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Spring is in the air, blowing hot and cold. But Easter is here to sweeten the pot. And better still, this year Easter falls right on my birthday, so it will be a double celebration! Because for me, this time of the year is a time for second chances.Easter is all about rebirth, about new beginnings, and I find it fitting that I was born at such a season filled with this type of renewable energy, because I truly believe that everything deserves another chance.
If you're unhappy with your life, and your internal wake up call drew you to my blog, then my message for you today is: don't be afraid to start again.
New beginnings should not be places that seem as distant and exotic to us as Timbuktu. They are not unreachable destinations. We can treat the problems in our lives as merely a blip by our GPS signals; we can get back on track, or end that journey and start a fresh one. Spring cleaning our lives can knock the dust out of our veins.
Stagnancy cause a lot of imbalance in our lives, and in the world around us. Economic troubles, climate woes, public unrest over political restrictions on freedoms - the list can go on and on. The world has come to a crossroads, and the stagnancy is so potent we can feel it in the air.
Possibly you have sensed it yourself. Has it been a cruel winter for you? Are people around you less than charitable? Or more prone to get into fights quickly? Do people seem impatient and irritable? It's because human beings are sensitive to the forces of nature, like the ocean tides to the pull of the moon, and we can sense the current imbalance in the world - and naturally we bring it into our lives.
But to effect change in the world, we must first make changes in our lives. It may seem right now that our lives our out of our control, but that is an illusion. You control your life. I know new beginnings can be stressful, but you can use the difficulty of stress to your benefit.
I spoke about how stress is a killer in our lives in a previous post, and that we should connect with our inner doctor to heal us when things go wrong in our bodies, as a consequence of the problems in our lives. The solution to stress is not in more caffeine, less sleep, negative thoughts, or any of the hazards that go along with our traditional lifestyle. Pills, potions, or powders – or other voodoo - won't fix stress, either. But we see people constantly using positive stress, too - because sometimes a shake up in our lives is just what the doctor ordered to break out of our shell and knock us out of our stagnancy!
Exercise your life back to fitness
When exercising, our goal is to apply a stress to the body in order to achieve an adaptation. For example, a young man might apply the stress of repetitive biceps curls to cause muscular growth as the desired adaptation. In contrast, a practitioner of yoga would hold stretches for extended periods of time in order to stress the body into increased flexibility over time. Done properly it can turn your body's clock back decades.
However, each one of these good stresses can go bad. A runner who increases mileage too quickly can suffer from overuse injury. A beginner yoga enthusiast can stretch too far, too soon.
Physical adaptation (i.e. training improvements) is what happens when we apply good stress during a workout. Physical deterioration (i.e. overuse and and over-training detriments) is what happens when we apply either a bad stress or too much of a good stress during a workout.
The big lesson is that there are both good and bad types of stress. Keep that in mind as you go along in this life. Turn your stresses into positives. The stress we deal with often walks a fine line between good and bad. Stress can make you grow (literally and figuratively), and stress can damage and destroy you.
In the exercise examples I gave above, a situation where you physically can't handle the stress requires you to use a more appropriate alternative exercise method or to eliminate the stress completely. A good coach or trainer always makes sure to have a good reason for everything you do. Again, it's a fine line between good stress and bad stress.
This is exactly the same approach we must take with the mental stress in our life.
Don't hide under the sheets, shake them out!
Make no mistake, stress can kill. No matter how painful in the short-term, we need to remove all chronically negative stressful situations, environment, and people from our life. We must in effect, prune out the stress in our lives like dead wood, and leave space for better things. Then it's time for those new beginnings, to search out positive people and experiences.
Now many of us will groan: easier said than done! I can't bring such an upheaval into my life! You don't know what you're asking, or how scary it is to start all over again!
But I do. And I also know that as adults we need to start taking personal responsibility for our actions. You can't go your whole life blaming everyone else for the life you've gotten yourself into. That's right, you got yourself here. Only you can get yourself out of whatever negative situation you are in. And only you determine how the stress is going to affect you mentally. You control your reactions. As I said before, you control your life. You really do. The only thing holding you back is you and your internal resistance. And that's the good news for this Easter!
For this outlook in life, the best advice comes from Dr. Viktor Frankl. As a prisoner of war in Auschwitz, the most infamous of all German concentration camps, Frankl suffered and toiled for several years, and was one of the few to survive the atrocities.
In 1946, Frankl published the first version of what eventually became his book, Man's Search for Meaning. My twin flame has told me this book has been the most influential of all the books he has read in his adult life. In it, Frankl chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate based on his psychotherapeutic method of finding meaning in all experiences, even the most heinous ones, and thus a reason to continue living.
Two of my favourite quotes from Frankl are:
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.Instead of choosing only to complain, we should look for ways to change our circumstances. That's why you are different. You were attracted to this blog, because you can change. And you are willing to, as Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world."
To do that, you must start today. After all, you can either create or you can complain. And creating is much more fun!
Take active steps to make life changes
If there are stresses and troubles in your life, what steps can you take right now deal with those issues? Are you actively working on creating a better life or are you just being lazy and complaining about your circumstances? Make the right choices, starting today. And forget about past mistakes. Take only the lessons, and not the regrets, from the past.
If you fall "off the wagon" – in any area of life – cut your losses, don't stress about it, and get right back on track. Immediately. It's the old adage about getting straight back on the horse after you fall off. It's minor damage that can be dealt with and there's nothing you can do about the past. Focus on what you can do now and in the future.
Humanity is now entering a period of radical transformation where technology has the potential to significantly raise the basic standard of living for every man, woman, and child on the planet.
There's also, believe it or not, an abundance of good people out there who want to support you. Seek those who will support your change. Good people are out there. They do exist. They want to help.
If it is physical changes you want to make, there are many excellent personal trainers in the fitness industry all over the world who would be happy to help.
If the changes you seek are financial, heed this thought: Show me the people you hang out with, the library in your house, and the material you read day-to-day, and I can predict your bank balance. Association matters.
And not solely in our finances - this is just as true in our family and love relationships. I truly believe that twin flames attract other twin flames into their immediate circle of association. My grandmother met her twin flame, I am the product of a twin flame relationship, my best friend has met her twin flame, and I am very happy since meeting mine.
As a result, when you fill your life with love, you become a magnet to attract even more love into your life. You just have to believe in it, and have the courage to take a second, a third, a fourth chance.
Take a chance, by giving love one
The Sun shines on the righteous, they say, but it also shines on the courageous.
Although our complaints have substance, it's good to put our lives into perspective. When I read about individuals who are physically limited - not because of what we have labelled as their disabilities, but because our society is disabled in its acceptance that some people will function differently - it always serves as reminder that I don't have one iota of the courage they have. Every day, facing the same difficulties, must be like starting anew.
And it doesn't matter what shape or size we are. We all need love. And sometimes new beginnings doesn't mean starting completely afresh, but by giving love a second chance with the same person. You know what I mean: that one man or woman who you let go (or even drove away) who you wish more than anything would come back to you, pull you into their arms, apologise for everything and say "I love you" again, the way they used to before things got "bad".
You just have to silence the white noise of stress, so that you can listen to your heart, and hear what it says. Trust your true instincts. Only you know what's really right for you.
Because you, possibly more than anyone you know right now, deserve a second chance! What better time than this Easter; as we celebrate second chances, to make your own. In a season where we can go from sunshine to snow in a week, what better time for change?
And it doesn't matter how old you are, or where you are in life. Young or old, until you take your final breath, it is never too late for anything, especially not for a second chance - more so for another chance at love.
Yours in love,
