Easy? No thanks I opt for difficult!

How does the word easy rest with you?  It’s a strange word with so many connotations, many of which aren’t always positive!

Easy lover … be warned Phil Collins would tell us and don’t fall for an easy lover who will steal your heart and you won’t even feel it.  That’s really not a positive outlook is it?

Easy rider … didn’t quite end in the easy flamboyant lifestyle the road tripping guys intended

We are so often ingrained that anything that’s easy is bad for us.  We must work hard, play hard and love hard.  We need to suffer to succeed.

Is that necessarily true?  It’s not the working long hours or putting in effort which is the issue, it’s the word hard!!  Is your effort making your life easy … if not, for what reason are you doing it?  Are you even enjoying it any more?  Sometimes we feel we are suffering and yet given the options we would rather choose the life we have than make changes to live it differently – in those cases, stop moaning and recognise your choice.

On Twitter this morning, Davina McKail (@dreamwhisperer) suggests that to give in is to give inwards to yourself.  And yesterday she noted that to give up on what isn’t working for you – is not failure, we’re surrendering and handing over to our higher power.

There’s been a bit of a theme running along these lines recently as Sally Asling (@surreylets) wrote an article about letting go in business and comparing it to the bit in the Titanic where Rose has to let go of Jack to save herself.

When you notice a theme running in your life, things you see or hear – music on the radio, tweets which catch your attention, articles which jump out at you – it’s time to listen up and think about where in your life you would be wise to tune in and actually hear the alarm clock which is trying to wake you up to your own situation.

If you’ve been making things more difficult for yourself by holding onto a  ‘Jack’ equivalent, if you feel that giving in or giving up is failure, maybe it’s time to recognise what positive step could actually be made if you did give in or up.

Sometimes you need to say ‘enough is enough’ or ‘I have done all I can here’.  Is that failure?  Not in my book, it’s actually being willing to make life easier.

Adopt the mantra – easy, easy, easy!  Question your decisions, look at your options, which one is easy and which one will you now take?

Conflict and Mediation

I watched as the group dispersed and one lady hung back, she’d been quiet during the meeting;  listening, watching; it looked like she had a question to ask.  I smiled encouragingly.

‘May I ask you something?’ she asked.  ‘Of course, how can I help you?’

It transpired that she was married to a wonderful man and therefore not in need of mediation, but she wanted to know if she could have done anything differently at the time, 27 years ago, to have kept her first marriage alive.  She’d often wondered about it, and could still get upset that she might have been too hasty.  She’d learned many years later from her ex mother in law that she ‘should’ have used an iron fist in a velvet glove approach with her ex husband, that was how to deal with him.

The conversation progressed from there, and she began to understand that mediation is more common than most people realise.  Mediation is used to find the best possible outcome for those with any form of conflict.  Conflict can be internal – this lady still had conflicting feelings and emotions around her divorce.  27 years is a long time to hang on to it.

‘I know I shouldn’t even be thinking of it anymore as it was so long ago’ she confessed ‘but there’s a wee part of me which still wonders’.

With a few questions we quickly got to the cause of her internal conflict, and it was very quickly put to bed.  She thanked me and sighed.  That sigh indicated that this lady had no reason to carry this burden around with her any longer, it was now gone.

As she turned to leave, she stopped, turned round and said ‘I feel as if a great weight has been lifted from me’.

Mediation is simply a facilitating process, whether with another individual or with the parts of yourself , which cause you pain, fear or simply to clear up things which you are curious about.  All it takes is being willing to want to reach an end to the issue.

Stuffing things away and pretending they don’t exist is as helpful as a chocolate teapot.

Cherokee Legend – which wolf do you feed?

This story says it all, you get the results you focus on … enjoy …

“The Wolves Within”

An old Grandfather said to his grandson, who came to him with anger at a friend who had done him an injustice, “Let me tell you a story.

I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do.

But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times.” He continued, “It is as if there are two wolves inside me. One is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him, and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.

But the other wolf, ah! He is full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is helpless anger,for his anger will change nothing.

Sometimes, it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit.”

The boy looked intently into his Grandfather’s eyes and asked, “Which one wins, Grandfather?”

The Grandfather smiled and quietly said, “The one I feed.”

History or His Story?

If you think that history makes you what you are then you might be in for a shock – it certainly brings you to where you are, but it sure as hell doesn’t define you going forward.

Take the break up of the word and make it ‘his story’ and you will quickly recognise that whether you be male or female the ‘his’ is purely a generic term for mankind.

A dear friend of mine, Wendy Salter, has written a wonderful book called Herstoria – you can follow Wendy’s blog from the blogroll.

Relying on past experiences to provide us with a template for the future is all well and good if the experiences have served us well.  If on the other hand they were necessary for our growth and learning, let’s just take those salient points and leave the story behind.  To do that we have to be grateful and forgiving …. mainly of ourselves and then other people.   Holding onto history to taint our lives with pain, fear, guilt and sorrow does not give us the ease and capacity which is our right by birth.

But holy cow it just isn’t so easy is it?  I know I’ve spent years getting rid of many a story and rightly so as it really was just keeping me in a place where I could abdicate responsibility and pretend that it wasn’t my fault.  Well the fact is that we’re not to blame for things, it’s just that you do have to take responsibility.  There’s a fine line in there I thought, and I’ve remained curious about fault and not to blame – until suddenly the penny dropped.

Just get up, accept what is and get on with it.

Stop wearing the problem, stop talking about, stop feeding the negativity.

Realise that it’s not all about you but the only way you can make a difference is to make it all about you – your responsibility to make a change to your attitude, to what you can do about it .

Start to recognise that you are not to blame and forgive yourself for giving yourself such a hard time.  Stop blaming others – and recognise they were doing the best they could – even if it seems a bit odd.

We make mistakes only so’s to learn better how not to do it next time.  And that doesn’t mean that you stop trying, it means putting in place better strategies.  It doesn’t mean erecting barriers against what you perceive as injustice – it wasn’t an injustice, you had to learn how to grow up and be better than you were.

You’ve never been perfect, it’s unlikely you ever will be, but you can be better than you were – how’s about it?  Are you ready to give it your best shot … even if it’s for the 28th time?