Tuesday 14 December 2010

Movers & Shakers

I was channel hopping the other night, and I caught a scene from Ugly Betty. It was about Betty’s braces, but it applies to just about anything in life that challenges us.

Betty was talking about finally removing her braces and how it will affect her life: ‘What if nothing changes? Then I’ll have nothing to blame’.

Her sister replied: ‘You are who you are, the sooner you accept that, the happier you will be’.

Simple as that.

Its’ strange how just a few words from a seemingly innocuous TV programme could have such a big impact.

We all have challenges in life; some we can overcome, but some we have to endure. Yet it is how we choose to see these challenges that help determine our lives. We can give up and walk away in defeat (nothing wrong with this at all), or we can battle on, determined to succeed against all the odds (a tiring, but rewarding experience, if we reach the finish line).

Yet, these words resonate at a much deeper level. The planets have been pushing each of us towards more personal accountability and responsibility in life. We have been asked by the Cosmos to take control of our lives, to make difficult choices and to honour our gifts.

Of course, when we have challenges in life, so many of us do what Betty did; we blame the challenge or the issue. Looking beyond this though, it seems clear that we need to stop blaming anyone or anything, and instead choose to re-take our personal power and begin to truly accept ourselves as we are (warts and all – figuratively speaking!).

Most of us have aspects of our Selves that we are not happy with, yet does that one aspect truly shape the whole of our lives? When we move to a place beyond logic, we can begin to see that nothing should prevent us from Being true to our Selves.

Coming towards the end of a cosmically spectacular and busy year, it seems clear that the need to accept ourselves has reached such a deep level that it is even flowing through on the TV!

It is time now to honour ourselves, to let go of blame, to let go of shame and to love ourselves unconditionally. Life does not always go to plan, but we need to accept the challenges with the smoother times, and we need to stop pinning our hopes on fixing that ‘one thing’ in life that is stopping us from being our Selves.

Instead we need to accept (this is not the same as giving up!) and to realise that we do not have to wait until everything in our lives is ‘fixed’ or hunky-dory, but we can make that decision to start living immediately. Indeed if we do choose to wait, then it is likely to be a very long wait, as there is always something on our personal ‘fix lists’. Life is for living, not for hanging about thinking about living when the grass finally decides to get greener on the other side.

So, get out that grass feed, and feed the grass under your feet now! Embrace life and honour your Self.

If you decide to wait and still nothing changes, then maybe there is nothing to blame after all, maybe there is something within you stopping you or holding you back? So, why waste time waiting about? Why not face up to this now, and get the inevitable tough personal questioning over and done with?!

Burying one’s head in the sand can only work for so long, if we truly want to honour and accept ourselves; then there is no time like the present...