I no longer need to “fix” something or find a “perfect” answer or repair for a life that will always be in process—and in grace. I am less concerned with what the deluge of information on the Internet or in the media suggests. I want to hear the still, deep, dark, electric truth within me. I want to follow what only I can know.
Of course, I’ve learned incredible information from others along the way, and will continue to do so. But that’s not where my fulfillment has come from. My outstanding success is not clever. My satisfaction comes from the power of self-alignment. I am not rushing to be somewhere else so that I can finally accept myself.
I am not blaming anything for why I am held back. I am never held back. I am standing on holy ground—because wherever I am standing, I am standing wholly. I am no longer measuring my progress by my circumstances; I am measuring it by my experience of and response to my circumstances.
Finally, I trust uncertainty more, because I am never uncertain as to how much I will choose to love myself and every fiber of this fluctuating, emerging life.
To me, this is success. I want you to have it.
TURNING POINTS:
Why Does It Take So Long to Succeed? (And How Come You’re Asking That Question?)
There will always be a gap, a space between where you are and where you want to be. This isn’t failure. This is life, especially for someone who continues to grow.
You have every right to desire progress. But it’s disabling to condemn where you are. Thriving comes from loving, not from withholding love.
You may feel as though the rug has been pulled out from under you. I’d say you’re on a magic carpet ride. You’re no longer in the life you planned. This is a life that is bigger than your plan.
Thriving means trusting your own experience to lead you where the deepest part of you longs to be, instead of fighting your life and yourself at every turn.
It’s always been love that has moved me forward. All the data or strategy in the world couldn’t give me the solidity of one inspired moment.
I no longer need to “fix” something or find a “perfect” answer or repair for a life that will always be in process—and in grace.
I am standing on holy ground—because wherever I am standing, I am standing wholly. I am no longer measuring my progress by my circumstances; I am measuring it by my experience of and response to my circumstances.
Finally, I trust uncertainty more, because I am never uncertain as to how much I will choose to love myself and every fiber of this fluctuating, emerging life.
IT’S COMING: MORE GOOD THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
HELEN KELLER
If you haven’t gotten “there,” it’s because there’s something for you here. You’re not missing out on anything in life, unless you’re missing out on this moment.
TAMA KIEVES (journal entry)
They say the older you get the faster time seems to move, or maybe that’s the more you read Facebook, I don’t know. What I do know is that most of us are always wishing we were “there,” that we had done the “right” things, secretly carrying our shame suitcases stuffed with regrets, imagining the life we cost ourselves with our own negligence. God, but we’re cruel to ourselves—and misguided.
I have a story to tell you about a ritual of release I did. I’m hoping it will open you to the abundance that is heading your way right now.
When my second book, Inspired & Unstoppable, was first released in hardcover, I was feeling anxious and fearful about how much I “hadn’t gotten done” to prepare for the launch, the precious days when a book first comes out and you’re golden and have chances to promote it that you will not have again, or so says every single publicist.
I hadn’t finished designing the website. Well, I’d never actually finished designing me, as in who I was going to be—so that was a problem. I hadn’t come up with some sexy launch strategy, like how I would let everyone know about this book, why it was better than sliced bread, and why they needed to have it because otherwise they would surely go insane and eat their young. I didn’t have bonus products, like downloads or cars to give away. And with each day, I became more anxious and couldn’t sleep at night.
I felt like I was running out of chances to finally go all the way, and at the same time, I was running out of steam. I had such a limited time to become “the bomb,” to make up for my whole life and all, and I was just a tiny bit ragged around the edges. If I’d met you at a party, my name badge would have said, “Hello, I’m Freaked Out and Twitching,” which is ever so reassuring in a self-help author. You may have looked at me and suddenly remembered you had an appointment in another part of the world, or at least on the other side of the room. And you surely would have felt better about your own life no matter what, even if you were going in for a hip replacement the next morning.
Finally, one day, I drove to the mountains to see some nature-type long-haired woman, an intention coach a friend had recommended. This is what you do when you’re desperate. You pay complete strangers to talk you down from the ledge. This nice woman I’ll call Mary talked to me in her backyard yurt, listening carefully as I piled on the desires I wanted to have fulfilled in my life. The poor woman probably hadn’t imagined the hurricane she’d invited into her nice, safe, nature-harmonious sanctuary. No amount of burning sage was going to clear this air.
After some time, I tried to study what Mary was thinking—because I was trying to decide if I needed to manage my image or if Mary might need to manage her medication. She’d been silent for long spaces of time, which made me babble more. I couldn’t tell if she was captivated or horrified or deciding upon which sex toy to use tonight when her acrobatic younger Italian lover arrived. But I digress.
“Okay,” she said. “Come on, we’re taking off.” I’d been warned that she was prone to spontaneous inventions of healing rituals, so I followed dutifully like a baby chick. We hiked to a sun-drenched field where a raging stream ran.
