WHAT SUCCESS FEELS LIKE

By Niki Billingslea

    This is one of those articles I have to write in the dark.  I do not yet consider myself successful, so I do not embody that quality in that sense.  What I will focus on is the feeling of success because what I have read and what I have been taught by my spiritual teachers is that being able to feel like I have already arrived is what ushers me into the state of having it.  How do you feel like you have something or have accomplished something that you have not yet done?

    A very important component to the process that I have chosen is practice.  The practice that each person adopts may vary.  My practice is deeply grounded in my daily meditation and prayer.  Writing down ideas is vital and so is the visualization, but none of that is possible without clearing the mind and creating the mental space for the ideas to come through.  So, when I want to experience the feeling of success, I make space for the experience.  I clear my area, my mind and my heart to be taken over by the feeling of success.

    I have had a few victories in my life, so as I focus on the success I see myself achieving I call on those feelings at those times.  Also, as I see myself in that moment of accomplishment and achievement, I experience sensations that I begin to associate with the level of success I would like to embody.  The sensations I feel are satisfaction: to at last arrive at a destination I projected for myself (by no means the end).  A sense of power engulfs me: I feel as if I have been carried this distance and through so much by sheer will--mine and my ancestors.  Another state I experience is that of gratitude.  In the past I have never associated gratitude with my feelings of victory.  However, when I see myself in the field of accomplishment that I desire, I have an immense wave of gratitude wash through me at the realization of the sacrifices, the growth, the support, and profound change that makes this success possible.  I am thankful to the spirit of God for making this possible.

    I feel it.  I even see it.  So, it has to be true.  Right?  To be honest, I have tried on several occasions to do things my way.  My way elicits temporary, and sometimes unsatisfactory, results.  I have ceased trying to be the contractor of my life.  I am now an architect and designer who consults with a higher source who is both developer and contractor.  Spirit makes it possible for me to design and it takes care of the details that I am not equipped to take care of.  There is a time frame I have in mind, but God has a different schedule.  What do I do?  Practice. I continue to focus on the plan, the feeling, and preparation.

See it.  Then feel it.

 

WHY DO PEOPLE SUCCEED?

HOW BAD DO YOU WANT IT?

PLACES TO WRITE IN LA

    Now that I am not living in a home I own, I find that  workspace is a premium.  If you are in Los Angeles and you want a virtual office or a place to work that inspires creativity, I have compiled a list of some of my favorite places to write, grade papers, and get work done.  

    Feel free to comment and add other productive spots around town.

SIMPLY WHOLESOME

MCKAYS BAR & LOUNGE

3540 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA 90007

LIBRARIES LAPL.ORG

CEMETERIES

MUSEUMS

SELF-REALIZATION PARK

BEACH (IN YOUR CAR)

PARKS

KOREAN SPA

ACKI BAMBOO

HITTING THE WALL

By Niki Billingslea

If you have been on your journey to realizing your purpose or pursuing a life-long goal, you know what it feels like to hit the wall.  That proverbial wall that stands between you and all of your hopes and dreams.  The one that you stare at for hours wondering what to do about it.  The people who get things done simply go through the wall, around it, or over it.  There are a number of people, for whom I write this article, who seem to think this wall is real.

    When you think you have it together this wall erects itself right in the middle of the path to your dreams.  What is up with that?  It keeps you from completing tasks you identified, it stops your flow and is a blight in your life altogether.  While you  wait for it to go away, you distract your self with people, activities and thoughts that have nothing to do with your vision.  The wall is not real.  You are lying to yourself.  You simply do not want to admit the truth to yourself.  That could be a number of things:  you have not fully committed, you are pursuing world-class goals  with small-town effort, or you are simply not doing the inner work necessary to activate that God potential in you.

    Everyone on the path experiences that period of elation and bliss with our first breakthrough.  Life is magical and we are levitating through life.  It is the best high ever.  Then that level of existence becomes normal.  The shine wears off and, if you do not continue to do the spiritual work, you fall off.  Falling off feels like being left behind or becoming detached.  If you happen to have a spiritual practice that sustains a connection with your higher source, then you at least maintain some of that blissful feeling.  Even that can become routine and something you create a blind spot to.  Kind of like that stack of papers on the table that has been there so long you do not see it any more.  That is the plateau that can turn into the wall.

