As we wind down one year and begin another, I always find it interesting and informative to reflect back on the events, situations and circumstances that filled the previous twelve months. Typically at the start of each New Year we have goals, plans and ideas of how we want and hope the year will unfold. I am often surprised by the dichotomy of what I thought would happen during the year and what actually ended up happening – as the saying goes, “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry”. Over time I have learned to surrender my ideas to the greater plan that the universe has for me and my life. This has resulted in much more peace, happiness and joy in my day to day life. However, this approach didn’t come easily to me. At first I struggled greatly to create the outcomes I wanted and pushed hard to make things happen in my life. I had the mindset that the only way to get something done was with lots of hard work, analytical thinking and careful planning. Most of the world will support this approach to life. It is the “take the bull by the horns” mentality that is commonplace thinking in the world at large. The great irony being that in my previous efforts to reduce my anxiety, worry and stress about life, I was actually guaranteeing that it would continue to be my primary experience. The mindset that I alone am the driving force holding my goals, plans and hopes together is by definition anxiety creating! If the only way my life works is that I have the responsibility to hold everything together through my own intellect, how could I not be worried and fearful? Feeling as though it all depends on you is terrifying. It is why people struggle to make decisions, have lots of push energy, and experience fear about the future. We can’t know what is coming around the bend or what twists and turns life has planned for us. When we are trying to make life happen on our own terms it can only create in us an anxious and worried mindset.
The good news is that there is another way. In order to access this alternative way, we need to reframe our understanding. Life is not “out to get us” and we don’t need to stand guard ready to hatch a plan that will save ourselves and our loved ones from whatever is showing up as the current worry of the day. This is essential to understand, because otherwise our life will continually be spent putting out fires, dealing with the next crisis and trying to solve yet another impossible dilemma. Einstein said that you cannot solve a problem at the same level of thinking that created it. That is what I am getting at here. It is a shift in mindset that creates the new awareness. As this happens, we begin to move into a deeper understanding, a recognition that life will present us all with challenges. From this new vantage point, we cease to view life’s challenges as problems to be solved and start to see them as opportunities for growth. This creates the space and presence of mind to recognize that our so-called problems are actually the method of our evolution. By replacing that faulty mindset with truth, which is that we live in an intentional universe, we can start the journey back to sanity.
This doesn’t mean that we don’t have goals or plans for the New Year, it means that we begin to have a relationship with life where we hold “our plans” loosely. Then we can release our attachment and drive to a particular outcome and open up the possibility for the universe to bring us even something better than we could have ever dreamed up on our own. Which brings me full circle to how I started, we are not doing this alone and we can relax into the knowledge that the same infinite intelligence that keeps the planets in orbit, turns embryos into babies and buds into blossoms can handle the circumstances of our life. According to the Talmud, every blade of grass has its own angel bending over it, whispering, “Grow, grow.” We just have to take our hands off the wheel and be willing to trust that the universe has our back.
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