“Consider carefully: what prevents you from living the way you want to live your life?” the Dalai Lama.  Yesterday’s conversation touched on the gap between where we are and where we want to be.  This also requires a lot of honesty because you are not only evaluating your current circumstances, you’re evaluating how you ended up there.  It is never easy to acknowledge that what we do keeps us stuck.  Our imaginations take us through so many possibilities that sometimes we believe we are operating from a place that will get us where we want to be when we are really just expanding the circle and not moving from the track.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t external circumstances that stop us.  Challenges and obstacles always arise—that is just a natural part of life.  But how we deal with them and how we learn to overcome them is what moves us forward.  Sometimes the universe isn’t actually trying to stop us, rather it is trying to build the skills we need to get to the next level.  It may also be redirecting us to where we need to go.  The universe is all too willing to work with us and help us get where we want to be—we just have to see it that way.

Shifting our mindset from victim to creator liberates us to move forward.  When we feel victimized or like everything is conspiring against us, it’s difficult to see the opportunities.  When we see that everything is happening FOR us, it is easier to learn the lesson.  It’s also a matter of understanding that not everything is meant for us.  While we are able to create the life we want, not all doors are for us.  I’ve tried living multiple lives at the same time.  I wanted to bring in money through work, I wanted to have my own work, I wanted to spend time with my family.  And no matter what I was doing, I always wanted to be doing something else.  My mind scattered and I got scattered results.  I also never stayed in the moment.  I had to learn that I could do all of those things, but I couldn’t do them all at once.  Clarity and purpose was key.

The other elephant in the room we need to acknowledge is our obsession with comfort.  I’m SO guilty of this.  I love being comfortable and I love having a perceived amount of security in my life.  As a whole, we want to be secure and we have a tendency to equate security with things.  The more we have, the safer we are.  I certainly love building my little nest and having all of my trinkets and things around me.  But all it ended up doing was overwhelming me and taking up space.  And anytime I had to move or change, I carried it with me.  It became a burden rather than a blessing.  What’s more is that I started looking for ways to continue to accommodate what I always had rather than letting them go.  So not only was I carrying the weight of my entire life (and keeping it prime in my life because I had to make sure there was room for it) I wouldn’t try to move forward unless I could take it with me.  Let me tell you—put down the weight. 

We all say we want something different but we have to be willing to do something different.  Words are great but the action has to match the intention to get anywhere.  We have to understand that we have a say in where we go and the universe wants us to get there.  Most of our purpose on this Earth is growth and evolution.  It’s a matter of us deciding to let go of what we’ve held on to in order to get to that next level.  We are not victims—we are intentional beings and everything we want is on the other side of what we are told to want.  It’s on the other side of what we carry.  It’s on the other side of the fears.  The good news is, it is all possible.  In fact it’s all probable.  We just have to be ready for it.