Tell me about the sure thing - the fact that you know best - the million dollar idea - that you are absolutely right, what I should do, what you should do - yadda, yadda - and you are certain to see my eyes glaze over and my feet inch toward the exit sign.
Tell me that you are not certain but your heart is stirring - you are unsure of what to do next - you have done no thing for yourself in so long, you have no idea what you even want to do - you do not know if this will work - you aren't sure - and I will be listening ...
Following our heart does not mean we will never lose money. It does not mean we will never get hurt. We don't work from our hearts to make our lives safe.
All the tens of hundreds of thousands of people who are out of work were not fired or laid off by chance.
(and I am not talking about jobs moving offshore and corporate greed and stagnating money and underwater mortgages because although on one level all those things are happening, on another level this unraveling of our safety net - a safety net that has always been made of our intention for safety and need to be cared for, which we are evolving (kicking and screaming) past - is so much bigger than all of that)
Doing unpalatable work soley to earn money is no longer in harmony with the energy sweeping the planet - but if we lose that job that if we were honest with ourselves we didn't love anyway and we spend hours and days and weeks and months running around in circles applying for similar jobs to the ones that left us -
this is kind of like when you want to break up with that boyfriend, you know the one who gave you something to do on a Saturday night and someone kind of presentable - well, except for his stupid bulldog t-shirt collection - to bring to your parents on holidays,
but the one who didn't make your heart sing and you knew that and although you knew you were going to have to change this relationship because it really wasn't working, you didn't want your life to change just then and of course what happens is the guy with the bulldog t-shirt collection
who has most likely been feeling exactly the same way about you that you have been feeling about him - well, he dumps you on your ass and suddenly you realize (fall into your fear) just how great he was and how adorable those t-shirts were and then you run around in circles trying to get the t-shirt guy back or finding someone else equally un-challenging
- when what is really happening is that life is calling on us to expand, to raise our vibration and clear away the cobwebs so the right stuff can find us.
Life got tired of waiting for us to leap and finally just pushed us, ready or not, off that damn limb
and, depending on how awake we were before that push, we may have landed in a pile of leaves or a pile of snow or if we were really in a deep sleep - the sleep where you are so deep and snoring so loudly that you don't even stir when your wife smacks you in the head with her Nook - not that I have done this - well, maybe it has taken a hard landing in a field of desert cactus or a rocky cliff to
I know so many people who tell me they don't watch the news because they don't want to see any bad news and this is exactly the way of thinking that brings this bad news to our door so we can see it.
This isn't to punish us. Everything in life is showing us our connection to every other thing - the wheels are set in motion for all of us. We can barricade that door and spend weeks, months, maybe even years holding at bay what we think is out there - but it is absolutely coming in anyway - or we can open that door now.
So the second thing I do when I am at a crossroads
(after getting rid of something - see Part II) -
(making things is not just for professionals named Martha in Connecticut or skinny people in Brooklyn who wear black - this is not about making something perfect or something amazing or something that says anything other than I made this)
The act of creating anything is a spiritual act. Our grandmothers instinctively knew this because this is how they spent their days - they made bread, the made sweaters, they made friends with their neighbors, they made a life with what they had.
I will finish up this series tomorrow with Part IV of Navigating Change for Makers -
here is a wonderful link to the amazingly talented artist, musician and writer Kirsten Cram's blog as she tells the tale of the beginnings of her little adventure called Tollipop which started with a voice that called to her with the words "you should make something".
* keep your coins, I want change photograph by YMPhoto
