People say ‘surrender’ like it’s the easy option…

In some moments I’m* a control-freak. Admittedly, the moments are fewer and less intense and less consuming than they used to be. But, every now and then, I still find myself in situations where my jaw is locked and my body is tense and there is a part of me (metaphorically, or sometimes even literally!) screaming ‘MAKE IT HAPPEN THE WAY I WANT IT TO HAPPEN!’ Because, you know, my ego is omnipotent and infallible and, if only it could yell just a little bit LOUDER and control just a few more people, things or worlds, then, I’d like, totally have this shit sorted. Ha! Yeah, right. So, what really happens is that every now and then I’ll have a moment of clarity while my ego is screaming and my years and years of ‘new spiritualist’ learnings and trainings and dedicated self-teaching will kick in and a bigger version of ‘me’ will say ‘Surrender’… (Often times it will also add ‘You are not the spiritual police or the boss of the world!’ Mostly because I need to be reminded of those two things fairly regularly!) ‘Surrender’, hey? It’s a fairly simple word, just 3 syllables, sounds easy…

BUT IT’S NOT!!!! Well, let me clarify… We are not generally taught ‘surrender’, our systems and the majority of our ways of interacting are the antithesis of ‘surrender’ and I’m not yet evolved enough in this little form of mine to find the solo practice or even the mere idea of ‘ surrender’ regularly, consistently ‘easy’. My ego and I are generally pretty damn attached and I labour quite often under the illusion that I /my ego knows ‘what’s best’. I can go from joyfully, openly creating and living my bliss to ‘things have to happen like this, in this timeframe or life will suck and I’ll have missed a golden opportunity or some other blah, blah, blah…’ in the smallest of time-frames. Let me give a perfect example… Recently I created this new adventure called ‘The Passion Tree – Business and Inspiration Network**… It was an idea born out of a heart-felt intention to connect and share, to add value and to create more of the life I truly desire… The creation was good, it has foundations in the most beautiful, synergistic, flowing of places… And then this ego of mine got in the way and decided that I needed to have MORE people at events, I needed to PUSH, I needed to have promo fliers and posters printed and I created DEADLINES and I needed to put subtle PRESSURE on people and the process for this all to ‘WORK’… I started gripping a bit HARDER and FEAR that I wouldn’t get things done ‘in time’ or ‘to standard’ or ‘do enough’ or ‘have enough’ appeared… I started to do that thing that is our unconscious, fear-filled fall-back… I started to ‘stress’.

Now, I just Googled ‘stress’ and the first definition that popped up was this - Stress- noun- pressure or tension exerted on a material object. And I found this definition really interesting because there it is in black and white – A simple clue to a marvellous revelation…’Stress’ is not a spiritual reality. There are no such thing as ‘material objects’ in the greater scheme of things… The notion that ‘If  you break everything down into its most fundamental of components, you won’t actually find any ‘thing’ there’ is commonly accepted… There are even little cartoons on Youtube these days explaining the ‘basics’ of quantum physics*** … We might not understand the ‘logical’ technicalities but we don’t need to to arrive at the understanding, the knowing that ‘Stress’ is not a spiritual truth… ‘Stress’ is an egoic, fear-based construct healed by the spiritual truth we call ‘Surrender’.

What do I mean when I say ‘surrender’? Let me clear up a major point first – I don’t mean ‘giving-up’… ‘giving-up’ is not a spiritual truth, ‘giving-up’ is just a renamed version of egoic addiction. Spiritually speaking, ‘giving-up’ and ‘controlling’ are exactly the same – they are both ego-games that keep us trapped in circles of disconnect from peace, love, and joyful, spiritual flow. ‘I give up!’ and it’s associated ‘I’m a failure, things never go my way, I never get what I want’ type carrying-on is just as much of an ego indulgence party as gritting your teeth, stressing, pushing and trying to make things happen the way your ego demands them… A true ‘I surrender’ comes from a completely different intention and dimension than ‘I give up’… ‘giving up’ is contraction, ‘surrendering’ is opening yourself up to greater freedom than your ego dreams possible.

The act of (or even the intention of, if you, like me, aren’t quite at Bodhi Tree level yet!) truly surrendering is exquisitely profound – surrender is the ultimate in liberation and freedom! Surrendering can seem, to the control-freak ego, like the ultimate loss – it means letting go of the death-grip we so often have on outcomes and ‘ways things should happen’. It can mean massive changes in our lives, ‘loss’ of relationships, ‘loss’ of power and control. When we make great steps towards surrender, we even lose the juiciness of the self-pitying wallowing of when we ‘fail’ (an ego favourite!). Some people like their egoic, drama-laden ‘pay-offs’ soooo much that nothing bar death (literally) will bring surrender to their lives…( To me it’s even obvious in the ways we manage to kill ourselves that we are living lives chronically devoid of surrender… but that’s a whole other blog post!)

