“The definition of an optimist is someone who believes
taking one step backwards after taking one step forward
isn’t a crisis, it’s the cha-cha!” ~ Unknown.
Wherever you’re at now is just fine.
Part of releasing resistance is making your peace with whatever is, as it is.
Your INVISIBLE POWER lies in being in a safe space and OKAY with what’s going on, maybe even appreciate, accept and learn to DELIGHT in what’s happening. Your Invisible Power becomes more powerful as you get really good at feeling, saying, thinking and doing what feels really wonderful, life-affirming and DeLightFULL… to you.
GIVE YOURSELF PERMISSION TO PLAY
Author Michael Neill said the most difficult thing to adopt is that choosing to do what feels good. I believe given what we all see in the world, that is likely a very accurate description.
I wanted to learn to play piano at the age of five when I heard a pianist play at a church I attended. But, by the time I was eleven, I hated every minute of it. In fact, I hated anything having to do with “music” at all. I was terrible at it. I had no ability to count, no rhythm, no vibe. Nothing I practiced sounded anything at all like the magical lyrical music I heard when I was tiny.
For six years I had been told I had to practice the piano for as long as 2-3 hours every day, to ensure my parents were getting their money’s worth out of my piano and my lessons. I began hating the words “practice” and “discipline”. To me, it meant long, agonizing hours spent on the bench, my fingers aching, my thumbs hurting, having my hands and wrists rapped on by my teacher, never playing full pieces of music, just for fun… focusing only on repetitive exercises in tune to a metronome, every day… day in day out. Sometimes I fell asleep at the piano I was so exhausted from “practicing discipline” to be “a great classicist pianist”.
The instrument I once loved so dearly, became a symbol of torture to me.
It wasn’t until I was fifteen and I met a girl who invited me to sing in her band, “just because, it’s fun!”. She discovered I knew how to “play” piano… but I shook my head. “I only know how to ‘practice’ drills. I don’t know a thing about “playing” music. It’s never been about play to me. Just a lot of hard work and discipline.”
My friend could not believe that I had never played a single piece of music all the way through. I secretly longed to be carefree and play and sing music with effortless grace. But I had it drilled into me to believe I would never be good.
One day, my friend dragged me to a music store where a bunch of heavy metal musicians were jamming together. The music was raw, cacophonous, loud and FUN!
She stopped their jam, hugged a couple of them then introduced me. She told them I had forgotten what “playing” music was all about.
One guy smiled at us and threw a guitar at me. I caught it and stared down at it as if it was an alien from outer space. I didn’t even know how to hold the thing. He laughed and sat down beside me. “Sit down, and I’ll show you some chords. We’ll have a little fun riffing and making a bunch of weird sounds.” He handed me a pick and with a deep sigh (and because he was cute) I decided to give it a try.
In about a half an hour, he had taught me a few chords, some basic progressions. Then, before I knew it I was “jammin’” with his band! I never had so much fun making “weird sounds” that made music with other “weird sounds” in my entire life. I knew my classical piano teacher would have had a fit! I was ruining my ears, ruining my hands and it was fun, fun, fun… because it wasn’t about all the discipline and hard work. It was easy and effortless.
“Hey, she’s pretty good!” One of the guys yelled over the noise we were creating. “Yeah, we are!” I smiled.
After that, my girlfriend gave me a stage name and we played in a band together for a while. I went on and played with another band for a bit after ours went our separate ways.
Over time, I learned bass, some basic drum beats, and even sang a bit. Not once did we ever “practice” and not once were we ever “disciplined”. We just got together to “jam”. We were carefree about making sounds that felt like fun to us. It didn’t matter if we sucked, it didn’t matter if we never played in front of anyone, we just lost ourselves to making up songs and singing out loud. I wrote the lyrics, someone else put the chords together and we just ran with it.
BE DeLightFULLY CareFREE Everyday.
I don’t really care for the word discipline.
It is heavy, like one of those ball-and-chain things you have to lug around behind you. So, I’m going to give you permission to play, rather than demand you develop the “discipline” to “practice” something that isn’t in alignment with your spirit. Discipline can create resistance if we are not careful.
It’s surprisingly challenging for us to let go of what doesn’t feel good and to move in the direction of what feels effortless, freeing and playful. Undoubtedly it’s because our parental and social conditioning rewarded us for “working hard”, being “disciplined”, and listening to others over our own internal guidance, for struggling, persevering, paying our dues, trying… etc.
However, if you trust that sometimes our course must veer off in another direction entirely so we can experiment with what it means to have fun again, to be carefree and flow with life, you may find something out about yourself.
