The Magic Ingredient for Living Your Truer Life

Sep 23, 2014

I adore stories with magic and fantasy elements because they remind me our lives are epic journeys, and we work to create what is good and true for ourselves.

I love the reminder to rout the dragons that hoard our treasure and to not be led astray by false gods that try to trick us into being fearful creatures hiding in the shadows.

I need the examples of living what is true rather than conforming to a formula or doing what is expected.

If you study fantasy stories, you’ll notice all effective magic has something in common: containment. If the magicians in a story can do anything, the story falls flat. Magic needs form or it doesn’t work.

Your life is exactly the same. You need containment and boundaries for your truer life to continually reveal itself.

There are all kinds of ways to create healthy containment for yourself. Victoria discovered three powerful ways when she took The Life Navigation Course last winter.

“When my husband got cancer, he said, ‘If I don’t make it, you are going to have a chapter two and you need to start thinking about your chapter two.’ We had a wonderful marriage and most of my life was based on him managing the big stuff. All of a sudden, I had to do everything and I wasn’t sure if I could do it. Could I have a chapter two?”

This feeling of “Can I do it?” came to a crisis point when most of Victoria’s house was flooded. She hated living in the mess, didn’t know if she could manage the reconstruction project, wasn’t sure how to ask for what she wanted in the remodel.

Then she signed up for The Life Navigation Course. Here’s where the magic comes in, the magic you can use starting now.

1.
Communal Containers of Questing and Listening

“I had been too busy to pay attention to what my strengths were, to what I trusted about myself, to what I wanted. Having those Monday mornings and the Wednesday classes, where I could just be quiet and ponder, “What do I want?’ and all the journaling we did, and just listening to you, Jen, I realized I can do this.”

Ask yourself: What time do you have set aside to listen? To ponder the big and small questions? How are you supported in keeping that commitment?

Humans are not designed to navigate our lives alone. We need containers. We need to be held(Click to Tweet)

2.
Conditions of Enoughness

Victoria was raised by parents who communicated to her that nothing she did was ever quite good enough and that her creative desires were silly. Victoria used Conditions of Enoughness to reclaim her creative voice. “I started with, ‘Today I will do one creative thing and that will be enough.’ I can declare that is enough because I say so. I don’t have to rewrite my novel today; I can revise a section.”

Victoria also used COE’s to break down what she needed to do to launch her greeting card business. “It just clicked. Until then, business had seemed too difficult for me to do. But breaking it down to what would satisfy me, worked.” And just a few weeks ago, Victoria exhibited at a large business expo and hosted a huge open house with her products.

Ask yourself: How can declaring what is enough, dependent on only my own actions, help me move forward today? One declaration, one movement. Check it out.

3.
The Magic of Practice

Victoria practiced getting in touch with her desires by asking, “What do I want?” in small moments of life. She had always wanted to go to France and she’d amassed enough miles to go and take a friend. But when she spent time asking, “What do I want?,” she realized she didn’t desire France anymore. She got current with her desires, which changed everything. “Right now what I want to do is get up every morning and see what I can do with my business. I want to look outside and see what’s going on in my yard. Those are the things that I desire now.” Her genuine desires revealed the shape of her truer life.

“I was never afraid I wouldn’t find something to do. It was a matter of choosing what I really wanted to do and to discern if it was right for me,” Victoria added. “This was a very peaceful yet radical process that helped me discern what’s next.”

We all need containment and we often need someone else to help create that containment for us. We try too often to tough it out alone, often falling into shame because we can’t find our way. But when we find simple time-tested structures to hold us, so much freedom and truth – real magic! – can be revealed.

Love,

Jen

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