So, recently I traveled to Canada for a training. The flights over and the first one back were pretty uneventful. The last flight was another story. It was one of those puddle jumper planes with propellers. Yup, didn't even know they used them still. Anyway, I load up with eleven of my closet friends (people I just met but if you are going into this type of plane in the rain and wind, you get close, fast!), the pilot and co-pilot (Who, by the way, I think I have shoes older than.).
As we are about to take off we are told there is a slight delay as we have to wait for ice to melt. Yeah, ok, I'm still good here afterall, I know I am going to land safely. My fellow passengers were not so convinced. Two young, strong men next to me looked like they wanted their mommies while trying to not showing they were scared. I made eye contact and said, "I promise you, we are going to land just fine and the flight is only an hour. We've got this!" They didn't look convinced.
Twenty minutes into the flight it got interesting. We were dropping altitude and the tipping sideways. I'll admit I said a holy macaroni and said "oh, heck no, my kids are not losing both their parents in one year!". Then I remembered, I love roller coasters and if I get freaked out, I am adding to the energy of the other passengers. I look over and the young man next to me is taking his pulse. Seriously? Ok, time to do some Belief Re-patterning. I asked them if they would be ok saying some phrases and breathing with me. They, thinking they were helping me, agreed. We had fun and shifted the energy and in another ten minutes were making the descent into the airport.
When we landed I said "Man! That was fun!" The gig was up. They realized I was helping them, not the other way around. They said I was a bit off, but laughed and thanked me for distracting them.
I could have allowed myself to be scared out of my mind, but what was that going to serve? If it was my last flight, I didn't want to go out freaking out when Howard had been so brave. We enjoyed healthy competition and he wasn't getting that one!
We have a choice about how we respond to a situation. We have a choice whether to see something as fearful or as exciting. How much more exciting can being 35,000 feet up in a tin can being pushed around by Mother Nature can you get? Bring it on, I say. Enjoy this chapter on how to do the switch and be excited by your flight in this life too!
DO YOU FEAR IT OR GET EXCITED BY IT?
Have you ever sat in a movie where the scene was very dramatic, a
good place for drama is the screen, and waited on the edge of your
seat because you just KNEW something was going to jump out and you
were going to scream? Remember that feeling? Was it fear of the scene
and what would happen to the girl who ALWAYS went downstairs to
see what the noise was, or was it excitement that she just might do it
again? It’s hard to tell isn’t it? It is really difficult to distinguish between
the excitement and the fear of it happening. This is true of the movie
of our lives as well.
One of the best processes I learned along the way was to picture my
life as a movie, with myself as a character, and watch the interaction,
hopefully without being engaged in the story. I rarely go into the
basement if I hear a noise so it was pretty easy to stay detached. Try
this the next time you find yourself getting involved in the story of
something. Take a step back and allow yourself to just view and see if
you aren’t able to find a solution because you don’t get bogged down in
the emotions of it all. It feels really good to surf on the plot rather than
the drama and perhaps write a different ending than what would occur
if you were emotionally engaged. It may just give you a perspective that
in your too involved state you wouldn’t have seen and make room for
those a-ha moments we love so much,
If you are able to see the story you are brilliant, but what if it is harder
to identify? It doesn’t mean you are less brilliant, it simply means your
compass could use some tweaking. I was reading for a client a few years ago and while we were discussing how she could learn what she could
from the relationship she was in before she left it as it was perfectly safe
for her to stay in it and discover herself, and perhaps that it wasn’t the
relationship that was the issue, the difficulty in seeing the next step to
take was really what she was stuck on. As I was watching her movie, I
asked her if she was aware fear and excitement have the same vibration
in the universe. It really depends on how we are programmed to
respond on which identity is used. If one hasn’t felt safe in their lives,
for instance, they will usually respond with a fear feeling but if one has
been raised or wired to have an open mind and see the adventure in
life, they will often respond with an excited feeling.
For this client it was extremely difficult for her to determine the
difference in the short time we had to work together so I suggested a
few exercises that may help you as well.
- Take a nice deep breath and exhale ALL the air. Really let
it go and clean out those cobwebs. Now do that again with
gusto!
- Close your eyes and imagine a time when you were feeling
frightened and unsure of what to do. Open your eyes (unless
you can read through your lids). Can you feel that within
yourself? Do you feel where it resides in you? It is different
for everyone so really identify where fear shows up for you
as it will be the beginning of adjusting that compass. Ok,
notate where that was as we will come back to it soon.
- Take another really deep breath or two and clean out the
fear vibration.
- Now, remember a time when you were so stinking excited
you couldn’t stand it and wanted to shout from the rooftops.
Feel that zing. Where does it show up in your body? What
speaks to you as the location of that excitement? Notate
this as well.
