Learning Life Lessons

… is the only reason you are here.

You are here right now to learn. That is it. That is the big mystery of life. You are here to improve yourself and your level of consciousness. With every lesson learned in a lifetime, you move up – closer to happiness, closer to freedom, closer to God.

This is why it is extremely important that we are consciously walking through life and not sleepwalking our way through it. Sleepwalking is a favorite pastime of ours – numbing ourselves with overworked schedules, alcohol, food, drugs, electronics, media, etc…

If you are ready to be more conscious and want to know what is really going on in your life, look at your landscape. Who are the people and situations around you? How are they influencing you? What affect do they have on you day-to-day?

We make contracts with other souls to teach us our life lessons. Nothing every shows up in our lives that doesn’t have a reason for being and that reason is to teach us something. Our work is to decipher the lesson, overcome it and make our life better because of it.

Wonder what your life lessons are? Here are a few basic life lessons that many people face today:

If you are working on Self-esteem, you will attract people who walk all over you/take you for granted.

If you are working on Anger you will attract people who test your patience.

If you are working on Tolerance, you will attract people who challenge your notions of what is proper/acceptable.

If you are working on Self-worth, you will attract people who try to undermine you/cross your boundaries.

If you are working on Selfishness, you will attract people who are needy.

If you are working on Forgiveness, you will attract people who continually hurt you.

If you are working on Emotional Independence, you will attract people who try to control you.

If you are working on Balance, you will attract people who create drama in your life.

If you are working on Patience, you will attract people who push your buttons.

Now that you start to recognize the pattern, you can make great change in your life and change you WILL MAKE. Learn your lessons – get them early. The longer it takes you to get them, the harder they get. They repeat with each new relationship you have until you stop buying into the lesson and start reacting differently. When you finally get the lesson, it stops… and life continues on – much sweeter and easier.

Are you ready to learn?

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What Lies Beneath

… is what matters the most.

We tend to spend most of our busy lives focusing outside of ourselves – spending thousands of dollars every year to make ourselves new and improved via personal trainers, gym memberships, weight programs, skin care products, facials, reconstructive surgeries, make-up, expensive wardrobes and accessories, etc… But what does all that really do?

Fixing the outside of ourselves is fine, but it is never a replacement for healing the inside. We are a work in progress and it is much easier to bury our emotional states and hide behind a few simple cosmetic changes then it is to go deeper into our beings and ask the tough questions – are we really happy with the lives we have created for ourselves? Most of us run from that key question and keep “prettying up the front yard” because we think that if the outside looks ok, we can forgo the mess inside. That never works. Eventually the door breaks down and your dirty laundry is exposed on the front lawn.

In life, it is not just important to focus on the tip of the iceberg when clearly there is destructive ice sitting just below the surface. In other words, it is the 10% above the surface that is the easy stuff; it is the sneaky 90% below the surface that really demands our attention. Just because it isn’t showing day-in and day-out and just because you are able to hide it successfully from the world, doesn’t mean it isn’t there to wreak havoc on our lives.

Slow down and take a long, hard look at who you are and how you show up in life. Does your life accurately reflect who you are? Are you dealing with the real issues that are confronting you or are you just stuffing them below the surface? Dealing with the hidden ugly is the only true way to beautify your surface. Our faces never lie. They show a lifetime of what we have stuffed down beneath the surface. The time has come to excavate what we have submerged and shed the light of consciousness on it. In raising up all that we have suppressed, we have the ability to transform our lives into a happier and more meaningful existence. What are you waiting for?

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Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff

… It’s the big stuff that matters.

How often do we find ourselves doing this? We obsess over the small things – the things that do not matter – the small items that we need to cross off our to-do list. We allow these small, mundane items to take precedence over our lives and give them the power to impart happiness or misery over us.

If we are not careful, we can busy our days with lots of small and insignificant items and/or activities. These items may seem very important to us in our day-to-day mundane lives but in the grander scheme of our lives, they are not very important at all. In fact, these small items distract our attention away from what really matters in life.

Let’s define what really matters in life. We can sum it up in two words – your relationships. Translation: how do you show up in all your relationships? All relationships being those with colleagues, with lovers, with friends, with clients, with bosses, with shop clerks, etc… If you want to know how you are faring in life, worry less about your item list and worry more about how you are treating those around you. For instance, are you fair? Are you kind? Are you constructive? Are you inspiring others? Are you a motivator?  Or on the other hand, are you spiteful and resentful? Are you jealous? Are you passive aggressive? Do you busy yourself so that you do not have to deal with other people? These are coping mechanisms and escape mechanisms programmed into us. They do not serve the purpose of the soul, they only temporarily satisfy the ego.

The ego will always make the tasks at hand seem supremely important, especially if the tasks are created to distract oneself away from relations with other people. Sometimes we worry so much about doing and completing tasks that we completely forget that at the end of the day, it is really unimportant as to whether or not the task was actually completed, but what does matter is how you made another person feel while you were trying to complete that task.

If it becomes a choice as to whether or not to strike something off our to-do list or actually face up to our insecurities and issues with others and allow ourselves to connect and be there for someone who needs us, the choice should become increasingly clear. When all is said and done, life is about being and not doing. If you focus on being, I assure you, you will innately become happier and more centered. Doing always needs to be busy or it will never be complacent because doing is a means of escaping a deeper connection to others.. You can spend your life chasing your tail, but it will never make you happy. Don’t sweat the small stuff… let go of the details. Life becomes easier, happier and much more joyful when you look at those around you and learn to make an honest connection to them; that is what the big stuff is all about.

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Pack your bags lightly

You take it all with you.

It is human nature to carry your bags with you. All of it. We all carry heavy burdens of issues – packed up discreetly or not so discreetly as our “baggage.” We insist on carting this baggage around with us into every new relationship, job and situation.

We try and show up as the best version of ourselves, yet we will not let go of our bags. We stand smiling at the front door while we are invited in by our host and instead of discreetly storing our bags away in the guest closet until it is time to unpack them, we find ourselves running into our host’s main room and exploding open our bags like a crazy person – exposing the most intimate parts of ourselves (panties and all!) at very inopportune times. Why do we do this?

In life, there is a big difference between being open/vulnerable and being needy/unconscious. You always want to be yourself and be genuine but at the same time, it is important that you are conscious. It is important that you realize everything that you have packed into your bags and recognize it is yours when it rears its ugly head out of the baggage. Never confuse its contents with those of your host. In other words, own what is yours and give the rest back.  

You have a lifetime to sort through your baggage. Try and streamline it – deal with your issues and evolve onwards. You will blame people less, resent people less, distrust people less and grow consciously into the being you were meant to. Life gets easier for you and people find it easier to be around you. Do the work – lesson your load, you do not need to throw your dirty laundry all over your partner’s living room in order to be seen and heard. There is a better way to show up. Pack your bags lightly, the soul is eternal and your baggage is your load to carry lifetime after lifetime. How heavy are your bags?

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