One thing I’ve learned from tangling with spirit guides is that they have no interest in complexity. I may have said this before and will no doubt say it again – and again!
Often my guide’s advice is stunningly simple, completely obvious, and leaves me wondering why haven’t acted on what was right in front of me before. That’s because he’s de-training my poor training .
If it doesn’t make you happy don’t do it
Completely obvious, something we all know, yet we will make any number of perceived reasons for staying somewhere that makes us low, unhappy, miserable, or depressed. This is because these emotions are seen as a normal part of a stressed 21st Century life. What if that’s wrong?
Stress is not a necessity
Firstly, let me define stress. It’s at the top of the anxiety scale: Stress, strain, anxiety, acute anxiety, depression. When I consider that list I feel that stress comes in at a point, and as a pointer, that we need to start creating changes in our lives. I would not put a death, accident, job loss, etc., under the heading of stress. No trivialisation here.
When you start to feel stressed you’ve reached an action moment in your life. Failure to take action usually comes from the fact that you’re only a bit stressed. At whatever level this is not a good thing, because stress may be at the top of the scale, but it’s a sliding scale in the true sense of the word and it slides downwards. So use any stress as a warning signal to start working out what the issues are and what you can do. But you won’t take action if:
You consider stress to be a normal part of everyday life
(the acceptance of that idea leads to more acceptance of stress)
You don’t need me to tell you that’s a bad idea. You know that, so don’t fall for social thinking. No one else has a right to define stress for you, dictate your stress levels, or make you feel feeble because you can’t take much stress. Just reply that you can take stress but choose not to.
No one can be happy all the time
Why not?
Okay that’s not a real answer but it should be your first question. To help me avoid stress and cope with my life in a better way, I defined what I considered to be things we can’t call stress, where unhappiness is a reasonable reaction: death, relationship break ups of all kinds, illness, accidents to yourself or others. You get the drift. Anything that falls outside that list of what we may consider to be ‘uncontrollables’ I take as serious action points.
You see, I agree that no one can be happy all the time, I don’t agree that we have to embrace unnecessary unhappiness. Give that some thought and then you can more easily deal with your own life and reactions because you will have a clear way of measuring the reactions you have, and whether they’re necessary.
So the answer would be, yes I see the truth of that statement, but I try to be careful to make sure that I only accept the realities, and don’t put every uncomfortable feeling down to the idea that unhappiness is some kind of rule. It’s the exception.
Actions speak louder than words
A well-worn cliché that is stunningly true. Most people will try to be kind and say what they think you want to hear. Others are so scared that they say what they think you want to hear, because they’re terrified of being wrong.
However, when people say one thing and do another, you really should be taking notice and being careful, you may never know their reason for behaving in this way, but if the saying and doing not matching is having a negative effect on your life, grab hold of the truth of this saying and act on it.
I could go on forever but…
The simple message here is that life is more often than not extremely simple, decisions are fairly obvious, but society has taught us such a poor approach to our idea of what living your life means, that we become lost amongst the rules.
Rules are there to be re-written, and each individual has the right to make their own rules rather than following a proscribed pattern that, let’s face it, hasn’t been working for a few centuries.
We all have a choice, to expect the best of life, the worst of life, or live life somewhere in the middle plodding from day-to-day doing nothing much, then wondering why we’re bored.
Make a conscious choice to expect the best that life has to offer. That will inspire you to look for those things. Shut your ears to any of the handy sayings available that would ruin that mood. Try asking your heart. I’m sure it would far prefer happiness and all the good things that encompasses. The heart knows and you can trust it.
To your happiness
Deb xx
Deb Hawken 