life challenges
You Don’t Have To Be Perfect
Whenever we are focused on a task at hand, whether it is career, business or personal, we tend to focus on our mistakes and worry about what we may be doing wrong. Will it meet expectations? Are we good enough? The loud voice of perfectionism in our ego mind is often saying, “You did not do it right, you did not do enough…you are not enough.”
But constantly striving for perfection and beating ourselves up when we cannot meet those impossible expectations, sabotages the very thing we are trying to achieve. It impacts every part of our lives and also affects people around us, including our friends, coworkers, family and life partners.
Setting unrealistic standards for ourselves and others leaves us constantly feeling disappointed in ourselves and let down by others, over and over again. The perfectionism we are striving for becomes front and center in our in relationships, our careers, our health and our overall well-being. The result is anxiety, low self-esteem, fear of failure, depression, and broken relationships.
Failed perfectionism leads us to constantly measuring our worth against others, and vulnerable to the opinions, criticisms, and judgments of others. Perfectionists are very concerned about what others will think or say.
Striving for perfection is also about a need for control, so that our lives and those we care about will work out perfectly as we had planned. But contrary to popular belief, perfectionism does not lead to lasting success and fulfillment.
Spirit Is Like A Lifeguard
I used to work in a Wisconsin tourist town in the early 90s, holding down two full-time jobs to pay my way through college. One of my employee benefits was a free admission pass to all the city’s water parks and other tourist attractions. I rarely had a day off, but whenever I did, I would relish splashing around in those lazy rivers and wave pools with childlike enthusiasm!
A popular feature at my favorite water park was a towering waterslide. At the top sat a lifeguard who would give the go-ahead for you to safely start sliding down, after the slider in front of you had cleared enough distance.
Our spirit guides are kind of like those water park lifeguards.
I remember doing a reading for myself around New Year’s Day 2016, regarding my wishes and goals for the future. I wanted my midlife crisis to be over after my divorce, and I craved to immerse myself full-time in my spiritual work to gain respect and personal fulfillment.
Seven years later, I’m still working on some of those 2016 resolutions, but I have meanwhile realized that Spirit has held me back from achieving these goals earlier in my life, as I had karmic obstacles blocking my progress.
I used to be in a loveless marriage that was a karmic ball and chain around my ankle. For example, when I faced a major health challenge years ago, all my ex could focus on was the economic loss, since I wasn’t able to work at the time. I recall someone in an online support group asking him, “Don’t you love your wife? Then support her!”
Waiting On The World To Change
Waiting On The World To Change is not just a great John Mayer song, it is also a devastating pattern in many people’s lives. Too often people are waiting for some outside force to come along and bring them the happiness and fulfillment they want. Living one’s life ‘on hold’ in this way can become a incapacitating habit that will only serve to make us eternally stuck and unhappy.
When we are waiting for a change from someone or something other than ourselves, we are not taking control of our own power. More importantly, we are also not taking personal responsibility for our God-given free will choices, nor are we holding ourselves accountable for our own actions (or inaction).
We all have that friend who is always saying how great her relationship would be ‘if only’ her partner would change a certain habit, or do something differently. Or that colleague who never gets the promotion, while she keeps blaming others as to why she is constantly overlooked. Or the diseased relative who ‘cannot’ improve her health and wellness, because making better lifestyle choices just doesn’t fit into her busy work schedule and social life.
The worst one for me is people waiting for that amazing soulmate relationship to finally materialize, when they are not making even the least bit of effort to put themselves out there and meet new people.
Some people spend a lot of time constantly setting new goals or intentions, making wish lists, creating vision boards, or doing visualizations or rituals, to manifest the changes they want to see in their lives. But what if the thing they need to change is actually themselves?
The Wisdom Of The Cuckoo
Over the past year, I have become fascinated with birds, particularly thrushes. They are small to medium-sized ground birds that feed mostly on insects and fruit. My interest began with the American robin, but soon branched out to other thrushes worldwide, such as the fieldfare, the Eurasian blackbird, and olive thrush of Southern Africa.
One peculiar species I accidentally stumbled upon is the well-known, and also notorious cuckoo. Apart from being famous as the key feature in ornate wooden clocks from Germany, the cuckoo is also infamous for being a ‘parasitic’ bird that lays its eggs in other birds’ nests.