In the moments when I have the presence to let go of the illusion of ‘control’ and move instead towards surrender (Yes, even ‘just’ the intention to move towards surrender!), I feel as if I am granted a glimpse of cosmic perspective. Things flow. Things are easy. Everything ‘works’ – there is literally no possibility of it ‘not working’ because I’ve surrendered to whatever is so. This does not mean things always ‘go the way I want them to’, it means that my perspective is expanded enough to be at peace with what is, right now. It means that I am more present – surrender is only possible right now. Only now. In surrender I am reunited with the spiritual truth of who I am and there is no fear in me of being any less than what I am, there is not even the spiritual possibility of being less than I am.

Yes, I still do things. Yes, I still want things. Yes, I would still love to have my fliers printed in time (and there’s a good chance they will be!) and have thousands of raving fans and millions of dollars and an awesome team working for me and global success and a new car and a gorgeous partner etc, etc, etc…. It’s like a massive mural that I am painting and I’m laying first a coat of the most beautiful colour, the colour of surrender… From this base, everything shines with a luminous, gentle grace…

God, Life, Love, Universe help me… I surrender…

*I stared at this statement for a while because obviously I mean ‘My ego is a control freak’ but we so often mean ‘my ego’ when we say ‘I’ that I just decided to stick with it…

** You can read more about it here if you haven’t already!

*** I just watched this and got a little side-tracked… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu57B1v0SzI&feature=related watch til the very, very end…

Yes, actually, I intend to be rich.

*Of all the things we’re emotionally, socially retarded about, ‘money’ definitely ranks in the top 3. They say that issues around money or sex are the leading cause of divorce. I can go around saying a million outrageous things (and, trust me, I do) and nothing will raise the hackles of more people, across the widest range of demographics, than me saying ‘I intend to be rich.’ Well, get your hackles washed and blow-dried people cause… I intend to be rich! We’re really not so good at loving rich people now are we? I just read this in a random article that someone posted on Facebook- ‘If you needed one more reason to hate the insufferable lead singer of U2, go ahead and add this to the list: When Facebook goes public May 18, the $90 million investment Bono made in 2009 will turn into $1.5 billion by the end of the day.‘ Apparently being rich is a legitimate reason to hate someone these days. People subscribe to the idea that rich people in general are unscrupulous, untrustworthy and in cahoots with the devil while those who disown money are saintly – stories of ‘rich shmucks who screwed me over’ are rife and stories of people living their lives just above (or even below) the red line but doing ‘good deeds’ are consistently glorified. It’s ridiculous. No wonder so many people shy away from even admitting they’d like to be rich, no freaking wonder.

We seem to have lost sight of the fact that money is a game, ‘money’ is a system that WE CREATED. ‘Money’ did not appear one day and start corrupting us and turning us into greedy capitalists or disillusioned wage-slaves. ‘Money’ did not create a grid from which the ‘alternative’ amongst us make loud and noisy attempts to flee from. ‘Money’ did not create our neurotic, grasping, compromising ‘lack’ mentalities, we did. ‘Money’ has never and will never create a single problem – we create the problems. To create a victim-hood and pitifully say things like ‘The system is keeping me down’ or ‘The banks are out to get me’ or ‘There’s no way I can make money in this economy’ is bullshit.** Bullshit. We don’t get in our cars and drive and then bemoan the places we end up, ‘Oh, but I don’t like it, the car just took me, all the other cars seemed to be going this way…’ We don’t say things like that because we can see instantly how ludicrous they are – you are quite clearly the driver and the car is quite clearly just a vehicle… ‘Money’ is just a vehicle and you are quite clearly the driver. So, unless you’re happy to sit on the bus your whole life and plan your life around its schedule or you’re happy to walk everywhere (and get nowhere, nowhere near as far as you could in a car), join me in getting your shiz together and owning the fact that you are driving this damn car and you totally, completely get to decide where it goes! And just in case I’ve lost you with my long, convoluted analogy – ‘Money’s not the boss, you are. If you want it to be different, step up boss. STEP UP!’

I want my life to be different- I want to be rich. I intend to be rich. I have been on one end of the financial bell curve for a while now and I’m over it, I want to swap ends. I want to swap divvying up $12 coffee bills for divvying up multi-million dollar dividends, I want to swap ‘gold coin donations’ for ‘million dollar donations’, I want to move the decimal point in my bank balance… and then add a few more zeros… I want to be one of those people that they write about in ‘Time’ Magazine and quote crazy trivia about – ‘Gabriella earns so much in a minute that it’s not even worth her time to stop and pick up a hundred dollar bill that she dropped…’ (I would still pick it up, just for the record.)

Why, you ask? Why do you intend to be rich? Why can’t you just be content with what you have? Why do you need to be rich? Because I can, quite frankly, because I can. I can be content with what I have, I am enormously grateful for what I have… and, along with many, many other things, what I have is the desire, the inquisitiveness and the emotional and mental fortitude to commit to a path of ever expanding financial abundance in a way that brings greater wealth to me and everyone around me. …. I don’t ‘need’ to be rich but I’ve played this ‘money’ game at a similar level for a while now and what’s the point of playing a game unless you’re aiming to move up a level? God knows I wouldn’t have committed myself so doggedly to ‘Mario Kart’ at one stage in my childhood if I wasn’t obviously, constantly getting better and further along in the game! (Yes, I just compared money and all its related ‘seriousness’ to Mario Kart, yes, I did.) ‘Money’ is a game sweetcheeks and games are fun and they’re even more fun when you’re winning. I plan to win at ‘Money’.

