Sara Hand

In our daily journey it is so easy to get caught up in the “all” of what we must do. We hide in the busyness of our routines, the desires of our hearts, only to have them surface at odd moments as unrecognized sadness.

It is spring time in Florida. From the balmy breeze, the blue skies, the budding greenery and oh yes the traffic. It is a time of growth, a time of renewal and refreshing. It is a time to open the windows and let the fresh air fill the house, before it again gets hot.

It is a great time to look at the activities of life, the busyness that fills your day and ask “Why?” If the answers make sense…Great!

If not, here is a quote from Marianne Williamson that I enjoy.

"It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us."

Our Deepest Fear

 “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.’ We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

(A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”, Harper Collins, 1992. From Chapter 7, Section 3])

2009 is coming to a close and maybe you feel like you have fallen short. Maybe you haven’t recovered from 2008 yet, and you are wondering if you ever will…

My older daughter was taking ice skating lessons and my younger daughter couldn’t wait until she was 3 and able to start. At her first lesson, she headed out onto the ice with her helmet and gloves. All bundled up and pink, the instructor completed her goalie image with knee, elbow and bum pads. Good thing…The first couple lessons were spent purposefully falling.

I came away from this spectacle with several things:

• We all fall at some time or another, so don’t be surprised or beat yourself up when it happens.
• Wearing the correct safety equipment and knowing how to fall can minimize how badly you get hurt.
• More important than knowing how to fall, is knowing how to get up.

If like my daughter you have spent considerable time practicing, you may be able to get back up on our own. However, maybe you weren’t as well padded. Maybe you haven’t fallen before, at least not like this. Maybe you‘ve tried to get up, but it’s cold, it’s wet and seems like no matter how hard you try you just can’t seem to make it on your own. Sometimes part of getting up is asking for help.

Love only can exist with the ability to choose.

“If you do this, you can be like God”…they already were. They were deceived into thinking that by works they could get something that they already had, something they already were.

 The purpose of the enemy is always to call into question…as a child of the kingdom, as a citizen on this earth with the nationality of the kingdom, you have been redeemed.  The relationship between the work of your hands, your mouth and the creative nature of God which resides within you which can not help but to expand forth even as the universe can not cease to expand…has been restored to proper order. Your very nature is one of increase!

 Yet I can choose to consistently run on less gears than I have. I can consistently choose to underutilize my resources. Now in full knowledge, why would anyone do that…

 Fear that those resources are not mine…really…that the promise is in word and not in substance

 Fear that if I succeed it will be taken away…authority issues.

Fear that I am less than what has been said of me, fear that if I step out I will be exposed as the inadequate being that I am, and shamed.

 Without fear I can choose to operate within or without the authority that I have been given.

 Fear removes choice…for I now feel compelled to take care of my own safety.

 The tree of life that God gave me in the beginning, calibrated my being for life. I acted and chose based on the standards of life God had set within me.

 The tree of the knowledge of Good and evil removed the standards of God as the default and allowed me to choose which program, which standard I would want to run. The choices were overwhelming and because my ability to make choices was based on only my limited perspective…many of my choices were flawed.

As a sales professional we do things that are at the top of the list of “scary” for the average person. We talk to strangers on a daily basis, calling people we don’t know on the telephone or even walking in places we have never been before to talk to people we have never met.  We ask others to make decisions. Not only do we ask them to make decisions, but to do so about money. We talk about money. We ask how they would like to pay for their purchase. Sometimes we even give them the chance to back out, knowing if they don’t back out now the chances of them doing it later are less…Or at least these are the things we train to do. We buy books and watch videos and go to conferences and seminars and workshops all in the attempts to improve our performance and our bottom line. Yet after all this training, we still often walk out kicking ourselves for not doing what we have studied so hard to do. Why…when we actually get to the moment we have prepared for…why do we back down or forget?

Actually there are a number of reasons, but at the heart is fear.  Fear that someone may not like us, fear that they may not see us as competent or proficient, fear that because of our inadequacies they won’t buy. Yet so interesting is the fact that because we are afraid we don’t do the things that are necessary to make the sale and so as the old saying goes… “What we fear has come upon us.”