OVERVIEW
Each of us has something seeking to express through us. You sense what this is in your quiet moments – through the silent whispers of your Spirit when you turn within. As you connect more deeply with your inner calling and trust the flow which is happening in your life, you are able to express your essential nature and offer it to the flow of Spirit. What is calling to you? How can you listen to what is flowing in your life to bring forth that which is essential?
TRANSCRIPTION
So good morning Cityside and welcome to all the people who are online. There’s a nice little check going on out there. So I’m gonna begin with a story and it’s a story about a high jumper named Dick Fosbury. Maybe you’ve heard of him. And he was this tall, lanky, geeky guy and people made fun of him because he looked so terrible when he was high jumping. And you know, at that time the Russians really dominated the um, the sport and they said he was an aberration the way he jumped. But he was a scientist and an engineering student. And he said, you know, the way that we jump over this high jump, it doesn’t make any sense because we’re not using the law of physics. So he started to try some different things and one of the things he tried was to go over backwards.
He called it the fosbury flop and people were making fun of him, but he somehow made the Olympic team, he placed last, but he still got his birth on the team. And at the Mexico Olympics in 1968, he made the final round. There were five people, and guess what? He won with his fosbury flop. And I love this story because he’s a great example of someone who was listening to this inner nudge and he decided to follow it in spite of the fact that people made fun of him. He just didn’t listen to him. And nobody has won a high jump without going the bar back over the bar backwards since that time. It changed the sport. So we all have something essential to offer just like he did. It might be small, it might be big, but I like to think about it that we’re part of this divine symphony and we each have a part to play in the divine symphony. And my intention today is to inspire you to embrace yours, to really, you know, get in touch with what is essential within you and to embrace that.
And my second intention is to really encourage you to get into the flow of your life and to know that the universe has a plan for your life which is already unfolding. If you trust it, your life is flowing already. And so let’s start with a few concepts. This month people have been talking about this idea about life, your gift giving, receiving all of that. And as many people have said, it starts with us surrendering to the divine. That’s where it begins. But we resist that, right? And the reason we resist it is because we wanna direct the outcome. We wanna tell the universe how it’s gonna be. And in his book, the universe always has a plan. Matt Kahn talks about how we need to evolve in our understanding of the law of attraction and how it relates to time. So he shares, while there is a law of at attraction, it’s essential to understand it from a heart centered perspective.
I love that in the old paradigm, the antiquated way of teaching it, it felt exciting, but it didn’t quite amount to bringing you the thing you were eager to manifest. And this is because in the old paradigm, you were in resistance to time, you were trying to create something that didn’t exist. Now. And from the soul’s perspective, the law of attraction is a chance to say, I accept that my desire confirms what I want and that something’s waiting for me. And I acknowledge that my desire is a sneak preview of where my life is going. So why is time important? Cuz everything in life is about right, timing, right through time, through this dimension of time, you’re preparing to receive at a higher level by cultivating your own maturity and your own worthiness, um, for what you want. And our spirit is smarter than we are, right?
Do you ever hear the stories about people winning the lottery and then they spend all the money? It’s sort of like that is kind of what he’s talking about. Like sometimes you want something but you’re not really quite ready to receive it. You know what I’m talking about? And so, you know, if the universe has to give you what you want, but it does it in a way that compliments and continues your rate of expansion. And this is why everything happens over time. I like to call it divine timing. And my practitioner talks to me about a lot about waiting on the Lord. And if you’re, if you don’t like the word Lord, cuz it sounds too old fashioned, call it whatever you like, waiting on spirit. Waiting on the universe. But to do that, we have to trust. Trust is foundational to the whole thing.
And giving and receiving is all about trusting. We have to trust that the universe is gonna provide for us. We have to trust that we’re gonna be safe. We have to trust that these spiritual principles we practice here, that they work. And how do we build trust? We practice, we affirm, we focus on where we’re going, not on what’s missing, right? We need to look at what we already have, not what we don’t have. And we also look forward without criticizing ourselves. It’s really easy to say, okay, this is where I am right now, but look, I I haven’t gone very far. Shouldn’t I be farther than this by now? And so then we get really focused on like, well what did I do wrong? Instead of saying, okay, I’m gonna give myself credit for how I have progressed, right? I can see evidence that that this is working in my life, but I keep my focus on where I’m going.
