Opportunities for growth

In life, every experience can be seen as an opportunity for growth.  Whether the experience is perceived to be good or bad, positive or negative, we can look for ways we can expand and grow.  Growth from pain or negative experiences helps us to realize our strength, perseverence or love for ourselves and others.  Growth from something good that happens can be a little less obvious to find.  Usually we want to pride ourselves in our accomplishment, share it with our friends or post it as a status update on Facebook.  :)  Perhaps we can also find growth in the story that goes untold, the one that exists in our humility, grace and quiet self-expansion.  We can be content in knowing that life's great little moments are just that, fleeting and impermanent, and to enjoy them fully as they come; just as life's sorrows and disappointments are also fleeting and impermanent.  If we look at all of life's experiences as opportunities for growth, we keep our energies moving forward, we stay in the moment, and we live our lives exactly as we want to live them. 

Acceptance

Accept what happens.  Accept the moment.  Denying our circumstances or fighting them keeps us in a negative energy space and only exacerbates the situation.  By completely accepting the moment, we move ourselves into an open space, open to what may come and open to change.  We say no to drama, to clinging, to attachment and go with the flow into the now.  Sometimes acceptance doesn't come easily, as we may find our situation quite averse and really don't want to accept it at all.  But acceptance is the first step toward change.  Acceptance takes that negative energy from all the resistance and clinging and stops it.  Flat.  When you accept, then you can take a breath and say, Now what?  Let's move forward.  Let's be our own agents of change.  Let's unlock the powerful forces of the Universe and our minds to create our lives.  

What can you accept today to unlock the positive energy required to move forward?

Generosity

The word generous and the word generate both come from the same Latin root: genus.  Among its definitions, genus means to procreate, beget, give birth.  How can generous, a word that is associated with "giving" come from the same root as generate, a word that means "creating"?  One, it seems, is all about giving something away, while the other is about bringing something about.  When we think about it, however, it makes sense. When we give of ourselves and share our gifts freely and without expectation, we create a powerful energy that will bring those gifts back to us tenfold.  So by giving something away, we are indeed creating something in return.  As we generously share our cups of knowledge, wealth, kindness or love without expectation of return, we generate knowledge, wealth, kindness and love in the Universe that (you guessed it) will be returned to us, often in quantities we never thought possible.  How will you generously share your gifts this week, and what do you think your actions will generate?

Ripples of inspiration

We may never know over the course of a day who we may inspire or touch.  A smile given freely to a cashier completely shifts his energy from bad to good.  A genuine hug is the only human touch someone receives in a day.  A word of encouragement inspires a youth to study hard for a test.  The reverberations of genuinely given affection keep vibrating long after the gesture is made.  The cashier smiles at someone else and shifts their energy too.  The person who was hugged decides life is worth living after all.  The youth who studied hard passes his test and brings his mom some picked flowers from his walk home.  The ripples we cause through our positive actions may benefit many people whom we may never know about!  And that's okay because this is not why we do it, we do it because we are inspired to do it.  Inspired by our love for all beings, inspired by life's possibilities, and inspired by our own amazing existence in this world. 

Think, feel, act

Thoughts lead to feelings which cause actions.  If negative thoughts dominate our thinking, we feel bad as a result.  What happens next is a direct result of those feelings.  If we feel depressed, then inaction is often the result, and we blame ourselves or external circumstances.  If we feel angry, then the action could be undesirable as we lash out or "get even".  It is physically impossible to think negative thoughts and feel good.  But, there is hope!  It is also physically impossible to think positive thoughts and feel bad.  Hooray!  And when we think positively, loving ourselves and others, we feel great and as a consequence, we inspire ourselves into action in ways we never thought possible! 

When we find ourselves stuck in a negative thought stream about a certain thing, we can try thinking to ourselves, What is the most supportive thought I can come up with about this?  For example, one may be thinking, I'll never find a job! Which of course, makes her depressed, which then leads to her to stop looking (think, feel, act).  What's a different thought she could have?  Maybe she could think, I don't have a job right now, but I know somewhere out there is the perfect job for me!  Which leads to a whole different energy shift.  She now feels better about the situation, and may be inspired to keep looking or explore a different career!  Simply by shifting our thoughts from negative to supportive, we can exit the tired old thought stream that holds us back, and enter the uplifting thought stream that can inspire and motivate us!