We’re all dying… what are you doing about it?
People talk about what they would do if they were dying – their bucket list, their wish list, their ultimate dreams, or what have you. Things to achieve, things to experience, things to feel with their soul and heart if the time comes.
But you know what?
We’re all dying.
It just matters when.
And sometimes we don’t know the ‘when’.
So I say, we shouldn’t be compiling our bucket list for some future event… rather we should be LIVING it now – and then re-compiling our list to keep on living it NOW, and NOW, and NOW.
When you let go of that internal control and just let yourself live out your innermost desires and hopes, you fully appreciate everything the Universe has to offer; the miracles that kiss your cheek; the joys that LIFE is breathing into your very soul.
And in some amazing way, it extends to you the gift of courage; the ability to reach out and pluck your dreams from the sky and with a deep resonance within yourself say with conviction, “THIS IS MY LIFE!.”
May your bucket list give you continued joy, courage, hope, and above all, motivation to live out the life you deserve.
Much love to you.
(Image credit: http://bit.ly/2enOpw)
What If?
If you’ve ever made a major decision in your life that alters the path you’re currently travelling on, you’ve no doubt encountered that little voice inside your head that whispers ‘What If…’ or ‘What would happen if…”
9 times out of 10, the little ‘what if’ has some scary story to tell you or some other negative message. The voice doesn’t care that you’ve made up your mind. Until ACTION is taken on your decision, it’s going to sit there and annoy the hell out of you until it has you in a spin and questioning the original decision you made in the first place!
Sound familiar? Don’t worry, it DOES happen to all of us… even if you’re a positive-minded person.
So what can you do about it?
Firstly, I don’t believe you should be ignoring the little ‘what if’ scenarios that are whispered to you. They pop up for a reason and if they’re being whispered into your conscious mind
then they are most definitely working in the background in your subconscious mind.
Ignoring the ‘what if’ whispers, or indeed, allowing them to run amok in your mind without addressing them, is giving cause for your subconscious to continue to feed on the negative scenarios, without you even really knowing about it. Until you wake up one morning – before you have taken action on your decision – and emphatically declare that your original decision was a stupid idea and you’re just going to keep on moseying along just like you are, thank you very much! Or, you take action, but you haven’t entered into the action with gusto because there is some part of you that doesn’t believe.
Our minds are very powerful and your brain has no idea what is truth and what is fiction. Or what is grounded and what is outlandish. I’ve demonstrated this in my article ‘Your Brain
Believes What You Feed It’ which you can read here.
If you’ve made a clear decision to take action and you’re experiencing distracting ‘what if’ scenarios, here’s what you can do:
1) Keep a notebook or journal by your side at all times. Divide the page into two columns.
2) Observe your inner voice and the ‘what if’ scenarios that are coming to your mind.
3) Don’t ignore the ‘what if’ and give your subconscious mind an opportunity to feed on it and blow it all out of proportion. Instead, open your notebook and in the first column write
down your ‘what if’ (or ‘what would happen if…’).
Sometimes, when we write down our ‘what if’ scenario, it doesn’t look as big as we first imagined it in our mind.
4) After you have written down the ‘what if’ scenario, on the opposite side in the next column, imagine the opposite of what you have written down.
To give you an example…
If your ‘what if’ went something like: “What if they hate my speech? I’ll have ruined my chances and I won’t EVER get asked again!”
On the opposite side, you may write something like: “What will happen when they love my speech? Oh my goodness! I’m going to be inundated with new business requests!”
5) Once you’ve written down the opposite of your ‘what if’ scenario, spend a minute or so in jotting down the RESULTS of that thought. Don’t over think it – this should be a fun
exercise… jot down what quickly comes to your mind without wondering about the ‘how’ or whether it’s even a real possibility.
So with the example above, it may look something like this:
“What will happen when they love my speech? Oh my goodness! I’m going to be inundated with new business requests!”
- Increase my business by 12%, each month.
- Gain 10 new contacts each month.
- Secure 2 new referrals each month.
- Get recognised for my expertise; XYZ newspaper has written a profile about me in the Social Pages.
