Are you afraid of dreaming?

Posted on November 10, 2015 by Louise Gallagher

“The universe is always dreaming bigger things for you than you can imagine.”

The thought rose out of my meditation. It floated into my mind as gently as fog lifting off a river in the morning sun.

When coaching at Choices, there are two team captains whose role is to support the coaching team and focus them on the task at hand. Part of what they do is to remind the team members of their strengths and gifts, and to support them in letting go of the things that hold them back from giving their best to the group.

Between Choices and the two additional weekend sessions of Givers 1 and 2, trainees and coaches return for over the following two to three months after Choices, the team captains put out a coach’s email challenge inviting the team to share their experiences from coaching, and to examine an aspect of their beliefs/behaviours that was illuminated throughout the week of Choices.

This time, the team captain’s asked people to share, if they are willing, one dream they felt stirring that they were going to take action on now.

Dreams are funny things for me.

I fear dreaming, or at least fear articulating my dreams.

It’s that old core belief thingie. Somewhere within me is a voice that likes to stomp on my dreams with its chatter about how stupid I am to dream, how people will think I’m silly, or call me ‘stuck-up’ and all sorts of other vile things that are not true, but are said with such convincing fervor, I give into their demands that I not dream — big or small.

Those are childhood voices that do not serve me well today, but still, they creep in with their insidious insistence they have the right to limit my capacity to dream big and live large.

This mornings centering thought in the 21-day meditation challenge I am participating in is: “I turn my belief into actions.”

Which lead me to wonder, if I fear dreaming, or simply don’t believe in my dreams, what am I turning into action?

Good question. I wonder if my fear of dreaming holds me back from connecting to the dreams the Universe holds true for me? I wonder if fulfilling on my dreams is the path to experiencing all the Universe has for me?

What about you? Do you have a big dream you don’t like to illuminate in fear it will be squashed, ridiculed, scoffed at? Are you afraid of dreaming?

What do ya’ do when the shoe don’t fit?

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Louise Gallagher

The centering thought for today’s 21 day meditation challenge is, ‘Belief renews me every day.’

Most of my life I have been told I am ‘creative’.

I didn’t always take it as a compliment. Sometimes, I thought people were suggesting I was flaky, unfocused, irritating…

I tried to conform.

I took jobs that looked good on paper, sounded good at cocktail parties and made good money. I even went so far as to become a stockbroker, a role I was highly unsuited for but one that I thought would legitimize me in society’s eyes.

I didn’t like it. It didn’t fit me.

It wasn’t that the job wasn’t a good career, it is for many. It’s just for me, it didn’t align with my soul’s calling, my heart’s yearning for creativity in my life.

This morning, as I sank into meditation, repeating the mantra, Sat Chit Ananda (Life is absolute bliss consciousness.) I felt my entire being opening up to the truth of my creative core.

I love being creative. I love expressing myself in creative ways that both challenge and stir my imagination.

I love how words strung together create pictures and feelings that stir the imagination and wake up minds.

How paint dripped on canvas evokes meaning that becomes an expression of joy, wonder, beauty with every stroke of a paintbrush, with every drop of paint thrown upon its surface.

I love the freedom of dance, the joy of spinning in circles, the wonder of creating movements in the spaces around me that stir the air and ripple out in waves of pure, irresistible joy.

I love being creative.

I am grateful.

Once upon a time, I thought being creative was a negative, a less than expression of my lack of meaning in the world.

Today, I know being creative, expressing myself through my creations, is my meaning in the world.

I don’t want to live in black and white. I don’t want to travel the same corridors as anyone else as I desperately try to fit into shoes that do not fit me.

I want to travel my own path, create my own waves. I want to try on life and see what fits and cast off the pieces that don’t sit well within me. I want my journey to inspire others to claim their own path so they too are free to express themselves in their own unique ways.

I want to create a world of wonder and awe where we are all free to express ourselves as creatively as we choose.

There is no right and wrong to creativity. There is only creativity, however we express it.

What joy!

Fitting in
(From Footprints in Melted Snow — Poems and other thoughts on living well and loving deeply)
©Louise Gallagher (1993)

I don’t always know
that what I do is
right
or that it’s wrong.
What matters is I know
it is my best
so I am free of worry
about how I fit
into the world
around me.

And even though
I like to wear
only the clothes
I know
that
fit me

Sometimes I’ll try
a dress too large
or a shoe too small

And when I do
I take them off
and try
another size.

Who are you when you believe your true self will guide you?