Mother Teresa told Lynn Twist that she never worried about having enough money because God always provided exactly what she needed, exactly when she needed it. And I think that’s great advice, but we don’t always trust, right? We’re kind of like, God, here’s my memo about what I want. And then we keep texting, God, God, did you get my memo? Did you get my memo? Did you forget that I prayed about this? We just keep like we don’t let go because we’re not trusting the flow of it. But you know, Ernest Holmes taught, when you say a prayer, it’s complete unto itself. Release it, let it go. Don’t worry about it. But when we worry, we’re coming from lack, we don’t believe it’s possible. And it also, you know, this whole idea of seeing what’s present also makes me think about the parable of the loaves and the fishes.
And I can’t remember how many loaves and fishes there were. I’m sorry I didn’t look it up. But you know, you think about it, Jesus had, you know, I think it was, how many was it? Five loaves. Okay, five loaves and two fishes for a crowd of 30,000 or whatever the thousands. And so what did he do? He stood and he blessed what he already had. And then we could mentally try to say, well then like just more people came, they gave him more food, but he wasn’t worried. He knew that there would be a bounty, there would be an abundance. He blessed what was already present. And you know, as I was preparing this, it’s funny, we were at my brother’s yesterday and my sister-in-law was um, has been Lutheran for a long time and you know, the Luther, the Lutheran church, she’s in the stance that they have on some of the current events.
You know, she’s just struggling with it. She’s like, I’m not gonna go to the church there anymore. So I’m prepping my talk and I’m like, you know, I just wanna be clear. I’m not saying it’s all good all the time in America right now cuz we’re in a very negative conversation as a country, right? And I think that we’re focused on what’s absent, we’re focused on what’s wrong constantly. And we’re seeing a lot of bad behavior right now. I mean, you know, I could go down a tangent about why no one should have guns anymore after the last few weeks, right? But you know, for me spiritually, I have to stay in. Where do I want to see things? So if you feel called to work on the issues that are happening now in the world, just listen to my words that way, right? Like what’s your role?
If this speaks to your heart, what is your role? What is the essential part of you that you wanna offer to shift things in our country, right? Not just like, oh, I gotta go manifest for myself. But it’s like, you know, take it a step deeper. Like what am I really here to, to do? And so I’m gonna pivot back to my talk now. So let’s talk about timing again. You know, what do we do? I used to call it baking in the oven, right? When you have something that’s trying to emerge in your life, but it’s not quite done yet, what do we do then? We can be so impatient, right? We can give into our anxiety like, oh my God, this is not gonna work out for me. Instead of saying, no, it’s baking. Can I just be curious right now about what’s trying to happen?
Not grip, not grasp, but not claw, but just sort of wonder like, oh, I wonder where I’m going right now. You know, your life is consciousness evolving, right? Your consciousness is evolving. I don’t know if you can look back on your spiritual journey and see that, but I can do that with mine. But you need to be where, ready for where you’re going, right? And so, you know, we know it’s not gonna be instantaneous and that’s part of the gift, right? Like the journey of growing. You know, I think about my change out of corporate life, which I’m still kind of shocked I did all these many years later. But I think back on that and I think that was one of the happiest times of my life. Besides my like, I’m free. I am free <laugh> and you’re also unemployed, <laugh>.
But I gave myself permission to just explore in a way that I had never done before in my life. I, I kind of had a plan, which was that I could, you know, I had to live within a certain amount of money and whatever. But I loved that period of my life cuz I was just open. I spent a lot of time with my family when my great nephew was little and I looked at a lot of things and it evolved over time. It continues to evolve. You know, I got opportunities to help some companies and someone said, Hey, you should do Vistage. Then I was tired of not making money, then I decided to go work for consulting firm for a while. Still do Vistage, you know? But then I said, okay, I get serious about this. My point is just like we’re all evolving all the time, right?
