What’s your best success story? It might be a career or business success, meeting your soul mate, a personal breakthrough, a creative or academic achievement, a lifestyle change, a contribution to your community, healing your body, finding peace.
When you look back along the path, what was the turning point, the event, thought or action that led to everything else?
Look back beyond the hard work, the persistence, the planning, the growing, the evolving – what was the very first thing that you can point to and say ‘There, there it is! If it wasn’t for that, I might never have started on this path!’
When I look back over the 19 years I have dedicated to my path as a dream analyst and alchemist, the turning point was quite literal. I twisted my ankle. I had a very physical business at the time, and it was in the stopping, observing and listening that I saw where I was ‘meant’ to be, and embarked upon the less travelled road.
Did your success story begin in an equally unexpected way?
And how often have you set out to achieve something big, laid a plan, followed all the ‘right’ steps, worked hard, persisted, yet somehow never really achieved the goal you had envisaged?
The secret? Success depends on many factors, and the biggest is whether your unconscious mind is with you or against you. If your unconscious mind has no beliefs to the contrary, following your carefully planned steps will deliver your success. If your unconscious mind has other plans, your waking life will reflect those, in obstacles you meet, things that seem to ‘go wrong’, physical ailments, as well as in ways that seem more positive to you, such as strangers opening your eyes to a new way, unexpected opportunities landing on your doorstep. Oh, and of course, every night your dreams reveal the intent of your unconscious mind, one of the greatest gifts of all (once you interpret them and do your dream alchemy to ensure that your unconscious mind is working in your best interests.)
And that’s the nitty gritty: is your unconscious mind working in your best interests (in which case you might need to tune in and change your path) or is it working against your best interests, holding you back due to fears and limiting beliefs formed as a result of your past experiences (in which case you need to identify these and do your dream alchemy to transform them)?
If you have a vision and your unconscious is supportive from the start, then you’ll fly along. You’ll still have to do the work, meet the challenges and evolve, but you’ll feel the effects of the wind beneath your wings.
And then there are those times when you’re on the right path, but your unconscious mind is focused on a much bigger version of your destination. I remember, almost 12 years ago, putting the final touches to my five page website, sitting back and thinking, ‘There, that’s done now’. I’m glad I didn’t know how much work would be required, step by step, responding to the muse, requests, necessity, new technology, new media – years of huge, huge work – to grow the site through its many stages of evolution to where it is today. (And yes, I know, there’s more to come!)
I’ve been pondering this since Margaret Stuart interviewed me earlier this month about my path, the challenges and turning points along the way. (Update: Margaret’s podcast is no longer available.)
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