Joy is Your Power
Tama J. Kieves
By Tama J. Kieves
I am committed to allowing myself to receive more freaking goodness than I can imagine. To begin, I know that, independent of anyone else’s predictions or convictions, my life can be fantastic. I am going to stop calling negativity and limitation “realism.” Instead, I am just going to call them negativity and limitation.
We have all bought into the superstition that goodness is a soap bubble about to burst. But I challenge you to think of sadness and strain as a bubble, too; a bubble that can burst just as easily. It all depends on where you put your focus and what you call real.
Let me tell you a personal story. Years ago, to support the release of my first book “This Time I Dance! Creating the Work you Love,” I put myself on the road. It was a brave move to invest in myself. At the first event of my “tour,” I spoke to a high-powered women’s business group. They loved me, and I did cartwheels inside.
That afternoon, still cartwheeling, I walked into one of those stores that sell ethnic home accessories, fun art, and things you really don’t need but suddenly have to have. I sashayed down the aisles, boogie author, she who had just nailed her first real talk on this adventure. I picked up a piggy bank, a leather olive green pig with red and purple wings. “When pigs fly,” I thought to myself and grinned. My journey of writing and launching the book has(had?) seemed like realizing the impossible. I held the little crafted object. I should get this, I thought, to symbolize shattering the customary, rising above the gravitational pull of doubt and fear.
“Yeah, but you know how things go,” another inner voice pipes up. “It’s just the beginning of your trip. You don’t know how the rest will go. You could be disappointed, and then you’ll feel silly with your triumphant, hopeful totem here.” The voice throws me a bone. “Let’s wait and see how things turn out,” it says. It’s my rational voice—the one that controls the checkbook, buys only the sale flowers at the florist, and never orders a brownie with her tea. I put the pig back down.
That night, I had a book signing that broke my heart. So few people came. I looked at the empty chairs, and thought about how much plane fare, hotel, and other “manifestations of faith” this trip would cost me. I felt like a piñata, clubbed until the sweetness fell out of me. “Good thing you didn’t get that silly triumphant pig,” said the voice inside. I cringed at the thought of having believed in myself, believing everything would turn out just right, believing I was now finally on that roll I’d always dreamed about.
Today, years later, I think I should have bought the pig. I should have bought my celebration totem, because in that moment I felt alive and I believed—I knew something true, deep in my bones. The following disappointment didn’t change the truth of the original dazzling moment, until I let it. When I doubted myself, I relinquished my power. It was a vote to make moments of pain carry more weight than moments of joy and realization.
“I’m having more fun than I’ve ever had in my life,” a client said to me recently, giddiness in her voice. Her business was taking off, and she felt her luck changing. “I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop,” she said. I was struck by the realization of how often we do this to ourselves. We tell ourselves that life can’t be that good: it has to stop, it has to end; what goes up must come down. “We are meant to grow and expand,” I tell her. It is our evolutionary instinct to strengthen, blossom, and develop heightened capacities. I share a quote with her from Esther and Jerry Hicks: “The better it gets, the better it gets.”
Just because negativity is familiar doesn’t necessarily make it significant. When you’re in your joy, you are more intelligent, resourceful, and present to possibilities. It is who you really are. Circumstances that follow may tempt you to forget your passion and knowledge, but the disillusionment is really the illusion!
For me, the path of being self-employed, having a dream and moving it into the world in a big way has been one of constantly remembering a sweeter reality, no matter what conditions look like. The circumstances fluctuate, but my good does not. I’m always on the road to even more grace. There are so many fantastic opportunities that are waiting to come into my life right now the moment I allow myself to fully accept my value and welcome them. I’m not denying reality; I’m claiming it.
Of course there are suffering and pain in the world. But these are the places where we, the members of humanity, haven’t gotten it right yet. Why would we make these the standard of reality if it is not a reality we wish to create?
Good things are knocking at your door right now. Open the door. Allow yourself to believe that you can have the dream you desire. Take in the abundance wherever you are and allow more to shower upon you, with your arms wide open for as long as you can. It is never too much for you to handle—you were designed to blossom. Practice allowing yourself to be loved just as the Sufi poet Hafiz describes: “And the sun and the moon sometimes argue over who gets to tuck me in at night. If you think I’m having more fun than anyone else on the planet, you are absolutely correct.”
I urge you to try on a new sense of realism. When good things happen to you, don’t wait for the other shoe to drop. Expect something even better now. You’re just getting started!. Remember, being in your joy is being in your power. I’d say the shoe on the ground… is about to fly.
Tama J. Kieves is the bestselling author of “THIS TIME I DANCE! Creating the Work You Love (How One Harvard Lawyer Left It All to Have It All!)” She is also a national A Course in Miracles presenter and sought-after speaker and career coach who has helped thousands world-wide to discover and live their true life’s work. Visit her at www.ThisTimeIDance.com and sign up for FREE inspiration and support through her monthly e-newsletter or download her FREE Transformational Report on “Finding Your Calling Now.”
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