Your Life Path—Hard Knocks or a Golden Spiral?

What, to you, is a human lifetime like?

When you close your eyes and look for an IMAGE of what a lifetime is like, 

what IMAGE do you see?

Also, HOW is a YOUR life like this image?

I invite you to imagine and then journal your response.

Feel free to share your image with us here,

or at least keep a record of what you have seen.

Your Life Path—Hard Knocks or a Golden Spiral?

 

What is the difference between a negative and a positive life experience? This is a riddle, friends. Haven’t you noticed how there often appears but a hairsbreadth difference between an experience that can “break you” or “make you”? In life maps coaching, I see this a lot with people. Two people can experience very similar events, like a car accident or an illness, yet their understanding of or response to those events can be like night and day.

Two people who engaged in life mapping are Scott and Will (pseudonyms). Scott expressed a Life Metaphor when he told me twice, “They ought to give me a Ph.D. in the Hard Knocks of Life!” Will expressed a more positive, very detailed Life Metaphor, after closing his eyes to meditate on “What is a human lifetime like?” His image: “Life is a golden spiral with launch pads on various rings of the spiral that propel one to ever higher levels of realization!” Hmm. Two people, two very different metaphors for life. Why, do you suppose? And, does it matter?

Scott’s life map traces a long series of Ups and Downs, especially with Work-related and Health-related events. He went through several years during which he would take a new job, move to where the job was, then lose the job and move back to his parents’. Scott had a car accident in the middle of all this which led to chronic back problems. He confided that with every loss in his life, he increasingly turned to “partying” with alcohol and drugs in an attempt to mask his pain. Life is Hard Knocks, says Scott, and certainly his life pattern conforms with that opinion.

Then there’s Will, a retired pastor from the United Church of Christ. After choosing his religious vocation as a young man, Will graduated from a seminary, married his best childhood friend and “soul mate,” and then he conducted a successful career as a pastor for some 40 years before retiring, still active in his faith and father of two successful sons. Will’s life map  traces a series of extremely positive events, as we would expect. Still, Will’s map does record three deep ‘troughs,’ widely spaced but difficult times of Descent, in Will’s terms. These were times of soul searching. Dealing with a diagnosis of diabetes, facing his mother’s death, and facing retirement were, to Will, those “launch pad” events along his “Golden Spiral” lifetime that propelled him each time up to the next higher rung of the Spiral.

 

Both Scott and Will have encountered challenging situations in their lives, though Scott’s life of “Hard Knocks” does appear to have been more characterized by Downs, while Will’s has been more consistently a positive experience. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? To what extent do our Life Metaphors–interpretive lenses through which we frame and interpret life events–serve as self-fulfilling prophecies that, indeed, not only reflect but also perpetuate their own image? Someone says, “Life is a Roller Coaster” and lo, that person’s life does continue to drag the person through a challenging, bipolar sequence of challenging Ups and Downs. Yes, but there’s another side to that picture. If our Life Metaphors serve as mindsets or cognitive models that can either enhance or limit our interpretation of life events, then it stands to reason that finding a way to CHANGE a self-limiting Life Metaphor might also facilitate (or reflect) a more positive trend in a person’s life pattern!

Check in Friday for more on how changing your outlook on your life’s possibilities can change your life metaphor which, in turn, can help reorient you to fulfilling your Life Dream!

Is it All, or Nothing? Our Choice of Attitude Helps Determine Our Experience

Today I explored the opposing attitudes of Expansive vs. Narrow. It was an amazing day!  First, I woke to not being able to reply to folks who started “following” on Twitter by following these kindred souls in turn. Even though I had not reached a limit for following, I was mysteriously restricted from doing so: a contraction and narrowing of opportunity.  So, I went to the office and dealt with some restrictiveness there in my role as department chair. I accepted both of these, figuring that with some patience I could eventually work things out. I acted to query customer service about the Twitter constraint, and I worked on a needed document to try to ‘open’ a matter at the department. Then, I went to write; my real goal for the day.Everything shifted in my attitude.  The editing process expanded a chapter that was in need of a fix, and I found myself sitting next to a writing group whose members all had positive experiences to share around their writing. When I came home, I cleaned house a bit (another expansive experience), and when I checked email in the midst of cleaning, not only had the Twitter problem been resolved but there was actually an “offer to publish your blog as a paperback”! We’ll see what happens, but what matters here is that I experienced the clear difference between the effects of two opposing attitudes. By remaining neutral about the ‘negative’ side rather than reacting by ‘closing’ my heart, I was able to shift to the positive, and then it felt like the universe Itself followed suit! This demonstrates the Law of Attitudes, which is such an important aspect of creating Better Endings in our lives, yes?

With my life mapping interviews and coaching, I have seen how two people might experience very similar life experiences, yet their attitudes can lead them to very opposite responses which have very different consequences in their lives. John (pseudonyms used), for example, was an author who had felt “paralyzed” in his life since a car accident that followed a series of losses and setbacks in his life. Doctors had not found anything medically wrong. John’s Life Metaphor (his answer to ‘What is a human lifetime like?) was: “A tree stuck in the mud beside a flowing stream.” Ever since a romantic failure, every event John recorded in his Life Map seemed to dig for him a deeper and deeper hole that he had fallen into. John arrived at a fatalistic view of life, and all of his experiences appeared to validate that point of view.

