Official blog for the book "Just Behind the Door"

Posts tagged ‘life lessons’

Unlocking Your Potential

To learn to live in unconditional love is the reason we are experiencing life in this incarnation. To achieve this type of love we need to be able to truly accept, understand and appreciate ourselves and others. When you think about it, that’s a tall order. It means not only being totally comfortable in our own skin but to allow others to be comfortable in theirs as well. How is this possible to achieve? When we accept that we all have more in common than we may first think, it opens up our thinking.

1. We are all motivated by acceptance and love
2. We all experience fear from time to time.
3. We have all chosen this lifetime to live through our unique life challenges.
4. Most importantly, we share the same source of our existence.

When we accept these commonalities, it allows us to see ourselves and others through different lenses. It may take an entire lifetime to realize that learning to love yourself and others in a nonjudgmental way is the most important thing we can do. That’s okay. It is a huge lesson.

What opinions do you have about your life experiences to date? We have all lived through tough times and life altering experiences, many in fact, that took our breath away with the pain. Trust me on this one, no one goes through life unscathed.

The question is can we regroup and as the lyrics of the song go, ‘pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again.’ Or are we in the blame game, angry that life happened to us when we weren’t expecting it. Anger, blame and fear are debilitating and the direct opposite of unconditional love.

Challenge yourself to examine a life altering experience that appeared so unfair to find the lesson in it. It will necessitate that you stop thinking about the ‘what if’ or ‘why me’ and analyze it from the perspective of what was the most difficult thing to accept from it. There is the lesson, staring you right in the face. Every experience offers us a chance to grow from it as we embrace ourselves and others with unconditional love and faith in tomorrow.

Everything happens for a reason – a purpose. If you find yourself in a negative mindset at first, thinking ‘why me’ just give yourself a little time for the rawness of the hurt to pass. You are a spiritual being, true, but you have both the gift and burden of living this spirituality in a human form with human emotions. Just don’t let yourself get stuck. Talk to a friend, family member or counselor to help yourself regain your footing. Think to yourself, ‘I know there was a purpose for … and I will seek to understand and learn from it.

Unconditional love is the way to unlock our true potential. After all, our thoughts truly are our keys to life. Positive thoughts open doors and negative thoughts close them. We are each on our own individual path to knowing a higher truth and embracing unconditional love. When we believe this, it lets us take a deep breath and ‘allow’ the experiences to help us become better human beings. We then remember with gratitude “All is as it should be.”

Have a great few days!

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Developing Plan B

The beloved Theodor Seuss Geisel, affectionally known simply as Dr. Seuss wrote a book in 1990 that has become a classic. It is entitled, Oh, the Places You’ll Go.” Although it has become the perfect gift to give others when they graduate from nursery school to graduate school, the thoughts and lessons are timeless, ageless and worth considering.

The book refers to the bang-ups and hang-ups we all experience in life and talks about the difficulty of ‘un-slumping’ ourselves when we meet a road block. The challenge of choosing the next path in our lives can be daunting even paralyzingly at times. All of a sudden (or so it seems) life has changed course and you are left questioning, ” What do I do next?” This is especially true for those of us who have experienced a major change in our lives, especially a loss. At first, time seems to stand still, then evolves into a slow drag stage. Sooner than we may be ready, life begins to resume at full pace – at least for the rest of the world. We are left wondering, does anyone remember that I lost a loved one who is irreplaceable to me? Do they see the bleeding of my heart? You think to yourself, my head knows what happened but when will my heart accept it?

Developing a Plan B for your life may take every once of energy you have and leave you breathless just putting pencil to paper but it is absolutely critical to do so. Plan B can become your life line – your reason to get out of bed in the morning. You may wonder, when will I shake this? Is there something wrong with me? Followed, of course, by the thought will I ever be the same again?

There is nothing wrong with you when you react like this to loss. You are gradually accepting that the change – the loss is real and no amount of wishing or hoping will change the fact that your heart is broken. It will take time and the loving support of others to help you regain your footing. It may take a lifetime – be patient with yourself. Beyond family and friends a talented grief counselor can help. Maybe that is why God/Universal Energy put these folks in our lives, to help us stand when we can not find the strength or will to do so for ourselves. Yes, your life will be unalterably changed but not stopped, not frozen in time. You will dig out of the hole you may be in and gradually see the light at the end of the tunnel. You may think you are slipping back into the morass of ‘why’ from time to time. It’s okay – you are okay. Remember, as my son said in my book, our lives are like a photo album with pages that are left blank. They will be filled in over time.