    This is the point in your process when you  have to work to sustain the excitement and enthusiasm that will take you to the next level of your practice.  Some relationships are like this.  When you want to keep the passion alive, you have to make a conscious effort to put yourself in situations that elicit the energy field you want to pick up on.  I have an audiobook set that  I keep on constant rotation especially on those days when I just don’t feel like it.  There may be a time when those days turn into weeks or, God forbid, months.  You do not want to let that precious time slip through your fingers so you work to hold onto your vision.  You work to keep your goals intact.

    For me, it was like fighting for my life.  I listened to the CDs, I journaled like a crazy person, I sought out all the positive people or productive people in my phone.  I sat in the lectures and the churches soaking it up.  I forced myself to sit in meditation whether it was five minutes or thirty.  Eventually, and without my realizing it, my blahs turned into a-ha.

Getting through a tough period was not always like that.  There have been times in my life when the days turned into weeks, the weeks turned into months and the months turned into years.  To get out of it and get back on track took an equally grueling amount of time.  I got tired of it and the older I have become, the less I am willing to keep starting over from scratch. I may have a great excuse to be down and sad; however, these days I don’t allow myself the luxury of wallowing in personal pain.  I have come to enjoy proving to myself how divine I am by standing in my power.  It is exhilarating to look insecurity in the eye or fear, or whatever other obstacle and walk away with a smile and my joy intact.

   The most effective weapon against the wall is the one thing most people give up when they see it--your practice.  When obstacles erect themselves in your life, that is not the time to lie down with your belly up.  That is the perfect opportunity to become a spiritual warrior.  If you have been doing this for a while, you might have to upgrade your arsenal.  Find new tools, draw a new teacher into your life, be more open to being led.  Most importantly, DO NOT STOP prayer and meditation.  Do not stop your practice EVER.  

You may experience a bad day.  It is ok to have a bad day.  It happens to the best of us.  Take a time out, replenish, renew, relax.  Once you get a reboot, upgrade that practice and get back to it because there is no wall.  There is only your vision waiting for you to embrace it.

No Man or Woman is an Island

By Niki Billingslea 

The process I have committed to and journey I find myself on has not been easy.  At first I berated the fact that the challenges seemed unnecessarily so.  Somewhere along the line, I realized that the challenges and painful moments always resulted in a polish and refinement in my persona that I had not been able to foresee in my haste to live in peaceful serenity.  For me, having a child taught me how to rely on others and appreciate giving up control of every aspect of life around me.

When I began the MasterMind process, I was hesitant and excited to work with others on my goals.  It took some time for me to relax into sharing my hopes and dreams with someone, and to reveal my weaknesses and struggles as well.  In this experience of having a partner and someone I am accountable to, I have learned that I have much more determination and focus than I initially thought of myself.

Why You Need An Accountability Partner

I also learned the value of an accountability partner on several levels.  It was a surprise to me that I felt a responsibility to my partner to be positive and prepared at all times.  In my past interactions with people, I would make every effort to prove how much I actually did not care. I came to have a deep respect for my partner’s time, her rate of progress and her dedication to our meetings.  There were times when I tried harder to keep up with my requests, affirmations and weekly goals so that she would know how much I appreciate our work.  When I could not find the motivation to do it for myself, I would work hard to accomplish my goals for my partner so that I would have something to share with her.

I pushed myself harder and more than I felt like doing because I hoped that when I hit a wall, she would be there and be able to balance me out.  Before this experience, I did not know I had that kind of dedication to another person.  I appreciate my partner for being there and being patient as both of us navigated the ebbs and flows of our processes.  The realization that it can be a good thing to not feel super at the same time was a burden off of me.  I would rather be unsynchronized in that way because there are few things worse than two people in a negative space at the same time.  As a partner, I learned to look forward to my partner’s upswing because it usually occurs at a time I need that energy.  When I am up, she accepts my rays of sunshine.

The Value of Accountability for Achieving Your Goals

Having a partner is not always easy, not for the reasons aforementioned but, because at some point an accountability partner has to deliver the truth. As much as I would like to think I am doing everything I can do and accomplish all that I need to accomplish, I know that I have presented dozens of beautifully illustrated excuses to justify my laziness.  God bless my partner for listening, but when it is time to call it like it is, she very politely presents the truth to me.  That is what true accountability is: speaking the truth when another person is tap dancing around it.  The responsibility of the receiver is to accept the insight and not resist it.  The ego is an extraordinary thing; it will have you believing you can fly and in the midst of falling fast to earth convince you to refuse a parachute.  I have learned to be open and receptive to truth even when my ego does not like it.