- Ok, now take three really deep breaths all the way down
into your belly. Now, expel the air and feel that cleansing
energy putting you back to center.
So, how was that for you? Did you get to know a little bit more about
yourself and where you hold energy? Good! That was the point! So
often in our busy lives we go through the day without any intentional
breathing that it is a good thing it is an involuntary process or some of
us would be in real trouble passing out all the time when we forget to
breathe!
Now, even though those two exercises are at opposite ends of our
emotional yardstick they still result in similar physiological responses.
Your breathing changed, your heart rate went up, your awareness of the
situation you recalled was at an all time high and you weren’t certain
you could maintain it long. This is what drew me to feel the vibration of
both of them without any response and darned if they weren’t the same
frequency! This was very exciting to me as it explained why so many
people had a challenging time shifting behavioral patterns once they
were conditioned into them. It is fascinating how we have moved away
from our senses looking for things to make sense when the information
was there all along.
Let’s try the fear exercise again and see if the energy changed for
you now that you are a little bit more aware of yourself. Repeat the
steps from above but this time try to feel where it could possibly be
excitement for you rather than fear. Of course, if your example was a
danger situation, it doesn’t apply because our fight or flight response
is there for a reason. If you are in a dark alley, do not stop to try this
experiment, get out.
My client and I worked on this for a few sessions and she has gotten
really good at seeing her programmed response was to flee a situation
when it felt like it was changing. She wasn’t confident in herself to allow
herself to simply follow the bouncing ball of life and see where it took
her prior to this realization. Now that she is able to take a moment and
feel out the situation or the opportunity, she has built confidence and
now if she feels fear she evaluates it and decides if it is time to leave or
if she could stay and adjust her energy from reaction to responding. By
taking the time to breathe and feel she shifts from that reactive place to one of response and confidence. Also since that time, the relationship
has gone from one she was going to leave to one of marriage and so far
two little ones. Amazing what breathing will do isn’t it?
As you read in the introduction I LOVE acronyms so when I read
years ago a quote from Neale Donald Walsh, a self described spiritual
messenger and author, which read “FEAR is an acronym in the English
language for “False Evidence Appearing Real”. While I loved this quote
and had used it often, I found it shifting for me to False Expectations
Appearing Real. A little bit of literally license on Mr. Walsh’s expression
but one that fit well for what I was seeing in my clients. There were a
lot of false expectations on how something was supposed to work so
they would get so disappointed and not be able to move forward as they
were so tied to how they thought it would turn out. One of the dangers
in this is it will block some really great synchronistic events from
happening. Our universe is so magnetic that we are literally drawing to
us our experience and I felt that if we were always trying to figure it out
we were negating those opportunities coming to us by our control.
One of my favorite clients, as she has become a great friend, Lisa
Liberatore is the queen of acronyms. She has come up with some really
amazing, always funny, ones over the years and always with joy and
excitement of what it could manifest. So, when we started discussing
this vibration within her own life she, of course, came up with an
acronym for Excitement to which I had to share with you. As she sees
it FEAR is very black and white, not real fun at all so it remains just
false expectation appearing real. But Excitement is a whole different
story for the world of acronyms, and the always fashionable and usually
dressed in pink Lisa, so here I give you Excitement as seen by Lisa Lib
as I call her along with my descriptions in parenthesis. :)
- E=Energy (because everything in the universe is energy)
- X=Xengenous which is defined as due to an outside cause
which she saw as how we often see how our lives are but
then find that we are always connected to self and realizing
that is so exciting.
- C=Certainty (the knowing we all have inside that once
tapped is a calming source of balance and the gas pedal for
moving forward)
- I=Intuition (Of which we are all born with and carry
eternally)
- T=Trust (what we are born with and learn to do once again
if we are willing. Trust in self.)
- E=Expectation (because it’s a great word when applied
with forward motion in regards to the greatness of one’s
soul and ability to succeed in whatever is tried.)
- M=Movement/motion (always moving forward and being
willing to see what is rocking and rolling in front of us!)
- E=Enlightenment (that place that many are trying to
achieve only to find they had it all along if they would just
listen to self. )
- N=Now-ing (Allowing oneself to be in the Now and
accepting things as being present and not something in the
future. Trade marked word by the creative Lisa Lib. )
- T=Totality (the feeling of the total self when physical self
and soul become aware of each other and function as a
whole unit, powerful, fun and totally awesome. )
Can you come up with your own acronym for Excitement? What would
you choose for the words? Give yourself the space to be creative and to
put words that mean something to YOU in there, who knows, it could
be exciting!
This life's journey really is about how well we can fly it. Before Howard passed he asked me to keep being me and to fly as high as I possibly can in this life. While it is still a navigation doing that, I know he can meet me at those heights now and that is freaking exciting. Want to join us?
Who needs a spaceship? We've got our souls!
Vicki
