Creating a life of my own making
Over the last few days I’ve had some odd dreams of shopping and cooking, or more specifically feeding others, and of people helping me with thoughts and ideas for recipes and where to find the ingredients. I take from this, that my journey is of my making, I can choose the ingredients, chose the recipes and feed myself and the world with the all the joy and abundance and love that I can pull together.
Stepping back into my past I'd previously boxed myself in, that I'd chosen this life and more worryingly I'd chose to stay in it. Quitting at that time was not an option, it represented defeat and in doing so I would need to admit I wasn’t strong enough.
And in reality, I WASN’T strong enough, I wasn’t strong enough to work 12 hours a day and then have a 3 hour commute. I wasn’t strong enough to replenish myself on the 4 hours of sleep that I wore as a badge of pride. I wasn’t strong enough to put up with misogynist abuse. I wasn’t strong enough to deal with the feelings I had of not being good enough.
I had created a beautiful box for myself, I had wrapped it in the most gorgeous paper, I’d tied it up with a stunning bow and presented this wonderful gift to anyone an everyone that would take it, regardless of whether or not they deserved it. BUT because of my own of self worth, I both expected and, subsequently, received, exactly what I gave daily to myself, a lack of support, and a lack of gratitude in what I had and what I was giving.
As a result, the beautiful gift wrapped in the colourful box became old, tarnished and broken and I woke up one day, looked at my life and said to myself, “This will be the death of me”, and I realised that, for the first time in years, I was speaking the truth.
It was then my box was shattered, I had no box and so thinking outside of it was all I could do. I could only pick up the pieces and create a life of my own making.
The Universe had been tapping me gently on the shoulder for years, my heart had been whispering but I couldn’t (or perhaps wouldn’t) hear it. Through a year of poor health, my heart now shouted (not whispered) every time I thought of returning back to my previous life, the Universe no longer tapped me on the shoulder, it punched me in the face.
Einstein asked, “Do you live in a friendly universe”, I’ve always believe, “YES”, so if the Universe was telling me in no uncertain terms that my existing life wasn’t good for me, I had to listen.
I’ve always been embarrassed to talk about my spirituality, of which the Universe, with a capital ‘U’ is a part but more recently become more comfortable as science and faith, which have been separate for centuries, are now starting to diverge and we are starting to understand how we behave operates on, not only a physical level but also META physical level, and both are equally important.
Science is stating to show and we are beginning to learn about ‘gut instinct’ and realising that ‘intuition’ can be equally and perhaps even more accurate than left brain thinking when it comes to decision making. Malcolm Caldwell and his thought-provoking book, ‘Blink’ has some amazing examples of this.
We ‘re understanding that the gut also has a huge impact on our health, with the gut biome being seen as a key component in how we think, with an unhealthy gut impacting on our mental health.
Through the HeartMath institute and the work they have done, we understand that we can take charge of our emotions through bring the mind and heart centres into coherence and, outstandingly we can affect our surroundings and others too.
Through neuroscience we understand that our brain is not the be all and end all, we can effect our mental state through our physical being through sometimes something as simple as breathing from the bottom of our lungs through belly breathing rather than shallow breathing from the top.
We’re aware that memories are not just stored in the depths of our brain but throughout the body. We talk about ‘muscle memory’ but what about memories of a donor that are transferred to the recipient of a heart transplant. Memories that they couldn’t have acquired elsewhere, even down to preferences of foods that previously they have disliked.
If all these things have come to pass then the ‘truth’ of what we see is only transient. And it was this that occurred to me that day I woke up and foresaw my own potential demise.
And if that ‘truth’ is temporary, then the box that we find ourselves in also is.
We are the Captain of our own ship, we can steer it towards our own destiny. We don’t have to be trapped by the journey we are on. We don’t have to conform to the image of who we think we are, or should be, or to someone else’s idea of us.
We have the right to choose, we have the right to change, we have the right, indeed the OBLIGATION, to become the best version of ourselves, and to love ourselves with the compassion and intensity that we wish to be loved by others.
Elaine Sullivan
Founder, Elaine K Sullivan Ltd
WORKING WITH WOMEN, FOR WOMEN, AND ON BEHALF OF WOMEN
Training, Coaching and Mentoring
Find out more about me
Email: elaine@elaineksullivan.com
For speaking enquiries: speaking@elaineksullivan.com