So what is the good news? You have memories to last forever. You were given the gift of unconditional love for another. No one can ever take that away from you. The depth of your loss is directly proportionate to the depth of your love. You loved deeply and well and have been forever changed by it. Deeper as a person, a little less quick to jump to conclusions and more aware of the magnificence and delicate nature of life.

You will be ready to help the next person who crosses your path when they experience a major life change or loss and will serve as a model of survival. Granted, you may be a little battered and bruised but upright nonetheless. When you run across someone that seems to believe there is an acceptable or normal amount of time for grieving you will think to yourself that they have a very important lesson yet to learn. Yet, you will be ready to help them when they experience a loss. Why? Because you have survived a major life change – or loss – and your loved one would want you to ‘pay your lessons forward.’ The Universe is about learning our lessons, being grateful for love and becoming more aware of the significance of our individual purpose.

Have a happyThanksgiving!

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Allow Yourself to Heal

I talked to a person recently who said that they no longer feel joy in their life since losing their loved one. They feel anxious, unable to concentrate and just basically empty inside. I understand. I have been there. From the moment you wake in the morning a heaviness descends around you and you have to absolutely will yourself to take that first step of the day. The loss of someone you love is not easy to put into words. Loyalty, trust and joy are just a few of the emotions felt when we love someone so deeply. We think to ourselves, now all that is gone from my life. Our grief is not only for today but the many unrealized tomorrows.

An important part of healing from loss or even just making it through the challenges of living as we learn our life lessons is to ‘allow.’ By definition, allow is ‘to permit.’ To give yourself permission to feel, grieve, remember, even momentarily to wish things had been different, and it is a natural part of grieving the changes that happen in our lives.

We are so used to making things happen that to just allow life to unfold seems counterintuitive. We may feel that it is a cop out, an excuse to do nothing. Quite the contrary. If we turn the kaleidoscope in our minds ever so slightly, we will see that when we allow, we resist the urge to try to control everything or to demand life be a certain way to make us happy. We still strive to become all that we can be but as things happen that hurt or derail us we look at them not with indignation but with a deeper understanding as we search for the personal lessons contained within them. To learn to allow is a hard lesson. To me, that one little word – allow – means a combination of acceptance for what is combined with a belief that ‘all is as it should be.’ It speaks of a power, an energy, greater than ourselves

Take some time over the next few days to think about the word ‘allow.’ How would your life be different if you looked at events, challenges even losses in your life and thought to yourself, my life is about accepting that the Universe is unfolding in perfect order. When you learn to allow, a sense of peace envelops you and you begin to exhale the stress that is so deeply bottled up within you.

A poem that has been meaningful to me on this lesson of allowing life to unfold was written by R. Bach.

A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction
and at such a speed,
It feels an impulsion…this is the place to go now.
But the sky knows the reasons and the patterns
behind all clouds,
And you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough
To see beyond horizons.

Have a great few days!

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Forgiveness and Moving On

Do you ever think about a particular person and feel anger, resentment, or even rage? Be honest with yourself and really think about it. If you feel that you have been hurt, rejected or even emotionally attacked by another in your past it is hard to let go of it. Each time the person’s name comes up or you even think of that person, you may feel tense, hostile or even a seething inside you. Check out your body language. Your eyes, face, even voice intonation says it all. When that person’s name comes up it is easy to see if you are still holding on to negative energy surrounding the situation.

In my book, Just Behind the Door, I talk about past hurts as if they were a backpack we are caring around. Every time we think about a particular event or person and feel emotionally stressed by the remembering, it is, as if, you are actually experiencing the event again. It adds another rock to your backpack making it heavier for you to carry. I can visualize a person hunched over from the weight of past hurts struggling to put one foot in front of the other. The weight of the world seems to be on their shoulders and they seem to be a magnet that attracts more negatives in their life day after day.

Forgiveness releases the hold, the weight we are carrying. It doesn’t mean that we don’t remember past hurts. But rather we remember them without emotionally getting hooked into the negative feelings associated with them. You might be thinking that what happened wasn’t right or fair. In reality, what you lived through was PLANNED by YOU for this lifetime to teach you some valuable life lessons. When you can look back and release the anger associated with the experience and forgive yourself AND the other person you will have learned the lessons you set out to learn. It is not easy to emotionally let it go but it is extremely important to do so. Until those particular lessons are learned and your mind and heart lets go of the anger, similar situations will continue to surface in your life. When you accept responsibility for the choices you made for this lifetime and let go of the anger towards others, you exhale deeply, your shoulders relax and you view the person or situation in terms of ‘life lessons learned.’