Yes, the cuckoo does not raise its own young. Instead, it takes advantage of other bird parents by laying in their nests. Once the egg hatches, the cuckoo chick attempts to push the other bird species’ eggs out of their nest, thus monopolizing the surrogate parents’ energy. The cuckoo chick typically also grows much bigger than the natural offspring of its adopted parents.
Watching some videos of cuckoos online, I became aware of many negative comments on YouTube about these amazing birds. Many folks apparently choose to regard the cuckoo as a devious villain of the natural world. However, I don’t see it that way at all.
Being a co-parent myself, who had to depend on my ex-husband to provide much of the care for my two children when they were younger, due to my personal health challenges after a near-death experience (NDE), I feel empathy for the cuckoo’s eccentricity and the unusual value it brings to the animal kingdom.
We Need To Reopen Our Hearts
If, like me, you are highly sensitive to energies, I am sure you have noticed the alarming increase in anger, hatred, callousness, and cruelty in our society in recent times. It seems many people’s hearts have hardened. In my view, this is due to a post-pandemic heart chakra problem in our culture.
For example, one issue I have been finding more of in post-pandemic readings is an inability for many of my callers to remain ‘in the flow’ with their romantic partners. Some of my clients are either overly focused on, and extremely loyal to a partner who clearly doesn’t deserve it, or they are too rigid in keeping their distance and even avoiding contact. I have also been noticing more of this with people’s friendships and interactions with their relatives.
Of course, we must set healthy boundaries in all our relationships for the sake of our own well-being. Without proper boundaries we will become too exhausted and energetically drained to be of any use to others. By taking good care of ourselves, we also take better care of others and will have more to give.
But there’s a difference between healthy boundaries and ‘excommunicating’ just about everyone across-the-board. ‘Blocking,’ ‘banning,’ and ‘ghosting’ every person who dares to express a different point of view on social media, and disowning every person in your life who has the nerve to do or say the slightest thing that may annoy you, is not exactly setting healthy boundaries. It is rather a sign of having very weak, fickle boundaries. If this has become your way of being in the world, then you may want to consider doing some heart chakra energy work.
Helping Children Navigate Divorce
When parents get divorced it is always difficult for the entire family. Navigating through this time is usually challenging. There is also no manual or guidebook for how to do things the right way, so parents have to figure it out as they go.
Same with the children. It can be very scary for them not knowing what to expect and sometimes feeling obligated to take sides. It can be a very sad, stressful time for children, especially when parents are so caught up in their disputes and drama that they lose sight of what is best for their kids. The kids are not the ones getting the divorce.
However, I believe most parents really do try to do their best to soften the blow and make it work for everyone involved.
Children tend to want to please their parents and not cause further upset. So, tend to not speak up. They sometimes suppress their feelings of hurt, resentment or fear. Sometime children feel like they need to choose one parent over another.
Everyone needs to feel they are being heard and their needs considered. It is therefore best to listen to all sides before making decisions. Going through this process can be tricky. You do not want your child to feel neglected or abandoned in the process.
Understanding your children’s needs and feelings, and dealing with it, is the first step into helping your child get through it with the least amount of trauma. If a parent finds this difficult to ascertain, then it is wise for them to get some professional help and guidance.
Are You Stuck In Victim Mode?
We all have had at least one very bad experience in our lives: a twist of fate, a major setback, an intense trauma, a tragic loss. In these moments of extreme adversity, we are usually victims of circumstances beyond our control.
But these challenging life events typically serve a higher purpose. Everything happens for a reason. It is therefore vital that we gather whatever hard-earned wisdom, personal growth or self-empowerment we possibly can from such experiences. If we do not, our suffering would have been in vain.
We can only accomplish this if we get up, dust ourselves off, find resilience within, and courageously begin to move forward.
Sadly, some people tend to become stuck in victim mode long after these experiences. This obviously does not promote their personal growth and well-being, nor does it improve or change their life for better. On the contrary, as long as we remain trapped in a victim mentality, the negative life experience will have served no purpose and the hardship we suffered will have been in vain.
All the challenges, lessons and trials in our life are invitations and opportunities for us to grow and expand. This is true transformation. Easy lives are meaningless lives.
Now, we are sometimes allowed to complain and say ‘life sucks,’ because from at times we also get caught up in the learning and transformation processes of other people. However, we are also allowed to consciously reject that. We are not required to take on the lessons of others.