We’re getting information as we go. And I have to say like now I look and go, it was so obvious that I’m doing the work I’m supposed to be doing, but it wasn’t obvious to me in the moment. And that’s how our consciousness evolves. Who do I need to become for where my life is going? How do I need to be different? You know, cuz we’re never done evolving. It’d be great if we were, but what life would get boring, right? Have you ever had the experience or maybe, you know, someone who’s had the experience, they achieve a great goal and then they’re kind of bored and unhappy and they’re like, what now? Like we’re meant to always be growing and evolving. And it doesn’t mean it has to be a big thing. It could just be like, wow, you know, something is speaking to me like I wanna, I wanna learn to cook better.
That’s one of my, one of my goals. But you know, maybe it’s that art speaks to you or music speaks to you and you’ve never given any room for the expression of that in your life. It doesn’t have to be like, I’m going out to conquer the world. It can be just revealing more of what your, what your spirit wants. And you know, sometimes we do get tested in the big things, you know, I don’t believe like it’s a punishing god up there. We just don’t teach that here. But sometimes we kind of get like the, a little test to see like, are you serious about what you’re doing? Like something gets thrown in your path and it throws you off. But the test is there to strengthen your faith. You know, it’s not a sign that you don’t deserve it. It’s not a sign that it’s not gonna happen.
It’s just there to check. Like, are you serious about this? Um, there’s a story that Tasha tells in her book, Tasha, um, who wrote our book, Tasha Silver. And she said, you know, there was a zen monk and he sent a group of students out to build a bridge. And then when they were done building the bridge, he jumped on it hard several times to see if it would stand right. And I think life does that to us a little bit. Like right? Sometimes the bridge gets jumped on a little bit. Like are you really serious about this? But the thing about it is that it also causes us to go within and check ourself. Like Tasha Silver says she herself when that happens, she recognizes whether she’s really serious about what she’s calling in or if she’s just sort of bypassing in an it’s all good way.
And we can all do that, right? Like we can, we can be sort of halfhearted in our, our intent and then we get tested and then we have to really look at ourselves and say, am I really serious about this? Right? And if we’re serious, then maybe some, sometimes we gotta shift. But in our impatience, we want things to be pa fast. Our ego wants everything to be fast. Like I want it now. But I have found that decisions make themselves when the timing is right. Have you ever had that experience? Like you’re struggling, you’re trying to make a decision and you just like, there’s just nothing there. You just can’t feel what you should do. Has anyone ever had that experience besides me? Right? And so the wisdom is don’t decide yet then if you don’t know yet, it’s not time and it’s okay to not know, right?
But we live in a culture that tells you you’re always supposed to know everything all the time, but it’s not true, right? And I’ve seen that in my own life where I was just like, okay, I really don’t know. That was true when I left my corporate job. I really don’t know what I wanna do. You know, I went on some job interviews that I was extremely halfhearted about, you know? And one of ’em, I, they voted on whether I was gonna get the job and I got nine yeses and one no. So I didn’t get the job and I’m like, thank God I didn’t get that job. I would’ve hated that job, right? But the universe is smarter than I am about what’s good for my life and I just have to slow down and listen. So like doors that don’t open for us.
Have you ever had a doorknob open that you really wanted to open in your life? You know, that means they’re not for us. But what do we try to do? We try to beat the door down with a bat, right? Let me in. I wanna get in here. Instead of saying, huh, that door is closed. I wonder why that door is closed. Maybe there’s some bigger wisdom happening here that that’s not a path than I am meant to go down, right? And we have to trust that like if it flows, it’s for us. If it doesn’t flow, it’s not for us. Got a couple head shakes there. And you know this expression rejection is God’s protection. Have you ever heard that one before? Rejection is God’s protection. Sometimes the things that don’t work out for us are absolutely the best for us in the long run.
