We do not need to get over fear, anxiety, and the blues to have wonderful lives and successful businesses. If we did, I’d be sucking my thumb instead of writing this newsletter.
Honest.
What I’ve discovered is that it’s not negative thoughts and the moods they produce that trip us up, it’s believing that we shouldn’t have them and trying to change them when we do.
Trying to change thoughts and moods expands them. When we innocently focus on processing what upsets us, we invest emotional and mental energy in the story, and before long the story is a novel.
Let’s entertain the possibility that the core stories that make us who and what we are have no inherent reality? That they are the product of thought in the present moment? I mean, in this moment right now, not the accumulation of thoughts over the years, for the past is past except when we think it into the present.
I’m not talking about questioning stressful thoughts. I’m talking about seeing that what we experience is always and only produced by our thinking in the moment.
With that understanding, changes in our thoughts and moods are like ripples on the surface of a lake. Nothing essential is altered by those ripples. Even if the ripples become waves, the nature of the water is unchanged.
Over the years I’ve noticed (with more or less understanding) that this is actually how it works. Irrespective of how long a painful thought or feeling has been around, there comes a moment when it is gone. Even the longest and most involved dramas unravel in the light of insight, leaving us momentarily alive to our essential wellbeing.
When we are alive to that wellbeing, we have access to inspiration and creativity. We naturally resonate with what is good, true, and beautiful, and that includes resonating with the people that I call our just-right clients.
A potential consequence of that resonance is new business. An invariable consequence is a continued feeling of happiness and success, and out of that feeling will continue to flow new ideas and fresh energy for growing your business.
That’s so much more pleasant than self-improvement.
Photo Credit: Michelle Hofstrand via Flickr
