The Intuitive Perspective

Coming to Our Senses

Bonita Kay Summers — Mon, 13 May 2013 23:02:20 +0000

In my yoga classes, I talk a lot about the need for people to come to their senses, and I teach meditation from that point of view. Tuning into our body’s intelligence is key to connecting with our intuition.

From the moment someone shakes a rattle in our faces, we are taught to draw conclusions from what we see and hear in order to comprehend our world. This places us in the unfortunate position of believing that the world happens to us, and that life is a mental exercise.

When we come back to our senses, we experience our world from the inside out, and we remember that our world is being made up, moment to moment, by our preconceptions and expectations. Enlightenment is recognizing the world as we experience it directly, not as we expect it to be based on our intellectual conclusions.

When I first began to meditate at the age of 13, I used meditation to escape the physical world. Entering deep states of samadhi, I would lose track of time, and any awareness of having a physical body. It was a deeply pleasant experience to float in space and to discover that what seemed like 10 minutes of contemplation had actually been an hour. Afterward, I would have to return to the mundane world of physical existence, which often seemed oppressive after my journey to other levels of consciousness.

Later in life, I realized that meditation needed to incorporate the physical body, involving all the senses and the emotions in order to be a rich and grounding experience. As I learned to feel everything, my physical life became more vivid, and I became more committed to engaging with my world rather than eluding it.

As we have evolved technologically, we’ve developed an increasing number of distractions to keep us mentally occupied and physically dissociative. This became abundantly clear to me recently when I took a few days off to stay in a cabin in the mountains, beyond the reach of cellular networks. Sitting by the lake with only the song birds for company, I could feel my mind let go and my body come alive.

For our well-being and happiness, I believe we need to choose to connect with our senses and emotions and take time away from distractions of the mind. We need to re-acclimate ourselves to feelings that often overwhelm us, because we tend to keep them suppressed in favour of mental pursuits.

One way to reconnect with our inherent emotional and physical intelligence is to pay attention to how we feel. If there is tension in your body, stop, close your eyes, and breathe into it for several minutes. What is your body trying to tell you?

When emotions arise, instead of pushing them back down inside, take the risk of following them through. Be curious. What happens if you cry until the crying is done with you? What occurs when you sit with anger and frustration instead of finding someone to complain to? Often, we stop uncomfortable emotions in mid-cycle, because we don’t like the way they make us feel. So, we never get to see what’s on the other side of them.

Several years ago, I was having a Therapeutic Touch session with a fellow practitioner when I began to cry. I had developed the habit of holding my breath and stopping myself from crying, so this time, I just let myself breathe and cry until it stopped of its own accord. The tears continued for 90 minutes. At the Therapeutic Touch practice group I was attending, several people came to hold my hands, feet and head as I cried. I was completely supported in my process.

This was counter to my expectation that others would find my prolonged crying inconvenient or annoying. In fact, it had quite the opposite effect. Unbeknownst to me, a young lady had been quietly observing me the entire time. Afterward, she said, “I could never do that.” I replied softly, “Someday, you will.” We never know how our choosing to be real and vulnerable may be an encouragement to others to do the same.

Often, we stop ourselves from feeling emotions if we can’t nail down a reason for their eruption. We choke off the cycle simply because we can’t deduce its origin. This time, I let myself cry without knowing the cause. To this day, I do not know what the tears were about, nor do I need to know. It’s enough to be aware that my body was shedding some longheld grief.

What amazed me was the experience immediately afterward. My heart chakra expanded way beyond my body. I felt light and peaceful and more open than I had felt for some time. A similar experience occurred when I sat with anger during meditation, rather than project it outwardly. It took about 30 minutes before it transformed itself into a tremendous expansion of compassion from the heart.

In both situations, I had to show patience with myself – something we lack in our instant gratification world – and allow curiosity to take me somewhere I hadn’t gone before. Indeed, it’s that curiosity that can help us transcend the deep discomfort of our emotions in order to mine the wisdom of the subconscious.

The next time your head intervenes with your feelings, take a deep breath, close your eyes and feel your way through your body, allowing it to speak to you. Take the time to see where its wisdom will lead you. It may open a doorway to compassion and awareness beyond the realm of the mind. It may wake you up to what it feels like to be truly alive. It may bring you back to your senses.

