Seven Secrets to help you rediscover the “re-newed” in you.

Everything happens to teach us about….ourselves

We just received the “opportunity News” that another conference had been “downsized”.  It included the typical tight budgets and difficult time’s apologies and promises of new bookings in the better days to come.

We know how hard it is to put on these conferences, especially for volunteers who  already have real full time jobs. These are perplexing times, but these are the times when people find out who we really are.  When things are going well we simply blend into the background.  When things are challenging people find out who is behind the image.  Over the last ten years we have managed our own international association.  In 2008 we had the best year ever – and then we fired them.  Some would say not the best move in turbulent times; but life is too short to just go along to get along.

We are either growing or we are dying.  Sometimes we have to die first (while we are alive) before we can really start growing again.  Instead of working to understand what these current economic times mean to you, try to learn what they are teaching you about you. The purpose in every event of our lives is to teach us something.  Where most people miss the boat is that they don’t realize the lessons are not about anything outside of us, but what is inside of us.  The only person we can change is us.  The good news is that we are the only person we need to change to have all the peace, prosperity and joy we ever wanted. We don’t need to change jobs, spouses, locations or even economies.  The most important economy of all is not that around us, but that within us.  If we believe in scarcity that is what we will experience.  If we believe in abundance that is what we will find as well.

Here are seven ideas to help you use this time “pick yourself up, shake off the dust and rediscover the “re-newed” in you.

1.  Remember in every moment you are new.  You are not the same person you were six years ago or six seconds ago.  In every day the only thing you can change is now.  You can never change the past, and worrying about the future is a waste of the present.

2.  There is NEVER a need to suffer.  Suffering is just a resistance to what is, and you cannot change what is. Accept what is.  Appreciate the lesson.  Take action.

3.  Get out of your head.  Most of believe we use your minds, but most often we are used by our minds.  Think about how often your “stories” bring you dis-ease.  Take a few minutes to observe not what you are thinking, but how you are thinking.  Do your thoughts bring you peace or pain?  If they bring you pain why would you choose those thoughts?

4.  The best indication of what you are thinking is how you are feeling.  Learn to pay attention to how you feel.  Don’t judge it or understand it, just observe it.  All you need is awareness.  You will soon realize you can observe your feelings without being absorbed in them, and in that moment you can choose to think differently.

5.  The best thing that can happen is happening.  This is one of our favorite thoughts from Deepak Chopra.  You only have to look back at your own life to KNOW that it is true.  The times when you have grown the most have not been in times of ease, but times like right now.

6.  It is not what you have or where you are going, but who you become.  This is not a journey outward to something you have never been, but a rediscovery of the best parts of you that lie buried under the layers of, as Juan Miguel Ruiz says in The Four Agreements, “Domestication”.

7. Be filled with wonder.  Most often we don’t get in trouble because of what we don’t know.  We get in trouble because of what we think we do know.  Remember these lines written by T.S. Elliot: We must never cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.