I love knowing how other people win at ‘Money’! I love pondering how incredibly, incredibly creative we human beans are at creating ways to win at ‘Money’! The Facebook example above is a PERFECT example of our extraordinary, insanely awesome creativity when it comes to winning the ‘Money’ game. *** Before Facebook, there were no instructions in the ‘Money’ game that said, under the heading of ‘How to get rich’: Create an online social network, make it free to general users, make it addictive and appealing to a wide demographic, garner over 900 MILLION users and make it integral to the way people share and store contact information. With canny leadership, development and marketing skills and timing that’s just right, this will make you, and others around you, very, very, very, very RICH! Before Facebook there was no ‘Get rich’ rule that covered an epic idea such as Facebook… The rules are constantly changing, constantly expanding- humanity is constantly coming up with new and amazing ways to win at the ‘Money’ game… And I find it completely fascinating and fantastic and my inner Mario Kart champion (yes, champion) is jumping up and down excitedly yelling ‘I WANT TO PLAY TOO! I WANT TO PLAY TOO!’ So play I shall – I intend to be rich. The game takes all comers – come play. MARIO KART CHAMPIONS UNITE!!! lol (Too much? Hmmmm, possibly, my point is that it’s a game though, I can’t really end it too seriously… If you’re a fan of gravitas when it comes to the subject of money you probably didn’t enjoy this here blog post too much now did you? Lighten up pumpkin, no one makes it out alive anyways. ) Game on.

 

*There are so, so many different angles I could take when talking about money and being rich… eventually I’ll probably cover most of them… but due to the constraints of our attention spans (mine as the writer and you as the reader), this is my story for today! May there be many, many more stories about money!

** Here I’m referring to you, you privileged, 1st world citizen you. Let’s keep it simple for today shall we and keep ‘world politics and finances’ for another time. Today it’s just about you (me) and the game of ‘Money’, honey.

*** I’ve talked about Facebook in a similar context before, suffice to say, it still fascinates me and I still think it’s genius! lol Good for Bono!

There’s no such thing as ‘just friends’…

There’s some really interesting, really crazy stuff going on out there (in here?) when it comes to the notion of ‘friends’… We bandy about the term ‘just friends’ like it somehow makes these people less… they’re ‘just friends’, not ‘lovers’, not biological family, not some random bigwig with an elastic cheque book who could make us rich and famous, ‘just friends’. We find ways to put them regularly, crazily second to our all consuming careers or dead end, exhausting jobs.We even manage to convince ourselves that we can live well without a social life this year, this decade, this lifetime… And then we die and what of our friendships then?

We don’t respect the bonds, the privilege, the learning grounds of friendship enough. We don’t honour our friends for being there, for being there at all, and for still being there even when there is no biological, sexual or financial compulsion or reward for them to be there. We don’t fall on our knees and pour praise on those people who have seen us at our worst and are still there. We don’t value enough the sacred role that friends play in holding the space for our grander, greater versions of ourselves.We don’t prioritise our friendships enough, oh sad, tender longing, we forget them, we let them fall by the wayside so, so often. Stop, please stop.

I could write a dozen examples, things I have seen recently, things I have heard or read but I won’t… I’ll just use myself as a soft, tear-stained example… The perfect example of someone who regularly falls into the delusion of telling myself I ‘know’ someone- I know them, move on, next, new and exciting please. Even on my best days I can only tentatively say I truly know myself, how can I profess to truly know anyone else? I can’t. Even if I have spent every waking hour of every day with a person, the nature of the divine in them is such that there will always be mystery there if I have eyes to see it. Sitting in front of me, there, is my ‘just friend’, conduit of the divine and microcosm of  infinite creation… If only I have eyes to see it, a heart to feel it and the grace to shut-up with my stream of ‘I already know this person, I already know this person’ long enough to discover that I don’t.

There is nothing ‘just’, nothing diminished about the love of friends. We (I) invest so much in the search, the waiting, the wanting for the love that will change us, will sweep us off our feet and blow our hearts wide open with its exquisite tenderness… partner, children, family will do it (we tell ourselves)… Even when there are people in our lives filling these spaces, so, so many of us are still wanting more, needing greater expressions of Love… And so it is that we have friends. And so it is that we need friends. A healthy, strong tree has many roots…

Of all the people in our lives, our friends are the ones in the best positions to see us, to truly see us and be seen by us. To them we are not ‘daughter’ or ‘son’ or ‘mother’ or ‘father’ or ‘partner’ or ‘employee’ or ‘boss’, to them we are simply, wonderfully, beautifully, ‘friend’. Here’s to truly seeing and been seen my friends, my friends.

