“Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.”

~ Les Brown

I recently posted on my Facebook Page that this quote has been a running theme.

I seem to be learning lessons repeatedly even when I’m so sick of them and cannot figure out why I’m attracting them to me! And at the same time not really attracting what I truly want.

Like many people, I’m pretty self-aware, and at the same time life seems to have it’s own ideas! No one really has control of external circumstances anyway, right?

“We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart.”  ~ Pema Chodron

Many of us experience the same sort of lessons over and over. We think we’ll learn but if we’re honest, we already know the answers. In pointing out the recurring lessons below, I already know the answers to all of them are to let go, lose control of what we can’t control, commit to what we want, take risks to do what we love, follow our own intuition and take it slowly.

1. Doing something out of fear of loss, which makes us give up to varying degrees what we truly want.

I really do believe if we focus on what we want to create rather than on the fear of things falling apart, it may not be easier, but it will be far more fulfilling and rewarding.

I love to write, speak, help others with my intuitive abilities, do social media marketing and paint. Four out of five of those items have created an income for me. Getting up daily with those items on my plate makes everything in life better!

2. Settling for a little bit of something is worse than doing without it.

If we accept breadcrumbs and call it a relationship, when it’s clearly devoid of the core tenets of something that feels good inside, we’re just stuck in another lesson. Waiting for it to get better, change or for the other person to wake up, it’s not about anyone except ourselves.

I’ve had to learn  (so slowly) to know I deserve more, value myself enough and actually believe (on a good day) something that feels good to me is out there. I’ve done this beyond a relationship, I’ve done it with jobs, living situations, my health and so on. Settling is a figment of our fears, it’s only our reality, if we choose it to be.

3. Taking things personally can make us do the opposite of what we want.

If we’re taking action based on our own happiness, we’re rarely going to react to another’s opinion of what we do or say. We don’t take other’s personally when we’re taking care of ourselves. When we fall short of self-care, we start to listen to others’ voices, worry a bit about what they think and in some cases we go against ourselves to please.

Whenever I’ve compromised and am not spending the majority of my time doing what I love, I get stale. I feel a sense of low energy and find myself affected to a certain degree by the drama around me. I don’t get pulled too far in to it, but when I’m not taking care of my happiness…it’s just not pretty. This also leads to assuming, I know someone else’s stance, and then I know I’m far away from where I like to live.

4. If we continue to do things the same way, we’ll have the same results.

Getting out of our comfort zone is hard work! We don’t realize the insidious ways our subconscious wants to sabotage change and keep to the rules/beliefs it knows. Finding the energy to make real change and take a risk can be scary!

I feel I’ve ridden this wave so many times, back and forth from risk junkie to holding onto what little security I’ve come to know. For me, change comes when the energy to stay in my box took a lot more, than to instead jump out and make a difference in where my life was headed.

When we practice awareness, we find we’re naturally moving toward freedom from doing things the same way. Our inner whisper grows stronger, intuition gives us signs and hopefully one day we wake up to our truth….that our lessons have been our choice all along.

Love elephant and want to go steady?

Sign up for our (curated) daily and weekly newsletters!

Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: Pixoto