One Great Tool in the Arsenal

 

     Since I found myself in a slump for the past two weeks, I pulled up a book I had downloaded on my iPad two years ago.  I listened to the audiobook about ten years ago and four years ago I read the book.  Completing the exercises in the workbook is a totally different experience.

 

     Doing the work is a much more fulfilling activity than simply reading about doing the work.  This is the reason why we should equip ourselves with as much arsenal as possible in the war against stagnation.  For me, it is a fight, but one worth getting into because this is my life.  I'm not going down without a fight.  I'm not going down, period.

 

     It is possible to go overboard with the self-help books, tapes, workshops, lectures, etc.  So, if more information is being taken in than is being processed, then I would say it is time to slow down.  Take a minute to practice and apply tools before picking new ones up.

BE YOUR OWN LIFE COACH

When the new year begins, I'm so excited about the goals I set and the possibilities I see in my mind's eye. During a good year, I don't hit the blahs until around May/June. This year caught me struggling to remain positive about the struggle as soon as February.

 

Resolution Revolution SNL Skit

Think about it. What is it that is really keeping us from accomplishing our goals? Short of someone physically preventing us from moving forward, there is NOTHING stopping us from doing what we want with our lives.

No money? Find a way to make it.

No resources? Ask someone or seek out the people who can point in the right direction.

No education? Go to the library.

No clue? Ask somebody.

No energy? Eat right.

Bad health? As long as there is life, there is another opportunity to share the thought so that something can be done with it.

I can go on, but I will not.

For every excuse there is a solution. At the end of the day, our thoughts and our feelings about our situation provide the obstacles. Please accept this: WE ARE WHERE WE ARE RIGHT NOW BECAUSE WE ALLOW OUR THOUGHTS OR OUR FEELINGS TO PUT US HERE. Consider this scenario: I woke up this morning and when I thought about all of the things I need to do and the the problems I have to address, I felt defeated. I was tired even before I got out of bed. I asked myself "what is the point?" My grandfather asked me what am I going to do, my checking account is close to $0 and none of the employers I reached out to have responded. All day I thought about it and tried to figure out what to do. I got on the phone and talked about it to my friend who was having similar challenges. By the time I put my son to bed, I was mentally and physically exhausted but had done very little.

The problem with the above scenario is that there was no mention of waking up with a sense of gratitude for having another opportunity to get it right, despite what might have happened the day before. I spent too much time focused on problems and not solutions. To my detriment, turned to someone who got down in my hole of self-pity with me instead of helping me out. Finally, there was far too much thinking and not enough action. Even if the only thing I did was meditate, that would have cleared my mind-space for more positive thought.

Quite often we shut ourselves out from the game before we even get into the arena. Imagine for a moment, we are standing on the corner down the street thinking about the problems, the visions, the goals and the obstacles. We haven't even arrived at the gate! Is it acceptable to dwell on the thoughts "I'm depressed," "I'm overwhelmed," "I can't do it"? No! I have learned how to coach myself. We have to coach ourselves.  I’m not talking about the nice life coach that costs a million dollars a session; I’m talking about the loud coach with the whistle and spittle.  Get in your own face.

I think to myself. If I am not physically impaired, if no one is holding me down, if I have the use of my mind, I can get it done. I think about the athletes who manage to do remarkable things with their bodies. I am training and conditioning to do something as remarkable with my mind. When I begin to resist myself and the things I need to take to achieve my goals, I get really raw with myself.

Things my inner coach says to get my A in gear:

If you do not do this right now, today when will it get done? What else do you have to do that is more important than realize the vision? Your feelings are not going to get it done; action and work is going to get it done!

The pain and the resistance means you are making progress!You are

almost there! Hold it, keep pushing forward just a little longer! Don't

give up!

You tired?! You haven't even made it to the board room! You don't even have a contract to negotiate! Get real and do something or stop lying to yourself.

How bad do you want it? What does your dream mean to you? Is it worth fighting for?