How to find/live your passion… AKA My inner circus-freak child gets reborn AKA Trust in practice, not just theory…

I’ve been talking about passion a lot lately… (Might be something to do with the fact that I’ve just launched ‘The Passion Tree – Business and Inspiration Network… Read about it here.) and I’ve had a number of people ask me a question along the lines of ‘But I don’t know what my passions are… how do I find them?’. I’ve been thinking about this question, I’ve been reading about passion and inspiration and just generally living my passions to see what answers came up… Of course there are many different ways and means to find your passions*- many, many, many… but the one I want to write about tonight goes like this – To find your passions… Do what you LOVED to do as a child!

Want to live a more passionate life? Do what you LOVED to do as a child!

A ‘new’ (I say ‘new’ because it’s actually old, I discovered a variation of this passion when I was about 10.) passion of mine these days is a Hawai’ian Partnered Flying Style of Yoga called ‘Union Yoga’ (www.unionyogamaui.com). Think acro-balance/circus skills with a yoga bent and a whole host of Hawai’ian words thrown in, think me upside-down, hanging between someone’s legs or me flat on my back with my feet up, happily balancing the staunchest of men. lol I first met Jeff, the teacher and creator of this style, when I was living in Bali in early 2011. I did a couple of his classes and had this awesomely joyous flashback to when I was in the little ‘Circus Arts North’ performing troupe back when I was a wee youngin… Luckily, perfectly, amazingly for me, Jeff (A German-American who was living in Hawai’i when I met him in Bali.) moved to Australia (literally 10 mins up the road from me!) a few months ago and I’ve been sinking my teeth (Well, whole body really! Not so much teeth…) into the practice. Talk about perfect, divine right order! No way could I have planned it this awesomely!

Rediscovering the passion back in Bali in early 2011… (Jeff is the buff one lifting the two of us! lol)

Throwing myself into this new form has been awesome! I’m completely passionate about it and it’s teaching me so many things in such a beautiful way. Here’s a few of the things it’s teaching me… (In fairly random order.)

1. Passion supports passion. When two or more passionate people are gathered in the space, both will walk away with more ZING! Passion is totally synergistic – the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. When I first met up with Jeff again a few months ago, we were both in very different places, our ‘passion-meters’ were both simmering at considerably lower levels than they are now…. our mutual willingness to see each other’s inherently passionate natures and unique and amazing strengths has seen us both surge forward in our respective paths.

2. A passion is a passion, is a passion, is a passion. Nothing need negate a passion.  Quite often we relegate passions to the back of the cupboard because ‘They’re not going to make us any money.’ or ‘There’s no future in it’ or ‘I don’t have any qualifications in it’ or some other blah, blah, blah.  I don’t intend to make Union Yoga or circus adventures my life’s work, I have been asked if I wanted to become a teacher of the style and I said ‘No thank-you, I’m loving just being a student right now.’. Union Yoga is what mainstream society would commonly call ‘a hobby’… this does not negate the fact that it is a passion! As a passion it gets a high level of priority in my schedule and budget. By honouring this passion as worthwhile and therefore myself as worthwhile, I’m adding value to my whole life and those around me and bringing new energy, skills and awareness to the passions of mine that I am making  my life’s work and forging into streams of awesome financial abundance.

3. Trust me, trust you. You need other people. Everything will respond to your trust or lack of trust. Union Yoga (Or any other type of partner/acro/flying yoga/balancing.) is literally impossible without other people. It is also literally impossible to do without trusting other people in a very real, physical sense. When you’re hanging upside-down with only the strength of someone’s legs between you and an epic face-meets-floor moment, trust is important. When you’re a few feet higher off the ground than normal, perched rather precariously on your partner’s toes you’ve got to trust that your spotters are there for you. I am also (re)learning to trust that there is strength and flexibility in my body and that we’re** entirely, wonderfully capable of working as an energised, integrated unit.  Here’s a point that I am being shown over and over again in this practice – Trust or the lack of trust will literally change your physiology. Obviously I’m using direct physical examples here but the extrapolation is obvious – Your level of metaphysical, spiritual trust in Life and other people will literally change your life. Physical and metaphysical trust are entwined… the expansion of one can (and will if you let it) lead to the expansion of the other.

So they’re the main things… I’m sure I’m learning many other things as well as I dive into this passion that gives rebirth to that inquisitive, trusting, daring, vivacious inner circus-freak child of mine.

What did you LOVE to do as a child?! A passion is a passion, is a passion, is a passion!

See you upside-down! x

 

*Please note the use of the plural here!

