Connecting the Dots
In yesterday’s blog I gave a technique that can assist you in preparing for change. Transforming the misperception that change means loss is the first step in recognizing when it is time to make a change. Once you have changed this core belief into one that allows you to embrace change as gain, you can then proceed to step 2.
Step 2 involves observation. Observe everything you experience in your life all day long in terms of the emotions they trigger. The first stage that begins the onset of a LifeQuake (the chaos that comes with your soul awakening to its next level of evolution) is boredom. When a cycle of our lives is closing and we cannot grow any longer in the form that it is in (ie. relationship, career, health habits, etc.), the first symptom that shows up is boredom. On the emotional tone scale, ecstasy is at the top, despair is at the bottom, and boredom is in the middle. Boredom is considered a transition emotion. If you begin to assess what you are bored with as well as what interests you now, (instead of trying to artificially stimulate excitement through sex, drugs or alcohol for example), there are clues to your next destiny.
By observing where your emotions move up the emotional tone scale from boredom to let’s say, mild interest you can see what is beginning to enliven you now. When I work with a client either by phone or in person, I always suggest doing this exercise for three weeks. Keep a tape recorder or pad of paper with you and quickly make a note of billboards you are drawn to, colors that attract you now, television programs, movies, conversations that you found particularly compelling, etc. Next to the description of what you were interested in, note the specific feeling it evoked.
After three weeks of observing what interests you in your life now, enlist the aid of a friend or coach to assess what connects the dots of your interests and write a paragraph describing a kind of vocation or lifestyle that would most enliven you now. Place it on your desk and spend five minutes a day envisioning yourself inside the life that best represents some or all of the elements most common to the theme you discovered when you connected the dots of your interests. You don’t have to know specific details such as the career that most expresses what gives your life meaning. It is enough to envision a kind of environment you want to work or live in, such as with a team of people or outdoors in nature and then allow the feeling you want to have inside that career or relationship to emerge and feel it with every fiber of your being, for five minutes. Although it may seem far away, ‘the visionary life” cannot be had until you dare to dream it. In the next blog, I will discuss how to acknowledge and dignify the dying of the life you are still in that is coming to an end.
Dr. Toni Galardi, better known as “The LifeQuake Doctor” is a change expert, psychotherapist, and columnist. Her new book The LifeQuake Phenomenon: How to Thrive (not just survive )in Times of Personal and Global Upheaval is now available through online publishers and through her website www.LifeQuake.net.
