What you set out to accomplish may not have transpired, because the sheer idea of being positive and talking about being positive was supposed to be enough to drum up the desired result. Did you immerse yourself in the vision, or did you become weary of thinking so positively that by the time you got around to putting some actions behind your intentions, you mentally fizzled out and the dream remained just that: a dream? A dream remains a dream if you have no intention of making it your reality. It is the intention with the inspired action that will make it the reality. Remove the intention and it is but a dream – an idea that remains an idea.
So, first and foremost, have patience with yourself as you learn to be you, as you learn to dream and as you begin to understand that dreaming is not only for the faint hearted! Dreaming is our soul’s way of communicating with the human part of us that has a responsibility to take action – in this world. As we learn to be ourselves and not a reflection of someone else’s dream, we go on to reap the benefits that go hand in hand with Patience.
Often in life, we don’t always find it easy to do something we don’t understand. If we cannot see how something will work out for us, we may not attempt to do it or to do it well. We all learn differently and then apply those learnings differently. If I understand why I am doing something, I am far more likely to do it better and then the dots in my peripheral vision tend to appear less threatening. The bigger picture can accommodate my confusion and frustrations, allowing nature to also run its course, as later on I begin to realise that some things are simply meant to be.
So thinking about your own events in life, for a moment, when does patience come naturally and when is it a struggle to maintain a connection? At what point are you even aware that you have been patient, because you had developed an equally valuable relationship with Tolerance and tuned into Nature’s rhythms? And at what point did the partnership break down? In other words, when did the spark go out and why? Was it anything to do with Time misbehaving or did you not manage that fellow to the best of your ability? Was something supposed to take a set time to do and you got bored part way through and gave up? Maybe it wasn’t so much about boredom, and Confidence scooted off on its travels again as you lost faith in whatever it was you were doing.
We can plan and prepare, though it is challenging to see past a certain point in time and know ‘exactly’ what’s in store. Patience may have felt natural at the beginning and then became a little more demanding; and then a little bit more testing… pushing you beyond your usual threshold in order to achieve an alternate state of mind. Finally, the penny drops! Eventually, hanging around with Patience feels like a walk in the park; you get to wear Patience like a comfy jacket you reach out to and put on each morning as you both morph into one. The habit becomes natural and natural becomes your norm. In the very least it is now becoming a familiar aspect to you that you can benchmark.
I suppose it goes without saying that based on the idea that we all practise patience on one level or another, it wouldn’t hurt to be patient with other people when it comes to accepting and even coping with their lack of patience, insecurities and insensitivities. Practise tolerance. It is most likely that all of those shortcomings we spot in other people so easily are reflected in each and every one of us, as we are not immune to periods of self-doubt or rebellious tendencies. We simply handle them and project them back out into the world differently.
Patience holds your hand through the darkness. It carries your weary soul through time when it struggles to cope with man-made pressures and responds to Nature’s distress calls. Go ahead and take the time to listen to your inner voice that resonates in your dreams, speaking to you in a language that is effortlessly understood by Nature, most often while you sleep. Dreaming may allow you an insight into some of the biggest mysteries known to Humankind… have you ever thought about practising meditation?
T*R*U*S*T
Emotional Contracts
Imagine living in a world where nothing you heard was the truth; where nothing you saw was believable and nothing you felt was real. Can you imagine never being able to trust anyone, ever again? Not only would this provide for a lonely and primitive existence, it would more than likely cause you to suffer from extreme paranoia whereby even your own survival instincts would become untrustworthy.
The human race thrives on social interaction and we rely on people in one way or another, every single day. We may not even realise how reliant we are on anyone or anything in particular because we have become accustomed to trusting that certain jobs will get done, by certain people at a certain time. Somebody somewhere is doing a job for you and you won’t even realise until they stop doing it, and only then are you likely to notice the impact that it has on your own little world.
I wonder if all the small things you take for granted, from having mail delivered or rubbish collected to having the roads swept, would soon impact negatively on your life if no one did them anymore. If you couldn’t make that all-important call, send your emails and watch live TV because technology no longer worked or satellites were orbiting around another planet instead of our own – I am sure these malfunctions would impact on business and general life.
There are people all over the world getting up each day or night, working hard to provide a service to another industry which makes a product that eventually finds its way onto your doorstep. The supermarket shelves will display the fruits of someone’s labour; the emergency services remain on standby; charities work tirelessly worldwide; governments multi-task and armed forces are either on guard or in battle. Someone somewhere is being saved from something that has happened or is about to happen. What if no one was helping anyone anymore because we didn’t trust ourselves to help out in the first place or we didn’t trust someone to help us? I think we would be in a pickle!
