If I had to bottom line my take on living your best life, it would be this list.
#1 When People Show You Who They Are Believe Them
Maya Angelou is one of my favorite authors and this is my favorite lesson from her. I used to really get caught up in what people told me. Their behavior would show me one thing, but their words would tell me another. I always believed their words. This made me easily manipulated.
When I started to put two and two together this quote really made sense to me. People can, and will, say anything to ‘keep’ you in their illusion.
#2 Rule of Three
The rule of three applies across the board for almost everything. What you put out into the world, comes back to you threefold. Third time’s the charm. But what I mean here is the pattern formula in relationships. The first time a behavior appears it can be a fluke or an error in judgement. The second time it appears is concerning and needs to be discussed. The third time is evidence of a pattern of behavior and if the behavior is a deal breaker, it is best to walk away. The pattern is difficult if not impossible to break without concentrated effort to change.
#3 Never Go Backwards
Ex’s are ex’s for a reason. What brought you together has deteriorated and you’ve grown in different ways in different directions or you wouldn’t have broken up. Don’t look back. Don’t buy into old patterns (see #2). The exception to this is time. If more than seven years have passed and you find yourself in different places at the same time, then explore! You are both different people. Give it a try. You never know what will happen. But make sure you keep #2 close to your heart because change many not have taken place after all.
#4 The Universe Is Conspiring On My Behalf
It is easy to believe this when events we deem good come our way. When in the midst of undesirable things however, this can be difficult to embrace.
You just have to look back over your life’s disappointments, heartaches and tragedies to see how they created openings for other wonderful things to enter your life. It doesn’t mean that they weren’t painful or hard. It doesn’t erase that pain or struggle, but it does help us heal from them. Life is filled with beginnings and endings; hellos and goodbyes; starts and stops.
Knowing that everything is perfectly perfect in its imperfection and all is in Divine Timing can get us through the most confusing times.
#5 Everything Happens As It Needs To
This flows perfectly from #4. Everything happens exactly as it needs to. Exactly. You can’t moan away hours whining that you ‘shoulda’ done something different. This moment of realization is brought to you courtesy of all the moments that came before it. Not everyone’s awakening/healing will happen in the same format. What is made available to you is done so when you are available to receive it and when it is most beneficial for you.
So often we lament over “I shoulda, woulda, coulda’s”. Nitpicking over every single memory inspecting where we went wrong or where we could’ve done better. It’s a waste of time. Bread is dough until it is fully finished baking. You want bread, my friend. Be bread. Embrace the bread. (Even if you choose gluten free!)
#6 Don’t Chase Anyone Who’s Walking Away From You
Rejection is a hard pill to swallow…so don’t. Rejection isn’t a thing except in your own mind. When someone is walking away from you, either at a cocktail party or after a 20 year marriage, it is not a rejection of you. It is an expression of their needs or wants. There is nothing lacking in you that you need to feel rejection over. Nothing.
And there is likely nothing lacking in that other person either. They just have indicated to you that connection lies elsewhere for both of you. A simple, ‘thank you for clarifying’, muttered under your breath is gratitude enough! You didn’t realize that lack of connection, so be grateful they did before you spent weeks, months or years figuring it out. Next!
#7 Always Follow Your Intuition
Ever say to yourself, “I KNEW it!” after something doesn’t quite go the way you expected? Or maybe it even did go as you expected. That is your intuition. It may not (and it does not) have logic or reason behind it, but it is as true as True North. You need to cultivate that. Don’t let your brain tell you that you must justify that niggle. That niggle is your built in navigation system. This is your direct line from your Source Self. It isn’t full of fallacy like the ego mind. It is pure and clean and accurate.
As we grow up though we may be surrounded by others who have ignored their intuition. They will convince you to turn yours off to, so if you are looking to turn it back on, it might take a bit to figure out the secret codes. How to decipher between your intuition and fear can be difficult. Here’s a tip: fear will move you away from something; your intuition will move you towards something.
#8 Your Life Is Created By Your Vibration
You may have heard this already – In fact, you may have heard all of these already – but you might not fully understand it. Maybe you don’t even understand vibration. Ok, let’s get personal for a moment.
Check into your body.
- Think of the last time you were disappointed. How did that feel in your body? Was it heavy? Dense?
- Now think of the last time you had an orgasm. How did that feel in your body? Not during, but after…the afterglow. Got it? How did that feel to you vibrationally? What words would you use to describe it?
