Who decided challenges had to be something we asked for?

It’s something I seem to have absorbed from corporate culture. Almost every job I ever applied for had something along the lines of ‘Must be good at overcoming challenges’ in the job description and it became something I had on my CV, ‘Welcomes the opportunity to overcome challenges.’

And one day a few months back, as I was writing about my ideal life and exactly how I wanted my business to be, I noticed I had written I wanted ‘a challenging, rewarding business.’

WTF?

I suddenly had the realisation that I was inviting ‘challenges’ into my life. I was actively asking for them. And right now, I want an easy, rewarding, smooth, flowing business and life.

Sure, challenges will come along but I don’t have to invite more of them into my experience.

This is a perfect example of ‘as a man thinketh.’ Because I did constantly face challenges and of course it was rewarding to overcome them but every day was a battle, a struggle to overcome whatever challenge I’d manifested.

Seems like ‘overcoming challenges’ is something in the culture that we’ve absorbed. I mean, just look at the sentence I’ve written above, ‘challenges will come.’ Who TF says so?

Even as I write about choosing to have business and life be fun and easy, I invite challenges in!

Its hard to change our thinking when what we want to change seems to be in the very air all around us.

My life and business is becoming fun and easy. Former challenges melt away. Problems resolve themselves.

Why not?

Why can’t we have a life that’s fun and easy?

Who decided it had to be a struggle to get what we want and be happy?

Don’t get me wrong, I admire people who overcome difficulties and restrictive circumstances to become amazing, successful individuals.

But why do we have to struggle to overcome it? Why can’t overcoming adversity and restrictive circumstances by easy, fun and rewarding as we play and laugh and dance our way into the life we want to live.

There seems to be to be a collective hypnosis that we’ve all bought into, that life is hard, that we must struggle to overcome. That everything we have is hard won and we must hold on tight.

I do this too. That’s what it is to be a human being, we fall victim to our subconscious programming and go on autopilot.

But when I catch myself, I bring myself back to creative thinking. What do I want to create in my life? How do I want to live?

There are challenges enough in life without us inviting more.

And that’s just one example of a subconscious program that could be holding you back from the life you want to live, stopping you from being all you are capable of.

There are so many more, hundreds of supporting and conflicting beliefs that encage you just as securely as a tiger at the zoo.

Its growing awareness of the cage and actively dismantling it that helps us live free from self imposed boundaries.

But what is even more powerful is simply pretending the cage isn’t there and deciding to go for what you want.

Yes, the cage is strong in our thoughts, but it too is imaginary. So if we have stronger thoughts about what we want, the cage disappears. How can it withstand the stronger focus? It can’t.

This is why its so important to every day, multiple times a day to spend time thinking about your ideal life, the ideal you that you want to be. A fully immersive experience of the imagination, fully realised details such as how you look, what you’re eating, how you feel, the house you live in, the work you do.

Don’t worry about the how, think only of the what.

What it is you want and what it is like.

Every detail, every sense engaged in the experience. Bring your imagination, your full creative power to bear on building this vision.

And set it in your mind with repetition. Every day, multiple times a day. And even better, write it out every day. As if it has already happened. Your ideal life. Your ideal self. Your ideal work. Your ideal relationship. Your ideal health and fitness. Your ideal social engagements. Make it all real in your mind.

Every single day.

And then do what you’ve got to do each day, holding that vision in place and allow yourself to be drawn forward towards it.

This is your challenge, just as its mine. Every day take the time to imagine your ideal life, write it out and hold it in your mind’s eye, like a talisman.

This will help keep you from drowning in the collective hypnotic trance of despair, of finding everything a struggle.

Yes, you still have to do what’s in front of you that needs doing but you know, like you know your own name that that ideal life is coming closer every day.

And you trust in it. You know everything always works out perfectly for you, the plan comes together.

Know what you want, decide you will live with it, choose it for yourself every single day.

And at the very least you’ll make yourself feel good and at the absolute best, you’ll find yourself being coincidentally in the right place at the right time, the right people showing up to help you, to support your journey as you keep holding your vision and watching it unfold even better than you could ever have imagined.

And you might say, ‘Piffle! Nonsense, woowoo new age superstition.’

Sure, absolutely. And yet how do you explain people like Ajak Deng, who was born as her mother fled from war in South Sudan and after a perilous childhood in refugee camps became an internationally renowned model and best friends with the editors of Vogue and Naomi Campbell?

Or Dale Vince who left school at 15 yrs old, spent years as a New Age Traveller and went on to form eco electricity company Ecotricity and has recently started a company making diamonds using carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere. Oh and he’s now a multi millionaire.

Both Elon Musk and Steve Jobs dropped out of University, so the conventional expected pattern of building a successful life didn’t apply to them either.

And there are loads of examples of these people who have created incredible lives by following their instincts.

Why not you? Why not me?

For me, I keep overthinking my writing. Not this, this every day blog flows easily, I mean the novels I want to write. I ask people to review and then I change based on what they say and then I stop writing because I stop trusting myself, stop trusting my creative genius.

Why would my creative genius come out to play when I keep second guessing it and allowing other people who are not, I might add successful published authors, critique before its ready.

Do what it is you were born to do. I was born to write. You know what you were born for too.

And stop inviting in challenges. Who TF needs more of that?

Love,

Cynthia xx

PS. If you’re not sure how, or feel stuck and unable to move on then I have the answer. Bite Size coaching. I’ll write about it soon. In the meantime, in case this January has you feeling rough, let me remind you of the fabulous Winter WonderMind. All you need to embrace the beauty of Winter and enjoy every day.

https://www.winterwondermind.com/