We naturally trust because if we gave all of these examples our energy and worried about who was doing what and when, all of the time, we wouldn’t be able to focus on our own individual purpose in life and find our own path (you may be involved in one of these professions). Personally, I don’t want to live a life that is based on mistrust and I like to trust people until I am given a reason not to trust. I need to trust so I am not consumed with doubts which can keep me in a less than comfortable place and emotionally drained.
Trust between two people (or two groups) creates a bond. Initially, you enter into an emotional contract and the relationship formed is not reliant upon any particular emotion being on display in order for it to work. Emotions may not reveal themselves unless the contract is broken and come out of hiding to indicate that either side is not too pleased with the outcome. Alternatively, emotions may remain conservative and contained, behaving with dignity during any further exchange of communication, symbolic of each other’s trust towards one another; this may involve signing an agreement. At the end of a contract, once the terms are successfully fulfilled, emotions can run free and depending on what you put your trust into at the time, these could be tears of joy as your satisfaction is theatrically expressed.
Trust has been leaving its fingerprints whilst silently turning each page, interrupting at times but appropriately. Trust will be an integral part of your journey in life, as you have to trust yourself and put trust in other people, most of the time. It is agonising to think, looking back, that Trust wanted to partner up with Choices, as they are like childhood buddies that need to remain close at all times. However, I needed to be sure that Choice could withstand the line of questioning it was expected to undergo without Trust becoming overpowering, before allowing the two to reunite. Trust underpins every choice we make but once one is made, Trust doesn’t put its feet up. Whatever it is you choose to do may need planning, executing and involve other people. Trust is in demand and is pulled in many directions.
If you find yourself in the unfortunate situation whereby you require an operation, you trust – before you consider anything else – that you actually n
eed to have one (unless in an emergency and you were unconscious). After considering your options you trust yourself to make the right choice and when uncertain, you trust someone else to help you make a decision. You will go on to trust the surgeon, who you know from your research has the confidence to do the job and a reputation that has given you the confidence to trust in his/her abilities. The people around you can hopefully be trusted to help out and get you back on your feet post-op. So, throughout this event, Trust is playing a huge role and everyone is counting on it.
It is clear from the outset through to your recovery that you will have developed a personal relationship with Trust. You will literally trust Trust to look after you because you cannot be certain how this event will unfold and whether people will actually do what they said they would do or set out to achieve. The fact that you are trusting now means you hold a firm belief in what you are doing, in what other people are going to do and in what is going to be done (the operation). Hope will probably hover around again on the operating table, which is great, but everything has been based on Trust up until now and influenced by logical facts and gut instinct.
We often trust until we are given a reason not to trust. This basic approach is healthy, realistic, empowering and goes hand in hand with the idea that we treat people the way we would like to be treated.
If you say you are going to do something for someone and then you change your mind, will that person trust you the next time you offer to help? It may depend on your reason. Did you tell them you couldn’t do it or just didn’t do it, leaving them bewildered and wondering what happened? Are you given a second chance but let that same person down again?! Do you innocently procrastinate without taking into account the impact of your actions on other people or are you simply untrustworthy and don’t mean a word you say?
Some of us have an admirable ability to laugh off other people’s excuses, having sussed out that there are simply people in life who cannot be relied upon. At work you may have heard the forewarnings floating around about the woman who always means well, but don’t ask her to do anything as she will end up letting you down. In the pub one guy says to another, “He’s a nice bloke and is always volunteering to help out, but if you want the job done sooner rather than later it may be best to hire someone reliable”. You may have been on the other end of one of these remarks having let someone down. If it resulted in any negative consequences you may have felt terrible about it afterwards, and if you are not used to letting someone down, it isn’t a pleasant experience.
Of course it is nice to be trusted! It enriches the soul and keeps us moving in the right direction as a human being, spiritually or otherwise depending on your beliefs. You may decide that there are enough down-to-earth influences that can cloud your own judgement, never mind trying to engage in the idea that spiritual guidance could exist and would require an element of interpretation before becoming at all useful. Alternatively, give it a go and trust the Universe to deliver; you may surprise yourself as you start to get a few more sensible answers coming through, when you ask the right questions. And then listen!
On the other hand, others may suggest it is wiser not to trust at first, until you are sure that a person or idea can be trusted. There is logic to having this point of view and it may be based on the situation.
When you are romantically inclined to get involved with someone who you have just met, you may be cautious. They may need to give you a clear indication of why they can be trusted but it is unlikely to be something tangible or a test they can take (unless you have a particular one up your sleeve that works well for you) and it may take time for you to trust the person completely. Surely, you will still trust up to a point in order to move the relationship on to the next level and trust until you have any reason not to trust. You will be the judge of where that point is, for you. Everyone will have different standards and levels of confidence in other people, either marked by a former experience or as a result of following their instincts. If danger felt close by, it stops being about trusting that person alone and more about trusting yourself to do what feels right – scarper comes to mind!
