Expand to New Horizons

As a principle associated with this week’s theme of Travel that can help facilitate Better Endings in your life, I recommend Expanding your Horizons to arrive at new vistas of understanding and awareness.  Even in the most familiar of locations you can expand your outlook by being more mindful and attentive. Do you know that feeling of visiting a museum and becoming absorbed in the artwork there, then when you leave the museum everything around you seems more colorful and full of beauty? You can do this even while standing in line at the bank or supermarket, by being attentive to what is happening around you, appreciating the sublime texture of the Moment.

In Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way she introduced the idea of taking yourself out for a weekly Artist’s Date. This might mean going somewhere like a museum or a botanical gardens, or it might just mean taking a different way to work once a week, or buying a cup of coffee in a downtown location and sitting to observe the passersby. Your Artist’s Date can shake you out of overly routine habits and open you to new experiences and awareness.

So take a trip today, even if it is just a daydream. Allow yourself to LET IN new observations about your surroundings, to HEAR people more deeply than usual, to LAUGH at the mundane for all its Beauty.

If you are feeling stuck about a decision or experiencing an artistic block, expanding your horizons can free up areas of your brain you may not be using. Create a Better Ending simply by opening to new possibilities in your Present Moment.  Allow the universe to reveal Itself to you in new and amazing ways!

I invite your Insights and Stories from embracing New Vistas. May they bring you to Better Endings, daily!

Envision a Future Transition

 

 

When I was a kid in junior high school (7^th grade) in Pennsylvania, I felt, or was made to feel by some neighbor kids, awkward and nerdy. My best buddy had moved to Florida and I felt isolated and alone. My father received notice almost a year ahead of time that he was to transfer from where we were in Pennsylvania to near Niagara Falls in New York state. So we had almost a year to prepare for our next major family relocation.

I made a conscious decision then to change my social persona, to alter my presentation of self so I might fit in with a more popular crowd in New York. I would dress more fashionably and act more “cool”. I would interact more with a wider range of people at school and I would express self-confidence. I envisioned all of these changes very explicitly and planned very consciously to change my wardrobe, hairstyle, etcetera.

We moved, and I put my plan immediately into action as I entered eighth grade in a new state, New York. Some of my actions were not so healthy; I started smoking to ‘hang out’ with those who appeared to be most popular at the new school. I had lunch with the popular bunch (when I wasn’t hiding in a restroom stall to avoid having to go to lunch at all); I made up a fake boyfriend by displaying a ring that belonged to my mother, and—for a short while—I achieved a modicum of success with the “in” crowd.

Some of the changes I made to change my social persona were healthy and good, so I kept those. I did feel more self-confident, and from then on I was always active in extracurricular clubs and activities. Others I found were not so great. The “popular” girls were rather a narrow and mean bunch toward anyone outside their circles, and I found their interests and concerns to be not very interesting in the big picture, so by ninth grade I drifted to a more nerdy bunch again—of artistic/dramatic and more intellectual sorts. But this time it was by choice, and I was happier. Altogether the conscious choice to establish my own identity at that point led to major changes that have led to all sorts of exciting and self-defining activities and interests, ever since.

So, for this week of focusing on Travel in relation to the principle of manifesting Better Endings, I want  to offer you the simple but potentially breakthrough Life Mapping technique that I call “Envision a Future Transition”.

Consider where you are heading as you approach a Life GOAL or as you aim to manifest your Life Dream. (With more extensive Life Mapping procedures I can help you to define what your current Life Dream is, so stay tuned! I will be shifting this blog to focus wholly on Life Mapping starting this May for the 2^nd half of this year’s blog, in advance of my book on that subject, Life Paths.) For now, you can choose a goal like a job/career transition, or a relocation you are expecting to make, or even a vacation.

As you consider your goal, make a list of several TRANSITIONS you will need to undertake in order to manifest your goal. When I do this I am surprised to find there are a relatively large number of intermediate transitions that will be involved in fully manifesting a goal involving a future change. For example, if I focus on retiring in 3 years, my list of future transitions includes:

• Pay down all debt (shift credit debt to personal loans to be balance free by three years).
• Visit places I might like to retire to.
• Research real estate, weather conditions, cost of living, etcetera at these various possible relocation spots.
• Journal about what daily life will be like
• Research possible part-time employment opportunities
• See a banker about how to plan for and manage retirement income
• Make a list of writing and related projects to be involved with
• Talk with friends in depth about the possibility to go in on real estate together (a cottage in Ireland); research all of this deeply
• Contemplate, contemplate, contemplate, envisioning deeply and in great depth

After making your list of future transitions pertaining to a future goal you aim to realize, circle one (at a time anyway) to explore in depth. ENVISION that future transition in great descriptive detail. You can write this out either in first person/ present tense FROM the future, or in future tense but describing your transition step by step. You could even choose to envision a FANTASY FUTURE transition; this is not one that fits precisely with your goal but would be a fun, “far-flung” sort of possible future adventure. Either approach allows you to ENVISION HOW you might transition INTO a goal state. PRACTICING envisioning in this manner can help you to eventually REALIZE a specific goal and to plan for achieving it.

 

I think you will find that in listing a set of future transitions that can help you envision a MAJOR shift related to a Big Picture life Goal, you will end up seeing how many steps will be needed to make your future goal a reality. ORDERING these future transitions will help you develop a plan of action. Envisioning the goal and its transition points in general will also help you to SEE your future goal as achievable and feasible, and it may lead to some great “synchronicity” as you plant the seed, nurture it with your ATTENTION, and then watch it grow and develop. It may take some unanticipated twists and turns, so you will want to remain open and flexible. But it can help you to FORGE A PATHWAY.

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Better Endings to You! I welcome your insights and stories.