Have It Your Way!
Often your thoughts are the biggest challenge you have going for you. Life is showing you obstacles and roadblocks all over the place. Your interpretation of those obstacles and how you handle them is what keeps you from getting around them.
I’ve had my share of obstacles and roadblocks. In the last week alone I’ve gone from giving up to trying again multiple times. I’ve been super frustrated and super triggered by the messages from my tarot cards. It’s been a very challenging few days.
But then I caught onto (I think) what they were trying to get me to understand – your work doesn’t have to fit in the box. You’d think I knew that already. My work doesn’t fit in most boxes, but I still try to make the stuff I create fit in the existing boxes. I write books, short reads, offer private coaching and so on. All of those things I put into the standard boxes they fit into. But what if I shift it a bit and shift my writing a bit? What if I don’t need to fit in the box and it’ll make more sense.
I think one of the reasons people struggle with what I offer is because they feel like I’m going to tell them what to think or that I’m going to convince them of my way of thinking – and that’s not true.
My goal is to challenge your thinking to get you to a place where you can do whatever it is or feel better. Whatever the thought is that you come to is fine by me as long as it gives you the freedom to move forward or feel better. If it’s not keeping you stuck, turning you off, or making you upset, and you can move forward with it, then it’s a good thought to have. My requirement is pretty simple – it has to free you – from the pain or struggle that’s holding you back. That’s it. So my goal is to continue to challenge your thinking until you find a thought that allows you to do the next thing. We keep challenging the stories until you get there.
But what about my writing? There are supposed to be 2 goals with my writing. The first is to give you the theory behind it. Here’s the spiritual principle we’re working with. Here’s why this is important. Here’s an idea of how to do what I’m offering. The second is to help you question your thinking by giving you some general questions to think about.
The goal with my topical writing is to take everyday scenarios and break them apart. I bust them by questioning them. The idea is to free you to see it differently too. No, that doesn’t mean see it my way. It means see it in a way that frees you from the idea as well because the scenarios I pick up on are the ones that keep people stuck in ways of being they aren’t happy with.
For example, I wrote The Justification Block, as a way of helping people work through needing to justify everything. What if it’s just okay to do that thing? What if you don’t need to justify it? What if the outcome doesn’t matter so much? What if being happy doing that thing is enough?
Those kinds of questions are meant to free you to see the story you’re telling, breakthrough that story, and find a way of thinking about that thing that allows you to do what you want to do.
My cards offered me the idea that my writing in books should look more like what I post on social media. That was a bit of a moment for me. My social media writing is pretty informal. But here’s what it does – it just asks questions. It presumes pretty much nothing. It does what I try to do all the time – break apart the concepts being discussed to free people up and offer alternative possibilities.
But maybe I don’t do that as well in my books and short reads because I think of them as more formal writing where I’m supposed to pretend I know what the heck I’m talking about. Since I don’t know what the heck I’m talking about, maybe dropping the idea is useful.
The other idea that came to me was that getting more creative with what I call things may also prove helpful. So, I no longer have short reads I have “Topical Thought Provokers”. They are just short, PDF downloads for you to read, but maybe calling them “thought provokers” will make them seem less scary to people.
The danger in working with perspective is that people sort of assume that the goal is convince other people to see it my way. That’s never been the case. The goal is to stop thinking any thought that causes pain or keeps you stuck and replace it with any thought that frees you from pain and stuckness. If I feel the thought keeps you in the cycle, I’m probably going to continue to challenge it because staying in the cycle isn’t helpful either.
The thing I had to get good at doing was recognizing the story in my own thinking. I learned to pay attention to my thoughts when they were painful or told stories that caused pain or kept me stuck. Because I’ve gotten so good at doing it for myself, my goal is to try to help you do the same thing.
To answer the question – no, you don’t have to see it my way. You get to see it your way. My only requirement is that it frees you from pain and stuckness. As long as it does that, you can think whatever you want.
By the way – that doesn’t require a massive leap either. Freedom looks different from wherever you’re standing at the time. Freedom to my past self looked somewhat different than freedom does to me now. The same will be true for you. From where you are, what does freedom look like? Let’s see if we can get to there. Freedom is defined by you, not me, because it’s based on whatever your goal is at the time. It has nothing to do with me.
If I challenge your thinking, where can you get to reasonably? No, it’s not going to be in your comfort zone, but it won’t be such a massive leap that you run away screaming either. Again, the steps are yours to take. You’re telling me what you need and where you want to get to. I’m just helping you free yourself from your own mind enough to do that.
I’m not here to question the goal. I’m not here to question the steps you take. To be completely honest, I don’t care about the goal or the steps. I don’t care if you change the goal 12 times. I don’t care if you take 50 steps to do something. I don’t care if you go around in circles. I don’t care if you stay on step number 15 for three years. It doesn’t matter even a little bit. The important thing is only that you’re slowly freeing yourself from the self-created prison that is your own mind.
You have a goal and you have a screwy relationship with that goal. Why do you have a screwy relationship with your goal? Because you think it’s a problem. Because you think it’s wrong or you shouldn’t do it. Because you don’t think you can do it or you’re not good enough to do it. Because you’re afraid of it. You have a screwy relationship with the goal because you have all these crazy ideas in between you and your goal. The only thing I’m doing is helping you clear the path a bit so you can find a way forward.
When you create a good, working relationship with your goals you can hang onto them, not be so outcome focused, and work towards them all at the same time. Why are you going after the goal? Because you want to. Good enough. You don’t need to justify it. It doesn’t need to make sense to me or anybody else. You don’t need to be afraid of it. It’s your goal so of course you’re good enough to have it. The world won’t stop you from having it either, if you learn to see what’s happening you in a way that doesn’t stop you.
The world is all in how you see it. Perspective is everything. Yes, I talk about self-mastery and learning to manage feelings and behavior as well. Why? Because how you act on the thoughts you have matters. Your behavior has a cause and effect. It’s either going to move you forward or keep you stuck. So once we find a better thought, we have to figure out what the behavior looks like that matches the better thought. We have to also be able to recognize when the world shows us that old cycle and then consciously act differently. Yep, that takes work and guts. But that’s what I’m here for – to help you achieve that changed behavior by questioning the thoughts and feelings around it.
What is the better behavior? Whatever you decide it is. It’s your life, not mine. I can’t tell you how to act. I can probably tell you why your current response isn’t working for you, but I’m not the one that has to change it. You do. My job is just to simply offer the idea that maybe there might be a better way to handle things and then help you figure out what that might be.
Most of the time, I’m going to offer the idea of just not reacting. The best behavior in many of these scenarios is no behavior at all. Just don’t do anything about anything. Just let people figure it out on their own. Why? Because you can’t make others do things and you’re not looking for permission. You’re doing a thing and they have to figure out how to get okay with that thing. There are plenty of arguments with that idea, but some version of it is how you’ll free yourself to move forward on your own terms.
The goal of what I do is simple – to help you free yourself from your own mental prison so that you can move forward freely.
Why do I have that goal?
Because that’s exactly what I had to do (and continue to do) for myself.
I’m here now to help you do the same thing.
Grab one of my Topical Thought Provokers or message me to work with me one-on-one. I’d love to help you free yourself to move forward.
You can do it when you’re ready and I’ll support you every step of the way.
Love to all.
Della
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