We have hiccups. Problems. Challenges. Invitations. They run in the background of our lives, sometimes coming up to the front. Louder. Brighter.

When that happens, they make us believe that they are going to last forever, that they are very very important, that they are the boss of us.

And often, we are happy to oblige and to give them the place of honor. They become “The Topic” of our thoughts, our conversations, our time.

Eventually, we either get bored with them, or they become resolved, or they go away. Maybe they just fade in the background. Get filed in our Archives.

Until the next one comes along and shows up in bright colors and loud voice, and we give it our time, our attention, our conversations.

What was “The Topic” for you, three months ago? How about six months ago? One year?

Where is it now? Is it gone, is it as bright or has it receded in the background?

Is it filed in your Archives?

Right now, my personal “Topic” is doing its best to make me believe it is so very very important. It’s loud, demanding and actually painful.

It seems to demand that I let it become the most important thing in my life and that I orient all my thoughts and decisions and interactions around it.

And even though I hear how loud it is, and feel its claws on my body, I’m also aware that I can drop the capital letters and just call it “the topic.”

Demote it a little.

Just doing that, starts to change things.

Next, I can further that demotion by talking about it less, maybe making a decision about what “the next right step” is about it - and then paying attention to other topics, having other conversations, with others and with myself.

Remembering that I am the boss of my thoughts.

And then little by little, because our thoughts create our emotions and our emotions create our reality, today’s Topic will just become another item in our Archives.

Here's to paying attention and then deciding who's the boss.

XOOX

- Laura

My client sat on the other side of our big red couch, a few feet away from me.

She looked very focused, the Happiness School binder she had printed propped squarely on her lap, her hands on top of it. 

She wanted to get clearer on her Core Essences and then make some changes to her life based on that.

After thirty minutes of listening to her, the picture she presented had become pretty clear to me. The kind of Clarity we wish we could give ourselves and often can't. 

I could start to get a really good sense of what her Core Essences might be and when I offered them to her for review, she lit up. YES! She said. How did I miss that? (as an answer to this question, see above paragraph)

Once we had figured that part out, we went about the business of using her Essences to brainstorm on creating something deliciously fulfilling for her life.

It was going well, lots of energy and light in the room until she looked at me and announced that this was great, and would be a wonderful 5-year plan.

That's when things got ... funny.

A good 5-year plan.

I knew to be gentle. I knew to be compassionate. And I also knew that there was no way I could let her walk out of my office with this as a 5-year plan. No. Way.

So I suggested that maybe this could happen more quickly. I might have mentioned a year. Then I might have mentioned 5 months. 

Her smile was huge as she seemed to think both that I was a little crazy and that heck... she might as well check out my brand of madness. I could tell that part of her had known that after being in Happiness School for a while, 5 years was no longer "the way she rolled."

We did a little exploring. Started with what she thought was in the way of her plan flowing more swiftly. There were a couple of things. The kind of things we often convince ourselves are way bigger and way more rigid than they are. Things like our family, things like money. Things like "what we've always known and always done." We looked at them one by one, the way she had learned to do in class. We asked - out loud - if we knew for sure that they were true. We boldly considered that they might not be.

I could see her standing up straighter and her face looking brighter.

By the end of our session, she had agreed to make a few calls. To check things out. Just in case.

A couple of weeks later (yes, "a couple of weeks later"), I received an email from her - with a photo. A photo of just exactly what we had talked about. The Form to her Essence. Done.

She had made it happen in two weeks.
With the blessing and enthusiastic support of her family.

This is all a big dance. The dance of knowing when to wait and knowing when waiting serves nothing more than keeping us small and possibly complaining. The more we pay attention to the cycles and our intuition, the more we know the difference. And the more we get to co-create with Life in Joy and Ease. 

Her email had me hooting in my kitchen. As soon as I saw the photo, I felt this delicious familiar blend of awe and ... "well, of course!" I LOVE this mix. It keeps us both humble and yet anchored in our magic-making. 

Listen: if there is one thing that I have learned in the last few months (and there is more than one) it is that we are adaptable. We can shift. We can do hard things, too. And if we are going to shift, why not shift in the direction of our dreams? In the direction of the stuff that we've only dared to whisper to ourselves - if that. In the direction of fully saying YES to our Essence-based life?

This is the stuff that lights me up. This is my favorite way to live, my favorite thing to teach and now that I am somewhat grown-up, I am no longer afraid to call it magic. Organized magic. Magic with a plan. 

Here are two things I invite you to play with, today:

1) now is a good time to pay attention to what works for you and what doesn't. Maybe what used to work no longer does. Get real, get true, get honest. Pay attention to the seams that are too small. Write about them.

2) when you hear yourself make statements about limitations being set in stone (even tiny ones), take a second and ASK yourself whether that's for-sure-for-certain true. Again, get honest about your answer. Watch for your hardening, protecting your limiting agreements. Just observe. That's how we start to invite the magic in. Just observe.

Well, that's it for now. I hope you are feeling some peace, seeing some Gifts, giving and receiving a lot of love, too.

This Life thing isn't for sissies, is it?

With a big hug, 

- Laura

PS: After a year of having its doors closed to focus on current students, it is once again opened for enrollment, and you may want to join me for it.  
This time, it has a brand new, fabulous twist and that is that it INCLUDES my whole Magic of Essence™ course. While we dabbled in Essence during this past class, we decided to plop it right into the middle of Happiness School to add tons of value to the new course (and it is still not all that expensive: less than the cost of 4 coaching sessions for three months of really powerful learning and transforming)
You can check it out HERE and see if it calls out to you.