what else is possible .....

kristen tercek locket - this cat is ready to roar
I am taking a blog break this week -

to do some new things and they will take all my focus.

(me and multi-tasking go together pretty much like peanut butter and mayo - yup, that good)

I usually choose to look inward - my mantra from the Course has always been - "look around less, imagine more" and this has worked for me - but it seems some things on the outside need my attention.

(and my courage - I am channeling Kristen's tiger this week).

 Of course, I'll be checking in with myself (maybe you will be, too):

“What else is possible?”
“What’s right about this that I’m not seeing?”
“What can I learn about myself from this?"
"How do I feel when I take this step?"



 

when we think we want something and we don't really want it ....

cuddly rigor mortis locket (my new lunch buddy)
Ever since India Arie said on Oprah's Super Soul Sunday a few weeks ago,

"If you think you want it and you don't really want it, it makes you weaker."

it has been gnawing at me.

She was talking about a certain level of success, about the kind of "showing up" that is necessary to have that and about the spaces in us that sabotage the other spaces.

(well, I don't really know if that is what she was saying, what with my lack of focus and total disappearance of short-term memory situation, but that was what I was hearing)

I have always known there is a little resistant part of me that wants to stay put, that doesn't want to stand out, that thinks this blog is a little too know-it-ally now - a space in me that was much more comfortable when I was just whining on Wednesdays, that gets a little tense when a big thinker tells me how much more I could be doing.

The space that pretends we don't know what we want or that what we have is what we want because really wanting what we want would be pretty freakin' painful (and yes, I'll say it, embarrassing) if we didn't get it.

Especially since we live in a world where we can see other people getting it - am I the only person with Facebook friends who are always doing the most amazing things - was everybody else always doing all this awesomeness while I sat on my porch watching ants - I think I might have been happier not knowing this ...  

Or the space that pretends we do want it, because what are we a slacker, shouldn't we want that!

I've held this space for decades. I've nurtured it.

I've never thought about it the way she said it though - I think it was the word weaker that stopped me in my tracks.

I had an Etsy shop owner a few months ago ask me for some selling advice and she told me immediately she wanted to net $50,000 a year selling her jewelry which was priced at about $30 a piece. A quick estimate told me (assuming her raw goods and expense costs were about 30%, which I just totally made up) she would need to sell about 2500 pcs of jewelry a year retail or about double that number wholesale to make $50,000.

She was currently selling about 10 pcs a week.

Going from 10 pcs a week to 50 - 100 pcs a week would be a pretty big change for her - I asked her how much time she thought that would take (for me, and you may need more time than this you don't have Olive after all, I calculate 3 hours of total work for every 1 hour of production), if she could even source her raw materials for these kind of numbers, is she had the funds to support that kind of growth (it actually does cost money to make money), 

how she would double her retail sales and maybe pick up 3 wholesale orders a week?

People might think - "well, I'd still like to have such problems" when actually these are exactly the kind of problems that put a lot of good businesses out of business.

(whether we go out of business because of too few customers or too many, we are still out of business

They are also the kind of problems that some space in us sees even before we do and says "I'm not sure I want that."

I'm sure she thought I was being negative and we never spoke again. I was trying to get her positive (the definition of positive that means certain) with her intention and looking at what this would actually mean - to see what kind of stuff this brought up in her - because it was exactly the stuff that came up that would create her roadblocks.

She was very certain she didn't want to hire any employees or do any outdoor shows and immediately looking at her numbers and looking at what she made - she wasn't putting a made-in-China pendant on a made-in-China chain like at least half the jewelry makers on Etsy are now - my immediate reaction was that it would be a lot of work and I wondered if some part of her was realizing this and blocking the process.

Some space in her that really didn't want to step into that life; some space that found it easier to say "this just isn't working" than to make the changes so that it can work or really look at whether or not she even wanted it to.

If we think we want something - maybe because we think we should want it - or maybe because part of us really does want it but other spaces in us are holding resistance to it, and we don't really want it (making and selling 2500-5000 pieces of anything a year all by ourselves is a whole lot of work, folks), it weakens us.

It's this polarity (and not the amazing locket - warning shameless plug ahead - have you seen this) that creates the self-sabotage or the unhappiness; the negative emotions from the resistance not what we actually do. Of course, the actions come from the emotions so it all goes full circle, but even a circle probably has a space where we can just jump in (or jump off) - think of that spinning ride at the playground.

I am still not sure where I am going with this thinking. I know we can tell what it is we are really wanting by the way it makes us feel

the problem is that so many things that could be really good things, can bring up fear in us. It seems like things can initially feel bad (as in scary, mostly) so we don't think we can always trust our feelings to go with what feels good

We have seen the bad stuff work out and the good stuff go all to hell.

We think we should feel the fear and do it anyway. But then life becomes one challenge after another and I'm not so sure things should be that hard. Maybe changing the emotion from fear to excitement (joy would be even better) before taking action helps eliminate the resistance that creates the sabotage; it will be a lot easier to change the emotion than to rewrite our personal history.

I have to keep thinking about this. Or I have to stop thinking about this. I think I have to stop thinking about this - whatever it is I am intended to get out of it will show up in an easier way for me to grasp.

(hopefully covered in something kind of grippy, I have dropped 2 test tubes in the last 24 hours). 

Have a wonderful weekend everyone - it's summer, so relax and let's enjoy it - actually don't even read this post - it is way too much to think about in late July ...

but you knew that ..... a note from the Universe

Dreams come true, Cat , that's what they do.

For the slow approach:

Resist. Attach. Insist. Deny. Stop. Second guess. Whine. Argue. Defend. Protest. Cry. Struggle. Ask others, when you know the answer yourself.

For the quick approach:

Visualize. Pretend. Prepare. Dodge. Roll. Do not waiver over intentions, but only methods. Show up, even when nothing happens. Give thanks in advance.

But you knew that,
    The Universe