SEARCHING FOR PERFECT

This is the quote that jolted me right back down to earth yesterday.

"You have to begin with the knowledge that there is nothing perfect in this world. Our job is not to hunt down perfection and live within it. It is to take whatever broken pieces we have found and sew them together as best we can"
Rabbi Menachem Schneerson (1902-1994)

I know this, as I am sure you do too, but yet I continue to catch myself judging, controlling and manipulating everything in my environment into my perceived frame of perfection and oftentimes resisting that which doesn’t fit my mould.

I realise that life just is and that is how it is meant to be. 

Every one of us brings a different shade and a different expression to the canvas that is life, and that is part of the beauty, the poetry and the magic.

This week my intention is to seek out all those intriguingly different bits and pieces, all that diverse otherness and see what a great work of art I can piece together.

Let’s be the change we want to see in the world rather than try to change the world to our perceived image of what is right and perfect. If we could be the partner we want for our partners to be, we’d be in heaven, a state where no more lessons are learnt, no more need for duality. It is our otherness that challenges us to go deeper and to access compassion and forgiveness. Suffering and discomfort are our most effective teachers.

So this week I embrace all the broken bits, I accept the bad with the good, the weak with the strong and the distasteful with the tasteful. I pray for compassion, gentleness and acceptance to be my allies. And I know before I embark that I will fall, but I will dust myself off and set my sights on the reality that it is all perfect just as it is.

Have a super week

Love 
Nicolette                                                                                                                         

                      

Positivity Takes Effort

Do you know that the average person has negativity selected as their automatic default setting?

Do you know that a river always chooses the path of least resistance?

What is your default setting? Do you choose the path of least resistance? Are you committed to change or do you give in to complacency, too lazy to leap across those last few hurdles just in front of the finishing line?

Are you an optimist who never gives up or are you laden with excuses as to why you just can’t change?

Positivity breeds more of the same but it doesn’t come naturally. It is a teachable skill, something that needs to be practised before it becomes a habit and before it becomes your natural default setting.

In order to change anything you need to be open to self-examination. You need to be honest with yourself and you need to identify what your pre-programmed default setting is. If you are a pessimist the first step to changing your default setting is to acknowledge it. Then you need to step into it and unravel it so you can understand it. 

To understand how you became entangled in your negativity, you will need to listen to your thoughts and emotions. You will most likely discover that these stem from much verbal conditioning and programming from your childhood. Try and remember back and see if you can pick up what your parents said. What did they condition you into believing through repetition? “Life’s tough”, “It’s all about luck and timing”, “You’re never going to amount to anything”, or something completely different.

Repetitive programming is yet another way we become brainwashed by observing and mimicking others’ behaviour. And repetitive occurrences that trigger an emotional response also play a huge role in shaping how we react to life.

No matter the cause of the default setting, it is entirely possible to reset your thermostat to one of positivity. It just takes a bit of reconditioning and willpower. Beliefs are more powerful than willpower, so you start there. You start by challenging your beliefs as they surface, asking them if they are true. Ask yourself: “How can I know that this is the gospel truth? Is it my truth or is it someone else’s that I have adopted? Who would I be without this belief? Do I want to be free of this false belief?” If your answer is YES. Then say to yourself: “I let go of this false perception right now” and replace it with a positive one. Write your positive new thoughts down and paste them on a wall where you are likely to see them often. Then repeat them to yourself every time you notice them. With continual remembering and repetition you will replace your negative beliefs with new and positive ones.

And remember positive people never give up. They never quit. They are too busy striving to get there. And because they do, they will.

Have an excellent and productive week

love

Nicolette

Let's Talk Ideas

It says on one of my client’s study walls:

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”

Eleanor Roosevelt

Many times at social gatherings I find myself having an inner battle over the conversation topic which is being discussed. I find myself moving from one clique to another trying to find some inspiring conversation which stretches my imagination and enthrals my being. 

I move from a group that is amusing themselves with anecdotes of all their past drunken escapades to another that is relating incident by incident some past events which they experienced together. The next group is sharing what they have done at work. Everyone is recounting past events. I have no aversion to reliving the past if it is of benefit to making changes or for learning something from it. But to me it seems that we just open our mouths to make utterances and to fill the silence. It all just seems like a bunch of phatic communication.

Phatic communication, in case you don’t know, is basically small talk. It is to create an air of sociability rather than to communicate about ideas or share feelings. It goes like this: “Hello. How are you? Fine. How are you? Great thanks. How is work? Yes, all good and yours? Good, good thanks. Ah well, give my regards to your wife. And you yours. Have a great day. You too.”

No one is really listening to anyone else. Each just has their turn to talk. But no one wants for the other to divulge anything of truth or from the heart. Each one just has their say and contributes to polluting the silence. So I ask: “What is the point?”

This kind of communication just doesn’t do it for me. I want to hear and know what it is that the other person is feeling. I am more interested in what is happening at a soul level with the person I am sharing with, or hearing their creative ideas than having a detailed inventory of their past deeds.

I want to discuss a way out of this, share an idea of how we could create a sustainable economy that would benefit everyone and challenge the ‘eye for an eye’ way we have been doing things. I want solutions for this mad, materially focused world. I believe if we put all our talents together, we must be able to come up with a better template, a new recipe for success and prosperity. Surely if we take all the stories from our history text books, we can find the common thread that has been the culprit in recreating just more and more suffering and war? Surely we can learn from the past and find ways to create a world that is kind and beneficial to all? 

Let’s halt this cacophony and mindless repetitious regurgitating of past stories. And let’s DO SOMETHING. Let’s share some new, innovative, out-of-the-box ideas on how we can recreate our world. If we can think it, we can intend it and then we can manifest it.

Here’s to real meaningful communication

Have a great week ahead

Love

Nicolette