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What To Do When You Don't Know What To Do

Part 7 of 10

A shadow of a person on the sand from head to knee.  They are elongated and roughly triangular.

Welcome back.  Last week we accepted that our choices played a role in our current situation and surrendered to trusting our intuition.  Today I crawled around in the dungeon in a video game before starting up the blog.  I trusted my intuition to play before writing.  I also learned about the idea of retro causality which is a quantum theory that the future can affect the past.  It is over my head, but how I applied it is that having a vision for your future can inform the decisions you make in the now.  If you think you have no future, you may decide to give up, or make choices more focused on fleeting pleasure.  If, for example, you decided you wanted a promotion, that desired future can influence the choices you make today.  Today is also my husband’s birthday and I braved looking at the photos from the past on this day.  We went to the beach several years ago.  It was a gorgeous sunny day.  The sun is a theme for today.  When you have clarity, you can shine as bright as the sun.  If you have done the work to let go of limiting beliefs and trust yourself, you will shine with an inner light.  The picture I chose for today’s blog is my shadow.  Light throws shadows.  In art, shadows provide depth and help to make a picture more realistic.  Our ideas about our future can throw shadows and deepen our now.

The challenge is having that vision.  How will you create your future if you are unclear?  We discussed in a previous post about brainstorming.  My mom used to say if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.  A dream will not become reality unless we put in the effort.  Yinka Ewuola tells us to choose our hard.  Our mindset can make difficult things not seem impossible.  The light shines brighter in the dark.  What are the shadows in your life that clarity can help to chase away?  I have achieved powerful growth by taking a leap into the unknown.  I dreamed about an incredible motivational speech and used that to fuel my first PLAY-shop.  We do not have to fear the shadows because they can be dispelled by light.  We can also embrace that our light will cast shadows into the future.  What would happen if you achieved your dream?  How would that impact your broader community?  Are you hiding your talents under a bushel?  Who are you depriving by hiding your gifts?  Will you allow your fear of the future to determine your now?

“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.”

― Neil Gaiman, A Game of You

When we leave this earth, a part of us remains with those who love us.  I remember those who have passed on by trying to incorporate what I admired about them in my life.  In the biological world, there is a cycle of life and decay is used to fuel the soil for future growth.  Possibility is a frightening thing.  What if I live up to my potential?  What if I don’t?  We draft the story of our lives and seemingly insignificant things can result in huge plot twists.  There are infinite possibilities and that can be scary but sometimes life is like a Choose Your Own Adventure book.  We flip the pages back and forth.  Sometimes the story ends, but we can start again and make different choices.  What if I made the wrong choice?  Surrender to the outcome and use it as data to inform your next steps.  Very few choices will result in annihilation.  Usually it is more a fear of annihilation versus the reality of what will actually happen.  We fear the pain and oftentimes our imagined pain hurts more than the actual pain.    What will help you to manifest your inner world?

The foundations for the future affect our present and past.  The past can be a specter haunting us into inaction.  It’s not going to work.  It didn’t work before.  Why bother?  As we learned in the previous blog, our perceived failures contain elements of our future success.  If you are in the dark, imagine gaining clarity as that tiny beacon of light and hope.  Dare to imagine a new world.  I am not going to promise you a rose garden.  In my forays into gardening, we need to clear out the rocks, till the soil, and nurture the plants.  Even with the best soil and conditions, there are aphids and disease.  Sometimes our plants bear fruit, and a horrible neighbor steals it.  We can plant again.  We can learn what works and what we need to improve.  Some shadows should be left in the past.  Limiting beliefs, negative self-talk, and inaction will dim our light.  When the light is behind you, the shadow you cast can be longer and taller than you are presently.  Once you gain clarity, you can create worlds each more fantastic than the prior one if you believe and have the courage to act.  Will you let your light shine?  Namaste