transformation

Living a cultivated life is a process and can never be done wrong. We are ever-evolving if we have set personal growth as an intention in our life, even when we can see no evidence of growth and transformaton. Like the growth of our physical body through childhood, or the opening of a subtle spring bloom, the shift in us is often imperceptable. It is gradual, but steady if we maintain our intention.

One practice that has helped me tremendously is to begin the day with a short meditation that supports my intentional path of cultivation. During this meditation, I calm my mind by breathing in deeply, all the way into my belly, three or four times and allow my mind to focus on the area around my heart and visualize a light there, first as a pinpoint of light, then growing larger and brighter until it fills my entire body. I concsiously relax each part of my body from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet. Then I bring thought in the form of a simple question. I ask “How do I want to feel at the end of today?” Do I want to feel satisfied, happy, content, kind, loved and loving,competent….The answer becomes my intention for the day  and I go through the day with this intention in mind, asking myself, will this bring me “kindness,”  for example, today before a think, speak or act.

This process helps support us on our path to a new way of living. If we begin each day with an intention, this serves as a roadmap for our day and how we will live it. It supports us to be present in our lives today, now, rather than living in the past or the future. When we begin the day knowing how we want to feel at the end of the day, we have an anchor and we feel grounded in ourself, we become inner referring rather than seeking external validation which we cannot control and in the end is meaningless. How we approach and live the days of our lives are a choice we have the power to make and lean on throughout our day.

So, what is perspective anyway and why should we care? Defined by Oxford below, I chose definition two for this blog:

perspective |pərˈspektiv|
noun
2 a particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view
• true understanding of the relative importance of things; a sense of proportion : we must keep a sense of perspective about what he’s done.

In my coaching practice, I often use this real life example of the power of perspective:

I know of a woman who has a personal narrative or story that she does not matter, she can’t ask for what she needs and she bothers people. This is a belief system that arose out of false conclusions she made when she was about 8 years old.

The year she was in third grade was a difficult one for her family in every way. The family dynamic was survival mode and she began to feel very emotionally needy. This manifested as pretending to be sick at school often. By the fifth or sixth time her mother had to leave work to pick her up at school, it was obvious she was “crying wolf.”

Then one day, she really was sick and the nurse called her mother at work just like all the times before and her mother did not want to come and get her and told this to the school nurse. When the nurse hung up the phone, she turned to the secretary and said, “what kind of a mother wouldn’t come get her sick child at school?”

The young girl overheard this comment and immediately began to ask herself that question and her conclusion was that a bad mother would not want to pick up her sick child. And what kind of a child would have a bad mother? A bad child, she concluded.

Eventually, the girl’s mother did pick her up and dropped her off, to spend the afternoon sick and alone. She made it mean that she did not matter, she bothers people (she was clearly bothering her mother) and it was not safe or acceptable to ask for what she needs.

She could have chosen to make it mean that she was a big girl who could stay home alone for a few hours until her mom could come home. But she didn’t.

And this is the power of perspective. When it comes to what we make things mean, or perspective, we really do have a choice. The choice of our perspective is powerful because it is another example of personal responsibility about how we see the world and our place in it. It is the doorway through which we must walk on our journey to create our greatest self.

Taking responsibility for how we choose to view the events and people in our world is like opening the door to a beautiful spring morning that is full of possibility. It creates the opportunity to experience the scope of untapped possibility within us.

Tap into the greatest source for transformation you have, the power of perspective.

Why did I share my story about my relationship with my sister? Because it illustrates the fruitless pain and suffering that an SRP creates. Until I could become aware of the very real truth that I was angry that I had to be a people-pleasure in order to survive, my ego could use this energy to cast blame onto another person.I could avoid taking full responsibility for my life, my choices and my relationship with my sister. I wasn’t angry that she didn’t accept me. I was angry that I didn’t accept me. I could only see this by reflection as I projected it onto my sis.

When I became willing to show up 100% responsible for my life and my relationship with her, I no longer needed to blame her. I did not have many opportunities to make external choices when I was a child, what child does? But, I had never put aside this deep sense of lack of control and continued to show up as a needy 10 year old, approval seeking child living inside a woman’s body. When I showed up as an adult, things began to change.

I just wanted to make it clear that I am responsible for me and you are responsible for you…in any relationship, we have a choice as to how we will show up and what our experience will be. Each situation will either inform us or affect us. This is our choice.