** My body and I!

Facing my own brilliance…

So I want to try and articulate something that’s going on for me. It feels tricky to explain, it feels counter-culture and it feels that if I write this the wrong way then I will just come across as an up-myself, woo-woo wanker. So be it. Such are the perils of writing a personal blog and even attempting to play out the exquisite* intricacies of life in words at all. But I’m going to attempt to explain what’s going on for me with as much finesse as I can** because if you’re here in this magical place with me I want you to give me a holler and we can get this party REALLY happening and if you’re nowhere near it yet then let me cordially extend the offer to play a cosmic game of ‘Marco, Polo’ with you and let me assure you, you are gonna nail this shiz! And finally, for the ones who moved through the place I am currently navigating years ago and to whom I am just stating the blatantly, blatantly obvious, I just want you to know- I’ve broken through! Yeeeee-fucking-ha! You cool cats are obviously where it’s at. Obviously! Hmmmm… so I seem to have written almost a whole paragraph without actually telling you what the hi-diddly-ho-neighbour I’m carrying on about… Lucky for you, I tend to give away the point of my posts in the title Soooo…. That’s what I want to talk about really… Facing my own brilliance. As in, that’s what I’m doing, right now.

I’ve always had a healthy sense of self-worth, my lack of self-belief was definitely buried deeper than most, or dressed in crazily more colourful costumes than most, depending on which way you want to swing this analogy cat. But the denial of and the inability to consistently, irrevocably see and acknowledge my own brilliance was rife in the underpinnings of this oft-times delightful life of mine.  My lack of illumination manifested itself in interesting ways – from feeling physically sick a few years ago that a certain man wouldn’t love me, to a moment of swooping terror about ‘running out of money’ just as I was about to embark on my open-ended overseas adventure, to epic ‘martyr-fests’ when I convinced myself that other peoples dreams and ventures and visions were more valid than my own. I have been making steady progress all the years, gradually changing things, healing things, deciding anew but this, this space I’m in right now, it truly feels like graduating from spiritual kindergarten. Huzzah! I have said to people in the past with 100% conviction ‘I have total faith in your brilliance.’ I have told other people this and I have believed it and I have marvelled at the fact that they can’t see the brilliance I see and yet, it is only now that I am truly able to say “I have total faith in my own brilliance.’ This is what Miss Life was waiting for before writing a note to the Universe saying ‘Gabriella has attained competency in all areas of basic human mastery, she is now ready to graduate from Kindergarten.’ Huzzah I say again, hooray for me!!!

So I’ve graduated, I’m moving on up to ‘Big School’ and I look way cute in my new, way-too-big uniform and my do-it-yourself hairstyle, but I can understand why people choose not to move up. I can understand why people choose to stay stuck in their comfortable dramas, their illusions of smallness and close their eyes to their own brilliance. This ‘facing your own brilliance’ stuff is INTENSE! And, the thing is, once you’ve graduated from kindy, they don’t let you go back… So, here I am, at the door of Big School and there’s no going back… Just me and my brilliance staring me in the face… I don’t get to hide in the ‘little’ version of me any more, the teacher won’t cut me the same slack because I genuinely, awesomely, literally know better these days.  Work, relationship and life choices that seemed like legitimate choices even a month ago are now so drastically out of congruency with who I brilliantly am that they cease to be options.

This brilliant self of mine still has an ego obviously, it still gets a little miffed when not as many people turn up to my events as I was expecting, it still gets frustrated that I don’t have all the business things I want set up yet, there are still moments when I just want to have met and be with my amazing partner already, I still bitch about people sometimes… Yep, still. But the acknowledgement, the irreversible acceptance of my own brilliance means that these things are so obviously ‘surface’, I refuse to let them siphon off vast reservoirs of my time or my energy…

This shift, this graduation, this acknowledgement of brilliance I’m talking about started IN me. I have consciously, committedly*** been on this path of metaphysics, conscious creation and a staunch refusal to acquiesce to the illusions the majority of the world are carrying around,  for over 10 years now. 10 years in kindergarten… Ha! It hasn’t all been roses, and it wouldn’t have served me as well had it of been. When I committed to the process of graduating from kindy a month or two ago, much of my external stuff wasn’t flowing – I was in debt, enrolled in a course I hated, keeping a relationship space open in a way that really didn’t serve me, working in work that I would start resisting two days before I went back to it, every week, not passionately committed to growing any new ventures… It was a sucky little season that one… But,  as I say, over and over and over again, to myself and everyone who can’t run away fast enough -  ‘Internal creates external.’… The change (and ALL the changes!) started IN here… The external things kind of have to get magical because things are a whole new level of magical in here!  So,yes, things are magical in the external trappings of my life right now but  they are by no means static and there’s even more ‘own-work’**** in Grade 1 than there was in kindy!

Do your ‘own-work’, it gets you places…. It gets you to your own brilliance!

And you’re all invited to my graduation party – there’ll be pony rides and face painting and so much coloured sugar you’ll be on a sugar high for days!

*’exquisite’ seems to be a favourite word of mine at the moment. Just thought you should know.

** And I’m not going to weigh everything down with a million disclaimers about ‘not being perfect’ and how ‘ it all applies to you too’ because if you need all those disclaimers to get the point of this post then my blog’s probably not for you…

*** Yes, I know ‘committedly’ isn’t a word, it should be.

**** It’s a play on ‘homework’… get it? Astounded by my wit right?

The Passion Tree – Grow you good thing, GROW!!

