This Holiday Season: Are you Waiting? Or Creating?
Dec 22, 2024
We are either waiting or creating.
And if we are waiting, we will be waiting for…ever.
Creating the future NOW is a moment-to-moment choice that we can act on aside from whatever is happening or has happened. The circumstances we’ve been waiting (hoping) for, are waiting for us to generate the types of thoughts, emotions, sensations, intentions, and actions that will naturally create them.
No doubt, sometimes we have to create in crappy conditions. Nevertheless, and perhaps even more to the point, if we are waiting for things to "GET" better, they never will.
We get what we GIVE into each moment of life. This has an immediate impact on our direct moment-to-moment experience and becomes a force of MOMENTUM that builds exponentially over time.
Most of us hold our happiness hostage to circumstances happening to us (when we get the job, or the money, or the relationship, or “get better” from some illness, or “get over” some loss or misfortune). We hope to get happy, instead of realizing that true satisfaction does not come from outcomes - it comes from engagement.
Choosing to be creative instead of reactive can feel challenging and uncomfortable, but its certainly easier than the inevitable shortcomings we face if we are waiting to "feel like it." When was the last time you felt really proud about something that came to you without significant effort?
Grounded satisfaction with occasional thrills and disappointments comes from honest engagement with the ongoing cultivation of CREATING the best possible outcomes we can, given: the current conditions, our increasable skills and capacities, and our future AIMS.
Contrary to popular notions that often keep people stuck, we do not need to fix what is wrong to create what we desire. We facilitate healing by putting the ends, first, cultivating the only skill that matters most (because it benefits everything else): joyful excellence by design.
The Survival Mode being "on" too much, too often, for too long is the root of all suffering and disease.
Survival Mode is the "default" we are all born with, but we can upgrade to "Thriving Mode" if we know how.
Take the Surviving to Thriving Online CourseBy focusing on cultivating the ends, the means metabolize the problems we thought we needed to specifically address. Most people think we need to heal in order to thrive and get stuck “trying” to heal, giving up, or never starting because it feels impossible (which it is when we are going about it the wrong way).
In reality, we need to thrive to heal. In doing so healing is quite natural and do-able.
We don’t often realize we can PIVOT to creating the future NOW, even if only by moving slightly in that direction, without referencing the past AT ALL. Being LOVING now, assuming we want a more LOVING future, is a choice aside from whatever else is happening or has happened.
This is our freedom and POWER as human beings, CHOOSING.
Think of it like a garden full of weeds. Weeds arise as a result of seeds that were planted in soil and they do so regardless of who planted them, or why they were planted. You don’t need to understand all about why the seeds were planted to recognize, “Those are weeds” (that’s a NO) and “I want fruits, flowers, trees, and veggies” (that’s a YES).
The current weeds are a fruition of past seeds. In this case, weeds are analogous to our upsetting conditions. Our current anger, frustration, anxiety, and apathy are arising because those seeds were planted, sprouted, and are now expressed as weeds. If we do nothing, those weeds will drop their seeds and will grow more weeds. If we get upset about the weeds, that amounts not only to MORE weeds but also more SEEDS, which will make a more crappy future.
However, if we pull the weed and plant the seed of a fruit, pull the weed and plant the seed of a flower, pull the weed and plant the seed of a tree, and we persist, by law of nature we will eventually be sitting in our garden enjoying fruits and flowers that drop their own seeds as our life gets better and better through the force of momentum.
The transition from mostly weeds to mostly fruits and flowers can be challenging. But, along the way we discover, again: the true joy and zest of life is in gardening, not in picking fruit. Or, at least we realize that fruit picking is so much more satisfying when it's the end result of our persistent labor.
What really feels good is getting our hands dirty and doing the work. THAT is the FRUIT.
Trying to fix, solve, or figure out the past is one of the reasons why typical therapists stay in business, as their “patients” (perhaps I am just not patient enough to be a normal patient waiting to get better) never get better.
Proclivities and obstacles arising from past problems will likely invade our current attempts to create better circumstances moving forward - we will still need to deal with weeds and seeds that are already in process. Plus, no matter how skilled we are at gardening, weeds will blow into our plot of life by circumstances that are beyond our control. But, when we have persisted at CREATING a bountiful garden, weeds don’t overwhelm us, instead they can be tossed in a compost pile and turned into fertilizer that makes our garden stronger.
We are on top of it when we can USE the crappy conditions of our lives to empower our Great Joy of Being!
When planting seeds for the future we value and choose, which can be as simple and present moment-oriented as fog breathing, we don’t need to go “looking for” the past to seek its understanding or permission. We will do much better to acknowledge: that weed is NOT something I want more of in the future, so it is incumbent upon me to pull that weed and in its place, plant a seed of joy, openness, love, kindness, and awareness.
This is not denial, avoidance, minimizing, invalidating, bypassing, or gaslighting the reality of weeds. It is looking at things exactly as they are and using the ingredients available to perform the type of alchemy that benefits us, others, and ALL.
Most of us think we need to heal to thrive, but what if we need to THRIVE to heal?
What if our obsession with fixing the problem exacerbates it?
What if waiting to “feel like it” will only beget more waiting?
What if what(ever) we focus on GROWS?
Is this a weed? Or a Seed? What I am planting in the garden of my life right now?
Am I waiting or creating?
The holiday season is upon us folks.... let's give our very best - even if, aside from, and especially because of all of the reasons (valid or otherwise), as to why we can't, shouldn't, or won't - to smile anyway and create the future we value and choose.
Together we thrive,
Mike
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