The elixir of Patience

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This month we have been exploring elixirs. Elixirs are qualities of consciousness assumed with the process of unfoldment of one’s deepest potentials for the good of the Whole. One such quality is Patience.

“Patience is a virtue” sums up nicely the alchemical nature of this positive attribute. Combined with other qualities such as persistence and even passion, patience can propel our actions forward to help us manifest our most worthy goals.

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So here are some nuggets about patience I found on the web:

“Being a good teacher takes patience; being a good doctor also takes patience. In fact, if you want to excel in anything, master any skill, patience is an asset.” Eknath Easwaran, Patience: A Little Book of Inner Strength 

“Struggles often serve to release the wisdom, patience, and strength we all possess but too seldom demonstrate.” Jim Stovall, Wisdom for Winners Volume One: A Millionaire Mindset, An Official Official Publication of The Napoleon Hill Foundation 

“But ‘not giving up’ requires a certain level of patience, of hours and hours, and sometimes days or weeks, months or years of trying and perfecting.” V. Noot, Don’t Give Up

“Doing interesting work when nobody notices takes patience and belief.” Brian Knapp, Creative Pursuit 

“One of the paradoxes of life is that being impatient often makes it harder to achieve something. As with any skill, you get better at manifesting the more you practice.” Simon Foster, Manifesting Change: How to Manifest Change, Love, Abundance and Prosperity 

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images are from pixabay.com

Enjoy the Fruit from Your Labors of Love

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Life is a Bowl of Cherries means you get to enjoy the fruits of all the work you have done and the love you have given and shared as you bring about and experience the “manifesting” stages of your life. My 88 year old mother, for example, though suffering from late stage Parkinsons, has her family’s love and support for all she has given us. She has more visitors than many at her nursing home, and this is one of the fruits of her many sacrifices and gifts of being a terrific mother through the years.

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How can you manifest a future wherein you will benefit from the fruits of your own labor and dedication? How will you construct this future as one filled with abundance and vital purpose? As I anticipate retirement in just a few years, I see this not as any form of slowing down or resting but as a graduation from my primary career work into a continuing adventure of service, creative productivity, and giving back to life for all I have received and learned through life experiences.

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A Contemplation and Journaling Seed:

What are to be the fruits of your life’s labor of love? Some you are already enjoying Now; what are these? Others you can yet choose to manifest; what are those? How will you help these fruits to mature?

It always helps to visualize and contemplate your future of abundant growth while appreciating the bounty of the present moment as well.

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Reflection

As a third method for creating a symbolic, representative TOTEM of your Life Dream Achieved this week, I invite you to, first, contemplate your Life Dream goal once again.  Envision yourself living your dream in deep detail. Where might you be living? What sorts of relationships will be central in your life? What will you be doing to contribute to the world you are inhabiting in this future landscape of your dream fulfilled?

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Second, find (or, create) a picture or design a collage of images that clearly represents something central or core to you about your treasured Life Dream. You might find your picture(s) by an online search of images associated with your goal, or search through magazines or through your own photo collection. You could instead draw a blueprint of your dream home or landscape (I did that this morning and it was amazing); or, use your completed Alternate Future Life Path image from last week’s posts (below).

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Now then, I invite you to paste your selected LIFE DREAM PICTURE or envisioned plan of action or collage at the top of an at least twice larger page, such as on a poster board. Then on a separate sheet of paper that you will later paste below that picture (or, you can write directly onto the poster board if you prefer), imagine and write a FIRST PERSON, PRESENT TENSE description of YOU, living fully the Life of Your Dreams!

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Your First person, present tense account of you, Living Your Dream, could be in the form of a letter to yourself FROM the future of your dream fulfilled. Or, it might read like a postcard story:  (For my  own starting example:) “Here I am, finally living in Bemus Point, just ten minutes from the Chautauqua Institute and 40 minutes from my dear sister, Cheryl! It is April. I have moved into my sweet new little house by the lake with Sophie, Loki and Emily. There is land for workshop retreats; I will build a lodge and place a labyrinth there…”

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Got the picture? Well okay then, find one or a set of YOUR Future-Life Dream-Fulfilled images that resonates deeply with you as Soul! Place your “perfect picture” somewhere prominent where you will see it often to remind you of your Life Dream that you are bringing into Being through living the values you relate to your Dream.

I welcome all of your stories or pictures!