Posted on November 4, 2015 by Louise Gallagher

One of the tools trainees in Choices work on is their ‘contract statement’. A personal I am statement about who and how they need to be to live life outside the comfort of limiting thoughts and beliefs.

My contract is, I am a trusting woman.

Not always an easy thing for me, to trust.

Heck, I could rhyme off a thousand reasons why trusting is not good for my well-being and I’d do my best to convince you every one of them is valid.

Truth is, every one of them is just a limiting belief/thought I hold onto in the misguided belief I’m safer playing small, hiding out and dimming my light.

Truth is, I’m safest when I journey with trusting myself as my guide. When I trust that Love is all around and I trust in myself, in my inner guidance to lead me, and my inner voice of knowing to advise me when to walk away from danger, or walk into the fire and light up my life, my life is full of wonder and awe. Sure, there are circumstances that cause pain, sorrow, grief, trouble, confusion, but when I trust in myself to turn up for me, in all my truth without fearing the outcome, I am safe in the world, safe to be me.

When I turn up, pay attention, speak my truth and stay unattached to the outcome, I am truly me.

This morning when I read the guiding thought in the 21 day meditation challenge I’m participating in, My true self can be trusted to guide me, I smiled.

Haha. How to challenge my thinking before I even sink into the quiet. How to ruffle the waters of peace and tranquility before I even dive beneath the surface!

As I sank into the meditation, I became aware of my thoughts racing. Remember when you trusted and… Remember when you believed in another and… Remember…

Yes. I do. But what was then is not what is now. Remembering when I trusted indiscriminately, when I trusted without listening to my true self because I was so busy listening to my false self tell me all the reasons why I needed to trust the untrustworthy, trust without opening my eyes and ears and heart drowns out my voice of knowing. Remembering does not create space for the light to shine on my inner wisdom today.

I am safe when I trust my true self to guide me.

Learning to trust myself and my capacity to live true to my knowing who I am lifts me up. When I believe I can trust my true self to guide me, I am free of fearing the past. Free of fearing what was then will be again. Free of fearing I am not safe in the world.

Living with trust as my watchword, I free myself from playing small, hiding out and dimming my light.

And when I live large, shine bright, the world becomes a trusting, beautiful place to dance in the light of knowing my truth. I am a trusting woman.

What we believe becomes who we are.

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Louise Gallagher

I am participating in the Oprah and Deepak 21 day meditation. The theme is, “Become What You Believe”.

This morning, Deepak posed an interesting idea. Our beliefs, he suggests, give us identity.

The example he uses is how if we look at the world through eyes of “I’ll believe it when I see it”, we don’t see a lot of things to believe in.

What if we flip it, he asks. “I’ll see it when I believe it” opens up limitless possibilities. We are always looking to see what we believe in.

In The Passion Test, one of the core ideas is, “What you put your attention on becomes stronger in your life.”

If I walk through life not believing in anything, or believing people are out to get me or I can’t do anything right, that is what I will see on my path.

Imagine we can flip those beliefs. Imagine what could happen.

Rather than looking for wrong, looking to be hurt, looking to make mistakes, we see the possibility in all things. We start to see the world through eyes of abundance versus scarcity, possibility versus impossibility, opportunity versus dead-end streets, hope instead of fear.

“Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Who and how I am is constructed on what I believe to be true about me and the world around me. If I choose to believe I am less than, a loser, stupid, or any other negative belief I may hold onto to keep me playing small, I am choosing to believe in the lesser part of me, not the greatness, not my inherent magnificence, not the beauty and miracle of who I am. I have the capacity to let go of negative beliefs, but first, I must see it, acknowledge it and accept it does not work for me anymore.

If I don’t like some way that I am in the world, I have the power to re-frame my belief in my capacity to change, to shift, to re-direct myself.

It takes work. But, if I tell myself I’m lazy, I won’t believe I am capable of doing the work.

It is a delicate dance of balancing my belief in me against long held unbeliefs and fears about the goodness and greatness of humanity and the world we live in.

I believe people are inherently kind, caring, thoughtful and loving. I believe people want to get along. They want to live in a world of wonder and awe.

When I act as if people are out to get me, undermine me, cheat me or hurt me, I am not acting from my belief in the goodness of humankind. I am acting from my fear of being human.

Imagine if we could change our beliefs. Imagine if we could create a world where all people are treated with loving kindness.

Imagine.

Now, let’s make it so. Let’s believe we can and act out on our belief that we are capable of loving one another with all our hearts. That we are capable of resolving the war and famine and lack of drinking water and inequalities in our world. That we are capable of making a difference. We are.