I have often wondered how did I get here, how did I manifest this life?
The day I got expelled changed my life forever. My dad called me mental. Determined to be brave, I acted unconcerned and tried to relish my newfound freedom.
During the day I visited the beach, the pub for games of darts and pool, and trips to Cardiff. At night, I sat in my room and plotted my escape, freedom at last to be me.
Sitting alone in the pub, I was fresh meat for a new friend, an older, troubled woman, who took me under her wing. I soon discovered that this would be another fatal error in my plan to rule the world.
Thinking I was rather clever, I went away one weekend with an odd group of people. Much to my horror, I found myself with the Moonies. In case, you didn’t know the Moonies were a cult.
The next two days were hell on earth, trapped once more in the classroom, with no unescorted time to myself. I was followed everywhere by Richard new best friend. There were lectures from early in the morning to late at night, interspersed with food and lots of catchy little ditties. This was worse than school! The drone of the lecturers’ voice kept sending me into a lull, he was so boring I fell asleep a few times.
Coming around from a doze, I was shocked to hear that Reverend Sun Myung Moon was indeed the second coming of Christ. That’s what we were here for, the extra-terrestrials wanted to turn us into moon children! My heightened senses screamed escape, escape. These people were nuts, they weren’t the spiritual beings I had anticipated. I wanted to go home to face my punishment. My dad was right; I was mental.
With the weekend over, I went home once again to tell my tales of derring do. Home sweet home, angry parents, no money, no job, and no qualifications. Being made an example of seemed so much better than an arranged marriage and a life of walking the streets looking for others to brainwash. I was free.
As Oliver Hardy said in the 1930’s film – Well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into. And it wasn’t the only one.
Life can be complicated and confusing, can’t it? Without a ‘how to be human’ handbook, we can only go down the path we think is right.
If you don’t know where you are going
There’s a wonderful saying that says if you don’t know where you are going any path will do.
When it comes to manifesting your desires, I believe that it’s equally important to consider how you got here. We often forget the twists and turns of the journey and all of the amazing or otherwise experiences we have had.
Although you don’t want to be held in the past, knowing what brought you here, can you help you to understand why you want to manifest what you do and what can potentially stand in your way.
What exactly brought you to this moment? An evolution or a revolution?
When you look back over the last 12 months, 3 years, 10 years or even back to childhood, what are those moments that caused a sharp and abrupt change and what are the moments that were slow, calm and filled with love? Did you get bolts from the blue followed by a period of resolution, understanding and then joy?
We rarely have time to ponder how we got here because we are busy working out how to sort out the latest crisis or thing that needs dealing with. When you understand more or how you got here and how you manifested your life, you can begin to perceive it differently.
Life is not one long period of ecstatic peace, love and harmony, it is made up of lessons for us to learn. Each lesson teaching you something amazing about yourself, and if you don’t learn the lesson the first time, it somehow creeps up and bites you on the bum.
Sometimes those dratted lessons keep spinning around until something jolts you awake. Then you often find that after a period of let’s call it grieving, you find a gorgeous peace once again descends, and you have a slow and enchanted growth period.
Life goes in revolutions and evolutions. Neither exists without the other, and both exist because of each other. Every step of your human journey has both revolution and evolution at its core. During this journey, life happened, chaos probably ensued, and often, like me, you had no idea who you were and what the hell was going on. You may have married (several times), had kids, took unsuitable jobs, dabbled at being an entrepreneur and all kinds of human existence and personal development stuff.
Either way, stuff happened, and without the fast rapid jolt that revolution provides, you could not have evolved into the beautiful person that you are today.
I wonder if what you want to manifest today is based on something that happened yesterday? Perhaps something you think needs fixing? Or something you are yearning for?
Grab your journal and take a moment to reflect on what brought you here and the part you played in manifesting the life you have had.
For me this is about acceptance. Accepting that I chose my life and I made the decisions that brought me to this place.
You can’t connect the dots going forward, or can you?
Steve Jobs says that you can only connect the dots backwards. Indeed, you might think that cannot connect them forward. You can learn from the past, accept it and then envision what you desire, set intentions and make more conscious choices.
I don’t believe in regrets. I’ve thought about this long and hard, and I believe that the choices that I made and the actions that were taken were meant to be. Regret is, therefore, a waste of energy. You may, of course, disagree. They could be big things that you regret or have emotions around. But the thing is you cannot change the past. It’s done. It’s gone.
I know that the shadows of the past haunt us and colour our lives. Childhood trauma cuts us life a blunt knife, slowly dragging our flesh through time.
When I look back, I wonder what would have happened if I had innocently picked up a knife and slit the throat of my sexual aggressor when I was a ten-year-old. I didn’t. Instead, I carried the wounds of lack of self-worth until I was able to and chose to love me.
Looking back over the dots for many people will drag up regrets. They will look back and regret the things that they didn’t do more than the great things that they did. It’s probably because as a species we are hard-wired to be away from, rather than towards. That is, we started our existence by running away from big creatures that wanted to eat us. Strange isn’t it to think that humans are naturally wired to move away from something rather than towards?
Do you have regrets? Perhaps about not looking after your health, taking or leaving a job, not seeing someone before they departed, not noticing that someone was in emotional pain…
For me, regret brings up the should word. It’s not a word I like to use. In fact, when I hear it coming off my tongue, I quickly catch it and chuck it back out into the Universe. There is nothing I should do, only what is right for me, my higher self and heart, at this moment.
What about the regrets though of who we think we could have become? I remember as a young, idealist 20-year old telling my mates over one too many strong ciders, that one day, I would be the CEO of a massive company and we would be changing the world.
It never happened. Or did it?
Though when I look at it sideways, I am part of a massive company, we are the people who are working to make a difference to our bit of the world, and I firmly believe that I am the CEO of my life.
If there is a regret about not reaching who you thought you ‘should’ have become or that so far you haven’t reached your full potential, what could you do at this moment to change that?
Or is right where you are where you need to be? And right where you will be in 2 months with a bit more learning under your belt, also perfect?
When I hear someone on TV saying I regret that I said that or did this, it feels like rhetoric. We like to hear that they are sorry and that they will make amends. Let’s hope that they do make amends. But regrets? It’s too late. It’s done.
There are steps you can take to be a better human or create more for you. But before you do that, I think that you need to accept that you are perfect just as you are. Yes, even with your bad temper and sarky ways.
Let’s not be people who regret. Let’s instead, look back with pride about how far you have evolved and choose to make better, more conscious decisions moving forward.
And leave regret behind in the dots, because if you cannot, as far as I know, alter time.
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