The noise in our minds fueled by negative remembrances drowns out the sounds of love and forgiveness from the Universe. It keeps us locked on, like a GPS, to a path that will attract more of the same. Our minds and hearts can be filled with either love or fear. If you find it impossible to forgive a particular person, force yourself to look at what you truly feared most about the past circumstance involving them. Fear is the operative word here. That fear is your lesson in disguise.

We can live a life of love, acceptance and abundance or remain stuck, reliving the hurts of yesterday and attracting more negative energy into our lives. The choice is always up to us.

Have a great few days!

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Abundance or Limitation

The law of attraction is exact, precise. What ever you have in your life you have attracted it through continued thought. Have you ever watch a particular person and thought, they have the Midas touch. It seems like everything they do just turns out right, or in the case of Midas, it turns to gold. Actually, if you dig deeper you will find that this person works, plans, and refuses to accept anything that is not in their best interest. They believe in themselves and put the effort in to make their dreams a reality. If they have a set back they view it as simply a small hurdle that they will get over.

I have had the opportunity to watch a few people in my life that fit this category. What a ride they have had – against all odds they have succeeded. When you talk to them you discover that they have had their trials and tribulations like the rest of us. And yet, they refused to give in.They just made things happen it seems, at times, through sheer will.

What I have learned is that success truly does breed success. Small doses of reality, small events that enlarge one’s comfort zone, does make for a happier, more secure person. The world can be as small (limiting) or as large (ever expanding) as you so choose. The Universe will deliver what is foremost in your thoughts.

No one achieves peace, love or success without paying their dues. There are simply no ‘free passes.’ Life, love and loss is about lessons. Simply put, we chose the lessons and we, consequently, have to live out the experiences until we ‘get it.’

If you feel a change is necessary in your life, look first to what you are saying to yourself. Is it a message of fear, lack of … or any other limiting thought. If so. You might think about the energy you are giving out to the Universe. Remember, you will get back more of what you give out. I choose to give out the thought of ABUNDANCE.

What thoughts are occupying your mind – lack, fear or abundance?

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Being Authentic in Grief

We often hear about the importance of being positive. Seeing your glass as half full rather than half empty is a mindset involving both a skill and an art. It is something that we work on continuously throughout our lives. We like ourselves better when we are positive. Others want to be around us because we have an energy field that is welcoming and uplifting. An important part of being in a positive state involves being our authentic selves. When we recognize and honor our true feelings about something that happened to us, we are being authentic. We are strong enough to show others that we are the same, emotionally, on the inside as the outside.

Being authentic, especially through personal loss is both the hardest and most important thing we can do for ourselves. Challenging or catastrophic experiences involving loss (death, divorce, separation) or other wounds or scars can easily become deeply buried in your psyche because the pain seems so great that you feel unable to confront your own feelings. You may be afraid that if the floodgate holding back your feelings is opened, you may never be able to get it together again. I understand, I have been there. I can tell you that those buried feelings just fester inside you and the anger and hurt you feel can become toxic in your mind and body. The choice between being authentic and verbalizing your true feelings or burying them cannot be overstated. I truly believe it is the difference between simply existing or a life well lived.

Finding a trusted friend who is willing to take all the time YOU need to work through your loss is critical. A good listener just listens and does not rush to tell you how you should handle something or how you should feel. These people are rare to find but are out there and will be of immense help to you. Grief counselors are trained to listen well and can also be invaluable in your search for peace. Send the intention out to the Universe to deliver someone to help you if you are emotionally stuck in a quagmire of anger, blame or discontent. You know you have found that great listener when you explain your situation and they respond with, “How do YOU feel about that?” And they listen with love and grace…

The importance of taking the time to process through your loss and express your authentic feelings about the situation can help you immensely. It is like putting salve on a wound. Eventually, the wound doesn’t hurt as much. Will it ever heal? Maybe not. But it won’t continue to hurt or bleed so profusely. We will live long enough to see the lessons we have learned from our losses and eventually the bigger picture of why those things happened.

Ultimately, we either choose to process through our emotions and arrive at an eventual peace about the situation or we will be dealing with the residue both here and on the other side. Lisa Williams in her book, The Survival of the Soul, talks about the importance of resolving our emotional issues on the Earth plane before we cross over. We will have to deal with the issues sometime, someplace, and it is better to do it now.

We can ultimately be more positive in our life if we choose to be our authentic self and live our truth, surround ourselves with love – of self – and others and remember that as difficult as our lives may be from time to time, we wrote our life script to learn specific lessons. It is no one’s fault, the world is not out to get us, we just chose a difficult path this time. Quoting from my son in the book, Just Behind The Door, “All is as it should be.”

Have a great few days!

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Oprah hits a home run!

Every once in a while something comes along that you feel compelled to share with others. It happened to me this Sunday morning. I was reading my Oprah Magazine and saw an advertisement for the Emmy award-winning series, Super Soul Sunday. The clever title got my attention but what really drew me in was the statement, ” Designed to help viewers awaken to their best selves.” That was my goal in writing my book and remains my goal in blogging twice weekly. Helping people continue on with their life after the death of a child, spouse, or through the painful experiences of divorce, separation, and suicide is something I can do – because I have walked in those shoes. To me, this series is totally designed around positive energy and purposeful living. It’s like a very special gift that will just keep on giving.

Oprah not only talks with well known speakers on spiritualism but includes the “average” person on the street who has lost a loved one. It makes the series even that more meaningful. I heard people saying things such as: listen to the voice within you, look for the message in every problem, grief is an expression of how well you loved, and, of course, our lives are all about learning to love ourselves and others unconditionally.

For those of you who have read my book and follow my blogs you will know what I mean when I say that watching her first program in this series caused me to feel that I had found my true north after studying the topic of unconditional love and loss since the ’70’s.

I would urge you to google Oprah.com or tune in to the OWN network on Sundays at 10 A.M. central/11 A.M. We all need ” a little help from our friends” from time to time. Give yourself a gift next Sunday and sit down, breath deeply and listen. It will bring you a sense of peace. I know that I will watching. The program is exceptional and has the potential to help so many people realize how they can make it through the difficulties and losses in their lives in one piece. We may be wounded from our experiences but do not need to be stopped in this amazing and challenging life journey that each of us has chosen.

Let me know what you think after watching!

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Changing Places?

How often have you looked at someone else’s life and thought to yourself, ” It must be nice…”. It may seem that their life is easier, happier or more fulfilling than yours. But is it really? Would you seriously change positions with them? Would you want to have what they have, do what they do and think what they think if it meant that you had to give up what you presently have to do so? I’ll bet not, if you really think about it.

Each of us is on the exact path we are supposed to be on. We are learning the exact lessons we have chosen to learn and, most importantly, we will each finish this life in perfect time – our own. Like an actor on a stage, we are each living out the unique, pre-birth plans that we designed. Jokingly, I said to my sister a few months before her death, ” Next time we need to hire a ghost writer (no pun intended) to write our life scripts because we throw in everything but the kitchen sink and then wonder why our life is so hard!”

The truth is our life is the perfect fit for us. Like that favorite pair of shoes you put on and immediately just realize that everything feels more comfortable. Those shoes feel like they were made just for you. Everything just settles in. Is it difficult, sometimes, to find the right pair – absolutely! Do we have to wait at times to be able to afford them – absolutely! Do we appreciate them and all of life a little more by having to work through the lessons we have chosen to work on to get them – absolutely! But, we can look back after experiencing a really tough challenge in life and realize that we made it, we accomplished something. We feel a renewed sense of pride in our personal strength and tenacity. No one can ever take that feeling of accomplishment away from you. You worked for it, you earned it. That is, indeed, impressive. Even better news – you will be a little bit stronger the next time a life lesson, a challenge, presents itself because you made it through this time of difficulty that you may now be facing.

So next time when you think that others seem to have life so much easier just remember that we haven’t walked in their shoes and we don’t know the lessons they have yet to encounter on their journey. When we accept our own challenges without feeling like a victim, and pat ourselves on the back for our own accomplishments, we achieve a greater sense of self worth. Life becomes a little less daunting through each challenge and accomplishment.

There is a quote in my book from my son that is so fitting on this topic. Ronnie said, “Mom, all is as it should be.” To truly internalize that message is both reassuring and liberating. The lyrics from a song by Frank Sinatra sums it up:

I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exceptions
And more, much more than this
I did it my way.

Have a great few days!

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Life Transitions

In an interview recently, the talented singer, Melissa Etheridge said, “Life is just a journey you never get it done.” If this is so than learning to enjoy the ride through the changes and challenging life transitions that can disrupt your comfort zone is the path.

Life is simply a series of changes. There is really no such thing as staying ‘status quo.’ These changes may be welcomed or thrust upon us dramatically. They can cause us to feel anxious, fragile or at least a bit uncertain. We wonder, will I be able to get through this one?