About 3 weeks ago, I had a little idea… I thought to myself ‘ I want to be part of a business network. I want to be doing my own thing, living my passions, but I don’t want to be doing it alone, I want to feel connected and inspired.’. I tallied up the business network options that are available where I live and none of them were what I wanted*. So I put the idea out there to people I thought might be interested and, lo and behold, there was a whole bunch of people yearning for the very same thing that I was! I put the idea out there in a simple Facebook invite and people grabbed it with both hands and said ‘Yes!’ . From that little seed a few weeks ago, today a seedling appeared and 22 delightful, passionate, inspiring and juicy people came together for the launch of  ‘The Passion Tree – Business and Inspiration Network for people living their passion (and those who want to be)!’. Expressions of excitement and pledges to come to the next one are still flowing in from people who couldn’t get there today. It has been an amazing little adventure even up to this point and I feel like I’m in the middle of a whirlpool with all the possibilities that abound! (I’m already getting formal invites from cafe owners to hold the next events in their venues!)

Here’s a little break-down of the most important learnings that are really consolidating themselves for me at the moment -

Start it. Whatever ‘it’ is for you, start it. I know it’s steeped in cliche but the metaphor that keeps coming to mind is that it is SO much easier to steer/move/change the direction of a ship when it’s moving than when it’s stationary. Another analogy I’ve been using is that you can’t edit a story until you’ve written the first draft… The thing you start may be a flop, you may have a massive realisation that it’s not actually want you want to be doing- you’ve just been idealising it for years and wondering if it might work. These are both incredibly valuable experiences to have and you will go through them and it is marvellous because, with every piece that falls away, the core of your passion and the perfect vehicle for right now is being revealed. Of course, when you start something there is always another joyful possibility… The thing you start will be a MASSIVE SUCCESS!!! Those moments make all the other moments completely worth it! When you start something that is a MASSIVE SUCCESS** you’ll discover the next thing that I’m discovering…

There truly is a ‘flow’ to be part of. When you are offering something that truly resonates with other people, they will nominate themselves, they will jump into the space and they will bring others with them. I have run a decent swag of events in various contexts in the past and, often, it has felt like a slog to get people there – never before have people so willingly run into my arms yelling ‘We want this!’ *** It’s fantastic!! Yes, there has been and will be effort and energy involved but there is ‘flow’ going on in a big way and it feels infinitely more sustainable that ‘push’! Just in case you were wondering, yes, your life and your business can be predominately ‘flow’. Wonderful, amazing things CAN ‘just happen’ through you. I feel like I have a lot more to learn and experience in this area but I have had a glimpse my dears and it has shifted my world.

So these are the two things that seem to be searing themselves into the molecules of my understanding of life at the moment. My brain is awash with possibilities for this new venture and my ego is intermittently yelling at me about all the things I ‘have to’ get done for it to work and voicing its fears in annoying ways. But I’m calling ‘bullshit’ on my ego and learning to really trust that whatever truly needs to be done will be done – with grace and ease and in perfect timing! Nurturing beliefs like these definitely take the stress off!

Almighty ‘THANK YOU’s to every little ‘Passion Seedling’ who has been part of The Passion Tree so far or wants to be – Simply by saying ‘Yes’ to something that resonates with you and showing up, you are making my adventure so much more magical. I am totally, completely honoured to be holding the space and sharing with you all. If you want to be part of it and you live on the Central Coast, NSW, Australia, give me a call on 0418 259 224 or find me on Facebook. For everyone and anyone else reading this… Start it. Get in the flow. If you need some extra encouragement then get in touch and I’m sure I can manage some wacky words of wisdom or something of that ilk!

‘There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.’ W. Dyer

You are an idea whose time has come. Grow passion seedling, GROW!

*This is not to denigrate the established business networks out there, there just seemed to be a hole in the market for what I wanted.

**The definition of ‘MASSIVE SUCCESS’ is, of course, completely malleable and can be whatever you feel it to be. My definition of ‘MASSIVE SUCCESS’ is as much a feeling that buzzes in me as external indicators.

*** Yes, the first Passion Tree was a free event but interest for the upcoming paid events is as strong as ever and I’ve been involved in free events in different contexts that have still taken major effort to pull off even though they were free!

There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come…

There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

You are an idea whose time has come.

There is nothing more powerful than turning that crucial page

And writing there, in the blank spaces, ‘I am an idea whose time has come’

In the instant of your creation, the Universe surged with an explosion of  light that lit up a million fairy lights

And even if you don’t believe in fairies, the fairies never died, the lights are still there

And even if you don’t believe in fairies, the fairies never died, your light is still there

With amazing grace, your light is still there…

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…

Listen to this sweet sound, let it balm your sorrows, let it bring fortitude to your light…

There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

You are an idea whose time has come.