Mary told me to step into the stream. The water was ice-cold and the current ferocious, but she found a place in the middle where I could easily stand. My ankles stung from the cold, then turned numb. My first lesson: Shocking discomfort wouldn’t kill or stop me; instead, my “comfort zone” would expand. Actually, that was my second lesson. My first lesson was: Get more information about who I’m hiring.
The generous Colorado sun beat down upon me in full summer radiance. The water was as frisky as kittens playing with a sock, splashing my legs heedlessly as though they were rocks.
We prayed out loud. Yes, this is what some of us intelligent, creative types do here in Colorado, in the beauty of the wilderness. Then she turned up the high-priestess-shaman-rabbi sassy factor. She commanded that I release all that I’d been worrying about, all I should have, would have, and could have done.
She pointed to the water rushing behind me, and pretended it was carrying away everything I’d intended to do but didn’t accomplish.
“Whoops, there goes the e-mail campaign you could have done for the book,” she hooted. “Whoa, there’s a great idea for a book launch that just rushed by you. Oh my, someone else downstream just got it, loves it; it will become a New York Times bestseller now.” I watched a leaf fly by on the current of the water, just as she said those words. There was no fishing it back.
“Oh, look, there go the phone calls you didn’t make. There go the e-mails you didn’t answer.” I yanked my head back in that direction, watching the current sweep twigs, leaves, and debris with it. It was all happening so fast. I felt helpless. I wanted to dive in after them. I wanted to rescue every single one of my chances. I wanted a slow motion do-over. I wanted to do my whole life over. I wanted a pass. But the current was moving too fast.
I kept looking behi
nd me, missing anything new that might be coming my way. She kept speaking faster. I couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t make it right. “What are you feeling about this?” she asked. And after a few intellectual, self-conscious stabs at it, I finally croaked the magic words. “Everything is out of control,” I said. “I can’t keep up.” This shaman-priestess–Midwestern woman prodded me on. “Yes,” she said, her voice booming like thunder. “What else?”
“I can’t control it. I’m not in control.” The words tumbled from my lips, as slippery as the water itself.
And then I laughed, the laugh of those who have gone too far and know they are never coming back the same. I laughed at the age-old joke of trying to control my life as though this time I just might. I laughed as I remembered every other time I had surrendered and come to realize that there was something bigger than my own will, that it wasn’t my laziness or stupidity, it was my alignment with something essential, majestic, and mysterious, something that felt like True Life.
I just stood there and experienced what it would feel like to really let go. I felt giddy. I felt naked. It felt dangerous and pure at the same time. She asked me if I could forgive myself, because maybe, just maybe, I couldn’t have done anything differently than I’d done it, and maybe, just maybe, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter a fig, or a battered leaf or a broken twig.
“I didn’t have to do all those other things. I had to do what I could do. I was meant to follow the flow of my being over the force of my intellect.”
For just a split second, I dropped my anger, ache, and weight. I dropped my failures and self-comparisons. I felt like jelly. I let go of thudding disappointments, so many of them, a sack of potatoes, heavy as hell, black rot fermenting in the bottom of this bag I’d carried with me all the time.
I let go of my inadequacy, the part of me that felt immobilized when it came to doing all the things I imagine more ambitious people do. I realized it was gone, done. I couldn’t get back the time. And later, much later—maybe years or seconds, I don’t know—I was in the goop of shamanic time, off the clock and off the grid and maybe off my rocker, or on it for the first time, I realized that I didn’t even want to get back the time that had passed, that I didn’t want to do it differently. That in fact, I’d moved in some kind of weird perfection infused with its own acumen. I didn’t have to do all those other things. I had to do what I could do. I was meant to follow the flow of my being over the force of my intellect.
Then she had me look in front of me. “What do you see?” she asked.
“A forceful current,” I said.
“Tell me more about it.”
“It’s strong. It’s relentless,” I replied.
“Do you think it’s going to stop bringing new energy?” she cackled.
“Not anytime soon, that’s for sure.”
She didn’t have to say the rest. I got where she was going. I started to cry with sloppy, juicy, silent gratitude. I beheld the energy of that current. I felt like a weary disciple seeing the anointing eyes of a Christ who had never ever stopped believing in me, even when I heckled him and groused—and I’m a card-carrying, bagel-eating Jew by the way. I saw Krishna, Allah, my hatha yoga teacher, golden retrievers everywhere, inventors, poets, philanthropists, civil rights activists, a deep green lake where my soul resides, and mothers rocking and feeding their children. That stream became love and life itself.
I saw this loving current of life, how it would always give and give and give.
The water surged forward, filling in gaps, renewing itself with spontaneous, impossible abundance, and I realized life is always rushing at us—with new chances and opportunities to usher us into wholeness and expression.
“I’ve been so busy looking at all I haven’t done or don’t have that I haven’t been aware or available to what’s coming my way,” I said.