The ” what ifs” creep into our thinking. We begin to perseverate on everything that may go wrong. Just remember the rule, 99% of what we worry about never happens. In my book, Just Behind the Door, my son has told me repeatedly, “Mom, everything is as it should be.” Even when talking about his death he repeated that phrase. I finally get it. It took a long time.

Transitions in life give us an opportunity to truly think about who we are, what we want our lives to be about and what legacy we choose to leave this world. The ultimate question seems to be, did I make the world a little better off by being in it? Did I bring joy into the world?

There are people who traverse through life changes more easily than others. They seem to possess specific traits: confidence and a belief in tomorrow, the ability to analyze the past to discover the golden nugget – the life lesson learned – and they listen and follow their inner intuitive voice. As R. Bach said, ” A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction…It feels an impulsion…this is the place to go now.”

We can look at life transitions in one of two ways; as a gift or as a burden. I choose the gift perspective. Why? Life transitions are all about learning our lessons – in other words- the reason we are here. They expand our ability to see, feel and function at a higher level. As we get through one challenge after another in life, we begin to fear less and gain greater self confidence. We are able to accept the world and the people in it with less judgment and more grace. We remember, we have never walked a mile in their shoes.

When you reflect back on your life, can you see how the moments that were the most difficult, the life transitions that were most severe, taught you invaluable lessons? Having lived through them, you now have a deeper knowing about truth, life and the Universe.

Melissa Etheridge is right – life is about the journey- both the challenging, gut wrenching times as well as the exciting and rewarding ones. Each step of the way, each life transition, teaches us that we will survive, we are resilient and that we can make the world a better place.

Make the next few days the best ever!

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What is Your Gold Nugget?

Our thoughts, are the keys that open or close all doors in our lives. We know that positives attract positives and conversely, negatives attract negatives. Why would anyone allow themselves to be surrounded by or immersed in an ocean of negative thoughts from themselves or others? I believe it has to do with the concept of free will. Although we have chosen this life for the life lessons we wanted to learn, it is our RESPONSE to the lessons, using our free will, that is the key factor.

For instance,if you think of taking a cross country trip, you plan overnight stays in certain locations. You know ahead of time the distance you plan to drive in a given day, the time it should take. That seems logical, dependable and certain. However, due to our gift of free will, even though the major stops (or lessons) don’t change, we sometimes choose an alternate path. Maybe something sparks our interest and we take a short side trip on our route. Possibly, a detour on the road causes our plans to be changed momentarily. Road construction, even wild fires or floods can delay your progress. How do we respond to a change in our plans? Do we get upset and blame ourself or others? I have learned to look at those changes more simply. Everything happens for a reason and everything will work out just the way it is supposed to. The Universe/God doesn’t make mistakes. My son has told me this, repeatedly, in my book, Just Behind the Door. The important thing to remember is that your goal hasn’t changed, you will still reach your specific destination (the lessons you chose to learn).

Reflect back on some of the events in your life that just seemed destined to happen. A person you met or married, a specific job to agreed to or a house you moved into; didn’t it just feel right AT THE TIME? When your heart tells you ‘this is the place to go for now,’ I believe it is a sign of a predestined event where a life lesson has yet to be learned. These lessons are like precious gold nuggets that need to be unearthed in your mind. Be gentle with yourself as you do the mental work to unearth the lesson. Take the time to truly think about why, in retrospect, that particular situation happened? The WAY YOU PROCESS what your have experienced makes all the difference. The lessons you are learning in your life can be viewed as terribly unfair, eliciting anger, resentment and fear or you can allow yourself to feel that pain, recognize the hurt, but most importantly, SEARCH FOR WHAT YOU ARE LEARNING from it. You will know if it is a life lesson if it is one of the hardest things you have ever encountered. Treat yourself with love, do the work to unearth your gold nugget. You deserve it. You have a piece of Divine energy in you. Once you thoroughly process through the reason, eliminating the need to blame others, you will be able to move on with grace, dignity and, most importantly, a heightened sense of self worth. You did everything 100% right with the information you had at the time. After discovering your “gold nugget” on the issue and responding with a deeper belief in yourself and confidence in tomorrow you will be so much wiser and at peace.

The really great news is, once you unearth the nugget, that particular life lesson will not resurface again in your life. Trust me on this, I have had so many similar life lessons that I chose to move through quickly, while I just kept going at the hectic pace I had become used to in my life. What happened? The same lesson came back around to bite me again, again and again. Now I can finally say, “I get it!”

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