And so on… you get the picture 
6) Once you’ve written down your RESULTS, cross out the negative ‘what if’ scenario in the first column. Just put a bold line through the whole thought. You can even take it one step
further and do what I do… I cross it out, then in capital letters I write things like: ‘What a silly idea!’ or ‘You are the weakest link – Goodbye!’ Sounds nuts, I know… but you’ll
be surprised how wonderful it feels – quite liberating really!
By following the steps above, you’ve successfully turned around a negative ‘what if’ scenario and fed your mind with something positive. Writing it down and imagining the key results
works wonders.
To entrench the new positive in your mind and totally eliminate the negative ‘what if’ scenario, consider practising visualisations with the results you recorded in your notebook. Put on
some relaxing or light meditative music and take the time to sit quietly for 30 minutes and transport yourself to that new, positive scene. Play it out in your mind and really feel it,
see it, hear it, smell it, touch it.
“The secret of making something work in your lives is first of all, the deep desire to make it work: then the faith and belief that it can work: then to hold that clear definite vision in your consciousness and see it working out step by step, without one thought of doubt or disbelief.” ~ Eileen Caddy
A BIG Spider Nearly Killed Me!
I’m going to share with you one of my biggest fears… large spiders!
In fact, they’re the only thing to send me in such a panic that it has me racing the other way, unable to talk, heart palpitating, and in so much fear that I burst into tears. I’ve always been that way… since I can remember.
In my part of the world we have these huge, fearful looking spiders – the Huntsman and the Wolf (apt names, I reckon!). The Huntsman likes to crawl up walls and peer down at you from the ceiling (not a nice sight to wake up to!), whilst the Wolf will stalk you on the ground. To put it into perspective, when their legs are extended some Huntsman’s can be the entire size of my hand, and the Wolf as big as the palm of my hand. Not what you would call tiny!
Well, last week a Wolf Spider decided to see what was available in my house. When I saw it stealthily making its way across my dining room floor, what did I do? Yep, you guessed it. Ran. Picked up the phone to tell my dad there was an emergency and he better get round pronto to get rid of it! Thing is, I couldn’t talk! Didn’t matter anyway; no answer! DRATS! I would have to get rid of it myself!
So fly spray hugged to my chest, and my dog worriedly watching from the shadows, I bravely approached Wolf and, standing as far away as I could, promptly proceeded to empty half the can onto its body. It ran around going mad and I felt so sorry for it, I thought to myself “I’ll have to put it out of its misery and give it a quick death.” Out came the broom and, BAM, it was flattened. And I know, that sounds very terrible. In fact, I started feeling like a murderer. I’m not used to doing this dirty work myself.
For the rest of the night I had visions of it being Mummy Wolf and Baby Wolf Spiders fending for themselves out in the backyard. Then I envisioned that flattened spider as a REAL living species… it had a heart and, no doubt, it had feelings too. I felt awful, to say the least.
Let’s fast forward.
As I wandered into my kitchen last night I was greeted by another Wolf Spider… no doubt Daddy Wolf! It was standing right in my doorway, ready to pounce! I scuttled backward to grab the fly spray, heart pounding, when this voice inside my head said “Murderer!” I stopped in my tracks and wondered what the heck I was going to do! I just couldn’t kill it like the last fiasco!
I knew then I would have to conquer my fear and get it out of the house; alive! Either that, or live with this horrible feeling of murder on my conscience (I even hate squashing or killing bugs!).
And you know what happened? As soon as I thought that, I looked down at Daddy Wolf and thought to myself, “Well, I can run quicker than you can! I’ll just get a little closer and take a look at you.” So there I was, inching closer on my heels and I was starting to break out in a sweat. I actually felt physically ill. But I kept on going… inching closer and closer.
I was thinking for awhile I was a pretty good “spider whisperer” as he wasn’t doing a thing! All calm and just sitting there watching me… patiently.