Don’t Go Back to Sleep

Bonita Kay Summers — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 17:05:33 +0000

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

This poem by 12th-century Sufi mystic, Rumi, I believe is an invitation to go deeper into the mysteries of the self through meditation.

How often have you found yourself awake in the wee hours of the morning, disturbed by a bad dream or a concern from the day before? How often do you roll over and try to go back to sleep?

Why not use this time to meditate, to enter into the experience presenting itself at that moment? Many would answer, “Because it’s uncomfortable. Why would I want to explore my fears?”

The next line to Rumi’s poem explains why. If we ask for what we really want, we are really asking for connection. In everything we do, whether it is acquiring work, a home, money, or nurturing our relationships, we are doing our best not be alone and insecure.

In the western world, we’ve been taught that security lies outside ourselves, that if we just build all of these aspects into our lives, we’ll be happy. Yet, with all of this, with all the luxury we have in the west, we still wake up during the night with our fears.

When we place our sense of security on things that lie outside ourselves, we rarely feel secure, because conditions around us are constantly changing. When we shift our focus toward our inner world, we can discover a sense of peace that is not conditional on our outer circumstances.

True connection with ourselves and our world is to be found by going within. Rumi writes that people are walking back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds meet, and that the door is round and open. In other words, many people are waking up to their inner wisdom – and it’s available to all of us, if we would just learn how to get there.

I started meditating at the age of 13 as a school project, which began a lifelong exploration of methods for exploring consciousness. I’ve discovered that a willingness to sit with the uncomfortable emotions of the mind ultimately leads to the discovery that these emotions are generated by the ego consciousness and have nothing to do with who we really are. Our ego is what we have come to believe about ourselves due to our cultural and familial conditioning and our life experiences.

At the deepest level of consciousness, we leave the ego behind and come to an understanding of our true nature, which is not based on anything we do, have, or think. It’s a constant presence, unruffled by the movement of daily life. When we meditate, we discover our naturally enlightened state, which is usually hidden from us by the activity of our ego consciousness.

The ego mind is like ripples on the surface of the ocean. When we first begin to meditate, we find ourselves tossed about on those waves, and the experience can be very disconcerting. We thrash around, trying to stay afloat and to control our experience.

Yet, when we stay perfectly still, we begin to sink below the surface. At first, this will feel very foreign to the novice meditator. It will be deeply uncomfortable at times, to fully embrace the experience of the emotions, without hanging on to pleasant sensations or pushing away pain and fear.

However, as we sink to the depths of our being, we discover absolute stillness, peace, acceptance, and oneness. There is no thought process at the depths of our enlightened mind. In samadhi, as it is called, there is an awareness of the ego mind thinking its thoughts, but its activity is like a voice in the distance that becomes easy to ignore. We come to realize that the ego consciousness is a manufactured state, with no basis in reality.

Meditation can be a challenging experience. On the way to the experience of the enlightened mind, there will be times of pain, sadness, rage, and boredom. Yet, Rumi invites us to hear the secrets whispered at dawn for a very good reason – the experience of our enlightened mind changes everything.

We come to realize that the ego is just an idea we have about ourselves, one that we often feel we need to uphold and defend. The experience of our ultimate truth liberates us from the needs of the ego mind, from its fears and insecurities.

Instead, we experience the one presence, which we all are. In the enlightened state, there is no subject or object, and no loneliness because there is no sense of separation. There is only peace, belonging, and incredible joy. Enlightenment is our natural state, and we only need to wake up to it to realize the fallibility of the ego mind.

The invitation stands. The next time you wake up with fear and loneliness, perhaps your curiosity will get the better of you, and you’ll join me at the doorsill where the two worlds touch. Don’t go back to sleep.

2012 in review

Bonita Kay Summers — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 00:38:14 +0000

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,200 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

From Fight to Flow

Bonita Kay Summers — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 19:57:57 +0000

Our world is changing, and everyone is talking about it in their own way.

Some folks are predicting the end times, because of the Mayan calendar or the changes happening on the planet.

Others are saying it’s just a new beginning.

I’ve watched the changes in my practice as an intuitive counsellor and life coach, and I’ve noticed some interesting trends. Over the past several years, more people from all walks of life are finding their way to my door because of an internal trigger.