Then there was Ambrosia. She had been dealing with a chronic intestinal condition for many years. With one outbreak, her condition was so dire that she ended up in a hospital. It was touch and go one night at the hospital whether she would live until the morning. As part of the life mapping process, I ask people to rate the relative impact of significant events in their lives, from “-5” to “+5” (or, one event could be rated as both positive or negative in its impact on “the person you have become”). When I asked Ambrosia to rate her critical night at the hospital, immediately she exclaimed, “+5!”

       “But, why?” I asked, mystified.

Ambrosia told me of how she had experienced a profound vision, like a Near Death Experience, that night at the hospital. An Inner Guide appeared to her and told her she could leave (pass on) if she chose to, but he told her there was much she could still accomplish in her life if she chose to stay.

Ambrosia told her Guide that she would only stay, “If I could get back the passion for life I used to have.”

      “You can!” he said.

      “All that glitters is not Gold,” Ambrosia said to her Inner Guide.

      “That is true; But anything CAN be,” was his sage reply.

      “Okay, then,” she said to him, and then she awoke.

After that night, Ambrosia survived and, gradually, she healed. She did regain the “Passion for Life” she sought, returning to school for two advanced degrees since then and becoming a leader in her local spiritual community for several years.

John and Ambrosia have come to symbolize for me how attitudes can determine the “flow” of life experience.  Quite often I find with these and other life mapping cases that people can experience a Sea Change in their life patterns when they allow themselves to shift their Attitude about life overall.

How? You may ask. Look in your own life for more examples. (Of course, feel free to share your stories here, if you’d like!)

I do find that almost always, a major positive shift in life pattern follows a profound change in OUTLOOK, whether from something like Ambrosia’s NDE or from a conscious move in a new direction; a choice to create a new condition.

Better Endings to You, Now and Always! – Linda

Listening to Your-SELVES: A Balancing Act

Welcome to Prompts Day at Better Endings. On Tuesdays we entertain a list of topics for applying the principle of Better Endings to a weekly theme; this week, Attitudes. Some speak of a “Law of Attitudes,” which makes sense to me. Our attitudes to a large extent determine our experience. Attitudes reflect and can establish “mindsets,” which act like filters between our minds or hearts and the “reality” we are able to perceive.

Let’s consider especially opposing, paired attitudes this week. These are polar-opposite perspectives that frame very different outlooks on the same event or situation. Here’s a list of some paired-opposite attitudes for you to consider and add to:

optimistic            pessimistic

open            closed

impatience            contentment

       insecurity            self-confidence

   belief            cynicism

expansive            narrow

kindness            meanness

acceptance           rejection

constructive            destructive

respectful            demeaning

gratitude            conceit

Can you recognize within yourself BOTH poles of one or more of the above pairs of opposing attitudes with regard to some situation or enduring conflict in your life? I invite you to choose that sort of opposition to explore. Consider a subject that you can “look at” from either of a very opposite pair of perspectives. Allow yourself the space to feel-think-Be first in one attitude, and then shift grounds to the polar-opposite attitude about that same subject and feel-think-Be in that attitude instead for a while. What do you pay most attention to, in each perspective? What appears more important, and less important, depending on your outlook? What about the subject itself motivates you to shift more to one or the other side of the polarity?

Recognizing duality or bipolarity in ourselves, especially around ideas or situations we feel conflicted about, is natural for everyone, sometimes. From an archetypal psychological viewpoint, situations that evoke conflicting attitudes can expose to us ‘parts’ of ourselves that are worth listening to and exploring–in moderation–because we may tend to suppress some ‘sides’ of ourself at the expense of a whole, balanced, integrated outlook. Allowing an attitude you normally suppress to express itself while you are there to pay attention to it can help you to get to the root of some issues you might otherwise be denying or seeing only from a self-limiting perspective. These ‘buried’ attitudes can help you to troubleshoot a stubborn point of view in order to develop some more balanced and creative solutions!

For today,simply choose one or more of the above attitude-pairs–or use another–that represents a set of opposing attitudes you sometimes hold about some situation or subject in your life. Let both sides have their say, either through journalling from each perspective, or engaging in an imaginative internal ‘listening session’ to both sides, one at a time. The only guideline is that each side gets to have its say without judgement or interruption. Then, try looking at the situation again, AFTER clearly expressing both of your opposed attitudes.

Does a creative solution or a deeper understanding of the situation light up for you?

Tell us about it (if you’d like). If you wish you can submit your story or journalling practice as a Story of the Week (If I receive more than one, I’ll probably blog them all!) And always, I welcome your insights and Comments!

Better Endings to You!  – Linda

Shifting Attitudes for Better Endings

I began this blog site three months ago around a simple, fun concept of Better Endings. How might we change a movie ending or a story to a more desirable outcome? How might King Kong finally survive, “this time”? That simple concept turns out to be neither so simple nor mundane, after all. If we can change a Story, we can change a Life (Story), especially our own!