I got a little closer. Then suddenly, he hunched up on all hairy legs ready to pounce! You can well imagine that I had a heart attack. Where were my ‘whispering’ skills? I grabbed the big
broom and dustpan I had next to me, and making a little dance (I didn’t want it running up my leg!) I flicked it into the dustpan. Whilst it lay there stunned marvelling at my Ninja moves, I slid the dustpan out the door with the long end of the broom handle! PHEW! Done!
And you know what? It felt SOOOOOO good! When I was close to Daddy Wolf, I could see so much to admire and it wasn’t really as scary as I imagined. And to top it all off, I didn’t have to kill it to get it out of my house.
I can tell you, I’m still not a big fan of large hairy spiders and will be taking measures so they don’t get in the house… however, if they do get in, I know that I can deal with it and
they aren’t going to gobble me up and I die a grisly death 
The thought is freeing and liberating.
Afterward, these questions popped into my mind that can apply to anything in life:
- What are you missing out on because you don’t have the courage to face the fear head on?
- What would happen if you DID have to face the fear head on? Go on… flip the fear and imagine THAT in your head. Would it be as bad as you think it is?
- Are your fears real or imagined?
Sometimes, we live out these fears in our head and we’ve never been in the ‘place’ where that fear is imagined.
For instance, with the large hairy spiders, I’ve never had to worry about ‘getting rid of it’ myself… I’d always imagined that it would jump on me and bite me and so on and so on, thus I
ran the other way, with no thought whatsoever to what the spider could REALLY do. Or even to the fact that it is a living species that I give a life sentence to, instead of thinking of
‘rehabilitation’ outside the house
When faced with my fear head on, I realised it wasn’t really as frightening as I imagined. Still frightening, yes. But not on the scale I imagined. Yes, the BIG spider DID nearly kill me… but only in my head. That spider was more scared of me than I was of him! I reckon I would get ready to pounce and attack too if a big giant suddenly appeared in front of me, looking all menacing!
This is what our fears are in our head. Big giants, standing over us; that in all reality are like fairytales that will disappear as soon as reason and ‘proof’ steps in.
So, I have a question for you…
… What one fear are you going to eliminate over the next 2 days? Are you going to take the challenge and stand up to it and fight the big giant?
Why not leave a comment right now to ‘put it out there’ on what fear you’re going to conquer. Then in a couple of days, drop on by and share with us all your experience in fighting the giant! I’d love to share in your excitement that YOU conquered the fear
PS: No, Daddy Wolf hasn’t come back into the house – YET… I reckon he’s learned his lesson
Are Your Monsters Gobbling You Up?
For some reason, my dog thinks the toaster is a monster.
He has such a fear of the toaster that as soon as I pop some bread into it, he charges out of the house to hide, tail between his legs; convinced the toaster is going to jump off the cupboard, chase after him and gobble him up!
In fact, his fear is so massive that despite him hating the rain with a vengeance, he will go and sit out in the rain just to get away from the toaster (normally he wouldn’t let a drop of rain touch his head!). Same thing goes if it is 40C (104F) outside; he would much prefer to swelter in the sun and nearly cark it than be inside with ‘The Monster’.
I have no idea why he has such a fear of toasters, and unfortunately, unlike us humans where we can get guidance on our fears, talk through all logical outcomes, and walk out the other side free of the fear, my darling little dog can’t do this and seems destined to be afraid of the monster all of his life, despite my best efforts to reassure him.
His situation and the way he carries on reminds me, on occasions, of what us humans put ourselves through, just to avert what we perceive as ‘pain’ due to an ingrained fear that we possess. We will jump through hoops, run 10 miles backward, and climb the wrong mountain; just to avoid ‘it’.
In jumping through those hoops, running those miles, and climbing a mountain, we’ve expended more energy than we should have which has taken our energy off what matters. Did you know that it takes more energy to fight your fear than it does to face it and move through it?
Fears are self-limiting beliefs that do not serve you in any way. And without evaluating your fear they sit in your subconscious, allowed to fester like a wound, and prevent you from fulfilling your dreams and desires.
What beliefs and fears are holding you back from stepping out with passion and purpose?
Please feel free to download this worksheet to work through your beliefs and fears so you can transform your thinking and eradicate the monsters!
