Three things I learned in 2016

I could have written a post about how well I met (or didn’t, as the case may be) the goals I set in early January, but I doubt my yoga attendance record or attempts to address my tendency for lateness are of much interest to anyone but me. What I’m writing about, instead, is what I’ve learned this year. Because the truth is, the challenges are always more interesting than the wins (right? right?).

Here goes.

Lesson 1: There is no one thing that makes everything perfect

In theory, I already knew this. But I had to experience it again to really understand it. Allow me to explain.

For years I’ve been banging on about how finding a partner is not a magic formula for happiness and purpose, as it’s our sacred responsibility to create these for ourselves. Even though I believed this devoutly, there was still a part of me that believed love would somehow cause some deep transformation that would result in me becoming a better, more confident, altogether more complete person. So when I found myself in a relationship this year, for the first time in many years, guess what happened? Nothing.

I mean, lots of stuff *did* happen – don’t get me wrong, loving someone and being loved in return is wonderful and deeply satisfying, and I am very happy – but it turns out I am still the same person as I was before I met him. I’m still battling insecurities, afraid of my own inadequacy and struggling to find my way in the world. 

Without realising it, I had been looking for the one thing that would make everything perfect. That’s a pretty familiar MO for me, actually. Over the years such searches have included: cutting out gluten (it will make me feel so much better!), taking overseas trips (it will help me find myself!) and lastly, meeting someone who would sense in me something special, something that I wanted so badly to be there… and was terrified was not.

A relationship, it turns out, does not so much fill the gaps in yourself as much as expose new ones. This is as true about love as it is about losing weight and getting a new job. Changing yourself has little to do with changing your circumstances, and significantly more to do with changing your thoughts and beliefs. And gratitude, always gratitude. There is no one thing, and there is no perfect. The best work I’ve done in terms of my personal growth, this year and all years, had nothing to do with any other human. And that’s as it should be.

Lesson 2: It’s OK if people don’t share my opinions or beliefs

I don’t know when or how this happened, but sometime during the year I stopped giving a fuck about how people responded to what I do. I used to avoid discussing One Grounded Angel, fearing the disapproval of others. This did me an enormous disservice, and possibly also others who might have needed some of the messages I was passing on. I suspect this reticence to be seen diminished in direct proportion to my sureness about the value of the information I’m passing on.

Of course, the more ‘visible’ I became, the more I became exposed to criticism and negative opinions. My viewpoint on such matters has always been this: what other people believe in is none of my business. I won’t say it doesn’t upset me when people post messages telling me what I do is bullshit but I would like to think I’m better at not taking that personally. This is the mantra I intend to carry into 2017: I do not need the approval of people who do not approve of me (that’s a life lesson from George Michael, by the way).

Lesson 3: I have failed, but I am not a failure

I wrote about this at length in a June blog post (read it here) so I’ll keep this to a brief summary. I had to change tack halfway through the year, as my reiki practice rooms failed to attract enough clients to be profitable. This stung. I felt personally inadequate, as if this lack of success were an indictment on my own worthiness. It took a period of healing and gradual acceptance for me to realise that this was not the case. This failure does not make me a failure.

Everything has played out exactly as it was supposed to. I don’t know why just yet, and maybe I never will, but I do know that venture was not meant to be. And that must mean something better is coming.

2017, I’m ready.

There are a thousand reasons to be cynical. Don't. Just believe

Sometimes I feel like a bit of a hypocrite when I’m doing angel card readings. So often I relay angel messages to clients about having faith that everything will work out, and trusting in the Universe’s plan. Then I finish the reading, go home or log out of Skype, and fall to pieces because cashflow is slow or a guy I like hasn’t texted me back. Really, I could do with taking on the guidance I’m dispensing myself – there are often messages in there for me too. As a very wise friend once told me, we are here to teach what we need to learn.

Keeping the faith is a recurring theme in my readings and, consequently, in this blog. In fact it was the subject of the very first post I wrote on this blog, in November 2014. It’s an ongoing struggle. 

Every day we are asked to believe in things which we cannot see or that are not guaranteed – weather predictions, job security, recovery from debilitating illness and relationship longevity, to name a few. Sometimes we do this easily, other times our desire for control and our obsession with timeframes get in the way. 

My love life is where this shows up most for me. I have been told again and again and again in my own readings that I will not be single forever. I have been sent signs, been delivered messages in dreams and even had a message from a deceased relative (via a spirit medium) all reassuring me that I will meet someone wonderful, and I will know him when I meet him. This should be all the reassurance I need. But I lose faith all the time. I look at all the beautiful, outgoing women in Sydney and I think, well, since I can’t compete with that, what else can I offer that would be attractive to men? And with no answers springing to mind, my descent in a negative thought spiral begins.

On Saturday night when I was leaving the Taylor Swift concert, I was feeling miserable because I’d seen a selfie in which I looked really old and haggard, and I felt that no-one would ever want to date me at this late age and stage. For the past few months I had been feeling, for the first time in recent years, really fine with being single and quite relaxed to let things play out as they are supposed to. This storm of doubt had come out of nowhere. Then I got a ridiculously obvious sign that I needed to snap out of it: I was jabbed in the shoulder with some angel wings. Literally, not metaphorically. As I was walking among the bustling crowd heading to the train station, a girl in an angel costume (dressing up is not unusual at a Swifty concert) bumped into me, the sharp corner of her wing pressing into my shoulder. It would be difficult to overlook the symbolism. In fact I would have laughed out loud if I hadn’t been feeling so sorry for myself. I probably should have laughed out loud. The Universe has a sense of humour, after all, and I definitely deserved a prod for being so self-pitying. And I could certainly do with lightening the fuck up.