Whether they are doctors, lawyers, military personnel, business owners, teachers, homemakers, or students, they are all saying the same thing. Something in their lives suddenly no longer fits. They may be questioning relationships, careers, where they live or their life purpose. It’s as though an awakening is occurring where people are looking at the choices they’ve made and are realizing that some of those choices don’t fit the path their soul chose. They come to me to learn what their subconscious has to tell them about that. They come to me to get clear on the journey they really came her to walk.

In the process, a lot of old patterns are being transformed, and people are letting go of anything that doesn’t fit the new paradigm.

That paradigm is all about FLOW.

We are moving away from a world built on fight, where we push to make things happen, pull on each other’s energy and hold a belief that life happens to us, and it’s not always kind. That kind of thinking isolates us, and makes us each other’s enemies.

Some say a Golden Age is dawning, and I believe it is. Of necessity, we are forming community based on compassion, on the realization that the Earth is changing in ways we can only survive if we work together, if we share resources and knowledge.

We have a choice to continue to isolate ourselves or we can move into a state of flow, where we learn to listen to our intuition and allow it to guide us into the right livelihood, relationships, and location where we work and play. There is an underlying pattern and order to the universe, and we only have to learn to attune to it to be directed to the best possible life we can have.

Animals understand this. They follow their migratory patterns and instincts in order to survive. It’s time we connected with our deeper awareness not only of our own inner knowing, but our connection to each other and our need to take care of each other and our planet.

It’s time we realized that nature has always run the show, and it’s our job to work with it and each other. We need to listen more, care on a deeper level, and respond from our hearts. Let’s move together gently into the new age.

Do you want to learn how to live intuitively in flow with life? Discover the information your subconscious has for you! Book your intuitive counselling session today. I work in person, by phone, and via Skype or FaceTime.

Overcoming the Primitive Habit of Fear

Bonita Kay Summers — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 21:51:14 +0000

How many times a day do you feel fear? I’m not talking about abject terror like the kind you have when a tsunami or a wild animal is bearing down on you. I mean that little tightening you get around your heart, that niggling sense of worry just under the surface of your thoughts that is there whenever you stop to experience your own mind.

If you are subject to fear on a regular basis or occasionally, you’ve fallen back on an old habit.

Fear is a vestigial reaction left over from our caveman days. Back then, it was reasonable to walk around in a state of hypervigilance, because you never knew what was going to come crashing through the bush at you – a warring tribesman, a rampaging beast, a fire or flood. All were possibilities in a world where humans had precious little say over their experiences. We were primitive, and our relationship with the world reflected that truth.

There was much to fear in the world back then, and we had good reason to walk around in a state of apprehension. It kept us safe.

Apprehension is a useful ability when we are in a dangerous environment. If you are walking down a dark, unfamiliar street in a questionable part of a city, being aware of possible dangers just makes sense. One definition of apprehension is fearfulness; however, it also means understanding and discernment. Taking into account our environment, our interactions with others, and any risk associated with what we immediately perceive makes us more capable of responding appropriately should some untoward event arise. It’s when we move beyond reasonable apprehension into habitual fear that we run into trouble.

Once fear sets in, we lose our ability to apprehend. Fear causes the brain’s activity to center itself in the brain stem, where our primitive brain resides. From there, we are capable of two things: fight or flight. We cannot reason our way out of the situation, because at that moment, we can access our neocortex (the reasoning part of the brain) only with great difficulty. With a body full of adrenaline, prepared to punch someone, or run away full tilt, we cannot think of a more evolved solution to our difficulties.

We can learn to catch ourselves whenever we start to feel the grip of fear, whenever we suddenly notice our breathing becoming shallow or our chest tightening up. We can ask ourselves if there is any kind of threat IMMEDIATELY in our presence. Is something happening right NOW that we’re having this reaction?

It’s an important question, because most of our fear is based on thinking about past or future actions or possibilities. That was useful when all we had to think about was fighting off a competitor for food or trying not to become food. We needed all of our faculties – limited as they were – focused on fear just to survive.

In our world, we can’t afford to give our energy to fear; we need our reasoning capabilities to call upon the many resources we have at hand internally and externally, to employ our ideas, our community and our personal power to deal with the complexities of modern life.

To have the energy, drive and focus to be effective, we must be HERE NOW, not in caveman mode, anticipating threats. By noting that we have fallen into the habit of fear, we can consciously choose to relax, apprehend our surroundings, and make constructive decisions about our next move, coming from knowledge and wisdom.

It is fear that causes us to retract from life, to pull back our energy from the world. We walk around, hunched over and turned inward, believing that our expectation of the bad things in life will somehow protect us – not realizing that we are actually creating an unhappy reality by focusing our attention on what we fear.

To become a community, it’s imperative that we understand this primitive knee-jerk reaction does not fit the world we live in, nor does it help us to create a better one. We need to make a basic shift from, “How will I get hurt?” to “How can I help?” Let’s drop the fear habit and look around for all that is right with our world, and transform fear into action that contributes to the greater good.

We do have control over our environment in one crucial respect. No matter what our world throws at us, we all have the ability, working together, to make good things happen. All it takes is kindness, and letting go of fear.

Even today I still arrive…

Bonita Kay Summers — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 00:14:39 +0000

In his poem, “Call Me by My True Names”, Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh writes:

Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

I love the feeling of freedom that this perspective generates. If we can accept ourselves as being in a continuous state of becoming, we are free to embrace unlimited potential.

Of course, the ego mind fears this idea. It likes its little box. In fact, it wants to climb in and close the lid, shutting off the world of possibilities, simply because they are the unknown, and the mysterious is also terrifying – at least to this limited creation of our consciousness.

Yet, I believe we are moving into a time of expansion, one where we recognize that we are simply energy – as all things are – and that this energy takes the form of our thoughts. If we don’t limit ourselves, if indeed we can see our inner and outer reality as constantly shifting along with our ideas, then we can discover the freedom of living in a constant state of evolution.

The question becomes, then, can we accept all of who we are? This is an important query, because our ego mind loves to identify itself with a persona, a self-concept that invariably shuts out anything we don’t like about ourselves. Those aspects of our psyche become the shadow, which we relegate to the dark corners of our mind.

In accepting that we are in a constant state of evolution, always arriving, it is necessary to embrace every area of our consciousness as it arises, without attachment and without aversion. It helps to recognize that the parts of us we don’t like are ones that we don’t really understand. We may not know the fear behind our anger, pettiness and judgmental behaviour, but if we listened to these parts of our psyche, we might come to empathize and realize the pain, the loss, and the sense of abandonment that have morphed into defensiveness and distancing behaviour. Then, we might be willing to adapt and grow with these previously rejected parts instead of suppressing or denying them.

As we come to an understanding of all aspects of the self (and there’s no rush in reaching that knowing; we have many lifetimes in which to do the work), we undergo great changes in consciousness – and these ripple out as shifts in our external world. The key is to be willing each day to see ourselves and our world in a new way, possibly radically different from the way we saw things the day before.

If, like me, you find the box your ego built for you to be too confining, then take this journey with me. You can begin anytime you like, by choosing in every moment to be surprised, to be open to the unknown, to feel everything that bubbles up from your subconscious, to savour the mystery, and to embrace what scares you and causes you to resist, knowing that THAT is an area on which to place your attention in the moment.

Just don’t get tricked into settling for the momentary awareness you find. Don’t be fooled into saying, “I am this.” There is always more, because even today you still arrive.

Get uncomfortable!

Bonita Kay Summers — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 17:34:08 +0000

Yesterday, I decided to go for a bike ride under unusual circumstances. In my town of Kelowna, BC, where I’ve lived now for a year, I’ve encountered many challenges that I never faced in Ontario, often because of the terrain.

At Myra Canyon, in the mountains of Kelowna, you can ride a bike on the trestles of a railroad track built in the early 1900′s. The views are magnificent, but the steep drive up an 8 km long gravel road with hairpin turns is scary for a newcomer like me, and at times the sheer drop-offs from the trail and tracks are unnerving as well.

I can think of many things I’ve experienced in the past year that were daunting for me. One year ago, I left Ontario to move to a new location on the other side of the country. As a self-employed person, knowing no one and nothing of the environment to which I was moving, this was an adventure indeed!

Since then, I’ve learned the joys of hiking in the mountains (the high, narrow trails took some getting used to), ziplining over a 380 foot deep canyon, flying in a biplane over the Okanagan, riding horseback through swampy mountain trails, tackling an obstacle course set high in the trees, and building a business and friendships in my community.

I never saw myself as an outdoorsy, adventurous type of person. Yet, in many ways, that’s what I’ve become, living in a city where these are everyday activities.

I’ve known other Kelowna citizens to hurtle down steep mountainsides on their bikes, take to the high slopes during ski season, and wake board at the lake. I am surrounded by folks who are more adventurous than me, and who inspire me to enjoy the opportunities that present themselves to grow and be a little more daring.

I believe we are all in a constant state of becoming. Every moment that exposes us to a new idea or activity affects how we define ourselves and gives us a new perspective from which to see our world and each other.

Take a moment today to think of some activity that scares and intrigues you. Then, make plans to do it! The action you take doesn’t have to be grandiose. It may be speaking in public, taking on a new task at work, or accepting an invitation you would normally reject. Just making the choice to walk into your fear will create a change in consciousness. Actually following through will shift your awareness even more!

When you feel resistance or fear, realize that on the other side of that, is a new you, waiting to be known. To come into our greater selves, we just need to get uncomfortable.

Is the universe working through you?

Bonita Kay Summers — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 21:51:35 +0000

In preparing for our work day, it helps to remind ourselves that we work best when we set the ego aside and let the Universe work through us.

In all of our interactions, we can drop the illusion of separation that is the domain of the ego, and place the intent that what we reflect back to others is done with the greatest compassion and understanding, knowing that we are communicating with some mirror of our ourselves as seen in the face of another.

We are all sparks of one Mind, intermingling, influencing and guiding each other back to our original consciousness. I see this awareness come to light in my workshops, when people connect energetically with one another, realizing we really are One, knowing this as a real experience and not merely a theory. We can carry that awareness into our day, recognizing that our thoughts and actions affect each other, and that we see a gentler result when we let universal consciousness rather than ego conduct the work we do.

To bring our work life into greater harmony with the Universe, we can begin each day with the intention to serve others in whatever capacity we are called to do so. Sometimes, being of service will be externalized in the task at hand; sometimes, it will be internally focused, as we examine the ways we can bring greater compassion and understanding to our actions.

By placing ourselves in a humble, receptive mode, we allow the Universe to work through us, and we find ourselves motivated to reach out to others. This is in direct contrast with ego mind, whose desire is to elevate itself, ensure its sense of security, and reap rewards that primarily are of personal benefit.

Ironically, the more we allow the Universe to work through us, the more deeply we reach others, and the more our prosperity increases. When we move beyond the concerns of the ego, our basic needs are met, and we have more to offer others. In fact, we have the infinite abundance of the Universe at our fingertips.

Is your brain older than you are?

Bonita Kay Summers — Mon, 21 May 2012 20:08:26 +0000

You’re striving to stay on top of your career, managing complex decisions, coming up with creative solutions, and working with younger colleagues whose brains process information quickly. You want to maintain your edge in the workplace, keeping pace with the flow of ideas that sustain and drive forward your business.

At the same time, you’re working to secure your retirement. You’ve put money away. You’ve taken relatively good care of yourself. You’ve paid off your mortgage. In short, you’ve ensured that you have the external resources to live out the rest of your life in comfort. So what have you missed?

What if despite all of your efforts to secure your future you’ve neglected to maintain your brain? If you lose your faculties, your ability to enjoy that future and your independence will be in jeopardy.

If you’re in your 40′s or older, you may have already noticed signs of mental decline. Do you sometimes forget where you put your keys? Do you have a hard time remembering names? Does the word you mean to use escape you, and you find yourself scrambling for synonyms? These are all indications that you have begun to lose your neuroplasticity. Not only are your retirement years at risk, because your cognitive abilities are stuck in the rut of habitual thinking, you are potentially jeopardizing your creativity and ability to stay competitive in the marketplace.

Not to worry. Your brain is capable of regaining much of what you’ve lost.

Think back to when you were a child. You constantly had to learn new things: how to walk, talk, dress yourself, read and write – to name a few. Gradually, you came to master these skills and more. Your mind was in a constant state of intense concentrated learning, ensuring that your brain maintained its plasticity.

As we move into adulthood and become established in our careers, our daily routine often presents fewer opportunities to learn new skills. Instead, it becomes incumbent upon each of us to seek them out. Why? If we don’t, our brains begin to lose their neuroplasticity. They becomes fixed in their functions, and we start to lose our cognitive abilities. We process information more slowly and have more difficulty recalling facts and figures. Our response time is affected and even our problem-solving skills.

We become creatures of habit as we age, choosing a daily routine that has very little change. As we get older, we tend to stay within our comfort zones. With nothing to shake up our world, we stop learning new skills. Instead, we simply build on the ones we’ve already mastered. To build new neural pathways in the brain, it’s imperative that we learn new skills on a regular basis, or we risk atrophy.

Neuroplastician, Michael Merzenich, in The Brain That Changes Itself, concludes that, “…when you are eighty-five, there is a forty-seven percent chance that you will have Alzheimer’s disease… We’ve got to do something about the mental lifespan, to extend it out and into the body’s lifespan.”

Some of Merzenich’s suggestions for fighting cognitive decline include:

1. Learning a new language.

2. Learning new physical activities that require concentration.

3. Solving challenging puzzles.

4. Changing to a career that requires the mastery of new skills and material.

Today, there are a number of programs available through the Internet that can improve our mental faculties. Merzenich is the developer of Posit Science, a series of brain training programs designed to address age-related cognitive decline, which attacks memory, thinking, and process speed. Posit Science has dropped its prices considerably since their programs first came out on the market $690 for the complete program to $345. The site includes sample games you can try, as well as an opportunity to test your brain.

A popular site that allows users to compare their cognitive abilities with their peers is Lumosity. Users go through a training program for a very reasonable cost. $200 will buy you a lifetime membership. You can pay considerably less if you want to give the program a trial run of a shorter period of time. Lumosity fans can even participate in scientific studies that use their stats to understand neuroplasticity and other aspects of brain science. Lumosity also offers a smartphone app so that some games can be played while mobile.

Another program, Cognifit allows users to unlock applications by inviting Facebook friends to participate. Cognifit uses a more general comparison of a user’s score to that of the world in general, but also breaks it down by profession, gender, age and country of origin.

Regardless of which program you gravitate towards, don’t fool yourself into thinking that these computer-based tasks are going to cut it. Get exercising, eat right, get enough sleep, and drink in moderation. Avoid excessive TV time or video game play. A well-rounded life leads to healthier grey matter.

Whether you are in the work world and want to stay competitive with your peers or you are planning for a fulfilling retirement, ensure you stay sharp. Maintain your brain!

Are you settling for small change?

Bonita Kay Summers — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 15:29:39 +0000

When we welcome a change, we call it variety and enjoy it.

When we resist a change, we call it tragedy and suffer pain.

Peter Comrie

Something just out of reach of your conscious mind is scratching at the surface of your life. It’s time for change. You know that some part of your life no longer fits – and you need to do something about that.

When it’s a small change, it’s not a big deal – and that’s often where we settle. We get a haircut or go shopping. We let off steam by talking to a friend. We alter our routine at work. Little changes make a small difference – and we’re happier for a while.

So what do you do when the voice inside of you loudly demands a big change? Do you listen? Often, we’re too afraid of the unknown to make the change or we don’t know what our next step should be.

Here are some unorthodox ideas for welcoming big change in your life:

1. Where will you be 10 years from now? If you are in a dead-end job, an unhappy relationship, or the wrong location for you, but you can’t muscle up the gumption to do anything about it, picture yourself there 10 years from now. Close your eyes and run the entire scenario through your mind until you feel you are really there. Is that the life you want? No? Then, start living.

2. Figure out your first step. Would you rather have a nicer location, more abundance, a happier relationship, a better career? It takes some big, powerful steps to get there, but you can only make the change one step at a time.

We tend to overwhelm ourselves by pondering the end goal rather than just taking the first step to get there. So break it down. What can you do today to get you one step closer to your happy life? As Gandhi said, “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” That first step toward your new life may not shake your world, but just as Gandhi through simple, small steps changed the world, so can you change yours. Just take that first step and watch the next step reveal itself.

3. Expect what you need to show up. Once we’ve made a commitment to a goal by taking action, our intent works like a magnet to attract the people, resources, and events we need to reach that goal. The next step will reveal itself, so expect to hear great ideas from people around you, watch for opportunities to arise, and be open to making changes greater than you anticipated – and in ways you never expected.

4. Accept the pace of change. When we set an intention, we don’t know exactly where the ripples will go. Opportunities can present themselves sooner than we thought they would, and they may challenge us to go somewhere we have never been. When the brass ring is presented, trust that it is coming your way for good reason – and grab it.

5. Be willing to learn by doing. When a new opportunity presents itself, even if you aren’t confident that you can meet it, do so anyway. Too often, we play it safe, only walking into what we already know. Adopt the attitude that the opportunity has arisen to call out the potential that already resides within you.

6. Are you scared? Rejoice. If you’re scared to take the next step, you may be looking at significant change in your world. Way to go! Acknowledge your fear, but change anyway. When you get on the other side of that doorway, you’ll wonder why you didn’t act sooner. If you’re life is very safe, and you’re not enjoying it, then it’s time to take some risks. You are not here simply to take your preciously preserved body gently to its grave. You are in life to enjoy this rollercoaster ride, so let it shake you up a bit – or a lot! It’s so much more fun that way.

7. Learn to love the unknown. In the information age, we’ve come to expect that answers we need will be just a keystroke away, but making big changes usually means walking into the irrational unknown. We can educate ourselves only so far into our process, and then the rest is up to wherever our path leads us.

For example, I became a yoga teacher without any conscious intent. Walking by a yoga studio one day, I clearly got a message from my inner guidance that I was to go in and say that I wanted to work there. My conscious mind thought, “Okay, I could work at the front desk, supplementing my income and getting free yoga classes.”

However, my inner guidance had other ideas. The owner of the studio hired me to work at the front desk on the spot, but with the proviso that I was to train immediately to become a yoga teacher. It turned out to be a natural fit for me, but not one that I had consciously considered.

Had I known that I would be asked to teach yoga, I probably would have been too overwhelmed to walk into that studio. I would have missed out on a very beautiful component of my life, simply because of my own resistance to stepping into something entirely new.

Since we do meet new challenges with resistance, our inner guidance will only give us information on a need-to-know basis, not revealing the end result, but just nudging us step by step in the right direction. Be willing to act on the inner nudgings you receive, even if they don’t make logical sense to you at the moment.

8. Trust your intuition. Often, people know instinctively what they need to do, but they balk at heeding the messages from within, because they would have to let go of security and step out of their norm. Accept responsibility for your inner knowing and take the action you know you need to take, accepting that you may encounter major challenges on the way. If you need to leave a relationship or a career that despite your efforts isn’t working, delaying your departure won’t make things any easier.

9. Accept fallout. With positive change often comes a period of loss and disorientation while the ego mind finds a new footing. Be gentle with yourself during this time. Surround yourself with supportive people. Take time to be alone when necessary to feel your way through the changes. Accept that fear about the outcome of your choices is not uncommon when you’ve taken a step outside of your usual paradigm.

10. Look around. Making a big change in your life alters your vibration. Expect to interact with people you’ve never met before. Recognize that opportunities will arise, and that you could be drawn even further into the mystery that is this new paradigm. See each interaction as an invitation into a new and exciting life.

11. Address resistance. It may take time to adjust to big change. Old patterns can emerge that don’t fit your new circumstances. Their modus operandi is to pull you back to your previous life. When you find yourself wanting to slip into that comfort zone, sit with the resistance instead of acting on it. It may burn through you like fire, but eventually, the pull backward will weaken, and you’ll have more energy to embrace your new situation.

12. Feel the emotions of change.

Whenever we are called upon to make a major change, we start to experience strong emotions. This is a sign that an internal shift is taking place. Change must come from within before we can generate a better world outside of ourselves. If you make a leap forward without allowing yourself to feel how this is affecting you, then you are likely to recreate the same problems you thought you left behind.

From the time that you contemplate making a major shift in your life, throughout the process itself, and as you adjust to your new situation, there will be emotion. Think of these feelings as energy in motion. Everything within is being rearranged to suit your new paradigm.

You will be tempted to withdraw into old comfortable patterns, and to shut down these powerful feelings. Instead, welcome them. They are entirely necessary to the process of change. The longer you can sit with the sensations instead of acting outwardly to relieve them, the deeper the shift into your new paradigm.

Not sure how to do this? Join me for an intuitive counselling or PSYCH-K session so you can transform thought patterns that resist change, and directly experience the guidance within, which has been working to steer you toward positive change your entire life.