Now I love getting stuff done. I love taking action & making a difference.
Sometimes though, things don’t quite work out how I imagined.
Does that ring a bell?
Do you sometimes get excited, make a plan, take some action & then feel disappointed?
I know how I feel when that happens-
Frustrated, not good enough, a failure, sad, angry and resigned. Feel like giving up, hiding away.
I feel like I need a little bit of time to lick my wounds & then I take a step back from my emotions to see what has actually happened.
I can get caught up in my plan & get very attached to the results that I want to create.
I know that when I do that, an expectation builds inside of me. I expect to get a certain result.
I get into a pattern of telling myself that I should have such and such a thing.
That I must achieve such and such a thing, and that only in gaining these things will I then be successful.
These kind of thoughts create in me a sense of unrest, disquiet & dissatisfaction.
I feel I am lacking something, I feel useless and incomplete.
Over the years I have made many plans to achieve things, those plans have often not gone the exact way that I had intended. Not happened as quickly as I would have liked, or turned out differently, or not happened at all. So, what can we do with the feelings that arise when things don’t go to plan?
I have notice that if I consciously choose to surrender myself to whatever outcome I might get, I feel a great sense of relief. It is much harder for myself to experience disappointment.
Also, in hindsight, more often than not, the ‘wrong’ outcome turns out to be an even better result than I had ever envisaged.
Dr Wayne Dyer in his film The Shift explains how this can be achieved, much better than I can.
A shift in our thinking is how we can deliver ourselves from suffering & disappointment.
“Move into a place of service. Living from your authentic self (, rather than from your fictional EGO self). Moving into meaning. Ambition with meaning, ambition transformed into purpose. You have to learn to become the observer, to step back. You begin to live in your process, trusting where the universe is taking you. Detach from the outcome and that detachment allows you to be no longer fighting. It allows things to just come to you. You are allowing them to show up. We aren’t here to push, we are here to enjoy life.”
Trust in the process of life, chill out!
This is not about becoming a martyr, but sharing all of our gifts with the world, unconditionally.
As a small physical aside…I also find that cooking helps me deal with disappointment.
Today I’m making marmalade. Have had the seville oranges in the freezer for 15 months!! I didn’t feel I had enough time last year-now I’ve made time. Feels great.
Thank you for reminding me; it’s so easy to get stuck in our own ideas of how we should be and what we should achieve – when a little bit of letting go and letting be is all that’s needed!
Have a lovely weekend,
Svenna
Good point; I know personally how limiting it can be when you become fixated on a particular outcome. Sometimes when you get what you want, it isn’t how you expected it to be at all, and many of the best things in life can come from unexpected places.
I’ve just got the link to your website from a Permaculture magazine emailed newsletter (wasting a bit of time perhaps?) and am practicing giving way to the moment. I’ve just started re-reading Dr Wayne Dyer’s book ‘When you Believe it you’ll See It’ from 1991 and lo and behold, you mention him in your blog. Odd eh?
Another strange thing that has happened this year is that 6 years after my died I’ve been able to trace the father he never knew. And this man was Swedish, lived in Canada and was a soldier in the First World War. I decided to get his War record. Again, a lot of time spent on the internet! The weird thing is, he was injured at Ypres and recuperated in a hospital in the town where I live in the UK. When we moved here, the building was still there – it was a school after the war and we could see it from our back garden…..