Negative Vision

This past week I learnt a massive lesson regarding creating from a negative vision. A negative vision is when you go for something but it is actually in order to get away from something else, not that it looks like that at the time.

I was going after a house to rent in Edenvale.

I had been experiencing loads of trouble through my landlord / estate agent in the house I was staying in, and desperately wanted to find a new place to stay. I even took the plunge and gave in my notice at the very start of the month, so I would have the extra motivation to find a new place. Within a few days of searching I found an amazing place, and submitted my application, which was initially rejected but after further negotiation was accepted. I believed everything was sorted out, all I had to do was wait for the lease agreement and pay the deposit. This new place was a bit more expensive than what I was currently paying, but I could make it work with a bit of juggling.

All the while I was still fighting with my landlord to get my problems with them sorted out, they simply did not seem to care.

I signed the lease for the new place, and paid the deposit, rent and all the little extras. It was difficult to pull that amount of money together all at once. I kept thinking about how much extra I would be spending every month, and if the expense is really justified, how it would change the standard of living for my family that I had only just managed to improve.

On Friday, on the weekend I was meant to move into my new place, the estate agent called to tell me that the owner had decided to let to another person and had not advised them… there was no new house for me.

I had lost my house to rent in Edenvale.

The negative vision had been created because I wanted a new house to live in, because I wanted to get away from the landlord / estate agents that were messing me around, and although it is still an end result for me to have a home in Edenvale, I was creating it here in a dysfunctional way.  

My focus the whole time had actually been on the money, and getting back at my landlord.

What I learnt was that you need to be sure of where your focus really is. All the things that creep up around what you would love, are the things that pull your focus off, and don’t let go of your focus on your end result until it has actually been realised. This is why it is important to have a coach who can help you to see past the smoke-screen of your identity because without mine, I don’t think I would have, and to keep on practicing and learning to raise your awareness around the truth of what is really going on.

Staying Safe

I have a choice to motivate and inspire women into action to change their lives through the medium of my writing, which is an amazing thing to dream of doing; that is, until it no longer is a dream, but rather a tangible thing. That is exactly what happened with the start of this blog; I set out and my inner critic joined the party.

I had to find the right picture to add, have the perfect thing to say or else nobody will be interested in anything I write; I needed to plan it out, find a theme and captivate everyone with my pearls of wisdom… “Geez this is a lot of work” says the mocking voice in my head

I start to write and suddenly I forget all the fantastic things I was just thinking about saying; it was so incredible and insightful, what was that again?  “See, you don’t know anything, what kind of a role model do you think you will be, can’t even remember what you thought 5 minutes ago” she chimes in again.

No, I am going to do this I tell myself and am half convinced too, when the voice pipes up from the depths again, “Sweetie, you are not good enough to write anything, you don’t have a story to tell that anyone would be interested in hearing. I think you are just looking for attention and you think this will do it, well you are wrong, nobody is going to read this and you will just be doing all this for nothing.   I am only telling you this for your own good Darling, I don’t want you to get hurt and disappointed when it doesn’t work out like you want it to. I am just keeping you safe from this cruel world, you know how nasty it is out there.”

That’s about the time I usually start giving up a little, but I keep trying regardless.

“Still at it hey? Well, that last draft was quite bland, if I might just say so. Maybe you should tweak it a bit so it can be a bit more appealing and fun. People will tear a bland post apart.” She comments. I am sent into a flurry of editing and rewriting and rewriting again.                                                                

“If you include other stuff you have written before, is it going to be relevant to the purpose of your blog, I mean, will they actually want to read that? #Justsaying" she chirps and I begin to doubt all of my thinking around my content and direction. “You don’t know what you are doing Sweetie, why don’t you just leave that stuff to the professionals and we can just carry on with our normal lives, you know, where we know what will happen next and I can keep you safe from anything that they might want to say about us.”