So I wanna give you a couple of reframes just to use during the week, just some questions that you can ask yourself. And the first one is a simple question. And this inspiration comes from a book I read by Greg McCune, it’s called Effortless. And he wrote another book called Essentialism, which is also excellent. But he asks this question, what if it could be easy? We believe things have to be hard. We believe we have to work for everything. I am the queen of this. You know, Linda’s probably go in the back road row going, yeah, she is <laugh>, but what if it could be easy? What if it could just flow? You know, what would make it easier? I’ve been really for myself, asking myself this question. Like I realized I was just plugged in all the time and that was affecting my state of mind, right?
I’d get up in the morning, I’d do the wordle, then you know, then I’d meditate, then I’d walk Ollie. But then later in the day I’m like okay, I haven’t done the spelling bee. I have to be a genius in the spelling bee, right? And then I’d be obsessed. Ask Rich, he’ll tell you. He’s be like, are you still doing that spelling be, I’m like, I am. But even with Facebook, like I’m just not on social media much anymore because I realized like I was sucking all the space out of my life with these things and that if I just gave myself some space in the morning, my life felt easier. And so just being in this question, like what would make it easier?
And you know, simple things too, like planning ahead, you know, just things that would make it more spacious. Asking for help would a novel idea. But when we turn things over to spirit and keep our mind open to things being easier, to things flowing, they can shift. You know, another great reframing question that I love is what else is possible? You know, we can get so fixed in, in believing that a certain path is the right path or a certain thing. It’s like it’s just fixed. It feels fixed to us. And we gotta ask ourselves what else is possible? I had something happen this week. John will know this cuz he’s prayed with me 700 times about this. I took over this group in Indiana a couple years ago from a guy who was retiring in my Vistage work and I’ve just kind of struggled with it.
And I keep being like, how do I get rid of this? Blah, blah blah. So <laugh> this week I was talking to a guy who’s in South Bend and he’s like, well I don’t know why you don’t have a group over here. And then I got a new idea. I’m like, I could move my group to South Bend. I’m like, it’s really close to our house in Michigan. It would make it easier. Like, why didn’t I ever think about that? But in my own frame of mind, I just didn’t see that anything else was possible other than I was fixed. So the path is always unfolding. Like wherever your life is now, that’s not where it’s gonna be forever. Spirit has a way of moving things forward. And I wanna tell you about one of my friends cuz this is super exciting and it’s a great illustration of embracing what’s essential in you.
So my friend Jody Wellman, she um, she used to live in the same building as I did over in the West Loop, my old building. And she also happened to be a Vistage chair at that time. And she’s the nicest lady. I’d come home, she would’ve baked like some delicious thing for me and she’d leave it in the lobby, you know, gluten-free, dairy free, corn free, everything free. But it’s still tasted good. And I’d be like, wow. So Jody didn’t love being a Vistage chair cuz she just, she just wanted, she didn’t like, you know, how we have to bring in business and all that kind of stuff. And so she went off and she got into business with another guy who was really an established like person who did organizational development. And she did that for a while. But then inside of her there was just this little nudge that kept happening and she decided, well I’m gonna get a positive psychology degree.
And she did that at whatever the school is in Pennsylvania. I think it’s University of Pennsylvania or something that has a good positive psychology program. And she said, you know what, I’m gonna leave this partnership. I join and I’m gonna start my own company and I’m gonna call it 4,000 Mondays. And she was inspired by the fact that, you know, she had lost her mom as a reasonably young person. And you know, her mom, I, I don’t know exactly what happened with her mom, but her mom’s life was cut short. And she said, you know, I just wanna be in the energy of really being alive, really being vibrant. So she started her own company and it’s really focused on living your life, like living your life. So she gave a Ted talk at um, where did she give it? Brigham Young some something like that.
Brigham Young, doesn’t matter. Um, but her talk was about her philosophy. She has over a million views. Isn’t that incredible? Now she didn’t start out to say like, I’m gonna give a Ted talk and I’m gonna have over a million views. She just went and gave a really great perfect Ted talk. And because she was talking about really living your life about what is essential to you, then people resonated with her message. So look her up, Jodi Wellman, J o d I. But she was also in the question, what else is possible for me? Right? What next step could I take that moves me toward a greater, um, experience of what is essential, what my spirit wants to express? You know, Jesus said I came that you might have life and have it more abundantly, right? Abundantly. And that doesn’t just mean things like life more abundantly means you have a greater experience of your spirit.
