The Adventures of the Blind/Low Vision/Visually Impaired (BLOVI) Girl-Volume 73: Letting Go of the Outcome and Living in the Moment
As I said in the last blog, my last four blogs will focus on how I have changed in the two years since my accident and the key things on which I am working to live a fuller life. The four things on which I have progressed, and on which I continue to work are getting rid of fear, letting go and not worrying about the outcomes, trusting in God and the Universe and living my unlived life by letting my inner voice guide me. In this blog I talk about how I am learning to let things go and to not get caught up in the end result. This was particularly challenging for someone who had consulted in outcomes evaluation and strategic planning for 15 years. How my mindset has changed is the focus of this blog. But first……………
My WTF of the week is how bad things happen in three’s (and maybe even four’s and five’s). It seems as if a cloud of negative energy has been hovering over my house for the past two weeks, causing crazy stuff and accidents to happen. There was the Ped E Cab Trifecta of a broken seat belt, a pedal falling off in a major intersection and the charger not working. There was another crazy hate e-mail. Four lights in the house that require me to climb up a big ladder went out in two days. There was the trying to curl my hair too quickly curling iron drop that resulted in a large burn on my leg. And the best was the massive hair extension knot that occurred while I was swimming. Let’s just say it involved almost all my hair and took 6 hours to get out. What the heck is going on? Does this happen to anyone else? I am doing my affirmations to dispel the negative energy. I may need to smudge.
This week I can’t get enough of the Baha’i Faith. Years ago, after I did my own comparative religion study by reading books on both western and eastern faiths, I decided my beliefs aligned closely with the Baha’i faith. I looked up the groups that met and then, interestingly, did nothing. A few months later I found myself back at or in the safety of what I knew, the Catholic mass. But that stint did not last long. I was reminded about the Baha’i faith as I was watching Super Soul Sunday on OWN (which you should be watching too). Oprah was talking to Rain Phoenix front The Office about his project Soul Pancake (which you should also check out). He is a Baha’i and was talking about his faith and said some awesome things like creativity is a form of prayer and how in the faith everyone and all religions and perspectives are accepted. So, even though I am not supposed to talk about religion, I am. Soon I will be saying, “Hi, I’m Baha’i:
I used to hold things tightly, to be driven and oriented toward making things happen. I used to get anxious when I could not control things or get things right. Those things made me driven, on the one hand, but stressed on the other. I also did not handle loss well. There was a lot of self-flagellation when things did not go my way or turn out as I expected. That is who I was before the accident. In sum, a person who at times felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. But when the randomness of the accident occurred and in the aftermath so many people did not act like I expected and things did not go at all like I thought they would or should, I realized I cannot predict or control anything. With my expectations and my plans completely shot, I had two choices; give up all control and let it go or drown in “what if’s”, remorse and regrets.
For the past two years I have been working on letting things go. First what this meant was realizing how little of life was in my control and how little I could know about what others thought of me or impact how they acted toward me. The letting go was of not only control and the feeling I could have an impact on other people's perceptions or behaviors; it was also a letting go of anger and forgiving others. I have talked about forgiveness in past blogs and it has been a theme for me. It all started with forgiving myself for causing the accident, I was the one that rigged the bands that knocked out my vision and it was an act of stupidity. If I could not have forgiven myself for that, I would not be where I am. And if I could do that then I could forgive anyone. Letting go also meant letting go of who I was in the past and what I could do. The dreams and plans I had which in part relied on my ability to be a sighed person were no longer a possibility and I had to let go of those goals and create a new reality for myself and in that new reality, new expectations and new dreams. My new reality has just become reality and in this reality I don't focus much on the future or on how things will turn out. Mostly because I have learned despite my best efforts and past notions that was somewhat of an intuit that I have no clue what will happen in the next month or week or day. And because I cannot predict, I do not live and act with the thought of how will this all turn out. It’s a waste of my energy and time, and it is also freeing.
Letting go of the outcome means I try and focus on listening to my inner voice guiding me to do what I think I need to be doing in the present to best fulfill my mission in life and Gods’ plan for me. I have things I want to do, of course, like write a book, but I am more interested in the process of the writing and don’t think much about what it will be or if it will get published or reach an audience. I am like this in my work life, I find myself not planning events ahead or thinking about marketing or coming up with a new way to draw in clients. My focus is just on putting out good stuff and working with my clients as best and authentically as I can.
Letting go has made me feel lighter. I know most of what other people do or think has nothing to do with me, that I really can't change people (especially those closest to me) and that there is no point in having an expectation or illusion of how things turn out, because that typically leads to disappointment. I have given up living in a world of illusion, which is a focus of A Course in Miracles, and have chosen to live in reality and to try and let that reality unfold and be revealed to me. I am neither the center of the universe nor master of the universe; I put my trust in God because that is his/her job. Because of all this, the weight of the world is no longer on my shoulders. And it feels awesome.
Two blogs left. Next week more talk on trusting in God and the Universe.
Keep Moving Forward,
Beth (BLOVI) Medlock
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