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Reclaiming Your Power When You Feel Like Life’s Out of Control
Are you feeling frayed around the edges, like you’re not sure how much longer you can hold it all together?
If so, you’re not alone!
A lot of us are starting to feel like we’re nearing the end of our rope. I mean, this has been going on for a long time now!
The daily anxiety, the death counts, the news — it just seems to go on and on.
Even those of us who started out really strong (or maybe just in denial!), and we thought, “This will be over soon…” Well, “soon” has come and gone and here we still are! Depending where you are in the world, you may not even have passed the peak yet, and you may be wondering how much more you can take.
The news wants to feed the Fear Virus and paint a picture of doom and gloom, and we have to counter it with signs of hope. Yes, there is devastation around us — I don’t want to ignore or downplay that. But I also want to remind you that there is a pattern here. And as hard as it is to believe, this too shall pass.
Our job is to stay focused on what we can control and stay in alignment. We need to stay physically healthy for ourselves and our families, and maybe even more importantly, stay spiritually and mentally healthy.
How we think, feel, and believe impacts our reality.
The reality in front of us is not the reality we are creating- this present condition did not begin now, it began in the past. Yes, we have the ability to respond or react to what is- and also to claim something even better before it happens! That’s why even when we’re beset with money fears, health fears, financial issues, grief, and so on, the readings I’m doing these days keep saying, “Hey, you have to stay out of victim mentality today.”
And so, when we’re in this emotional hairball of fear and confinement and going a little stir-crazy (okay, maybe a LOT crazy!)… we have to remember that this is not the only reality. There is something that we’re being initiated into, and that transformation can be a little scary. But there is light on the other side.
The patterns of the Universe tell us that there will come a time of respite, some form of a gift to come, even if we can’t see it right now.
Think about all the caterpillars that got shoved into their cocoons. We know what’s coming out the other side because we’ve seen it happen before, but the poor caterpillar…!
She is not having fun. She is not saying, “Oh, yippee, I’m going to become a butterfly!” No! She’s getting super ill inside that dark and confined cocoon. She’s a caterpillar and then a larva then a pupa and she’s losing all the fuzzy protected parts of herself. Parts are dying off while other parts are growing. Ouch!
If you could shine a light into the caterpillar’s psyche, you might be telling her, “Hey, buddy, you don’t have to just sit and eat leaves all day long with your fuzzy friends. Instead, you’re going to have wings. Isn’t that awesome? They’re going to be gorgeous and you’re going to FLY!”
If you told the caterpillar that, she’d be like, “Are you effing kidding? Just let me go back to my leaf.”
That’s what a lot of us are saying right now! “Let us go back to our leaves! This is way too scary. I want to be a caterpillar again. Please let me go back there.”
So when you look at it like this, it’s natural that our responses and our reactions in our time of confinement and change is NOT, “Oh, yippee! I’m transforming! Yay!”
No, a lot of us are not going to be feeling like that. Instead, we’re ready for this time to be over. We even say that, “Okay, shouldn’t this be done by now? I want to get back to life. I need to get back to work, back to normal, or whatever. Screw the transformation, we have families that need tending to and more importantly rent to pay and a future to depend on! But we are powerless over what’s going on in the world. We can’t control when “this” is over any more than the caterpillar can.
But we have an advantage over the caterpillar. We have a choice of how we want to be.
We have to remind ourselves that we are discovering meaning. I don’t mean bullshitting yourself and telling yourself you have to be happy, joyous, and free. That’s a bunch of hogwash! This time is hard. But it’s also equally compelling and creative and beautiful and wondrous. We can take this time to consider what changes need to be made when that new normal appears. What kind of world do we want to live in? How do we contribute to that?
Even in the hard times — especially in the hard times — we have to find meaning. We have to bring ourselves back to what’s in front of us right here and now, in this 24 hours, so we don’t buy into the Fear Virus. We can’t be Chicken Little and believe the sky is falling and everything’s going to crash on everyone and hope for something better at the same time. We can make different choices and remind ourselves of what we can control, our reactions and responses to what is directly in front of us. We can trust and do our part.
And, at the same time, we can hold compassionate space for things that we CAN’T control. There are things we are powerless over right now. We have to recognize when we have to surrender to life on life’s terms. We have to humbly surrender to what IS. And while we surrender, we can also foster peace and blessings, for ourselves and for others, even when we don’t feel like it.
That’s the work: Surrendering to what is while embracing the knowledge that there’s more than what we’re capable of seeing. If I’m going to be the best I can be for other people, I have to be in both places. I have to recognize what’s really going on, and also realize, okay, there is a spiritual solution to maintaining a sense of equilibrium through this.
I’ve talked before about the Stockdale Paradox. The prisoners of war in the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War all managed to survive and come out the other side because they believed. They held a belief that one day, even if they died, that something beautiful would come. Peace would come. There would be blessings because of what they endured.
They were powerless to change their outer circumstances, but they still chose their inner response.
I go back to the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
This is our time to be wise, to recognize that peace is possible, even in the midst of turmoil. When the world appears to be falling apart in front of our faces, we can still have faith that there is something greater going on. And we can ask to be shown our next right action to make a better world.
Remember that miracles aren’t always obvious to us, and when they do show up, they usually show up out of the blue. Make space for miracles, and don’t put a deadline on them. They’re coming, I promise.
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Colette Baron-Reid, known by her fans as The Oracle, is an internationally acclaimed intuitive counsellor, Psychic Medium, Spiritual Teacher and host of the TV show Messages From Spirit, as well as The Adventures of the Motorcycle Medium.
She’s also a bestselling author whose work has been translated into 27 languages, a keynote speaker, recording artist, entrepreneur, and was voted one of the Top 100 Most Spiritually Influential People in 2013. She has appeared on talk shows like Dr Phil, Oprah & Friends and The Today Show, in national magazines like Elle and W, and on-air as the host of the wildly popular call-in radio show Ask The Oracle on Hay House Radio. You can grab her latest book Unchartered; The Journey Through Uncertainty into Infinite Potential anywhere books are sold.
Feature slider photo credit: Anastasia Shuraeva
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