At the end of the day, achieving my goals Is my only real option. The other choice is to give up and die inside. As long as I am breathing, I will do something that will take me closer to my vision. It is that simple. I do not worry about what other people say or think. If they are not trying to help me, they get tuned out. I love what the comedian Katt Williams said about that situation. He said in the face of haters and dream destroyers to "tune in to your STAR PLAYER." My star player  is me. I am my greatest supporter and motivator. I will not say that I do not need anyone or need help because I certainly do. What I emphasize here is that the source of our success lies within us. We have to want it more than anyone wants it for us.

To draw another analogy: this process is like being a recovering failure. There may be times when we fall off of the wagon and take a hit of self-pity, but there is nothing nor anyone who can save us from the sickness but us.

 

SOLITARY JOURNEY



I am an only child, so I learned to do things on my own a long time ago. There are times though that I would like to experience that synergy, that great flow of energy, when a group of like-minded individuals get together and feed off of each other. I have been lucky enough to have experienced it before on artistic collaborations. Those experiences were extremely challenging on an emotional level.   Right now, I am excited about meeting people who are stronger than me, smarter than me, more positive and more motivated than me. I like seeing how other people go about their task of being excellent.

There always comes a time in the process when we plateau or run out of steam.  I have managed to be strong for myself on several occasions, but I still look forward to having someone to lean on. In my quest to connect, I have partnered up with people who have voiced the desire to make change in their lives. That resonates with me profoundly. I get excited and happy form them because I know how it is to want to make progress in life, but not know where to start or have someone with whom to share the experience.

This year, I spent more than $100 on friends who said they want to make change in their lives. That might not sound like a lot of money, but considering my current financial situation, I would say it was a foolish decision. I wanted to encourage my friends and in return be motivated by their successes. Unexpectedly, what I began to hear is how hard it is.

I have been doing this for four years now. My first year, I kicked myself in the ass and said to myself that the minimum I expected from myself was to check in daily with my goals and weekly requests. With my minimum set, I hit the mark 85% of the time. By year two, I had a discipline and the idea in my mind that this is a life or death situation. I do not want to die inside because I do not try. I do not want my dreams to die because I crawled up in a corner to cry and feel sorry for myself.

 



I have learned through my friends and accountability partners that I cannot afford to try and help anyone else, if I cannot help myself. No matter how lonely it gets on this journey, I have to stay strong for me. There have been times when I spent so much time trying to encourage and motivate my partners that I failed to nurture myself. I find it mind-boggling that the more I reached out to help and encourage, the more resistance I received. I learned to step back, take care of me, and in some cases, just keep it moving. I feel bad for doing that, but I understand that sacrificing me does not help anyone, least of all me.

Yet, I see other groups of people who get along well, and seem to thrive as a group. I wonder what is it about me that disrupts the kind of unity I would like to experience. I know that I bring a certain element of conflict. I like to challenge people. I also like to say things that make people uncomfortable because I feel that once we, as humans, step outside our polite facades we are our most authentic. Sometimes people like to compete with me. I try to avoid the competition, but I don't mind it if it makes things interesting. All of those natural human emotions like jealousy, inferiority, and competition are fine with me. My personal process is to internally confront those feelings and turn them into what they should be: self-motivation, happiness for my partners as they are an extension of me, and a measure of what is possible in my life.

I never hold back on feeling good about someone else's success, for to do so would diminish the chances of my own success. In an ideal world, I would find my tribe of people who have a strong commitment to improving themselves to the exclusion of feelings or thoughts that enable progress. Yes, it gets hard. Yes, some days writing a word is like stabbing myself in the eye. Yes, my heart sometimes feels it is being squeezed hard when a friend achieves something I want. Guess what? I keep moving forward. In my mind, I fight those thoughts and feelings like I am Muhammad Ali. I am a bad ass bitch and I have things to do other than sit around being punked by my fears.

I'm in search of other warriors who are in the daily fight to beat down the thoughts and emotions that seek to destroy us. You want to join this army? Are you bad enough?

 





Don't get the wrong idea. I am a compassionate person; sometimes I have to unleash my woman warrior. Thank you for reading.

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.