How you feel after an orgasm is a moment of your highest vibration. You can feel the energy buzzing and humming throughout your body, under your skin long after the orgasm has past. You want to make choices, take actions and have beliefs that make you feel like that, rather than how you feel when you are disappointed. Being disappointed is a moment of your lowest vibration. If you can get your thoughts to a place where they make you feel your highest vibration (HV) you will attract things, people and events that match that. Then you will respond with HV which will cause more HV things to present themselves. Its an upward cycle. I don’t need to tell you there is an equal and opposite downward cycle with low vibration, do I?
Situations that bring your vibe down are inevitable, but you can switch on your highest vibration by revisiting HV thoughts and find the closest truest thought about the current situation. (If you’ve done ‘affirmations’ and they didn’t work for you, it is because you were missing this piece.)
#9 Eliminate “Should” From Your Vocabulary
As hinted at in #5 ‘should’ is a four letter word. Ok, it’s not, but it is profane in it’s manipulations. There is and never will be another you just as you are in this lifetime. Never. Not one. Therefore, these rules that surround ‘should’ are bogus. No one ‘should’ do or be or have anything specific at any given time.
Instead of shoulding yourself, “I should do this because it is the right thing to do”, say instead “I want (or need) to do this.” We all do things we don’t really want to do, for the sake of a healthy relationship. “I don’t want to go hiking, but I do want to participate in an activity that my beloved enjoys.” Should is a derivative of guilt and guilt needs to be a non-entity in your life.
#10 Let Go Of That Which No Longer Serves You
I remember the last nigh-nigh (pacifier) that my daughter had. She used them only when she went to bed, which is how they got their name. Nigh-nigh. At the point that I intuitively felt she could fall asleep without them, I stopped replacing them. By this time she understood the term ‘broken’ and that when things were broken we could not fix them and they went into the trash. So, as each nigh-nigh deteriorated I let her throw them away. One by one she let them go. They were no longer necessary. They no longer served her.
It is the same for many beliefs/thoughts/relationship/material possessions in our lives. We hold on, sometimes, just for the sake of holding on. We need to step back and see if something is serving us. We ask ourselves, ‘is this serving my highest good?’ ‘Is this taking me towards or away from my highest best life?’ And we let go of what isn’t and allow the Universe to present what is next.
#11 Fear Leads You Away From Something
I mentioned this in #7 but it is important enough to stand on it’s own as many of us cannot tell the difference between being cautious and letting fear get in our way. Now, I am not talking about the sort of fear that tells you not to go down a dark alley at midnight. I am talking about the kind that prevents you from expanding your wings and trying something new. The one that tells your heart, you can’t.
Intuition, says “meh, no not this, but maybe this”, while fear says, “oh no I can’t! That’s foolish! I could lose everything!” Intuition will always end with an alternate possibility and feeling elated, while fear will leave you in the exact same spot feeling defeated.
#12 Never Let Them Change Who You Are
Do you remember when someone first told you, ‘don’t sink to their level’? I do and I must confess it felt binding as well as vague. Internally, I wanted to hit them low when they hit me low. I wanted to impart pain in equal measure to what I’d experienced. When I did that though, it didn’t make me feel any better. The pain was still there and something else sat like sludge over the top of it.
Why? Because I was changing my nature to match someone else’s vibration. My higher self was conflicting with the lower expression of who I was. In short, I was letting them change who I was. That’s when you have lost…when you’ve lost who you are.
#13 Strive To Understand Before You Strive To Be Understood
I left this for last, because I want it to be the last taste in your mouth. I want it to hang off your lips and be the first to fall out. This is the key to successful relationships, no matter the relationship. Too many individuals are caught up in the power struggle to be ‘heard and understood’, because they feel like they have been voiceless. In a world where no one is listening that isn’t surprising.
I was raised Catholic and one of my very favorite songs is St. Francis’ prayer. It is filled with good advice that I have tried my best to live my life by. If you don’t know it, these are the words. And you can hear it here.
Prayer of St. FrancisLord make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joyO divine master grant that I may
not so much seek to be consoled as to console
to be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it’s in dying that we are born to eternal life
Amen
I have long left my organized religious roots behind me. Or maybe they are just at the very root of who I became. I have taken the very best of what I’ve been taught and combined it with other teachings that resonated with Truth for me.
This, ‘to understand as to be understood’ is but one.
I leave you here, with this because there is no better way to leave you.
I understand, but I will never stop seeking to do so.
I love you,
~Jade