Three Tips For Accountability Partners

In the end, a partner becomes the person that can celebrate in the truest form because she has been there the entire way.  Witnessing the growth of another person from her lowest points to her highest is inspiring beyond all words and humbling to have a profound understanding of the sacrifice and courage it took to make it.  My desire is to see more of this in my community.  I do not see enough women supporting each other to the degree that I have experienced in this process.  I do not see enough people supporting their personal dreams, let alone supporting someone else’s.  Perhaps if we can be there for someone else, we can learn to be there for ourselves.  

TALKING VS. DOING

By Niki Billingslea

  I have a confession.  I have become very good at talking the talk of success so much so that I often believe my own hype.  The one thing that I cannot hide from is the fact that I have little to show for years of talk.  This is where faking it til you make it becomes a crutch.

Yes, I have had triumphs and I have certainly experienced flat out failure.  Decisively, I took lessons from all of those experiences and I am here.  HERE is the crossroads of Keep-Talking-Cause-You’re-Good-At-It Avenue and Demonstrate-What-You-Say-You-Know Boulevard.  The Avenue is stagnation and, quite frankly, I’m tired of hearing myself talking.  The Boulevard looks daunting, but it promises to be an exhilarating experience.

How do I get from talk to action?  I’m sure the achievers who read this are saying, “Duh! Make a plan. Know what you want to do.  Go deeper into your practice...blah, blah, blah.”  Instead of joining the chorus of the self-righteous, I will reach out with the compassion that seldom is extended to those who are trying to find the way.

You can adopt any system, any method and make it work for you.  There are people who will swear the only way to reach your goals is to do as they were taught or learned.  The secret is no secret.  It is the only thing standing between thought and action...the movement.  When we stop thinking, we have to do something.  That something has to be in the direction of the goal we are working toward.

I know this, right?  Why am I still in a mental space of grappling with it?  Thought.  I daresay any thought held for too long that is not followed by action is a limiting thought.  I affirm, I speak into existence, I visualize. People who are paralyzed by fear, limiting thoughts, or any other thought-forms that sabotage just have to decide to lay that baggage down and go. Like this article, it became a tangible thing only after I stopped thinking about it and began typing.  That is the challenge I work daily to overcome: turn off the mind and DO.

SAY NO TO DISTRACTIONS, SAY YES TO YOUR MISSION

   By Niki Billingslea

     According to Yogi Bhajan, one of the seven steps to happiness is commitment.  Commitment is simply making a promise to yourself to follow through.  The level of commitment is dependent upon the level of focus and personal connection.  The commitment I made was to writing, and not just writing because I have done that nearly my entire life; my commitment has been to finish the book projects I start and see them through to publication.

    It has been a deep and profound commitment because for so long I have avoided commitment on so many levels in my life.  Commitment to completing projects has meant that I had to assess how I use my time.  When I examined my schedule and daily habits, I discovered I spent a great deal of my time doing things that others wanted me to do and acting upon the whims of others.  I had to stop accepting the spontaneous invitations to hang out.  I had to value my time over others.  At first, it seemed a selfish way to be, but when I read about and observe the practices of successful people, I realize that it is a necessity.

    I read “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People” by Stephen Covey. Habit three is to put first things first.  In doing so, it is necessary to say no to the requests of others as it impedes upon valuable time.  There were projects I had to pass on and proposed opportunities that I had to deny.  There was a time I would have feelings of resentment toward individuals or groups for using my time ineffectively.  For some reason I expected others to use my time better than I could use it for myself.  I reassessed the time and energy I would put into community organizations, realizing that I could do a much greater good by completing my projects and bringing expertise to them.  Leaders are good workers, but laboring is not the best use of a leader’s ability.  Writing and completing projects is the actualization of my leadership qualities.

    Instead of feeling resentment towards others for not using my talents optimally, I have an appreciation for the ability others recognize in me.  I graciously decline to participate in meetings and activities that do not facilitate the completion of my projects.  That is not to say that old habits are not hard to break.  From time to time I find myself mired in a situation that is clearly not aligned with my goals.  When I come face to face with such an error, I quickly correct myself.  Sometimes it’s uncomfortable to tell someone I have to back out of a project, but it feels better to admit my mistake than follow through with it and feel resentment and anger at myself for allowing it to happen.

    A friend recently invited me into a money-making venture and I had to graciously and kindly decline.  I did not feel bad about it because I have a purpose and clearly defined objectives.  I am not good at keeping and creating deadlines, but I have not stopped writing.  I am committed to my success.  I have stopped feeling guilty about saying no to the dreams of others.  I can be supportive, but I cannot sacrifice my own or else there will be nothing left for me.  I say yes to me.

