About 6 and a half years ago I started a blog of my adventures in Japan and kept it up for about a year. I really had not recognised how much I experienced in that year until I rediscovered this site this week!
What a kick to look over my previous posts and recall how much I have been, seen and done already. Sometimes it's easy to forget, especially on those days that I am thinking to myself 'I am not doing enough, I haven't achieved everything I know I am capable of!'
So the last 6.5 years.... feels like 6,500 years!
I realised that I was really good at doing the 'ups and downs' of life... emotionally and physically, and yet looking back at my travels and writings, I still found the fun and joy and humour in everything somehow!
Sometimes I think 'if I knew then what I know now, I would've had even more fun!'... but the thing is, looking back at this stuff, I DID know something then. Maybe I didn't always have the tools to get out of the 'funk' on bad-hair days, but I did have that sense of adventure, the caring and gratitude for the people around me, and a sense that something greater was always possible. I knew life could be even MORE happy and more fun in general, not just when I was travelling.
I distinctly remember one point in particular that launched me in a different direction. I was in my apartment in Japan in 2005, and I was upset about some friends who were fighting. I cared about them both and I couldn't figure out whose point of view was 'right'. I realised how much judgement we fling back and forth at each other, and I thought 'well, everyone judges, right? That's just the way it is. But it's so f*&^ing uncomfortable..... isn't there a way around it? Is there a way not to judge? Is it possible to exist without judgement, or does it have to be a 'fact' of life?'. And I don't think I thought much about it after that. That question however, opened up a door in my world.
Fast forward a few years to Australia in 2009. New life, new challenges, trying to find what the heck I was supposed to be doing with myself on this planet, and doing relationship drama. I went to talk to a friend and she said, "hey let's try this 'energy shifting' stuff I discovered. It's kinda weird, but it's easy and fun, anyone can do it. I will ask you questions and when the energy comes up we are gonna clear it, kind of like a cosmic vacuum cleaner to clear up the crap!" So she asked me questions about what was going on, and I could feel my head getting light and spinny as she talked. I didn't really know what was going on, but I knew something was happening! When I walked away from talking with her, I realised that all the angst and drama about the situation I had made so significant was just... gone. I didn't have a judgement in my universe around it. In fact, I didn't have a point of view about how that situation would turn out, I literally could not find what it was that had made me so upset to begin with. WTF?
Several months later I was doing some mundane task at home, and I just stopped in the middle of what I was doing as the penny finally dropped. I was struck by the recollection of that question I had asked myself years ago in my Japanese apartment. That simple, slightly head-spinny talk I had with my friend had shifted me so quickly out of judgement of a situation I had previously thought had no happy solution, and it had not been an issue in my life since. It had been nearly a year and that drama, angst, judgement had not returned to my world. It was gone forever. My hand started shaking as I picked up the phone and called her '.... hi hon, er, what WAS that stuff you did with me last year?' I knew this was the moment I was choosing to walk through the door I had opened with that question 5 years before. And maybe I had been a bit slow in making the connection, but once I clicked, there was nothing that would stop me from going forward and demanding more!
I am so grateful I asked that question, it changed absolutely everything in my life and continues to change it! I now ask questions every day. I am always hungry to know what else is possible? If I can begin to change something that I thought was previously insurmountable with a question and some simple tools, what else could change? What else could be easy that I thought was hard or impossible? I kind of get excited the more I ask!
If you knew that a question could begin to change ANYTHING in your life, what questions would you ask? :-) Just a thought until next time!
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