That which brings you joy and you know when you’re happy, right? You know when you’re happy, you can feel it. Like, it’s like just this good feeling in the middle. And contra on the other side of that, you know when you’re not happy, right? You know, when you don’t feel good cuz you sort of have that icky whatever feeling, but we rationalize away the icky thing or we let other people tell us, you know, what that means Instead of just trusting that we have this intuition within ourselves already that is speaking to us about what we want, right? And what wants to express through us.
And so it’s not about your idea, ego’s idea about your life, cuz that’s all up here, right? It’s about your spirit’s idea of your life. So embrace playfulness. It doesn’t matter how fast you get there, what matters is the journey that you’re on. Cuz honestly, that’s the fun part, is the journey. And it’s also where we transform. So like say to your spirit, take this over and do this through me. If you want me to do it, do it through me. Show me. Right? Just show me what you want me to do. And if God is our source, as Judy read to us, if God is our source, God can use anything to sustain us. It’s not our job, it’s not our idea. You know, I, I think about my friend Maggie Guttier, who I was in prac training with, and I’ve told this story before, but like she wanted her own house with a porch.
Someone gave her one free to live in, right? You know, and she’s like, but I want my own house. I’m like, you have your own house. It was free <laugh>, right? So we don’t know what can happen, but we follow the thread of inner guidance. When we have an intuition, we listen to it and we need to con uh, cultivate our confidence in ourselves as we do that. Cuz often we hold ourselves back cuz we don’t have confidence in ourselves. Sometimes we can really get into this like, who am I to do this thing? Instead of saying like, Nope, the divine gave me this idea, I’m gonna follow it, right? It wasn’t even my idea. It’s like the inspiration I’m looking at Greg musicians, like follow the lead of the inspiration of the creativity. That’s the invitation for everyone. And we’re co-creating with spirits. So our job is to make the offering your life is your offering. It is the gift that you are offering the world. And we can do this through our practice too. We can just remind ourselves constantly, like, if you want me to do this, please open the way. Help me to be patient. Help me to let this reveal itself to me. Help me to see what’s already present here. Now, you know, so often when we’re worried we don’t even see what’s already present.
So the only journey is the one within Rainer Murray. Wilko. Wilke said that. And so the expression of what is essential in you begins with the inner journey. So let your inner journey reveal the outer and having an abundant life. And whatever your expression of uh, is of that, whether it’s your creativity, your work, your money, your relationships, all of it starts with trust. It all starts with trust. Like I trust that the universe is working on my behalf. Show me, I trust, show me and remind yourself to ask the question what else is possible? I dwell in impossibility. It doesn’t say I dwell in impossibility. I dwell in possibility. Repeat that after me. I dwell in possibility. One more time, a little louder. I dwell in possibility when you say yes, God takes over spirit takes over rich. That’s our joke at home. So <laugh>, I say, God bless you. He said, you mean spirit, bless you. So let’s take this into prayer. Come on up, Greg. When you say yes, God takes over. So I just invite you to turn within with me and just to sense into this presence and power, this presence, which is never an absence. This inner knowing, this inner connection within you, which is love, grace, possibility, ease, flow.
And I know that I am one with this and I know that each person hearing my words is one with this divine flow, this divine possibility, this divine grace, which always and everywhere is happening. So from this place of oneness, I just declare for each and every one of us that we are open to our lives evolving. I know for each and every one of us that we consciously make our very life the gift to the universe, to the world, to spirit. And I just know that we’re courageous in doing this. We are courageous in moving forward, trusting that God’s got us, trusting that all is well, trusting that the way will appear. I say yes to this on all our behalfs, and I’m just so grateful for each and every person hearing my words. I’m so grateful for the beautiful essential expression that is you. I’m so grateful that more and more all the time, that is fully coming out into the world for the world to see. And I’m so grateful to know that you are fully supported by spirit in each and every moment. I say yes to this for all of us. And I’m grateful
And with so much gratitude, I say, and so it is. Ah, amen.