Had we been taught to follow our “feel good voice” (which we were naturally gifted to follow as children), we wouldn’t even be discussing this now.
We’d already be skilled at following our internal guidance and doing what felt best and most natural for us.
I am sure most of us have lots of room to be more DeLightFULL and CareFREE. We just have to release all that time we spend in resistance to free ourselves up to Play DeLightFULLY with Life.
Go back to that list of “life-stallers”. What does it feel like in your body when you experience one of these life-stalling resistances? It feels “tight”, doesn’t it? Hard? Like you are tense? Maybe your jaw is tense or your are subconsciously tensing up your shoulders, tightening your arms, or holding your stomach in? Maybe you lean back a bit and find your fingers are bit tighter? As you become more aware of what your body does in resistance to something, you can immediately reverse it to get back into the Flow of A Life of DeLight!
Use that awareness to reverse the resistance. Take a deep belly breath and relax your shoulders, soften your eyes, open your mouth and chew a few times. Smile big. Do some funky movements and loosen yourself up.
Imagine you are in a river with the boat over your head. You cannot see much, you are stuck in the muck, and you’ve been using your oars to give you something to fight with. Well, it’s time. Turn your boat right side up, drop it in the water and get in! Stop carrying it against the current. Get your oars out of the water, reel in that anchor.
It’s all going to be OK. There’s nothing to struggle or to fight.
If you’ve ever gone rafting on a big river, you know you cannot fight the current, you can guide your boat, but it’s not about fighting the current upstream. Let go for a bit. Relax. See where life takes you. You might just really start to enjoy the ride.
Allow yourself be divinely guided by this question: “What would I like to DeLight in right now?” and dare to do whatever it is.
Sounds magical?
I guarantee you, it is.
Just go.
Open up.
You never know what you might be missing.
Putting this into practice, however, can be daunting for some of us. There’s many things we get so focused on, that we forget to pull back for a minute.
That’s why it’s important to create some kind of a trigger that you can use to bring you back and remind you to release your resistance to whatever you may be struggling with or fighting against.
For example, say you are in the middle of a work project that is getting more and more chaotic, and you sense you can’t make the deadline. Or maybe you are stuck in an argument with your life partner. Maybe you feel like you are fighting your own body because it doesn’t seem like it wants to heal itself. You feel trapped, stuck in a cycle of struggling, working hard… this is the life-stall of resistance.
It’s one thing for me to tell you “oh, just let it go”, but it’s quite another thing when you are right in the middle of a looming huge issue and you are stressing out, frustrated, freaking out, and lashing out.
Yet, that’s exactly how you begin triggering yourself. Create an interrupter. A Pause in the moment of your frustration.
I promise once you set up an interrupter or a trigger, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you can turn things around. When you are doing all you can at work, and you feel like you are pushing against everything that’s happening all around you, take a step back, take a deep breath and ask yourself this:
“What will really truly feel better to me than this? What would really DELIGHT me right now?”
Now, don’t let your mind take advantage and go ape-shit ballistic, sarcastic or cynical on you. I’m sure it might blast you with things like, “Well, I’d REALLY be delighted if this asshole got fired!” No… that’s not something that would ultimately truly feel better to you. That’s still resistance, that’s still fighting.
Maybe, taking a break from the struggle? Going out for coffee or tea? Take a walk outside? Find some birds to feed? Scrapping the current plan? Turning all your photos upside down? Drawing a goofy picture? Going back to the board and begin intuitively drawing out another approach? Calling in a sounding board in the form of an objective third party?
You can come to a higher resonating place that truly delights you, creative solutions begin to readily make themselves apparent to you through all kinds of seemingly disconnected things.
Tune in with yourself about what feels best for you to do and then dare to go do it, no matter how “insane” it sounds. It doesn’t matter if it makes sense or not. Just try it on!
DeLightFULL, Miraculous things can’t happen in your life unless you’re feeling open to receive them. It’s difficult to see clearly when you are in the midst of resistance.
If you aren’t feeling positive, joyful, delighted or good in general, you are probably in a life-stalling resistance of some kind. As soon as you get out of the stall, you’ll be right back on track.
Not all stalls are bad, they give us the opportunity to check in with ourselves about our life’s various experiments to pull back and observe them. To see what’s working and do more of that, as well as to see what’s not working and do less of that.
I have a few techniques and strategies I share at DeLight University for my members on how to release upwards and get back into the DeLightFULL flow of life.
Other methods for getting back into cruising mode includes: