Why is it that we hold on to relationships long past their natural end?
Think of a friendship that no longer exists. Do you still remember how your friend insulted or deserted you? You gained new friends, but you still feel that hurt.
Remember that supervisor who made your life such hell that you left to get a new job? You smile every time you think what a sad sod that supervisor is, and how much better off you are now. Or you still resent the opportunity that you missed as a result of that person, even though you gained much more from the new job than from the old one.
Then of course there is your marriage. You have known for a long time that there is nothing left of that relationship, but you still hold on. You cannot get a divorce – or so you have convinced yourself. You are dying a slow death every day because your partner refuses to change.
Probably the most destructive relationship to hold on to is a marriage, because of all the social and cultural restrictions against divorce. Somehow we share a belief that a marriage must last for ever, even if statistics confirm that most marriages do not last for ever.
If you end a marriage, does that mean your relationship has failed? That depends on what you take away from the marriage.
Let’s assume that you decided to end the marriage because you discovered your partner is cheating on you. Of course the cheating partner is wrong and should carry all the blame. Or maybe not?
Let us take a step back and look at the situation from a different angle.
You had particular expectations of the relationship. You made those expectations clear to your partner, who obliged and live up to your expectations. Everyone was happy and all was well. You were very pleased with yourself.
Then you discovered that your partner was seeing someone else. This of course was devastating. When you confronted your partner they had nothing to say, or they said “it did not really mean anything”, or they said “you won’t understand”.
Did you listen to that? Did you hear what your cheating partner was saying to you?
It is not pleasant to realise that the relationship was all about you and your expectations. It takes much effort and sometimes a large leap of courage to look at the face in the mirror and see who carries 50% of the “blame” for a relationship where one person cheated.
Cheating is only the symptom of the lack of communication in the relationship. Did you ever listen to your partner? Did you ever ask and discover what your partner really values?
Of course it is quite disappointing to discover that a person does not live up to your expectations. But in any relationship there are two people and they both have expectations. One person may have the vocabulary to express their expectations and values, while another person uses their behaviour to express their expectations and values.
Throughout my life I have had to deal with bullies. Some of my first memories are of my mother mistreating me physically and emotionally. I encountered numerous bullies as colleagues, and too many of them used me for target practice. I also married a man who nearly destroyed me emotionally, and I had other relationships and friendships that did nothing for my self-esteem.
The treatment I had from my mother led me to much introspection. I just could not understand why she disliked me so much. It took me years to realise that her role in my life was to teach me to understand my own value. I had to realise that my self-worth does not come from the people in my life, but from the way I look at myself. Do I recognise my own worth? Or do I wait for others to convince me that God knew what he was doing when he created me?
My mother has since passed on, and with my understanding of her behaviour came peace. We now have a good relationship and I honour her as one of the greatest teachers of my life.
I recently had a fascinating experience. I was on an overnight flight from Johannesburg to Istanbul. When I checked in I asked for an aisle seat because I like to stretch my legs without disturbing other passengers. I was told that there were no aisle seats available.
Early on in the flight, I noticed a vacant aisle seat three rows back from where I was sitting. There was a man sitting in the window seat. I asked a stewardess whether I could move to the aisle seat, and she said it was OK.
There were some newspapers and overnight blankets on the seat. The man in the window seat made no effort to remove these items and just looked at me picking up the newspapers and blankets and putting them under the seat. He was wide awake while I sat down and fastened my seatbelt.
I settled down and fell asleep.
About three hours later the man woke me up because he wanted to go to the toilet. I got up to let him pass. He stood in the aisle and told me that I had stepped on his newspapers which he had paid for (to me they looked just like the newspapers that the staff handed out after take-off. They were Turkish newspapers and the man spoke with an accent that gave away the fact that English was not his first language.) He demanded in a loud voice that I pick up the newspapers and put them where I found them. He then pranced away to the toilet.
My first concern was for the rest of the passengers. Nobody wants a fuss at 2.30am in a confined space. I picked up the newspapers and put them on the man’s seat. I also had the distinct impression that this man had been badly hurt by someone and that he was very angry at life in general.
When he returned from the toilet, he told me that I had taken his blanket that was also on the seat and demanded in a very loud voice that I move back to my original seat. I picked up one of the two sealed blankets from under the seat and handed the blanket to the man, still saying nothing.
The man demanded again that I move back to my original seat. I calmly asked him how many seats he had paid for, and this resulted in another tirade. I then told him that I had permission to use the seat.
He went to sit down, and slammed the newspapers onto my seat. I sat down, held the newspapers out to him and politely asked whether he wanted the newspapers on his lap or on the floor. He grabbed the newspapers and bundled them into the seat pocket in front of me. He then told me that I was “unmannered” – I think he meant disobedient. I did not respond to any of this and simply settled down to sleep again. I fell asleep immediately.
When we were served breakfast the next morning, the man had two bread rolls and I had none. I offered him my butter, but he only mumbled and did not even look up.
At this point the cabin lights were on, and I could get a better view of the man. He was one of those men who are balding and refusing to accept the fact. One of the first things he did was to meticulously comb his remaining hair to cover his bald spot. I also noticed that he looked slightly sleazy, even though his suit was obviously expensive. I had a feeling that he was quite insecure, and that my lack of response to his bullying probably added to his insecurity. I felt sorry for him.
As we left the plane, I noticed him fawning over a young woman who looked slightly frightened. I had the impression that they were colleagues, and I realised that his middle-of-the-night tirade was probably also aimed at proving some point to her, because she was sitting opposite the aisle in the same row and had heard everything.
Two days after the incident I still caught myself thinking about the incident. I was wondering why I was giving a complete stranger so much head space.
Then I realised that my memories were focused on my own inner experience and not on the man. I remembered how I felt during the entire incident. It was as if I was outside of my body, looking on to the situation. I felt complete peace and tranquillity while this man was ranting – as if it was happening to someone else.
Most of what I recalled from the incident focused on the fact that I did not respond to the man’s insults and attitude. I felt no emotion. I felt no desire to attack him, or even to defend myself. I felt like a spectator standing on a river bank, watching a branch swirling and desperately trying to latch onto anything that would get it out of the turmoil of the water.
I realised that this incident underlined a closing chapter in my own life. I had dealt with all the bullies in my life and moved on. I had thanked them all for teaching me very valuable lessons about myself. I thanked them with pure gratitude and no condescension.
I felt that this man was some sort of final test for me. He did his best to needle me with very unreasonable behaviour, and I barely noticed it. I did not feel threatened at all. I did not feel hurt. I felt his own deep hurt and my heart went out to him. During the entire incident and afterwards I found myself in a place where there is only peace, tranquillity and compassion.
When I discovered all this, I felt a deep gratitude and Love. I realised that I had already closed the book on the life theme of being bullied and discovering my self-worth.
I am ready to move on and use this experience to help others achieve the same inner peace.
Please leave a comment if you feel inspired.
Love and Light
Elsabe
PS: I am a professional transition coach. I help individuals and businesses to achieve their personal and commercial objectives.
What is the one thing which is consuming all your energy at the moment?
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By now we all know the Secret: decide what you want, and believe that it will come your way. The more you believe, the quicker it comes your way. Right? Then why does it not work? Why are we not all very rich and healthy and happy by now?
There are a few other factors that we need to be aware of when we want to apply the Secret.
The first factor is our own resistance against anything new. You say you don’t resist anything new? OK, let’s try this. Let me tell you that I have discovered the cure for all cancers. What are your immediate thoughts?
I bet you have a number of “yes, but” and “what if” thoughts in your head. Now, if I did discover the cure for cancer and you had cancer, that cure would not work for you, because your thoughts block the cure.
This is the case with everything we want in this life. We intuitively know that everything is possible. We then consciously place obstacles in the way. These obstacles range from emotional to financial to scientific and other “facts”.
Why do I doubt the validity of those “facts”?
Imagine the existence of a quantum vacuum in which everything is possible. Just for a moment put all your doubts aside and play along. Now imagine that you want nothing, and that all you ever have to do is listen for the vibration of that quantum vacuum.
Whenever the quantum vacuum vibrates, you identify that vibration. You identify the fact that there is an opportunity, and conditions are perfect for you to create what you want. You can create an object, an experience, a person, a feeling, anything that would please you at that moment.
What do you do with that vibration?
Do you feel the vibration with deep gratitude and create what you feel like at the moment?
The answer is probably “no”. At this point your brain kicks in and interprets that perfect vibration. Then you embroider on that perfect vibration until it becomes what you expect, based on your own past experience and anticipation of the future. By the time you are finished, the vibration has lost its perfection and become your creature – your monster.
Sometimes those expectations are so subtle that you are barely aware of it, and you have to do a lot of introspection to identify the obstacle and put it into words. For example, if you live in a reality where most people share the same beliefs, and you “know” only the minority of people win the lottery. But what are your own beliefs about gambling, creation, your personal power, money and so on? What do you truly believe?
At other times your expectations are very clear, and you can list a dozen reasons why you have never won the lottery, including a conspiracy theory and the very good reasons why you never buy a ticket.
What are you doing about these beliefs? Do you justify them, or do you see them as the obstacles you create yourself every time you feel the quantum vibration?
Another thing that impacts on the success of applying the Secret is your own intention when you choose what you want. Do you choose with a sense of a purpose and a deep sense of knowing that what you ask for already is? Or do you wish and wish and wish with a sense of desperation for something that will help you escape the mess you do not want to deal with?
If you want one thing to escape something else, stop wasting your energy. Rather deal with what you have already created. Get your existing obstacles out of the way. Acknowledge the perceptions and biased judgement that you have right now, and get that out of the way.
Then wait for that quantum vibration, and when you feel it, remember that the quantum vibration creates conditions for creation. You do the creation. Do you want to create doubts and obstacles, or do you want to create joy and gratitude?
A third factor is what I call the “Hidden plan”. We come into this life with a pre-destined agenda. As we grow up, we develop a cultural “amnesia” of our own plan. We assume the general thinking that life is hard, and we focus on winning the struggle.
If we change that assumption to say that life is a lesson in eternity, we start to look out for the lesson. We become aware of the experiences, people and things that will bring us closer to the conclusion of the lesson. When we have this awareness, we are in a much better position to recognise the quantum vibration when we feel it. We become aware of where we are and where we are heading. We interpret the quantum vibration in line with what we intuitively feel is our destiny for this life, and we create people, experiences and things which bring us closer to that destiny. This is when we use the Secret to live our life plan.
The one factor that always results in the Secret not working, is the thoughts we attach to the quantum vibration. The Secret works simply because we allow it to work. We have the power, and the power lies in our thoughts processes.
The Secret always works, then we attach thoughts to the result based on our own prejudices and fears, then we put these objections in words, and then we take the action to prove ourselves right. In other words, step one is successful, and then we use steps two, three and four to disprove step one’s success.
We are weird creatures. We spend 1% of our time listening to the quantum vibration, 49% of the time creating our own stress and disappointment, and 50% of the time searching for a culprit. And we are the only ones who can change that.
Please leave a comment if you feel inspired.
Love and Light
Elsabe
PS: I am a professional transition coach. I help individuals and businesses to achieve their personal and commercial objectives.
What is the one thing which is consuming all your energy at the moment?
Visit http://www.elsabesmit.com for a FREE new start audit and a FREE Food for Thought subscription.
I was reading about survivor’s guilt and the part it plays in redundancy.
Whenever people are made redundant, there are big newspaper headlines that tell about fear for those who are leaving. There is a lot of finger-pointing and blame for the management of the company.
Quite often the atmosphere in the company is one of palpable fear, and during the process there is a definite “us and them” culture where those that remain behind don’t speak to those that are leaving.
The people who are made redundant, often feel that they are “guilty” if something intangible. Once they lave left the company under these conditions, it could take ages for them to recover their self-confidence and pride in their abilities.
From my own experience, I know that redundancy can be a spiritual and very enriching experience.
I have learnt over the years that redundancy is the Universe’s way to give us a nudge when it is time to move on and we choose to cling to what is no longer relevant or required.
Job was a man who suffered a lot in his life. It is interesting that when we work as an employee, we refer to our labour as a “job”.
On the other hand, a self-employed person is known as an entrepreneur (meaning “founder”). What have they found? Their life purpose? Their destiny?
One of the most powerful ways to “find yourself” is to be made redundant. When you are selected for such an experience, you can spend much energy trying to find someone to blame, or you can embark on a journey of self-discovery and find your true self.
I have thought for years that I would like to look up the company director who made me redundant after I had implemented a big project successfully. I would like to give him a case of his favourite whiskey, because if he had ensured my job safety, I would have disappeared into the oblivion of permanent employment. I owe him a lot.
Please leave a comment if you feel inspired.
Love and Light
Elsabe
PS: I am a professional transition coach. I help individuals and businesses to achieve their personal and commercial objectives.
What is the one thing which is consuming all your energy at the moment?
Visit http://www.elsabesmit.com for a FREE new start audit and a FREE Food for Thought subscription.
Frank Joseph said “Following a vocation, that inner call, is not self-indulgence or an excuse for laziness. Doing what one really wants to do is hard work, but it is self-fulfilling as nothing else can be. It is the ultimate key to personal happiness in the physical world.”
Most of us grow up believing that we have to work for another person. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as you live your life’s passion. It is possible to be a very competent employee and get great joy out of what you are doing.
But what if you do not live your life’s passion? What if you are one of the millions of people who get up every Monday morning and dread the week ahead because you anticipate so much stress?
If you are one of the people who spend all your energy on realizing someone else’s passion, then you are not living an authentic life. You are ignoring your inner voice and your passion.
If I ask what you would like to do with your life when you have all the time and money in the world and no restrictions, you will have an answer ready. We all know what we want to do “one day”.
But what if that is really your life’s dream? What if you spend most of your life dreaming and you only have a few years left for doing?
Oh, yes, I can hear you saying but what if I lose everything? What if it does not work out? What if I find that I was wrong?
Marianne Williamson said “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
So I ask you: what if you gain far more than you anticipate? What if you achieve your wildest dreams? What if you are challenged to achieve even more and to make an ever greater contribution to the world?
Living an authentic life means following your heart. Are you following your heart?
Please leave a comment if you feel inspired.
Love and Light
Elsabe
PS: I am a professional transition coach. I help individuals and businesses to achieve their personal and commercial objectives.
What is the one thing which is consuming all your energy at the moment?
Visit http://www.elsabesmit.com for a FREE new start audit and a FREE Food for Thought subscription.
L Scott Peck wrote a book called The Road Less Travelled. The first three sentences in the book read “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it”.
Is your life difficult? If your answer is yes, does that mean you have not seen the truth yet?
We can actually transcend all difficulties in life. This is not just a philosophical view. This is a practical reality.
All our woes and troubles have one thing in common.
Think of all the problems you have in your life. Think of your sticky relationships, the conflict you have in your life, your health, your job – or lack of a job. Who is the one person that features in all of these situations?
Yes, you got it.
Does that mean you are a trouble maker? Of course not – unless, of course, you enjoy causing trouble.
The majority of people do not want to cause or have trouble. They just want to have a quiet, peaceful life with good health, great friends and abundance.
If only everyone else would do their share and work on the same agenda. Because if they don’t they cause you stress.
Guess what? They are not going to change. You need to change if you want to make your life any easier.
Let me know how I can help you with the change.
Please leave a comment if you feel inspired.
Love and Light
Elsabe
PS: I am a professional transition coach. I help individuals and businesses to achieve their personal and commercial objectives.
What is the one thing which is consuming all your energy at the moment?
Visit http://www.elsabesmit.com for a FREE new start audit and a FREE Food for Thought subscription.
This is a quote from the Wall Street Journal in September 2009: “A recent study reported that 52% of working French don’t sleep well on Sunday night. But work-related stress is not a French disease, and is ubiquitous and severe in all developed economies. In the U.K. and U.S. 70% of employees don’t sleep well on Sunday night either.”
That means probably about
• 19 302 500 French workers
• 98 413 700 Americans and
• 21 700 000 British people
spent their Sunday nights tossing and turning in September of 2009, instead of getting a good night’s sleep.
Were you one of these millions of people? How did you overcome the problem? Or is it still a problem for you?
When we do things that are against our true nature, it requires a lot of energy. It also requires our energy to flow in a direction that does not feel natural. Our bodies go into a state of heightened alert and all systems go on standby.
Imagine how your body would respond when you do a job that is against your true nature. Your body would be in a continuous state of heightened alert during the week. By Friday afternoon you would feel exhausted, for good reason. Your energy will have been drained from you.
Then you spend the weekend doing things you love and enjoy, and you “re-charge your batteries”.
But what happens on a Sunday evening? Of course your mind starts to work on the job that waits for you on a Monday morning. You send a message to your body that says “time for heightened alert again” and your body obliges and becomes tense again. You cannot have a tense body and relaxed sleep. The result is a sleepless night of tossing and turning.
How do you counter-act the stress that keeps you awake on a Sunday night?
Find you life’s passion. Start to live that life’s passion as if each day is your last day. Your mind, body and spirit will be in alignment. You will sleep like a baby. It really is as simple as that.
Please leave a comment if you feel inspired.
Love and Light
Elsabe
PS: I am a professional transition coach. I help individuals and businesses to achieve their personal and commercial objectives.
What is the one thing which is consuming all your energy at the moment?
Visit http://www.elsabesmit.com for a FREE new start audit and a FREE Food for Thought subscription.
What happened to your New Year’s resolutions for last year? Can you remember how long they lasted? And can you remember how you felt when you realised that you had failed in keeping them? You failed yourself.
Why did you make those resolutions in the first place? Of course, you made them because there was a particular part of your life that caused you much stress. Your solution was to make just one change. You fooled yourself into thinking that one change would make everything all right.
And when the change did not last, the situation was actually much worse, because you now felt even more like a failure.
For many people the only reflection they do in the New Year relates to the amount they drank (again) and how they never learn.
Other people do not even tell anyone what their New Year’s resolutions are, because they know from experience that the resolutions will not last into the New Year.
I went through the same vicious cycle for a significant part of my life. I believed that I was powerless to influence the outcome of anything, and therefore I had to just make the best of it.
The more I played the victim, the more I became a victim. I had to learn a few very hard life lessons before I realised that there is a plan behind every one of my experiences.
It was so interesting to note how groups of bad experiences dwindled the moment I “got the message”.
The more I delved into this, the more I discovered a different reality that made complete sense to me.
My own research has uncovered a massive body of knowledge that I started to apply in my own life. I came to see more patterns, more processes, more relationships between people and nature. I became aware of a different reality.
I learnt that some things happen to us because they are inevitable, while other things happen to us because they are part of a much bigger plan. I learnt how to distinguish between the things I had to change and the things I had to accept.
The result was that I no longer make any New Year’s resolutions. I no longer need them. Instead, I become aware of my life plan, and I allow thoughts and ideas to bubble to the surface. I then pick and choose what I want, and see how the thoughts become actions.
A significant outcome for me is significantly reduced stress, and significantly increased peace of mind and contentment.
If you want some ideas on how to reduce your own stress significantly and create the best New Year ever, please contact me for some great ideas.
Please leave a comment if you feel inspired.
Love and Light
Elsabe
PS: I am a professional transition coach. I help individuals and businesses to achieve their personal and commercial objectives.
What is the one thing which is consuming all your energy at the moment?
Visit Discover your self. Love your Life for a FREE new start audit and a FREE Food for Thought subscription, as well as details on the SMIT-method for stress relief.
Life is stressful. Most people try to relieve their stress by taking some form of chemical crutch like a sleeping pill, or cigarette. None of these help to relieve stress. They simply suppress the symptoms of stress.
Stress is not caused by life events such as moving house or getting divorced or changing jobs. All these and many other events are symptoms of an inner division.
A life event can be stressful for one person, but a relief for another person. One person dreads moving house, while another person looks forward to it.
The way people deal with stressful events also differ drastically from one person to the next. For example, one person gets raped and carries that burden for the rest of her life. She knows of no other way to define herself. Another person gets raped and experience a turning point in her life where she becomes a motivational speaker or changes to a career that she would otherwise never have considered.
Stress is nothing other than an inner division or inner tension. This tension is determined by how the person perceives the situation.
What is healthy stress for one person, is unhealthy stress for another person. Healthy stress results in inner growth towards maturity. Unhealthy stress results in stagnation, and emotional and physical pain.
What happens when you ignore or suppress the symptoms of stress? Your body finds more and more different ways to express the tension. If you believe that chemicals and drugs resolve stress, you add more chemicals to your cocktail and your body protests more and more. It becomes a vicious circle.
How can you avoid the consequences of ignored stress?
It is possible to acknowledge the symptoms of stress and then look for the cause. Sometimes this is easy, and at other times it is a challenge to first overcome the fear of what you may find when you do some introspection.
When you take that step and explore the reason for your inner tension, you are always pleasantly surprised.
