Category: expansion

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Growth and Expansion

Here’s a post you might want to ignore because I’m going to challenge you.

The challenge is about growth and expansion. I want to see if right now is the time for you to take a look at your life and decide whether you want more.

I hope your answer is ‘yes’ because I believe in you and your capacity for change, especially in those areas you feel drawn toward.

Recently, I watched a movie and one of the main characters made a statement that he wanted his name to mean something. Can you identify with this? I know I can.

He wanted to amount to something, and I had the definite sense he’d been told by others that it would never happen. Has anyone ever said that to you or perhaps made you feel your life didn’t matter in some way?

What others say to us can have a profound effect on our lives, both positively and negatively. It’s important to remember that ultimately, we are in charge. We are the ones who get to decide what to accept and what to reject. So, it matters a great deal what we end up telling ourselves.

If you stopped reading for a moment right now and thought about it, what beliefs are you embracing about yourself? What gives your life meaning and purpose? How does what you believe find its way into your everyday choices and actions?

These questions make me wonder several things.

Were you brought up to believe in yourself? Did others affirm that you could or would be successful in life? Or were you told that you would never amount to anything? That you weren’t good enough or fast enough or smart enough? Did you let others convince you or did you seek your own path?

I’d like to offer you a fresh start, a new opportunity, and a new way of viewing your life.

Want in?

How about this.

The first moment you get a chance (you may not have a pen and notebook immediately available) begin by writing down a list of ten things (or more, if you like) that call to you. By ‘call to you’ I mean topics that feel personally important to you to explore. Brainstorm your list, which means you don’t evaluate, you just write. They could be related to physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual pursuits. Whatever they are, write them down.

Once they’re on the page, you can take a second look and spend some time sitting with each of them to see which have the loudest voice inside you. It’s also here you can evaluate and see which seem the most realistic to you to accomplish, but don’t shy away if your inner voice calls you back to one of them. That’s a sure sign of its importance in your life.

Okay, you have your list, you’ve selected the ones that raised their hands and you’re ready to go. Pick one that you feel most drawn to and energizes you.

Now it’s action time.

Tell yourself that you have the power to make progress on this item, that it has called to you because it wants to live through you. It wants to come alive in this world and you are the one to give it life. Jump in. Get excited. Think of one or two or three practical steps you can take and then take them. And as you act, give yourself credit for choosing to grow and expand your universe, no matter what size your actions take.

I know you can do it!

Now go prove to yourself that you can do it. And with every action you take, shift your perspective, and believe in yourself. Grow and expand. You deserve it.

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Limitless

My friend, Cheri Warren and I, created a Four Word Question Deck for Self-Discovery. It’s based on an Instagram series of four-word questions I created and beautiful background pictures Cheri designed. We created a 52-card deck that asks questions with the intention of serving as a springboard for going deeper into your inner awareness. They act as a kind of prompt for your intuitive side to tune into knowledge and wisdom you don’t normally experience. If they sound like something you’d be interested in purchasing, information is available at the end of this post.

The reason I’m mentioning this at the beginning of the post is that I recently shuffled through the deck and randomly selected one card to focus on. It read; “is your life limitless”.

I’ve pulled several cards in the past for review since we made the deck and each time it starts out as a mystery why the card appeared. I began with an assumption that they would always make immediate sense to me, but they don’t. And now that I’ve had a chance to reflect on it, I’m glad they don’t, because it encourages me to engage more deeply with them.

In this case, my first reaction to the card, “is your life limitless” was that it depends on what I choose to believe about the whole concept of limitlessness.

I could defer my choice and allow my cultural training to govern my answer and my life path, or I could make an entirely different decision. It was difficult for me to get beyond the idea that my answer has to be, ‘no, my life is not limitless’, regardless of how much I want it to be otherwise.

There are in fact plenty of limits for me to contend with. I have obvious physical, emotional, and mental limits. I cannot defy gravity and fly on my own. I cannot imagine being able to emotionally handle losing family and friends because of a war or other tragedy. And I cannot understand calculus or quantum physics. There also happens to be other significant things I feel limited in performing, which makes me wonder how the answer could be anything but, ‘no’.

And yet I want my answer to be ‘yes, my life is limitless.’

How can I justify this outrageous claim?

I thought about this for quite a while and asked myself, what are my life limits? Can I become a millionaire, walk on the moon, travel around the world, be kind to everyone I meet, sit under a waterfall in the mountains?

It occurred to me that one of the values of considering this question is because it assists me in determining what’s important enough to me to push my limits. Sure, it’s easy to see I have defined limits, but am I allowing my assumptions about them to control the outcomes I experience in my life?

The answer to that for me is ‘yes, I am’. So, I have to wonder, why is this my choice? Am I afraid to push beyond what I believe is possible? How is that worthwhile for me?

So, despite my initial reaction to the appearance of this card, that of course my life is not limitless, I want to shift my awareness and make a conscious choice to test my limits to see which of them are real. I want to collect up all of my assumptions, place them in a bag and tie a tight knot at the top so they can’t escape.

I want to explore the magnitude of my capabilities. How else will I ever know what my actual limits are? If I answer too quickly, I know I will feel smaller than I am. If I listen to everyone else around me, I will fall prey to those who don’t want me to experience too much success. And, if I resist trying to grow, I fail before I even begin.

The value of this card has shown itself to me. Within these four words there lies the promise of expansion outward into the greater world. My life may not be entirely limitless but there is still so much beauty, magic, and radiance for me to experience.

In my heart, I believe the same is true for you.

Should you be interested in purchasing your own Four Word Question Deck for Self-Discovery, please visit my website:

www.messagesforinspiration.com and click on the Four Word Question tab, then click on the picture of the box. From here you can place your order directly.