This is what our identity tries to do. It wants to throw you off the path to your dreams because that life is everything that we do not know how to deal with; that life is exposing us to our biggest fears and our identity wants to protect us from the possible pain and suffering based on what we have experienced before.

The fact that I am writing this blog now does not mean that I have overcome my critic completely, but I did win on the part of getting started. She is always there, sitting in the back of my mind, making her sarcastic, critical little comments but I have the choice to listen to her, or to follow my heart and have the life I would love. A little more every day I am learning to choose what I would love above all the noise, and she tries harder all the time to throw me off,  but that’s part of the journey, learning to accept that she is there reminding me of my “shortcomings”, but not listening. 

Resistance and the Start

This post was originally written on 28 August 2015, when I was in the throws of trying to live the life I would love, without the safety net of a full time job, or significant extra income. 

I had similar resistance to starting this blog, but I know that it is true for me to write in this format, so I had to cross the threshold once again and venture into the unknown... Welcome to the journey!

Getting this website up and running has been one unbelievable experience – in resistance!

I had bought the domain a few months ago with a view to making it a promotional website for a dedicated corporate training program that I had developed, and now I had decided that I wanted to change it into what you see here, a personal blog website that (hopefully) will inspire change in a few people’s lives. But, like with any good idea, the resistance kicked in.

Let me explain to you what resistance is; it is all of those things that happen that stop you from doing what you actually set out to do. Everything from the excuses you make about why it isn’t being done, to the other “important” issues that suddenly crop up, and even as extreme as causing major disasters in your life. Resistance is your unconscious assumptions and belief systems playing out.

In my case resistance reared its ugly head in the form of not knowing what the hell I was trying to do here. I didn’t know how to build a website and I definitely didn’t have any means to pay someone to do it. Plus, I had that little voice telling me how I simply wasn’t good enough yet, I didn’t understand the work I was trying to teach enough yet, and who the hell would want to read what I have to say? And the biggest of all, the fact that I was aiming to put myself out into the world and open myself up to be judged. Needless to say, the voice won and I procrastinated. Heck, I got so convinced that I just couldn’t do this that I subconsciously shut down my internet connection for two whole days! No matter what I did I couldn’t get online to work on this website. I simply was not ready for that type of exposure.

Through completing a process with my coach, I was able to determine that I have an assumption playing out that says in order to avoid getting hurt, I will avoid going for what I want. This assumption meant that I basically would avoid creating my website, because in my mind that meant I would be hurt through the exposure I was opening myself up for. No wonder I wasn’t getting anything done!

Obviously the fact that you are reading this on my website means that I got through my resistance. I built the site, created the content and now have completed my first blog post.

When we understand what drives the resistance we are able to acknowledge it for the story that it is, and rationally see that what is holding us back is not the “truth” of the matter. I have acknowledged that my fear of exposure is high, but I will not die from it. It is after all a big part of why I wanted to create this site in the first place, to be held accountable. 

Inspiration Pictures

About M Universe Stories

24 January 2017

As with most people who decide to write a blog, I thought that others may be interested in hearing some of the things I have to say. 

In my particular case, these are poems and stories about things that have happened in my life, a sharing of stories about creating wonderful things, about love and life and loss, about funny moments and musings. And, this is also a place for me to keep all of my writing together in one place, so I don't have to keep paging through a pile of little books to reflect back on my life. 

At the end of the day, perhaps there is someone else out there who has been or is going through things like me and will be inspired by my writing to do something a little differently, to see the world a little differently.

A bit more about me, I am a 40 year old, single mother of two teenagers. I have been divorced for the last 10 years and flying totally solo for the last 4 years. I have a great relationship with my kids, and my ex-husband is still a big part of their lives although he lives far away from us. I work in a corporate environment, but my passion is in helping people to live the lives they would love, to open their eyes to the powerful creative beings that they are, and to inspire others to live from a creative orientation.

Here's to inspiring the next level through the mundane!