Dancing with Changing Relationships
Have you ever noticed that your Inner Guide never rests? Mine has been relentless for two days now, letting me know that I’m on the wrong track. Does it speak to me in words? No, thank goodness. If that were the case, I’d be like one of those pictures you see in Internet ads, my hair standing on end, looking like I’ve been electro-shocked.
No, my Inner Guide communicates with me through my emotions. So does yours. (Not through my emotions—that would be weird—but through your own.
I’ve been down. Nothing really serious but to quote my four-year-old friend Zoe, “yucky”. Enough to capture my attention. I believe, without question, that you get more of what you focus on. I know that if I indulge these negative feelings for very long, the results will not be pretty.
So how do I “feel my feelings” (which psychologists tell us is healthy and necessary) without wallowing? The answer lies in asking the right question: what are your feelings trying to tell you? I asked that question after meditating this morning and this is the answer I received:
You are working far too hard at figuring things out. Just relax and enjoy the ride. You have already attracted abundance into your life. Now seek that which makes you happy.
Wow! My Inner Guide is not only wise but also very smart. Yours is, too.
My feeling down is certainly an “appropriate” response to what’s going on. It had to do with two things:
First, my partner Bill’s serious illness, a scary reality we live with every day. Neither of us dwells on it much and we both believe it to be a temporary setback. And yet, when I saw a TV show where someone died, I fell apart. Normally, I choose to avoid shows that might make me feel bad but this was a rerun of Ally McBeal, a comedy—who knew it would get so darned serious?
Second, I “broke up” with a longtime friend I love very much. Why? Because of various changes over the last decade, I believe the friendship is no longer serving us. In fact, it felt to me like it was doing us damage. In the vernacular of Dancing with Change, I heard the refrain of the new song and decided to sit this one out.
She and I have been trying for years to make it work and there comes a time for some friends to part, much like couples do when things aren’t working out. We were stepping on each other’s toes in a number of very painful ways. Opting to sit this one out causes an ache within me but I believe that, in the long run, we are both better off.
Why do we cling to things that don’t make us happy, that actually make us unhappy? Relationships, jobs, that frying pan with the missing handle…the list goes on and on. We have been trained to believe that anything worth achieving must be a struggle. Do we ever question that wisdom? Here is a quote I love from author Stuart Wilde: Effort is a natural part of our physical state, but struggle is effort laced with emotion, and that is unnatural and unholy.
We seem to be addicted to struggle. If you look at the number of self-help books and courses that sell every day it is evident that many of us think there is an “answer” out there. If we just find it, then everything will fall into place.
Well, it’s true. There IS an answer. What we fail to realize is that we find it on a regular basis. We apply it, things fall into place and we’re happy. However, in a very short period of time, we get used to our new circumstances and then we want more. We go looking for a new answer and the cycle starts all over.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting more. It is how we grow. But wanting more doesn’t prevent us from enjoying what we have. Only we have the power to do that.
I want Bill not to have cancer. But he does. And it is ridiculous for me to spend any amount of time worrying about what might happen in the future. Today he is here, feeling reasonably well and being as active as can be. On a daily basis, we make a concentrated effort to enjoy what we have—a strong and abiding love for each other.
Bill & me, enjoying life
I want more from my friendship and, for whatever reason, it wasn’t happening. I take full responsibility for that. I could spend more years struggling to fix it, to somehow make it work but I choose not to do that. There are those who might consider me a poor friend but I believe I would be a worse one by trying to make it work. I would continue to hurt her and myself. Is that what friendship is supposed to be?
So here I am once again trying to figure things out when the message I received was to relax and enjoy the ride.
The Law of Attraction says that you get more of what you focus on. When I choose to focus on how wonderful life is right now and how grateful I am for what I have, my happiness is ensured, no matter the circumstances.
Life continually lays change at our feet, some good, some we’d rather not have. We wouldn’t want it any other way—the ever-changing circumstances are what make life interesting. The more we can learn to dance with them, the less “yucky” time we will have.