Cleaning my rose-coloured glasses…

Sometimes I find it really easy to forget how amazing people are, especially those  closest to me. Many a time, the rose coloured glasses I once viewed the dearest people in my life with become dusty and full of blind spots as I see these same people day in, day out. Sometimes (I am shame-faced to admit), I almost fall into the trap of viewing my relationships as just another commodity in my life… You know, you buy a new car and, for a while, it seems like the absolute business with all these bells and whistles and awesomely comfortable seats that recline in such a way that you can gaze at the stars through the sun roof for hours*. But then, after just a wee little while, your consumerist addiction is yearning for something more, something newer, something shinier, something sparkly-er. Sometimes I have viewed the relationships and friendships in my life like this, constantly on the hunt for newer, bigger, brighter, ‘better’ people to be friends with because my ‘old friends’ were getting a tad boring, predictable, known and pedestrian. Sometimes I have been an idiot.

I was watching some of my nearest and dearest and longest-standing friends performing the other night and, a little part of me that is wiser than the rest, reminded me to see the brilliance that was staring me in the face.  My habit had been to see the flaws, to see the areas that weren’t yet perfect and point them out. There is value in this sometimes- a very, very small sometimes. There is also value in seeing those nearest and dearest to you through freshly cleaned rose coloured glasses. Acknowledging their brilliance and acknowledging that your appreciation of them can be oh-so-much deeper and more loving because you HAVE seen them day-in and day-out. You have seen them in the ‘sameness’ of the everyday and you haven’t bought into the illusion that you already truly know the extent of the greatness and creativity of the person standing in front of you. If you expect to be continuously discovering even greater beauty, intelligence, love, wisdom and creativity in the people closest to you, then that’s what you will find. People are consciously and sub-consciously drawn to reveal their greatness to those they feel are willing and able to see it.  You’ll find me cleaning my rose-coloured glasses, I want to be one of the ones willing and able to see it.

I have amazing people in my life. You do too. Be willing to see them.

*Can you tell I would LOVE a new car?! lol

Have a little more grace…

I’m a firm believer that in every ‘challenge’ there is an opportunity for spiritual growth, every ‘lesson’, no matter how frustrating or defeating it may feel at the time, holds the potential for an expansion of peace and acceptance and non-attachment and non-identification with ego and yada, yada, yada… Sometimes you can know this and believe this and still find yourself occasionally in a situation where it feels like your self-esteem and self-worth are dangling from a precipice… That’s been going on for me the last couple of days… In fact, contrary to my genera rule of not writing about something until I’m kind of through it, it’s still going on for me…

And what is it? What is this big thing that is shaking me so? Well, it’s ‘nothing’ really… Just the fact that I currently look the ugliest I have ever looked in my life. Just the fact that I look like the cringe worthy ‘before’ shot of a Clearasil commercial and seem to have swapped faces with a hormone-ravaged teenager… I’m 26… I should be done with this scourge of youth… Sure, I had pimples when I was a teenager but something crazy and unprecedented has gone on with my body in the last few days and it is seriously shaking my self-esteem…

I know it sounds flip, I know it sounds self-indulgent and part of me argues that it is – So what if I have an ugly face, all my other faculties are working  just brilliantly… But I cancelled a meeting this morning because I couldn’t handle meeting a potential new business colleague looking like this… I have never done anything like that before… I sat in front of the mirror and I kind of stared in disbelief and my mind said in trembling wonder ‘I have never been this ugly before.’ It has taken every ounce of my self-esteem in the last two days to go out in public or even let my closest friends see me… I went out tonight because I had promised I would and I spent the whole night wanting to hide, not wanting to engage, not wanting to be seen…

I know it sounds crazy but that’s how it’s felt… It has floored me to see that my self-esteem can be shaken thus… but then again, I have never sat and stared in morbid wonder at the ugliness of my own face before… And a friend said to me the night before last, a very close friend, he laughed at me and he called me ‘pizza face’ … Oh god how I wish I could laugh at that right now, some of you probably are, and good for you. But I can’t laugh at it right now, it’s everything I can do not to cry…. And he didn’t say it because he is an insensitive bastard who wanted to point out my current biggest insecurity…. He just said it as a reaction because I’d teased him about being ‘old’. He didn’t say it knowing that it had taken me a conscious act of will to go out in public that night, he didn’t say it knowing that it would sear my fragile resolve and play painfully in my mind over and over… Just like my friends didn’t know tonight that I wasn’t actually being anti-social and deliberately difficult… They didn’t know that I was having a mental battle with myself about literally showing my face in public…

And so we come to the point of this post… And no, it’s not that you should feel sorry for me because I’m ugly today… The point of this post is a reminder to have a little more grace. Give a little more grace.

My friend’s comment was graceless and being on the receiving end of something that smacked me so hard I had to fight the urge to crawl into a hole for the next few days made me remember that I have surely done the same thing to other people… Not because I’m an inherently insensitive bastard, but because it was reactionary, it was the easy laugh and the ‘easy’ way to placate my various insecurities… I will never know exactly which of the people I’m interacting with had to struggle to convince themselves it was O.K to leave the house this morning, I will never know exactly who around me is taking anti-depressants simply to stay vaguely functional and I will never know which of my loved ones are desperately in need of a loving word from me, or, at the very, very least, the committed absence of graceless, harsh words from these lips of mine… So I guess the safest route is to assume they all are, we all are, wading through our unique ‘challenges’ (big and small and possibly seemingly ‘flip’ or self indulgent to anyone else), parched dry with want for more love from the people in our lives… or, at the very,very least, the absence of graceless, harsh words…

Yes, I’m talking to myself and yes, I’m talking to you…

Have a little more grace…

 

The Reinvention of Me (and my new favourite mind game).

