fate (there is no wrong choice)

It’s nice to believe in fate, isn’t it? It’s almost reassuring in a way. After all, if fate exists, then fate can bring you your mate, your ideal job, anything that is “meant” for you. But in that same realm, fate can bring you an accident, breakup, disease, injury.

If we live at the effects of fate, we are victims to the things that happen to us. We take ourselves out of the picture. We assume we have no control. We put ourselves at the whims of others and the situation.

What if, instead of looking at fate as some pre-designed experience meant to happen to us, we look at fate as an array of options? A menu of choices that we can attend to in any way we want?

This puts the onus on us. We are in charge of our choices. We have many choices available to us. Any and each of those choices can help determine our experience.

This approach can be empowering! It can also be disconcerting. This requires of us a lot of responsibility. If we make our choices, then in turn, we make our fate. But, what if we make the wrong choice?

The responsibility and corresponding worry is enough to make you paralyzed with fear. It may stop you dead in your tracks and render you unable to choose. And if you don’t choose, life chooses for you. (After all, choosing not to choose is still making a choice.)

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this means that all of the choices will be lovely desirable ones. Life happens. Shit happens. And sometimes, it happens to us and those around us. How we deal with it and what we make of it, is a choice.

The first step in seeing this new perspective is allowing ourselves to see it. Opening our mind up to possibilities. Recognizing that these are paths, and like the choose your own story books, these paths can lead to different experiences, and sometimes even end up in the same place.

We can’t control everything. We can’t control the person who hits our car, breaks up with us, or fires us. We may see this as “fate,” but that doesn’t mean we are victims to it. In fact, we can cultivate a whole new outcome by choosing our response. We can choose our optimal response when we learn to choose our thoughts. (More on choosing your thoughts soon…)

How to tune in to your Intuition

What is intuition? Why do some people consider themselves intuitive and others not? Intuition is something everyone has, but maybe not everyone is tapped into it. What intuition is like for me may be different than what it is like for you. It may be a hunch, a knowing, a gut feeling, a visceral reaction. You may see it, hear it, smell it, taste it.

Just for kicks, I looked up “intuition” in the online dictionary. It gives the definition:

(noun). the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.

It’s the part about “without the need for conscious reasoning” that is important. Your intuition may not make sense, it may seem contrary to everything you know, it may even go against what you want.

So how do you decifer what is your intuition and what is something else, like fear or judgment?

It’s the ability to tune into yourself that is key. Here are some ways:

1. Think back. When was the last time you really “knew” something, just knew it, without having experienced it. What made it so clear to you? How were you able to identify that you “knew?”
2. Pay attention to your body. What exactly are you feeling? Is it tension? Excitement? Nervousness? Where in your body are you feeling it? Describe to yourself what it feels like, giving it colors, textures, and energy.
3. Meditate. (This is a common piece of advice on this blog, and for a reason!) Meditating allows you to truly tune into yourself, without distractions, and observe what’s going on for you: your thoughts, your feelings, your experience. Instead of getting involved in your thoughts and feelings, try sitting in your meditation and instead just observing each thought or feeling as a cloud passing by. You can watch it pass by and choose whether or not to get involved with it.
4. Be the non-judgmental witness of your emotions. In the heat of the moment, when you are triggered into an emotion, you may experience intense feelings. When this starts to happen, take a breath, realize it’s happening, and stop to think: What’s really going on right now? What am I feeling? What does this mean to me? d
5. Become aware of your fears. Knowing what inner voice is fear and which is intuition can be tricky, especially if you’ve often lived in a place of fear. Taking the witnessing a step further, ask yourself: What fear is this bringing up? What am I afraid of?

Essentially, honing your intuition is a game of self-identification and self-awareness. The more time you spend tuning into your deepest thoughts and feelings, the better you can understand your motivations and fears, and the better you will be able to decipher what your true intuition is telling you.

You are enough

When you boil down your fears (and anyone else’s, frankly) to its baseline, the underlying thought is often “”Am I enough?”

Why don’t we think we can run the race, get the guy, live the life we dream about? It’s safer to live it in our own heads than to try, because when we live life in our heads, we don’t have to fight the battle.

Many dragons must be slayed in the journey to our dreams. But the dragons are not external. No, the dragons are the sly voices that whisper in our heads saying “you can’t,” and “that would never work,” and “that could never happen to me.”

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world. – Marianne Williamson

What if, instead of asking “why me,” we ask “Why Not Me?” What will that change in your life?