Choose Your Past

April 20, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off 

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Social media is re-connecting people who’ve been out of touch for ages. As we tell out our “stories” to long-lost friends, its easy to fall back into the point-of-view of a former self, who may be a lesser self.

You know it when it happens because you might feel a little low afterward and you don’t know why and you find yourself griping about the downside of social media.

I had this experience recently telling an old friend one of my family stories, adding a touch of cynicism and a drama flourish. It brought up some old resentments that drained my energy and blocked my creativity for the rest of the day.

But driving home that night I revisited my story as I looked up at the full moon over Boston. Instead of resentment, I felt love, empathy and gratitude about the same memory and toward the same family members in my story.

I realized it wasn’t just a change in perspective or a plot twist. It was a shift: a different memory, a different past, a different family member, a different me.

A greater self creates the past of a greater self. Why be anyone less?

Filed under: authenticity, presence, self-awareness, shift, trauma release
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The Cast Net

March 13, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off 

I spent several autumns fishing in Menemsha on Martha’s Vineyard.
picture-2I found myself thinking today about how I loved watching really experienced fishermen cast net for Menhaden, a prized bait fish that sometimes swam in schools close to shore and the jetty. I admired their skill, grace and timing and the cast net scenes had a fascinating archetype quality.

Today, its my change metaphor. Typically we identify with the caster. We learn the skills, get the tools, make a plan, set the goal, identify the target, try again and again, and eventually succeed and get the fulfillment we expect, or we give up and try something else.

But circumstances are raising awareness that our identification with the caster’s control is illusory. We feel more like the cast: flung out and spinning in mid-air.

Often, the response to that insecure feeling is to give away our power to the caster – the shifting external reality, those difficult experiences and circumstances, the things that we don’t want to be happening to us. The caster is the cause and us in free-fall the effect.

We can change this by shifting our reality: life, always on our side, is the caster and we are the cast. We entrust the ways, means and timing to life – the divine. Instead of free-fall and fear, we’re suspended, yet prepared and poised to claim the best probable outcome at the right place and time.

Filed under: disruption, metaphor, self-awareness, shift
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Hide & Seek

March 10, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off 

My granddaughters loved to play hide and seek with me. I’d hear them crazily running from room to room, laughing and calling my name. Sometimes, when I’d have a great hiding spot, and they couldn’t find me, their footsteps would get a little tentative and their voices more plaintive as they called for me. At that point I’d thump or knock on the floor or wall to let them know I was in the house. I’d hear them get very still and whisper until they could sense the direction of my clues. Then they’d get right back into their joy in the game, knowing they’d find who they were seeking, sometimes hidden right in front of them.

Have you been looking really hard for a long time for a new life direction? Have you been caught up in a cycle of excitement and anxiety? Try stopping, being very still and listening for the “knock knock” of your intuition (muse inner voice, guide, God – your call), trusting in it completely and willing to receive whatever jumps out of the hiding place.

Filed under: In Transition, direction, going solo, intuition
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Don’t Get Derailed, Get Intense

February 12, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off 

During times of extreme uncertainty and massive shifts, its human nature to have thoughts of panic and self-doubt. These become self-fulfilling only if you believe in them and identify with them.

Solo professionals are often alone and vulnerable to getting lost in thoughts triggered by events that are exploding in frequency. A deal falls through, there’s not enough money, inquiries slow down to a trickle or less, investors pull back, unexpected family needs show up, losses accumulate. And if that’s not enough, millions of other professionals are telling (and selling) other solo’s what they’re doing wrong and what they should be doing.
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When you don’t separate who you are from the onslaught of triggered thoughts, you’re at higher risk of getting derailed. A precursor is a sense of urgency to do or chase something different, and its accompanied by a lot of anxiety, tension and doubt – paradoxically, the exact things you’re trying to get away from.

Its not possible to stop all negative thinking, unless you live perhaps in a monastery. But you can refuse to identify with the thoughts and the debilitating emotions that accompany them. You do that by observing them and feeling them for what are: thoughts, not you. And then you refuse to respond to them by unconsciously going off in an unwanted direction and getting derailed.

Resolve to replace urgency and scrambling with intensity. Urgency scatters energy and attention and inhibits poise and readiness to receive. Intensity is focused on intuitively choosing to do one thing at a time with the highest quality.

Nobody can tell you what that “thing to do” is. It could be, for example, producing a creative work, taking a walk, washing the car, helping a client, eating an apple, working on finances, being with other people, looking for a job, playing with kids, doing errands, taking a nap.

What’s important is that you merge with what you do and not with your thoughts about it which make you doubt your choice. Florence Scovel Shin tells us “Let God juggle your affairs”. You don’t need a religious orientation to accept truth in that statement and to feel a sense of relief.

We’re part of something that needs to happen. Although its huge, and beyond our knowledge, control and understanding, with awareness and intensity, we are the conductor and on the right track.

Photo credit:Pewari Naan Photostream

Filed under: alignment, counter-direction, going solo, self-awareness, self-management, solo psf, stress relief
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