3 Key Tips to Moving Forward
Have you ever tried something new, but you really didn’t want to? Think about that experience for a minute. Well, I love the quote from C.S. Lewis that says:
Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.
It’s time to cross the monkey bars my friends.
I will never forget when I left teaching. I thought I was slightly mad myself…but I knew in my gut that it was the only way to heal and move forward into what my life was supposed to look like. I didn’t necessarily know where I was going, but I did it anyway.
As I designed my life around the concept of moving forward, I saw flashes of signs telling me that I was, and still am, on the right path…to go forward without looking back.
I knew that creating a program to heal myself was going to take time…and armed with the knowledge that I didn’t necessarily have all the right answers at that particular moment, I moved forward.
I completed yoga teacher training and went from not being able to move, seriously, almost at all, to moving again. I finished a sports nutrition course with almost a perfect score on the 100 question exam. I made myself eat things like parsnip chips <<< that I actually made myself. All because I kept moving forward.
Throughout it all the 3 key thoughts were as follows.
- Wake up with thoughts of gratitude on your mind…no matter how much pain you are in. This one took me a whole year to work on, and I constantly realigned myself to thoughts of “thank you” as I woke up. I had to change my thoughts away from the physical pain I was experiencing in order to get away from it. I know this sounds odd, but try it. It is necessary to surround yourself with the thoughts you want in your life. The things you want to wake up to. I wanted to wake up to thoughts of gratitude that one day, and mind you I had no idea how this would turn out, that one day, I would wake up without thinking about pain first.
- Faith. I was really upset the day someone doubted my faith. I was allowed to be mad, have bad days, have days I wanted to scream and shout, and ask “why me?” I was not allowed to stop believing that I could do it. That I could actually accomplish what I wanted. We all make mistakes, but it was faith that kept whispering loud and clear, keep going. It will happen. I did have to remove the negative people from my life who didn’t support me on this belief…they simply couldn’t grasp that I was not watering their doubts. I had my own grass to look too.
- Vision. I visualized what the future would look like and stayed away from dwelling on what ifs. I didn’t have time to look back. I kept moving by creating vision boards, don’t laugh they work, and vision word boards. I have one in front of me right this minute. I was a teacher, remember? So I took the top 5 words I wanted to embody daily, blew them up really BIG and put them on tag board behind my computer. Up top so as I am typing, I look up to those words. If I drift off course, I look back to those. Am I creating something that is keeping me aligned to my purpose? Yes. Okay then, I can keep working on it. Am I drifting again? Stop working on that or putting energy into that thought.
These are the keys to my life right now. I still use all 3 daily and practice keeping myself only looking to where I want to go. If you are tempted by comparing yourself to others, stop. That is their stuff, not yours.