If trusting in other people is not the easiest of things for you to master, it can take up your emotional energy. The energy can feel negative and you spend most of your day on tenterhooks, anticipating a disaster or failure to unfold, instead of allowing Trust to be present unconditionally until you need to decide otherwise.
Trusting that we are only given as much as we can handle in life is a tough idea for many of us to get our head around. Maybe this theory works when life is playing ball but when it all gets too much it can seem a little far-fetched. Taking comfort in the fact that it is ‘all meant to be’ and we will be more resilient for having had ‘an awkward experience’ probably doesn’t work for half the population. On the other hand, if this concept gives you faith that you are not alone, even though you are not entirely sure what is accompanying you either, you may trust that a master plan will unfold and handling the here and now is as logical as it is going to get. Regardless of what you believe in, we all believe that Trust exists in one form or another; we just have different ideas about it, that’s all.
What does ‘trusting in you’ actually mean? I imagine it depends on the context. Trusting in you to do something and feeling certain that you can do it is ultimately believing in yourself: “I trust myself to drive a car without crashing each time I go down the road” or “I trust myself to keep a promise”. When you feel it is right – to trust in taking action – you are also trusting in a positive feeling that accompanies the act of trusting. (Not to be confused with having to be in a positive situation for Trust to work; kindly read on and then have a think about this. Here goes…)
Trust seeks your approval to get to work and responds to your feelings. If you don’t feel that an action is the ‘right’ thing to do, then Trust will feel apprehensive about carrying out any tasks it is being assigned. If you don’t believe in what you are about to do, then Trust will probably ask to step down and let Hope take its place because you are not reflecting the level of confidence it needs to see in order to work efficiently. A firm belief must exist which authorises Trust to jump on its surfboard and ride the waves off the back of your confidence.
You trust in yourself to do something or you don’t (boom!). It is a bold statement to make but is it really that simple? Maybe you are nervous about acting on an idea because you are lacking self-confidence and confine yourself to a limited set of thoughts! Trust is sitting on the substitute’s bench, like a player waiting to be brought on in a game of football – it is on your side and wants to play. In fact, this is the bench where all the emotional substitutes and reserve players sit, waiting a turn. It’s a busy place to visit with all the comings and goings, and sometimes an emotion sits down for a moment only to find it is being asked to get back up; this may be to support another player or help tame the other ones out in the field.
Interestingly, I think that Trust is an extremely reasonable character and understands that you may take time to build on your current levels of trust or to find it in the first place. This is why it is always running around after you at short notice. It senses an uncertainty can exist – especially when you are making a decision – and once you have made up your mind it will need to wait close by. It realises you can be fragile until any uncertainty has disappeared and your vision is clear.
However, Trust is equally clear on its own role and doesn’t like wishy-washy situations. It accepts it will be involved in situations that don’t turn out as well as you had planned but it expects you to believe from the start that they will. Its role is not to pick up the pieces when it all goes wrong or revel in your successes. Trust has no ego; it only asks for respect and then you can both enjoy an understanding relationship. Trust loves to work with Honest, which we shall meet later.
I stated, “You trust in yourself to do something or you don’t”, because I don’t kno
w if you can partially trust in yourself. After all, what does trusting yourself ‘a bit’ mean? If you said meagrely, “Well, I sort of trust myself”, this suggests to me that you don’t… more than you do! I understand why Trust is saying to you, “Make up your mind – and then you will have my full support”. Hence this is the reason I am inclined to believe that a positive feeling accompanies Trust, in order for it to exist. What are your thoughts about this now?
Trust won’t influence you one way or the other and simply does as it is told once you have made up your mind. Logic and instincts will do all the influencing, offering up a selection of mixed messages that you will have to interpret. They will both impact on how you think and feel, and Trust will go along with your final choice. Trust will expect the same level of confidence to be attributed to the small things you do in life as well as the larger, more complex, situations that pop up along your path.
If you are setting up a business, Trust will be involved in various aspects from start-up through to implementation and delivery, but I bet it will stick by its word and maintain that its own role still needs to be clear. Trust will say that you cannot trust yourself ‘a bit’ in any one aspect of the business. It will ask you to trust yourself completely to do any ‘one bit’ and ensure you do it well. It would expect you to learn to trust someone else to do ‘another bit’; excellent – so this would be ‘two bits’ that are going very well now! Learn to do the things you can’t do yet and work out how you are going to do the things that neither one of you is ever likely to be any good at doing. If you are someone who is fabulous at doing everything, then consider the time involved and if you’ve got plenty stashed away!
Emotional Sandwiches Page 13