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Thanks to WordPress and to every  reader and fellow blogger.Yesterday was the one year Anniversary for Better Endings! This next week I will present the final Life Paths for Better Endings topic of Live Your Dream, Now! Then we will embark upon a whole new annual round, with monthly Better Endings Life Metaphors, monthly Archetype Ally profiles, and many more Life Mapping tools!

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Magical Thinking or Manifestation? Seeing, Knowing, Being

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Is the future (or many possible futures simultaneously) a parallel reality? On Tuesday I linked this blog to physicist Brian Greene’s YouTube airing of The Illusion of Time (check it out!) If time is ultimately an illusion, then different time frames—e.g. yesterday, today and tomorrow—can be considered Parallel Realities. That means when you learn how to shift perspective, the future is perceived as an Alter-Now, as is a past moment or “memory”; for everything is Now.

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What imaginative and practical implications might we draw from regarding “the Future” as an array or matrix of Alter-Nows? Personally I believe this opens a pathway from the actualized Present to the to-be-actualized Future that we desire to manifest by conscious intention. You can set a specific future condition as a destination; not to be arrived at, but rather to “manifest”. This is what the credo “Live Your Dream, Now!” within the approach I’ve been presenting of Life Mapping is all about. Set a course, Cosmic NOWness Sailor, and Go (Just BE HERE)!

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This past Sunday I read an engaging, passionate blog from Rachel Mankowitz in which she discusses Hope as potentially merely a matter of “magical thinking.” Hope, though, can be channeled effectively via the “law of manifestation,” which may only sound like “magical thinking” by those who do not believe in the power of their own intention and imagination. I know Rachel does so believe; in tandem with her dear dog companions she continues to apply her intentions with skill and hopeful steering.

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I have invited a fellow writer, Denise Naughton,to share her insights with us today about the spiritual Law of Manifestation. I have been in helpful writing classes with Denise as the teacher where we have studied this “law” as a definite, dynamic process. In my own life, I have always been strongly motivated by the almost magical-seeming process of moving a project from the point of conception/ideation through gradual implementation into outward manifestation. Nothing compels me more in life than to facilitate this Law of Manifestation in everything I have “set my heart upon”.

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So, as a gift to you all, here are insights from my good friend, Denise:

The Law of Manifestation

What is the difference between manifesting and magical thinking? As I heard one person describe it: magical thinking is here’s my plate where’s my dinner, while another begins by imagining what dinner will look like, how it will come to her, what it will taste like, etc. Think about the little girl in “The Little Princess”. When she and her friend were hungry and cold, the little girl sat down and described everything from tea in a cup to a fire in the grate. She tasted it, even pretended to eat and drink, and what happened? She and her friend woke up to a transformed room. In the story we know how it came to be, but that’s also part of manifesting—not devaluing the gift because it didn’t fall out of the sky.

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I’ve been studying two books titled The Flute of God, by Paul Twitchell, and The Science of Being Rich, by Wallace D. Wattle. Both are similar in describing the principle of manifesting. It’s not important why I’m studying this principle per se except to say that I just love seeing how it works. By “studying” them, I mean when I finish the books I begin reading them again because manifesting is not about what I think consciously, it’s about what I believe unconsciously.

Both books bring out three principles about manifesting—seeing, knowing, being. This translates into, first, imagining what I want. Second, having confidence in the universe, Spirit, or however one wants to term that which is larger than we are, that this will come to me. And third, living as if I already have it, I have accepted the gift, etcetera.

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One day I was walking a very busy street in San Francisco. I was having a daydream about receiving an Oscar for a terrific screenplay that was made into a film. The film was up for an Oscar as well as the writer and director (this is all imagination). I imagined the gown I was wearing, and the speech I was going to give. I walked up the street carrying my newly received statue. I was there, not on the street where I was walking. Before I knew it cars were honking. I couldn’t understand why. Traffic was flowing smoothly, and then I realized that I had put myself so into the moment of my Oscar acceptance that drivers were seeing me that way. There was no doubt that’s what was happening.

I end this with something that I also read to myself every day. It’s a composite from aspects of both the books I mentioned. I don’t need to be worthy of any experience in this life. I don’t have to earn it or get it as a reward. I just need to accept it. I simply learn to accept my good and that good comes to me here and now. I learn to collapse time and remove the barrier between my desire and me. Life is nothing but a series of experiences, and whatever I want I can have. After all every person is having right now what they subconsciously expect to get.

Denise Naughton is an author, a public speaker, and a Ph.D. Candidate (ABD) at Union Institute and College. She is completing her dissertation on Jungian archetypes related to stock characters in Australian film.

 

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Thanks, Denise!

To all, I invite your Comments and Stories!

One Thing

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Remember Curly (Jack Palance) from City Slickers I? With sage advice, Curly shares with Mitch (Billy Crystal) that the “secret of life” (holding up one forefinger) is “one thing.” But Curly shared this on his last breath and died before he could answer, what is that one thing? Mitch–and the film audience–had to wait for the sequel to learn from Curly’s twin brother Duke what that ‘one thing’ is.

It turns out that the ‘one thing’ is different for everybody. It is “whatever it is for you,” that ONE THING that makes you happy or allows for you to thrive.

Joseph Campbell might call that ‘one thing’ your Bliss. “Follow Your Bliss,” says Campbell in The Power of Myth, meaning for you to pursue that which truly fulfills you and empowers you to achieve your life purpose and manifest your Life Dream.

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Establishing one new, good habit or an activity that can propel you toward a goal you might otherwise not pursue would be a positive, “one thing” to do.  Some eight years ago, for example, when I was just beginning to write in earnest about the life mapping process I was already developing then, at a therapy session one day, I reached a breakthrough. I could do one thing to help this project really get rolling; I could find a house sitter for one full month and go for a writing retreat. So, I did. I rented a ski chalet in Steamboat Springs, CO, where every day of the month I started to work on my book and a proposal package at 8 AM and I usually worked far into the evening. I brought with me my elderly, beloved Harlequin calico cat, Ariel.

It was wonderful. I set up the computer at a wooden kitchen table facing an alcove window looking out above an ocean of Ponderosa pine treetops. I had plenty of peace and quiet. I drafted the basis of several chapters that would, over time, develop into Life Paths, a book I aim to begin marketing with an agent this summer.  It was that “one thing”–something I needed to commit to and invest some money in, a writing retreat–that firmly established my feet and heart on a path I have continued to follow ever since.

So, what is your “one thing”? What can you do that is outside your normal “box” (remember though, “There is no box”); something that could move you in the direction of your Bliss?

Joseph Campbell spoke of Bliss on one hand and also Dragons, on the other. Your Dragons might be “threshold guardians”. Your Dragons might prevent you from taking an action that could help you manifest your goals, either from fear or a lack of self-confidence.

“It will cost too much to rent a chalet for a whole month;

 Who will take care of my other pets while I am away?”

A Dream that is close to your heart is worth risking your complacency. Go for it! I encourage you to DO YOUR ONE THING! You can plan for it now, and then, Follow Through!

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Better Endings to You!

(Thanks already for former Likers of this original post.)

“The Prologue to Compassion”, by Joshua Bertetta

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It commenced with an inconsiderable light, an untinged light

It was perhaps part of what was, and what was was only black.

The light was with the black you see, and the light was the black.

And through this light that was the black and with the black, things came to be.

A light breeze scattered flecks of this light. A brief pause let the flecks settle and the wind returned to the inconsiderable light, only to pause again and again go forth to scatter flecks of light. And bit by bit this helpful little laawan broadcasted the light across the black. Bit by bit, the specks sprouted and in spouting, grew a little more with each breeze and each breeze, bit by little bit, continued depositing the little specks of light. Back and forth, back and forth, the busy little wind worked tirelessly, without haste, never whining, though it seemed its task would never cease.

Now as this little wind busied itself, “things” took “shape.” It wasn’t so much that things themselves were made per se, but something more akin to the idea of things took shape, for still, these “things” remained unlit. Until, that is, the wind draped color over the ideas, thus bestowing upon them their shapes. These were not your ordinary run of the mill colors, however, for the breeze did not bother itself with the blues and the reds and the yellows and the greens: no, it beheld the illuminateds and the lucents, the prismatics and iridiants, the opaques and the opalines.

Such provided the environment for the makings of things and things thus did form. First the dragonfly, then the flowers for the dragonfly, the grasses for the flowers, and the ground for the grasses. The water and the air. All pouring their colors and their shapes in tandem with the swashing wind. Hills unrolled in the distance, and trees.

Everything created in and by the light that was the dark and was with the dark.

Flowers giggled diamonds; the diamonds sirulated into butterflies and those butterflies, those luxuriant and splashy butterflies, dripped polygonal pollens and gave lines to birds.

Soften its features did the wind with its gentle comings and goings. This wind, this breath, this breath, just breathe, just breathe, just breathe.

And in that just-breathing did the breath find life; in finding life did the breath find flesh and in finding flesh the breath found itself, fulgurating, reflected in and by the light itself—the light that was the water, that was the ground, the dragonflies and butterflies, the fish, and all the flowers—all of it, every single little speck of it, the light that was the black and was with the black.

What it was it just was and in being was, it kept on being. Being what it was…what it was…it was is. It is what is. Being. Am. What was was was. What is is. What am.

The wind: Be.

The light: Am.

Being and am-ing, am-ing and being; so the wind, the breath, the breath moving in, the breath moving out, passing in, passing out, the breath that am the flowers and the fish, the butterflies and the dragonflies, the ground, the water, the light itself finding itself in the flesh finding itself in the breath, in am.

And thus began the knowing and with the knowing the naming and the first name was the wind’s name:

Rahim.

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Bio: An aspiring novelist, Joshua Bertetta holds a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute and teaches in the Religious Studies Department at St. Edward’s University. He lives in Austin, TX with his wife and three boys, and he has a facebook group dedicated to his work at http://www.facebook.com/storyofthefour. Contact info: joshuabertetta8306@gmail.com

(There were 14 Likes for the first publication of this story on Better Endings!)

Name Your Bliss

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Last week we practiced the future oriented technique of “Envision a Future Transition”. This relates to a bigger topic for this week of discovering or reclaiming your Life Dream. What is a Life Dream, anyway? For some it may simply be that they want to spend retirement on a tropical island or something of that nature. Some may consider their Life Dream in terms of wealth or financial freedom to do anything they wish to do including global travel, without the daily responsibility of a career. Others might consider their Bucket List to be the depository for their Life Dreams and hope to realize these wishes, one by one, before they depart this lifetime.

The above ideas about Life Dreams are fine, and if that is how you define yours, then you can focus on how to manifest that with this week’s Better Endings prompts.  To me, a Life Dream can also be even bigger and deeper than any of the above approaches. A Life Dream is what Joseph Campbell called your Bliss, that which fulfills your greatest sense of Adventure and realizes your unique Mission and Purpose on the planet. It is your greatest heroic Challenge, that requires your unique strengths and your highest awareness to manifest and share. It is not a selfish Dream but one that, by realizing this deep desire of the Soul, benefits All. “The presence of a  vital person vitalizes!” says Campbell, and the means to maintain a vital life is to  “Follow Your Bliss” so you can, in life mapping terms, Live Your Dream, Now!

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So this week I invite you to dig deeply, to excavate, as it were, your Life Dream. Some months ago I referred you to the question, “What do you want to be when you ‘grow up’?” Well, five years from now, or ten perhaps, what do you want your life to look like? What are you doing in your future, having fully realized YOUR Life Dream?

Your Life Dream might be best visualized in terms of Values rather than concrete objectives. Five or ten years from now, what values would you like to be living in terms of so that you feel inwardly fulfilled?

When I was a child I remember walking in the city of Philadelphia with my friend Karin one day. We passed a woman on the street who was an older, though not elderly, lady. Her face was lined with deep wrinkles from smiling and from living deeply, I felt. I said to Karin, “When I grow old I want to be just like her!” Inwardly I recall thinking to myself, “That is a person who has truly lived!” I would hope for some child to see me as I saw her, some day.

So what is it for you? What brings vitality to your heart and joy to your Spirit?

Happy Easter!

Realize Your Goals!

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Connecting with this week’s Better Endings focus on joblessness or underemployment, our Life Mapping tool for this week can be used to envision a pathway to manifest a desired goal. As you engage with this GOAL-CLUSTER mind-mapping activity, I invite you to approach it with a childlike perspective, allowing “playful” ideas to emerge from your unconscious sandbox.

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Using the template shown above, you can start by placing either a word, a phrase, or an image icon that represents a meaningful, desired goal (with perhaps a photo of yourself, smiling!) into the center of a page, with an X that segments the page into 4 quadrants around this GOAL-center.

Next, starting with the top/RESULTS quadrant, you can use free association to place words or phrases that represent what you will gain or how you will benefit  with your goal ACHIEVED. Where these benefits or positive outcomes are meaningfully interconnected for you, you can draw lines or off-shooting branches showing these connections.

Next you can start filling in any of the other three quadrant sections, again using playful free association to ‘draw connections’ between ideas either within a quadrant or migrating across them.

For example, let’s say your goal is to take a trip to visit Ireland. RESULTS might include: “touching base with my heritage”; “expanding my horizons”; or “slowing down for awhile/ getting away”. Then branching off from one of these you might add, “gold at the end of the rainbow”, and off from that: “retire there?” [okay, now I am getting my own ideas; I love Ireland!].  Now under OBSTACLES, maybe you would write: “Money?” That may lead you to the RESOURCES space, where you can brainstorm how you might afford the trip; if so, you can connect this resource to the obstacle statement. Envisioning Resources might lead you also to think of some very real Solutions, see?

After filling in this GOAL-cluster mind-map so that you feel you have fleshed out all four quadrants with meaningful and helpful ideas,   I invite you to go back and circle or use color to highlight those specific Resources and Solutions that can help you to actualize the RESULTS you desire to create in your life. You can also start a new page, placing any of the specific Results or Resources or Solutions (or Obstacles) you generated with the GOAL cluster into the center, and explore that aspect with its own, freestyle cluster mind-map.

Approaching this technique as a playful game will facilitate emergence of a mindful awareness that can stimulate “out of the box” solutions.  Remember from Denise’s Guest Blog two weeks ago: “There IS NO BOX!”

Giving ‘UP’ — The Way of Surrender!

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Never Give Up, but you can always give UP—or, surrender—to attain Better Endings. Giving UP means, to me, releasing a problem or an attitude to a Higher Force and Higher Awareness, however you choose to define that. “I give UP!” releases my attachment to a situation or to a specific outcome. Then, what is truly needed or appropriate is free to manifest.

Surrender. What a concept this is, riddled with a dual character. A warrior might regard surrender as a failure of mission, although it allows for them to survive to another day. I imagine the Wicked Witch of the West on her broomstick, spelling out “Surrender Dorothy!” in the sky over Munchkinland. “Never!,” we think. At the same time, though, surrender is a path to freedom from attachment; letting go, or letting God. Surrender your fears and anxiety; be willing to “Take the Journey!” Here’s the double entendre: what if the witch’s message was actually a positive invitation to Dorothy, a wake-up call in the form of a waking dream?

When we hold tightly to a fixed position, attitude, belief or desire, we might be limiting our flow of creative potential and insight. Release your grip just ever so much to be open to the Way. I had a Quaker friend who used to tell me, whenever there was any confusion about what next step to take, “Way will Out!”

So, Give UP; surrender to your higher awareness; Way will Out!

Persistence and Resilience–Well Paired for Better Endings

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What personal qualities might most help us to “make lemonades out of lemons,” when needed, or to appreciate and develop insight and wisdom from our Significant Life Events? Two principles come to mind: persistence and resilience. In fact, these two appear on closer look to be two facets of the same attitude a person might rely on to manifest Better Endings.

Think about it. Persistence helps you to remain focused on a goal. It requires resilience, though, to “bend but not break,” to continue forth no matter how long it might take or how alone you might feel with your cherished ideal, project or intention. Resilience allows you to “bounce back” after a loss or setback. It facilitates persistence but at the same time, resilience prevents rigidity or becoming overly fixed on a specific form or outcome.

Dr. Carol Dweck, a Stanford University psychologist and author of the best-seller Mindset (2007), talks about “fixed” versus “growth” oriented mindsets. It is interesting that persistence might be considered an attribute of a ‘fixed’ mindset (being fixed on an idea or a specific goal), yet so long as it is paired with resilience–which seems more a ‘growth’ attribute intrinsically–it will facilitate flexibility and hence, real growth in both perspective and outcome.

Once, at a regional dramatics workshop during high school, our drama coach organized the participants into circles of 8-10 students each. He placed one person (at a time) into the center, with the rest of the group forming a circle around this person. Then he asked the middle person to think of one line in which they believed strongly. They were to repeat this line over and over, while everyone around them in the circle would try to get the speaker to stop. When it came my turn in the center, the line I chose was from Wooden Ships, a Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song I used to play on the guitar:

When you smile at me I will understand, 

because that is something everybody everywhere

does in the same language.

As I repeated this one line, over and over, it became like a mantra for me; a single focus for my entire life purpose and identity. People laughed, prodded, tried to overtalk me; they mocked and ridiculed the line. Their cajoling only made it seem all the more imperative for me to repeat my universal mantra. I spoke it loudly, softly; I sang the phrase, whispered it; but I never varied from repeating this truth and secret of all existence, that which I was deeply convinced everyone should hear! It was a strong line–one that I have often remembered since–, strong enough that I was able to outlast the opposition and maintain delivery through the full time allowed.

