I’ve been exploring more fully how to live in the moment. Over the past while, I’ve been paying attention to sign posts, listening to my feelings and taking action. Serendipitous encounters have guided me to make drastic yet exciting life changes. And I’ve learnt how much I get in my own way by over-analysing.
My “normal, rational and logical” way diluted my full experience of life. Keeping choices safe and small limited my personal growth, preventing my passions the opportunity to blossom fully.
Habitual Limitation
I’ve lived life with the training wheels on. I tentatively explored my potential as a practicing psychic medium, author, facilitator and creator of aromatherapy products. However, I walled myself into a conventional lifestyle – a ‘9 to 5’ existence Monday to Friday, with only early mornings, late evenings and weekends to available to explore these aspects of my life.
Anxiety attacks and mild depression invoked by a dark night of the soul experience, coinciding with the Covid Lockdown gifted me an opportunity to tap into and release old pain requiring healing. It gifted me the time and space to be able to learn to love myself more completely. I entered a more mindful space where I paid attention to myself and my response to the world around me more consciously.
I had previously lamented the perceived lack of available choice. However, I was now recognising the abundance of alternative realities at my disposal. And with that, a whole new selection of glittering, golden possibilities previously deemed out of my reach, revealed themselves.
As I became clearer on my vision and desires, dynamics shifted to provide optimal conditions for manifestation.
Trusting the Flow
These opportunities ebb and flow like gentle, lapping waves on a tranquil shore. It’s like they move in response to my increased awareness and greater sense of wellbeing. This, a very drastic contrast to how I’d historically confronted change of this sort. Ensconced in a world of external judgement and rejection, my experiences reinforced a negative sense of self-worth that troubled me since childhood.
As an action-oriented Project Manager in my 9 to 5 world, I earned praise and rewards for pushing forward and making things happen. I allowed this to define me as a person despite me being so much more. In recent months, rewards and opportunities have manifested from an internal, more spiritual source. I’m realising the potency of getting out of my own way. I’m revelling in the richness and depth being experienced.
While I’ve had an ability to facilitate others through life roadblocks with my intuition for most of my adult life, I’ve sadly never really used that gift for myself. Not really.
With my tendency to overthink and obsess, I stop trusting my gut. While in this space, when there are significant life hurdles on the horizon, my intuition slaps me around the chops with hard-hitting and ‘difficult to ignore’ dreams with warnings of pending circumstances. It’s the only way my inner guidance gets through to me in this state.
Learning to Live in the Moment
I’ve been learning to be in the moment, and to pay attention to what feels right for me. And with this internal barometer, I’ve been making choices – the sort of choices I would normally shy away from because they seem impractical, foolhardy and reckless. To the contrary, what has ensued has been very much the opposite. And they feel extremely calm, peaceful, stable and secure.
Don Miguel Ruiz, in his book, “The Mastery of Love” talks about how we either live in a track of fear or a track of love. When we live in a track of fear, we are full of expectation and attachment, and.things don’t pan out how we want, we feel emotional pain and rejection. Walking along a track of love, we have no expectation. We are able to just be in the current of life and love. Instead, there is a focus on gratitude for what the experience has presented. We feel compassion and allowance for others to walk their own paths. There is only love in this space. And it feels absolutely amazing!
The Perils of Low Self-Worth
In the past, while plagued with a low sense of self-worth, I wore a cloak of desperation, limitation and lack. I grasped on to whatever experience presented itself. It’s was like they were a life raft at the ready to whisk me away from pain. These experiences plugged a hole in my being and stopped me from drowning in my emotions. They medicated my wounded soul, allowing me to feel whole for a brief moment in time. The removal of the rose-coloured glasses unveiled a dysfunctional reality though.
I still struggle sometimes with dipping my toe into old emotional patterns. I’m increasingly becoming aware of the T-junctions at every turn. I’m asking myself, “how does this experience serve me? How will this opportunity nourish me?” I take note of the feeling. I make choices using this compass. Some of the choices I’ve made in recent months have really surprised me. Previously these situations were imbued with a sense of foreboding. However, in recent times I’ve experienced being more of a free spirit while feeling safe and peaceful.
Bouquets of Blessings
There are always blessings waiting to be revealed behind things that don’t go to plan (or where there are disappointments). And if I sit with the feelings for long enough with an open heart, they reveal themselves like a bouquet, offering me further opportunity for self-love, expansive growth and healing. I just need to take the time and care to listen, feel and be!
Anne McCormack is the author of ‘Lovitude: Trying to Calm the Monkey Mind‘ and award-winning ‘Peacock Dreaming: The Wisdom of Flowers’, the creator of the Lovitude Series Aromatherapy Range.
She is also a Health & Wellness Coach and a Psychic Medium, Clinical Aromatherapist, Healing Facilitator and Author who works from The Peacock Dreaming Studio in Oxford (New Zealand).
Image by juanvaldez from Pixabay
