Hindsight may be 20-20 but sixty-eight days into a new life, I stop to think of words from the past.
In January, someone told me, “Cheryl expect a different outcome!”
Honestly at the time, this stung a bit.
I felt the implication that somehow I was stuck in seeing the same and somehow was not getting past my expectations.
Expectations are hard, especially when you are consciously trying to change your life.
Or said another way, when you are trying to be conscious about your life, expectations can create barriers.
For me expectations come from several sources including whatever new learning I have today about myself and my life.
Things happen and you say to yourself, well ok, then maybe tomorrow things will go this way.
See, you just created an expectation.
It might seem benign at the time, but over time, this simple process can create within you ideas about how things are going to be that you can lose track of — even though they still have influence over you and the decisions you make in your life.
I am not saying that we shouldn’t create expectations.
I am just trying to get underneath the hood of what I am conscious of and what I am no longer questioning or paying attention to.
Like so much in life, there is always a balancing going on between two contrasts: the short term and the long term, the challenge and the least resistance, the unseen and the known.
Cut to the chase is the effort to let go of the unnecessary.
Mindfulness is paying attention in this moment.
Taking it all in is a gathering of the essential.
Finding balance is the effort to find your point between the contrasts.
How does this balancing play out in your life?
Sixty-eight days ago in my life, a very different outcome happened.
My husband of 23 years asked for divorce.
He wants to be alone he said.
Hmmm…. not an outcome I had ever expected.
Especially when I uncovered an ulterior motive on his part: a five year secret relationship with another woman. Hmmm…. Hmmm….!
What to do?
I listened to my friends.
I listened to myself.
Then I listened to my friends some more.
They and I came to the same point: Cheryl, what do you want?
In this moment, in the face of this unexpected outcome, what do I want? Hmmm…. Hmmm….!
Amazingly, wonderfully, the answer was simple. I want my life!
In this moment, I choose me.
In this moment, I will stand with me and allow me to move forward.
Whatever brought me to this point is nowhere as important as what I choose in this moment to take me forward into the next moments of my life.
In the last 68 days, I have moved on literally and emotionally.
I have physically moved, creating a new home for myself and my daughter.
I have also moved into the place of the different outcome.
My expectation is that today and tomorrow I will have the strength within me to choose me, allowing me to bloom however me is ready to do so.
I realize that somewhere along the way in these 68 days, I have let go of a burden held so long that I had lost awareness of it.
I feel lighter.
I feel a peace within.
I feel the joy of me.
New outcomes are already appearing!
Sixty-eight days into a new me!
A lot of my writing just comes in the moment. I feel an urge rise to put pen to paper. No outline. Not much forethought. Out the words come, all on their own. For me its always an act of mindfulness. A mindful moment.
Sixty-Eight Days into a New Life is one of these mindful moments. Read more on mindfulness and my mindful moments.