So, week by week, we have been applying Better Endings here to topics ranging from better movie endings, to revisionist history, to revising our own personal decisions or to changing our night dreams so we can realize our Dreams.

Somewhere along this journey, already, especially as more of you have been joining in on the adventure, we have discovered that Better Endings is more than a fun concept to flirt with. It is a creative principle we can draw upon to help us move from any one state of affairs, conditions, or fixed perspectives to another, more flexible position that allows us to grow, to expand our reach, and to transform our outlooks to embrace creative solutions for difficult or apparently ‘stuck’ situations.

This week’s topic is Attitudes. Let’s explore the open terrain of how our sometimes mixed or conflicting attitudes can shape or interfere with our experience. We can share stories about how shifting an attitude can transform our view of some aspect of our lives and can potentially transform our own outcomes.

With this week, Better Endings will exceed its first 100 blog posts. At this stage, I want to thank all of you readers and ‘follower’-Readers and contributors to this site for your excellent comments and great posts of your own that you have contributed or have allowed me to re-blog here.

I invite you to share your stories, insights and comments about Attitudes this week. Have you had an experience where you found that just by slightly changing your point of view on a subject, everything about that experience changed?

I am especially thinking about “paired (or, opposing) attitudes” as I look at our topic this week.  I’ll share a list of these tomorrow, but think about it. One attitude always seems to be paired with an opposite point of view.  Some would say this is due to the “duality” we deal with in the nature of human consciousness.

For myself as a starting example, I find lately that I sometimes vacillate between the two attitudes of Impatience and Contentment. If I focus on one end of this spectrum, Impatience, I feel like I will never reach the goals I have set for myself, for example, with a major editing project within which I am now enveloped. However, when I shift my attention to think about how much I gain from immersing in something I love–the very same writing project–I find I am content with where the process is at right Now, in the Moment. Then I wouldn’t change anything, no matter what the results might be, or not, down the road. I realize how fortunate I am, as well, to be writing this blog every day and to have found that there are people, other bloggers and other blogs, and Twitter or Facebook readers, et. al., who actually form a ‘cyber’-community of ardent people sharing ideas and authentic communication!

So, let’s–for any of you who feel like joining in–plant some soul-seeds this week around the topic of Shifting Attitudes. If this topic lights up a story or an example for you, please feel free to share it with us. (You will always keep copyright for your ideas posted in this blog, of course, and I will publish an author’s byline and bio for you with contact information.)

P.S.: I grew up with the Beatles! This week in honor of their 50th Anniversary since their USA appearances, all Quotes of the week are by them, so feel free to send some Beatles lyrics that relate to Better Attitudes.

Better Endings to You! –Linda

A First Principle of Better Endings: Gratitude

 

The greatest tool we can use for manifesting Better Endings day to day and moment by moment is an attribute of Gratitude. So often, the hairsbreadth difference between a “success” and a “failure”–or, for that matter, between a ‘good’ day or not–is simply the thankfulness we feel about whatever our circumstances might be. Are we home with a cold? How wonderful that the body has given us time away from workaday routines to reflect and repair. Have you lost a job? Okay, granted, with this sort of cloud bank it is harder to find a silver lining. Still, there will be valuable life lessons that will inevitably follow from such a potentially major turning point in life.

Usually once the tension eases around a difficult ordeal, we can look back and be grateful for certain aspects in retrospect. But this is watching our lives unfold in the rear view mirror. Gratitude in the Present Moment is more empowering, right Now, than appreciating what life has brought us in hindsight.

To establish gratitude as a character attribute, an engrained attitude and not just a passing feeling, can be empowering because our attitudes govern our interpretation of facts. In my Life Mapping case studies I have found that two different people can experience the same sort of accident or illness under similar circumstances; yet, one will regard the event as an opportunity to bounce back even stronger than before, while the other might crumble into a prolonged remorse.

Please, there are no judgments here! I am not saying one person is right and the other not for responding to challenges with either gratitude or remorse. Each person’s lessons–and timing–are their own gifts, or burdens. Sometimes we must simply  descend into the depths of an experience before we can resurface and go forward in life. Even in Descent there may be vitality so that perhaps eventually we may come to value and be grateful for even our sadness and remorse.

Booktopia image (by Jung) from Carl Jung’s The Red Book

Carl G. Jung, James Hillman, and Joseph Campbell–three authors who have written from the perspective of Archetypal Psychology–have shown that often Descent is necessary. It can be embraced as a potent, deeply meaningful experience. We can be grateful for the darkness as well as the light. For both can help us to eventually unfold, to Better Endings.

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I am adding with this entry a regular Saturday spot: First Principles for manifesting Better Endings. Please feel free to Comment and share what you find helps most to manifest better endings in your life! Also please send your story on Fictional Better Endings, or answer What Are Better Endings to You? for a Guest Blog spot. I look forward to reading and sharing your insights!

Related articles

• The benefits of gratitude (therapypons.wordpress.com)
• Six Habits of Highly Grateful People (blogs.berkeley.edu)
• Gratitude (kristinbartoncuthriell.com)
• Start Expressing Your Gratitude Every Day (harounkola.com)