Without a doubt, I am in a state of flux! My life is shifting and changing in ways I could not have imagined a few years ago. Yet, it is happening and I couldn’t be happier.

Normally when I feel like everything around me is shifting and changing, it is because I am trying to achieve something. Trying to get something done! In the midst of my attempt to craft or create some desired outcome, I bump up against a wall. Or, something doesn’t go as planned. Whether it was easier than I imagined or harder. Either way I have to adapt and adjust to the circumstances.

I struggle when things don’t go as I imagined. I visualize or intend a result.., and when it looks or feels different, I am spun around by the force of change. Chaos is not uncommon for me when I am in pursuit. A good metaphor for my determination would be ‘a dog with a bone’.

However for the last 7 or 8 months my focus has been on staying present. Keeping my thoughts in this moment.., not six months from now. I have always known I have a “future-orientation”.

As a result of consciously reminding myself to stay present… it has also become clear that I am also easily distracted by the past. Usually as a way to reinforce some limiting belief.

Being present has been a huge gift. Although it feels chaotic sometimes too. Mostly because I have to self-manage my tendencies to overlay the past and future. Who knew it would require such attention for something that sounds so simple. “Be Present”!

As a result of sticking with this… my life is transforming in magical ways. I am transforming.

I am in the limen of this shift. So I can still feel the pull to reverting to comfortable patterns and behaviors that are known so well. But I also feel compelled forward into new ways of being. Recognizing who I am becoming, even though this version of me feels unfamiliar, even awkward.

Sometimes I don’t know what to do with myself!

And here in lies the beauty of this experience and this time in my life. I am simply hanging with the discomfort of not knowing. Riding the waves of personal evolution. Not to some grander outcome. To an new level of comfort with myself. Simply being.

Here’s the biggest surprise. When I stay present… and am not trying to control or predefine my destination.., TONS of miraculous changes occur… many beyond what I could have imagined for myself.

All this time I thought my commitment to controlling my future is what made me successful. In reality, the attempts at control now feel limiting! I’ve heard about and even known at some level that control is an illusion. But it was hard to set down while in the middle of it.

For me, it required making a stronger commitment to being present… Then, staying with the discomfort that removing the lenses of the past and future triggers. When I wear either the lens of future or the past.., it distorts the vision of what is possible. Even though they both seem so real when I’m looking through them.

Once you begin to take them off… it feels like you are surrounded by fog and nothing is clear. Your orientation is off and the direction or next step is hidden. It is SO tempting to put those lenses or filters right back on!

But if you’re willing to stay in that moment of discomfort. If you are willing to let the path reveal itself (rather than forcing yourself in a particular direction!), different and interesting possibilities emerge, and you are drawn by them into the next new. That which lies beyond the liminal, beyond what you can envision.

Even a dog eventually tires of the over chewed bone.

It just took this dog a bit longer to set it down and move on to something new!

With Light, Love, and Laughter
Charles