I Believe I Can Fly (Well, Not Really ... But I Do Believe In Other Things)

Hello Gentle Readers.  

I keep writing about my life goals without telling you what they are. Does it matter what they are? Not really (if you are interested, I will share them with you. Remember, I love making lists). This blog is more about trying to make them happen in the hopes that some of what I've learned and learn will help you meet yours and that you'll share your knowledge with me.

Recently I watched the movie Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. I watched it because I had Vertigo (also a great movie but sadly, not the kind of Vertigo I had), and if you've ever had Vertigo you know that it's basically like being drunk without the fun part but with all of the room spins and nausea. And the really great thing is, you have to wait Vertigo out, medicine doesn't make it go away. Reading, surfing the net, even walking made it worse, and closing my eyes didn't help. I needed something to distract me from the spinning and nausea that surrounded me so, (even though we've been in the house for almost a year, we still don't have a radio hooked up - thank you, Steve Jobs) I put on the tv to listen to the noise.

Imagine the theme from Twlight Zone, too, for the full depiction of how I felt.
Image courtesy of winnond / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

As fate would have it, or, as I believe, as I was supposed to see, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen was on. So I watched - or listened to it - and I learned. As I was supposed to.

Even though we're in a great movie in the middle of the desert in Yemen, 

we printed out this great blog by the Fairy Godmother!

One of the many things that struck me about this move was the discussion about faith. We discover Dr. Brown (Ewan McGregor) doesn't believe in God. The Sheik likens believing in something, having faith, to fishing. He says:

“How many hours do you fish before you catch something?  Is that a good use of your time for a facts and figures man?  But you persist, in the wind and the rain and the cold.  With such poor odds of success, why?  Because you are a man of faith and, in the end, you are are rewarded for your faith and constancy with a fish.”

I have faith, or I believe, in certain things. Four have been the biggest in shaping my life.

First, I believe that you have the power to shape your own life. 

Thoughts become things. You draw to you that which you put forth .... that kind of thing. I believe that God, the Universe, whatever you call it, wants you to have what you want. You just have to believe that it's available to you, and that you deserve them. And when I say believe, I mean BELIEVE. Not half heartedly, not sometimes, but down to every last iota you have every second of every day. That also means believing that when something you want doesn't happen, you believe that there's a great reason why, and are thankful for it because something even better is coming. Of course, all of this is much easier said, or written, than done and if you can do that, please let us know how you do it.

Second, I believe that people or things you encounter are sent to help you achieve what you want. 

Friends you make, acquaintances you meet, even something as sill as a movie you watch, can be a sign or provide help or direction. So often I will be musing over a concept and all of a sudden I will read or hear something that helps me further explore that concept, just like Salmon Fishing in the Yemen did. It's not always something I want to learn, either. I remember once I was fighting with a colleague of mine ... the whole team was fed up with her duplicity and lying and scheming. As I was wondering how to deal with her, how to make her understand that what she was doing was wrong and how to stop it, I read a quote by Eckhart Tolle that said, "If peace is what you want, you will choose peace."

While I would like to believe that we can pick and choose what guidance we need, the reality is we can't. I wasn't thrilled as the realization that, if I wanted to stop fighting with this woman and stop feeling sick to my stomach every day, I had to change myself, not her. My choices, although they may not have been ego-fulfilling in pointing out to her how wrong she was or winning one for the team, would determine if she and I had peace or not. I had to make a decision - was what I wanted really peace or did I want to win and feel good about myself?

I chose these fingers over a different finger when dealing with my colleague

I sat down with her, had a heart to heart as neutrally as I could, speaking only for myself on how her actions hurt my work, asked for help and from then on used that quote to determine my actions and reactions as she continued about her old ways. Did it make me feel great? No. Was she proven to be the spawn of satan we all knew her to be? No. As a matter of fact, the rest of us have left that company and she remains there, doing well. But I did have peace for the rest of the time I had to interact with her.

That didn't mean I let her walk all over me, or all of a sudden think she was wonderful. To this day I would never work with her again, and she's truly the only person I've ever felt that way about. But when I had a choice to rail against her or complain or worry incessantly about what she would do next I didn't. I chose instead to focus on my own actions and what I could control. When we clashed, they were disagreements that were much more professional and less heated than the fights we used to have, and I was able to do so from a position of calm centered-ness rather than ego.

What I had been hoping for was insight into how to stop fighting by making her realize she was wrong, how awful she was being, how she was hurting the team and understand and get into line with the rest of us. What I was given was a solution for how to stop fighting, period. It was my choice to act on it for not.

Speaking of acting, third, I believe that, as Hamlet said (or Shakespeare wrote), 
 "... For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

That's right! You heard it here first, bitches!
Um, I mean, I wish I had written a blog as great as this!

As I mentioned in my post on my watching too much TV, where your thoughts are is where your energy lies. How we perceive, or judge, a situation or person or thing often dictates our feelings around that person, situation or thing. A person, place or thing usually just IS, we are the ones who attach a particular meaning to it or them, be it a good or bad meaning. My favorite example of this is rain. People always say, "What a terrible day, it's raining." Why does the rain make the day terrible? I understand there are bad things that happen due to rain, but otherwise, it's just rain. Rain gives you an excuse to stay inside and snuggle up or read a book, it makes things grow, prevents droughts ... rain is only good or bad depending upon what you think of it, how you judge it. Otherwise it just IS. So are most of the things that happen in your life.

I seem to be on a movie roll, so I will continue with it. Have you ever seen Life of Pi? (Yet another movie I had no desire to see but really liked once I saw it). I can't say anything else because it will ruin the movie for you if you haven't seen it, but watch it and you will understand more about perception.


Fourth, you will keep being put in or reliving situations until you learn the lesson you are supposed to. 

This is very frustrating because some of us are very pigheaded, even when we realize what we are doing wrong. One of my favorite quotes (hey, I read a lot so I have a lot of favorite quotes. Cut a Fairy Godmother some slack) is:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein

Does it make you insane that this quote has no end quote marks? It certainly bugs the fairy dust out of me. 

    http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins133991.html#EGKu38mxYRVVkH4B.99 

I used to always date the same kind of guy - emotionally unavailable ones. Some part of me at that time needed them to be that way because it filled a need I had. When I finally saw the patten I created and was following and how ultimately it was making me unhappy, I stopped. I focused on filling that need for myself and when that happened, suddenly I wasn't willing to tolerate that kind of behavior and I wasn't attracted to those kinds of men anymore. Was it easy to stop? No. Did I discover what I was getting from that type of relationship and how to get it from a healthier source right away? No. But unless I took the steps to stop it, to change it, to do something different, I was going to keep repeating the same mistake over and over and over. And voila, when I wasn't looking or expecting it, Prince Charming came into my life.

So there you have it gentle readers, four of my core beliefs that help me build the life I want. What do you believe and hold to be true? Are you sure they're your beliefs? Do you need to change anything? What will it take for you to start empowering yourself? What situation do you keep finding yourself in that you don't want to be in? Please feel free to share, because as Cloud Atlas, another movie I listened to during my playtime with Vertigo, said:

Sonmi-451: If I had remained invisible, the truth would stay hidden. I couldn't allow that.
Archivist: And what if no one believes this truth?

Sonmi-451: Someone already does. 

And with that dramatic ending, I will whip my Fairy Godmother cape around me dramatically and fly off into the wind.

Until next post, Sayonara babies!