The Seven Steps to Happiness:

• commitment
• character
• dignity
• divinity
• grace
• sacrifice
• happiness

MY PROCESS

   By Niki Billingslea

     I feel like this process began when I decided I was not going to live the life my parents lived.  I decided that when I was nine years old.

     Since then I have worked ferociously and insanely at being a better me. In high school, I read voraciously about EVERYTHING. In college, my studies focused on spirituality and I began to study meditation practices.  I have always been big on writing down goals and visualizing the next step.

     Then I read "The Twelve Universal Laws of Success."  It was the first time I saw the practices I used in a systematic form.  The perspective I got from this book put my efforts into gear.  The same year I took a yoga teacher training course.  I was able to manage the emotional upheaval in my life and maintain focus on my goals.

     That worked and things in my life aligned themselves miraculously.  I didn't stop studying.  I began listening to the "Life Visioning" series by Dr. Michael B. Beckwith.  I thought I was maintaining the life I created, but it became the catalyst for an entire life overhaul.

     I began using the MasterMind Goal Setting program too and it brought my life into sharper focus.  As I began to visualize the life I truly want to live, the universe conspired to align me to that.  So, everything I worked so hard for vanished.  It vanished because it wasn't what I felt in my soul I should do.  I was doing and had acquired what I thought I was supposed to.

     I have now surrendered to this process that I've chosen.  I continue to use the principles from "The 12 Universal Laws of Success" and I MasterMind almost everyday.  More importantly, I meditate and pray daily.  Honoring my truth and aligning the desires of my heart to the reality I conceive and live is what I seek to master at this time.  That is MY process.  I would to like to hear what your process is.



STAY FOCUSED

By Niki Billingslea     

     Easier said than done.  I don’t know if it is a blessing or a curse to be creative.  I get an idea, play with it, write it down, go to bed.  Then I get up the next day and there are a ton of things to do, then I come up with more ideas, write them down, go to bed.  My relationship with my ideas reflect my love life...I connect with ideas--some of them I commit to for a while, go through some things, get frustrated, walk away, sometimes I go back and try to make it right, but in the end it seems to not give birth to the glory and splendor I initially envisioned.  Hmmm...

    Focus means to become able to see clearly; as a noun it also means the center of interest or activity.  I have convinced myself that I have found a focus in life--writing and creating.  Although, I have done a lot of writing and creating, I have not focused any attention on what I will do once I have given creative birth to my pieces.

...In the midst of writing this, I stopped, edited another article, and now I’m back on this.  Focus, for me, is an ever elusive, but much desired quality.  I realize my focus is on writing (it doesn’t matter as long as I’m writing).  What I lack is a focus on the specific projects I am working on.  I love, love, love writing.  There will be no accomplishment without focus.  How do I maintain and sustain the kind of focus that will get me from idea generator to master creator?

Get motivated and stay motivated: Eight keys for pursuing long-term goals

    My personal arsenal to maintaining focus is:

• Setting Annual Goals (not just resolutions)
• Setting Monthly Goals (aligned with annual goals)
• Setting Weekly Goals/Tasks
• Daily Affirmations
• Daily Meditation
• Daily Prayer
• Meet with Like-Minded Individuals
• Have Someone to report to and check in with when things get challenging
• DO THE WORK!
• GET RID OF THE BACK UP PLAN!
• LOSE ALL HESITATION!
• GO FOR IT!

    The outcome of sustained focus is obvious--success!  Much more than success and completing a task, maintaining and sustaining focus works mental and emotional muscles that few human use.  We free ourselves from relying on others to tell us what to do and how to do it.  The people we see lose 100+ pounds or who have received accolades for being the best in their area of interest have unlocked the door to their potential.  To feel like the strongest, the smartest, the best has very little to do with being superior over others and EVERYTHING to do with realizing the unlimited potential one possesses.  That is a powerful feeling.  That is why corporations, governments, and religious institutions keep us distracted from such pursuits, because to have a society or planet populated by people who feel empowered would render all else powerless over human potential.

As I work relentlessly to feel that rush, experience that ultimate high of self-realization, I share this journey in hopes that what has been difficult for me is less so for others.  Each of us has our individual paths to travel, and no one is free of challenges or hard earned lessons, yet I feel compelled to share this and leave this sign on a path that is sometimes treacherous, often times filled with wonder--WONDERFUL.