Things have been changing in this heart and mind of mine. Things have been changing and the changes have been swift and magical and have left me firmly planted in a new understanding of the perfection of Life…

It’s hard for me to remember that 6 weeks ago I was in such a different place. It’s hard to remember a ‘me’ who was maintaining a simmering struggle with Life. It’s hard to remember a ‘me’ who was looking in the ‘Jobs’ section of the newspaper, trying oh-so-hard to fit myself into the job descriptions I was reading and pushing myself to get excited about a potential position for more than a day, an hour. It’s hard to imagine the version of ‘me’ who had random, unloving sex with a man just because the offer was there. It’s hard to imagine the version of ‘me’ who was saving space for a different man who had never stepped up to the idea of ‘us’ at all.  The changes at the core of me have progressed so far past their tipping point that it’s hard for me to imagine not knowing what I know now, not feeling what I feel now…

And what is it that I feel now? What’s changed? Did a knight in shining armour appear? Did I win a squillion dollars? Did three fairies and a genie turn up and grant me all the wishes I’ve ever had? Ummm, no. Something in me shifted. Sure, there were external little pokes and prods and encouragements but I’ve ignored them before, I could have easily kept ignoring them… Except something shifted in me… It started as a slow drip, the first thawing of Spring and quickly became a rush of crystal clear, exquisitely raw water…

A little way into the thaw, I came across this phrase ‘There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. You are an idea whose time has come.’ It smacked me in the heart, it grabbed my notions of myself and it turned them right way up again. ‘You are an idea whose time has come.’ Yes, you. Yes, me. I have had these same desires, these same rampant visions burning in me for as long as I can remember… I have buried them and, at times, mourned them, thinking they were dead… but now I see they were just germinating, meditating in the perfect timing of Nature and now these seeds are pushing their way to the surface.*

Years ago someone said to me ‘Gab, when are you going to back yourself?’ and, as I watch these new seeds come up, as I tend this garden with all my heart, I can answer that question once and for all – Now. Now I am going to back myself, now I know that there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come and I know I am an idea whose time and power has come.

I have an unerring belief that ‘Internal creates external.’, I say it over and over again to anyone with ears to listen. Great things will be borne of this internal shift in me. In both the seen and the unseen, new things are being created inline with this new version of myself, these new knowings and decisions. Already my personal actions are changing their course, they have to for me to be congruent. I am sticking oh so strongly to my mantra ‘Start where you are. Do what you can. Celebrate where you are. Repeat.’ After years of half finished attempts, I have finally created a website that is simple but clear and tells all I need to tell right now. (Check it out at www.gabriellasalmon.com) I have new business postcards, I have (re)started a monthly singing and vocal expression session that I’ve been putting off for ages, I’m in the throes of creating a new business network ‘The Passion Tree’ and I’m buzzing with energy and clarity… As the infamous line goes from ‘The Field of Dreams’ …. ‘Build it and they will come.’ And I am building it, oh yes siree, I am building it!

And yes, I’ve created a new mind game for myself… it’s as an alternative to getting stuck in boring old habits of ‘But how am I going to make this work financially? I don’t have enough money..’ and blah, blah, blah… My little game is really simple and it goes like this… ‘How would I spend $30,000?**’ Whenever I start thinking negatively about money, I think that instead – How would I spend $30,000?. I’m not allowed to answer ‘I’d save it’ because, to me, that’s just a variation of ‘I’d hoard it in case I didn’t get anymore.’ lol And the second rule is that I have to spend it on furthering my business adventures and my greatest goals. Answering this question ‘How would I spend $30,000?’  does a couple of things… it gets me clearer and clearer on what my priorities and focuses are, it gets me to the feelings of having an abundance of money to spend, it stretches me to think how I could contribute to things around me and, surprisingly enough, it brings into vivid focus the fact that my deepest desires and dreams and greatest version of myself aren’t dependent on having a big pile of money to start it at all- supported by it, yes but not at all dependent. When I play this game and imagine that there is an abundance of money just about to turn up, I realise what I haven’t set up yet, what I haven’t devoted time or energy to yet and I’m inspired to take the actions that I can take now. Cause baby, when the $30,000 does show up, I’m gonna be ooohhh so ready! Try it too!

I am seeing abundance everywhere…

 

www.gabriellasalmon.com

 

* Just to be clear, other seeds have pushed their way to the surface in the past and they have had brief seasons of growth but I let them die… not always consciously but the result was always the same.

** You can make the number bigger or smaller if you like, depending on your comfort levels.