What the Universe was saying to me was exactly what the band Journey expressed lyrically in the 80s: don’t stop believin’ (hold on to that feelin’…). We live in a cynical world, and of course we have no proof of anything much, so it’s only natural that our faith will falter from time to time. The challenge is to keep rising back to that place where you believe in your dreams and in your luminous, tantalising future again. Nothing is a given – that’s why they call it faith instead of certainty. But believe we must. Without faith, without hope, the world is a very bleak place. 

I know that my present situation is not my future. I have no evidence of this but I believe it anyway. I know I will doubt it again and again, but I also believe I have the resilience to return to all the things I believe in: transformation and beauty and human kindness and miracles. And now I know that if I don’t, the Universe will find a way to jab me in the shoulder and remind me.

PS I thought I should expand this story by adding what happened the next day. I was prompted to draw a card for myself from the Romance With The Angels deck. This is what I got:

See what I mean about that sense of humour?

I used to hate birthdays. Now everything is different

I celebrated my birthday this week. I mean that literally – I really celebrated it. This is significant for me because in past years I’ve greeted my birthday like a smelly, irritating relative that comes to stay every year, whose presence I endure with practised stoicism. The only celebration would happen the day after, when I’d wake up awash with relief that it was all over for another year.

My reasons for resenting my birthday were partly due to the fact that it drew attention to me – and as an introvert, this is excruciating. Seriously, I will vote for the next politician who promises to ban the singing of Happy Birthday in workplaces. *shudder*

But at the heart of my day-of-birth anxiety was the fact that they were a reminder that another year had passed and I was not living the life I wanted to live. 

There was a sense that I was running out of time to be happy, or to achieve a life that looked anywhere near as glossy as those of my peers. Every year my misery increased exponentially as I was faced with the realisation that my life had not changed significantly from how it looked at the last birthday.

This year, however, felt different.

I’ve made some major internal changes during the year that have affected the way I see myself and my future. I have a clearer sense of my life purpose and, most significantly, the value that I hold. I can look back on my regrets without feeling burdened by them. Right now I’m in the process of changing careers, so I don’t feel stuck or inadequate professionally any more. I no longer fret about being single, nor interpret this as evidence that I am flawed. It feels like I have enough time, and enough support from the Universe, to grow to a point that I can emotionally handle, and flourish in, a relationship.

I have wonderful friendships in which I have a sense of belonging and feel valued. Actually, this is probably the most significant change of all when it comes to birthdays. I can still remember the despair and humiliation of my 32nd birthday when only two people showed up for drinks. As I write this post, I’m preparing to meet 18 friends for my birthday celebrations. This blows my mind – 18 people like me enough to come and celebrate with me!

What all this amounts to is me having dropped my ideas of how my life should look – which is what was causing my birthday angst in the past. Instead I’ve arrived at something very close to acceptance of what is. I can recognise and celebrate the many blessings in my life and I don’t feel myself disappearing into the blistering chasm between the hand I imagined I would play, and the hand I’ve been dealt. In addition, I know how much power I have to bring about change, so I’ve dropped my self-pity I used to hold. 

Most crucially, I’ve stopped comparing myself to other people on the regular. On this point my resolve gets tested often (particularly on social media) but I’m better able to detach from comparisons, and jealousy. This is not easy when you’ve grown up in New Zealand, a country where your relationship status is prized above any personal attributes or achievements. But it’s in my choices, not my circumstances, that I measure my worth now.

This is the first year that I truly understand exactly how much I have to celebrate, and I have good reason to believe that will expand and deepen as I age. In a culture obsessed with time and deadlines, my anchoring principles are these: I am exactly where I am supposed to be, and the best is yet to come. 

I still hate that fucking office birthday singalong though.

Being single in a world that’s in love with romance

An awful day is approaching and my anxiety levels are rising just thinking about it. February 14. It’s a day you don’t really give a shit about when you’re in a healthy relationship, but when you’re single it feels like the entire planet is flipping the bird at you.

For me, the build-up is always the worst. The day itself is fine. And so is the next day. And the next day. That’s because I’m happy being single. Would I like to be in a relationship? Sure, I love the thrill of a new attraction, and all the wonderful getting-to-know-each-other stuff that follows – but only with the right guy (who will appear in my life when he's supposed to). But for some reason, the lead-up to Valentine’s Day makes me feel really really crappy about my single status.

Our society romanticises (pun intended) coupledom, and long-term relationships are seen as a measure of success. What if you’re not in a relationship – does that make you a failure? Sometimes I feel that way, even though I know it’s not true. I know a lot of people who’ve settled for mediocre or unsatisfying relationships, because they’re too scared or just unwilling to be on their own. I’m proud that I haven’t succumbed to that pressure.

From a spiritual perspective, there's no requirement to have 'another half' - we are all perfectly complete on our own. That said, we all have various soul contracts with various people who will accompany us from one lifetime into the next. That includes family members as well as significant others. Through my spiritual learnings I know that the most important relationship we all have is with ourselves, and that's the primary relationship we're here to develop.

So here's where I come unstuck: with the amount of hype around relationships on Valentine’s Day it’s easy to lose sight of this and feel like the world is participating in a party you didn’t get invited to. Because you weren’t good enough. Because no one liked you enough. All bollocks, I know. But, still.

This year Valentine’s Day will be really cool – it’s a Saturday, and I’m going on a picnic with a bunch of my single friends. We will eat, drink, laugh and celebrate the awesomeness of solid friendships. (I highly recommend this for any Saturday, not just Valentine’s Day.)

This Valentine’s Day, look for me in the park having a laugh with my friends. I’ll be the one shouting ‘Happy VD!’ to smug couples. And giggling inappropriately when they don’t get the joke.