Persistence and resilience support and strengthen one another, pairing intention with adaptability that can empower you to gain insight through any eventuality. So, hold to your Center and speak from your Heart. With a worthwhile purpose, Better Endings will prevail.

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Was there a time in your life when persistence and resilience bore fruit? Or is there a project you are working on now to which you are applying these principles, or maybe that you can envision using in fun and creative ways? Please feel free to Comment below to share your insights and stories. And if you have a friend you think would have a good insight to share or who might benefit from Better Endings, please Like this site on Facebook or you can share with your friend by email.

To receive Better Endings daily posts by email, you may simply click on the Follow button. (This works better than tagging on Google as you will automatically receive our daily updates.) – Linda

A New Year’s Better Endings Double Inspiration

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This week’s weekly prompt list is for reflecting on Better Endings outcomes from your Significant Life Events. In addition today though, since it is New Year’s Day in America,I also want to offer you a New Year’s special invitation.

First then, to the List of Prompts. Significant Life Events are those situations or memorable interactions in your life that have “influenced the person you have become”. The following list represents a set of possible kinds of memorable events. I invite you to select one or more of these–or choose your own–and either journal, talk about, or actively contemplate about this or these events in your life, one at a time. Describe the memory vividly or go back imaginatively to experience it again. Ask yourself, Why was this such a significant event in your life? How has it impacted or shaped aspects of the person you are now? And then ask, no matter how difficult or ‘negative’ (or by all means, positive!) this event may have been, what POSITIVE outcomes do you recognize that are either directly or indirectly related to this event? Here’s the list:

  • your earliest vivid memory
  • a key family experience
  • a memorable travel event
  • a breakup
  • NOW
  • a health situation
  • a relationship moment or situation
  • school related
  • pet related
  • a loss
  • a move
  • a significant dream
  • a time of great happiness

Please feel free to submit your story about the Better Endings outcomes or impacts of one of these or of another Significant Life Event from your life. Send it in for inclusion in this Sunday’s Story of the Week!

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A NEW YEAR”S INSPIRATION:

What Is Your Life Dream?

Do you have a New Year’s list of resolutions? Okay, but what about a Life Dream? If you were  expressing all that you can be and giving all that you desire to give, daily, every day of your life, what do you envision yourself DOING / BEING? The aim of Life Mapping is for you (and well, heck, for everyone and anyone) to LIVE YOUR DREAM, NOW!

For this New Year’s Day, I invite you to reclaim or to excavate your Life Dream. Describe it in one clear phrase or paragraph. Put it somewhere visible to you so you can remember it daily. If you like, choose an image from a photograph or magazine or online site that clearly reminds you of this life Dream, and pin or post it with your Life Dream statement.

The weekly Better Endings Life Mapping activities (right sidebar and weekly Friday discussions) will be offering many opportunities for you to focus on and in fact to develop ways to fully MANIFEST your Life Dream. So, stay tuned!

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Choice, Compromise, or Commitment?

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Our Better Endings topic this week is “Relationship Changes”. Relationships are always in flux: adapting, developing, deepening, sometimes dissipating. As we undergo our individual transformations, in relationships we weather or design our cycles in tandem when possible, or not.

How do you orient in your relationships with respect to Better Endings? How do relationships affect, in fact, what you might even define as a better ending in your life?

And They Lived Happily, Ever After!

This fairytale line suggests that stable relationships are an end in themselves, but of course we all know it’s not usually so simple. I love Stephen Sondheim’s comic musical Into the Woods, in which he brings several fairytale stories together but doesn’t end after Act II suggests “happily ever after”. Act III shows what really happens for the characters as life goes on. They face a Giant together and must forge a community and look past their petty grievances in order to survive.

Life happens; people strive to adjust, to adapt, to thrive. Sometimes they work together and their relationship strengthens and endures. Sometimes they grow apart. It’s not necessarily what happens in our relationships that matters for Better Endings but it is how we respond, what we make of our relationships and experience.

Consider Rumi’s excellent advice (our Better Endings Quote today):

“In silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and watch how the pattern improves.” — Rumi

How have you or can you manifest Better Endings with respect to your relationships, of any sort or mode? Write a story, or send your insights to share with the rest of us.

A First Principle of Better Endings: Gratitude

 Forest road. Landscape.

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!