Now I saw nothing but endless, fierce abundance. I remembered a lesson from A Course in Miracles that says, “Let miracles replace all grievances.” I got it. It was all a matter of consciously applying my focus. Grievances came from looking backward. But miracles come from focusing on the life in front of me, and the promise of the current.
Love isn’t linear. It’s infinite, honeycombed, holographic, and pervasive. Likewise, the life you are meant to live doesn’t depend on what you have or haven’t experienced in the past. It doesn’t matter what you think you’ve bungled or broken. It doesn’t even matter if you’ve thought you’re forever broken. It’s not about your opinions. It’s all about presence.
I started recalibrating internally. The wisdom of all the sages became crystal clear to me. The past doesn’t create the future. The present does. I could step into a shift at any time, no matter what. I don’t understand this with my brain, but I don’t understand spiritual liberation, how the gentleness of dusk by the ocean wipes away my sorrow, or falling in love either. I can’t even imagine how Skype works. All I know is that if I free myself of grievances and stories about my past, even the past of a minute ago, and all that I assume I know, I awaken to new capacities, brain cells, frequencies, and experience. I become available to everything that’s available.
We live in an unstinting Universe. Every second is a feast of giving in a life-affirming reality, and we are connected to this crazy creative substance.
There is an unseen stream that’s here for you.
There are breakthroughs and radically new opportunities with your sweet, singular name on them flying your way with more behind them. It’s always your time. You’ve never missed out. Love brought you to the brink of this moment and love will carry you all the way. Receive your life. It’s all here for you now.
TURNING POINTS:
It’s Coming: More Good Than You Can Imagine
She asked me if I could forgive myself, because maybe, just maybe, I couldn’t have done anything differently than I’d done it, and maybe, just maybe, it didn’t matter.
I didn’t have to do all those other things. I had to do what I could do. I was meant to follow the flow of my being over the force of my intellect.
The life you are meant to live doesn’t depend on what you have or haven’t experienced in the past.
The past doesn’t create the future. The present does. I could step into a shift at any time, no matter what.
We live in an unstinting Universe. Every second is a feast of giving in a life-affirming reality, and we are connected to this crazy creative substance.
There is an unseen stream that’s here for you.
There are breakthroughs and radically new opportunities with your sweet, singular name on them flying your way with more behind them.
It’s always your time. You’ve never missed out.
Do Try This at Home: Jump-starts, Inquiries & Exercises
Some of these suggestions are just right for you. Others, not your cup of latte, or at least at this moment. Follow your gut. Feel free to adjust to your liking. Do what’s right for you rather than what’s written here.
Pick three Turning Points from this chapter. Write them out for yourself. Post them where you will see them. Meditate on them. Journal about them. Do a Freewriting exercise. (See page 252 for more about Freewriting.) Create a piece of art. Pay attention to your thoughts, memories, dreams, and “random” ideas and incidents. Inspired thoughts spark inspired responses. My words begin the conversation, but what do these truths unlock in you?
Take kaizen steps. Take one goal, desire, or project and come up with five tiny steps you can take toward achieving it. Take one tiny step. And repeat. Make it intentionally easy to succeed in your goals. For example, if you want to write every day this week, set the goal to write once this week.
Reclaim three inspired times. The more you tell these stories, the more they expand. Do a Freewriting exercise on “Three Inspired Times”—times or experiences when you knew something or life was clicking for you
. What did you know when you knew? Make these your fairy tales, your Bible stories. What lessons did these times teach you? What did they make you feel? Is there a way to take some of that knowing into your life now?
Stay in the conversation. Where do you need to reach out or follow up on something? Where are you being polite instead of purposeful? Stop being self-conscious. You never know. Be spontaneous. Connect wildly. Give someone new alternatives. Don’t back down.
Stalk your losing story. Do you have a favorite story you tell about why you’re not where you want to be? Fill in this blank: “If ____ were different, I would be saved.” This isn’t a reason. It’s an attack on yourself. What does it feel like to know there is nothing wrong with where you are?
Determine your “open sesame” success formula. Begin to ask yourself: What am I doing well? How have I progressed? What feels good to me? What’s been moving in the right direction? How can I be self-affirming right now? Go deeper. Consider sharing your answers with someone else.
Step into the stream. Go to a stream or river, draw one, journal about one, or bring it into a meditation. Stand in the middle of the current. Look behind you. What grievances do you hold? What things do you think should have happened? What are your disappointments? Let them go. Now face the current, the rush of life. What is present on the horizon? What are things that could come? Things you can imagine? Things that excite you?
Do you have a question about this chapter? I’d love to know what’s on your mind! I may just get wildly inspired and answer you immediately. Send me your thought or question at www.TamaKieves.com/uncertainty-question, and you can also register for a FREE Thriving Through Uncertainty Coaching Call designed to shift your mind-set and bring you immediate clarity.
Thriving Through Uncertainty Page 25