Adapting with the Times

Over the past few weeks, in what seems like an instant, the world as we knew it changed. In what feels like almost an overnight shift, our routines have been uprooted, our comfort zones threatened, and our boundaries pushed.

Consequently, over the past few weeks, probably like you, I have felt myself shift from anger, to resentment, to acceptance, to fear, to uncertainty, to optimism, back to anger, into enlightenment, back to uncertainty, into impatience, and back over to faith. To sum it up, I’ve been all over the map.

But what’s important to realize is that this is a normal reaction to current events and that none of us should ever feel ashamed for feeling this way. The point in the journey to a higher consciousness is not to be “perfect” and unaffected all of the time but, rather, it's about accepting our true feelings and working past them using the tools that we have available to us at the time. We need not judge ourselves for how we feel; we only need to make sure that we work through those emotions so that we do not end up repressing them.

We must not wallow in emotions such as self-pity, anger, resentment, criticism, fear, or anything that takes us farther away from our happiness. Because, if we do, we will only be prolonging our negative feelings and taking ourselves farther away from recognizing the solutions that we seek.

Now, while I have written and spoken on the topic at great length, I feel that now is the perfect time to implement the concept of presence. The thing is, the more we long for things to be normal again, and the more we impatiently WAIT for that day to come, the more stressed and anxious we will ultimately feel.

We cannot hurry something that we have no control over. But we can choose to spend our time focusing on what we can do, which has a huge impact on how we will experience our lives and everything that we will encounter. We can focus on stepping up to the plate so that our elevated consciousness adds to the collective consciousness in order to resolve the global situation faster. But in the bigger picture, we need to be mindful that everything has its own time.

We cannot hurry a flower to bloom; it has its own process and it knows what it is doing. From the outside it might seem like we’re waiting and waiting for something to happen, and things might certainly appear chaotic to the naked eye. But the flower knows when the time is right and will not be rushed into submission, just like there is an unseen order that will bring us into the light when we are ready to receive it.

Likewise, we need to have trust and faith in the bigger picture of which we may not be fully aware at the moment. And in doing so, we can start to relax the hurry and focus on all of the power we do have right now to affect our lives for the better. We do have control over our thoughts. We can choose our choices and actions. We can behave in ways that align us with what we want to experience the most. We are not powerless and we are not victims. Our thoughts and feelings have energy and that energy not only determines how we feel, it also determines what we end up manifesting.

So then, why don’t we choose to focus on everything that we have to appreciate right now? Things might not be the same as they were a month ago, but was everything perfect back then anyway? Just because things are not the same does not ultimately mean there isn’t an opportunity waiting in the wings for us to notice it. And it doesn’t mean that we cannot look for silver linings in where we are right now.

Where had we been closing our eyes to issues that we didn’t want to deal with? What fears and insecurities had we been sweeping under the rug as we distracted ourselves with our busy lives? Where had we been avoiding conversations that needed to happen by spending a little more time at work than was necessary?

The truth is, if we focus only on the problem, incessantly bitching and complaining about what we don’t like, what “they” are doing wrong, and what we feel we can’t have or do, then we will only be feeding into that problem while ignoring the great opportunity we have before us to go deeper. But if we focus on what we love and enjoy, on making the most of the situation, and on what we desire moving forward, we can create a happy momentum in our own lives that will also carry over into the lives of others. We have a responsibility to both ourselves and all of humankind to start to focus on better days while we make the effort to make our present moments the best they can be.

The gist of it is, when we look for problems, we find them. But when we look for solutions, we find those too. It can work either way, but the choice is one only we can make for ourselves. So what will you choose today? Will you choose to see everything that is going “wrong” in your world, or will you choose inspiration, openness, and glorious opportunity to make things better?