How bold and outrageous is your ‘To Do’ list?

We are so conditioned by fear, failure and the fear of failure that something as mundane as making a ‘To Do’ list can be a traumatic experience. Rattling away in your woeful subconscious is the belief that you’re ‘setting yourself up for failure’. Again.

So, why subject yourself to more evidence that you are a ‘loser’, that you’re never going to make ‘it’, that you just won’t be able to survive another embarrassment, another submission to temptation,  another ‘fall from grace’ in someone else’s eyes and of course, in your own?

I want to tell you something.

The only ‘failure’ that matters is the failure to remember who and what you truly are.

The only ‘losing’ that matters is losing the awareness of who and what you truly are.

The only embarrassment that matters is the embarrassment of discovering that you could have spared yourself the embarrassment had you tuned in to who and what you truly are.

The only ‘fall from grace’ that matters is the falling from Awareness of who and what you truly are.

If only you could remember this and remind yourself again and again of it, your life would be truly so much easier and so much more joyful.

In the mammoth tides of conditioned existence, it is only too easy, too much of a habit to forget, to be swept up in the tides, to lose sight of the truth of our Innocence, who we are IN ESSENCE.

This is why it is so important to dedicate time every day and several times a day if possible to remind yourself of these essential truths, to return to INNOCENCE, to who and what you are IN ESSENCE.

It’s only the third day of the New Year. Why not begin this habit of reminding yourself of the truth of who and what you are first thing when you wake up and last thing before you go to bed. Why not do it several times during the day, pausing for just a few moments to remind yourself of this truth.

But perhaps you are not convinced that this is true, that IN ESSENCE, you are Love, you are Life, you are God and you are limitless, capable of great feats. If so, consider how you were as an infant, completely unaware of anything. Just being. Just human BE-ing.

In that state, there was no fear, no judgment, no resistance, no avoidance, no guilt, no unworthiness. All of these were learned so that your experience of life is now filtered through what you have learned and all the beliefs, expectations and perceptions therein.

As an infant, you were response-able meaning, you responded to the stimulation around you and you responded to the internal states within you such as hunger, cold and other physical discomfort. You did this without having had to learn how to. And you did this effortlessly because you were not saddled with self-sabotaging thoughts and fears.

This is how you accomplished such amazing feats as walking and talking. (You think these are not ‘amazing’? Consider why it is considered such a feat for an adult who has had spinal injury and lost their ability to walk but is able to walk again)

But that was as an infant, you might say. What good is that to me now?

It is useful to remember that there was a time, before any ‘learning’/conditioning happened, when you were far more free, far less psychologically and emotionally vulnerable and far more capable of astounding feats such as crawling, walking and speaking. Today, you can return to such a state of INNOCENCE, of boundless presence and possibility. You can do this through the practice of meditation and mindfulness. And the more you practice, the less limiting impact your learning/conditioning will have on you.

As I explained in a previous post, it is our thinking that imposes limits on us. But when we are present, when we no longer dwell on our thoughts, taking them so seriously, we find ourselves in a state of openness and spaciousness wherein the natural energy and power of Life which is Love is free to express itself in, as and through us. This is our Love or God state of being. Our INNOCENCE or IN-ESSENCE This is the state where anything is possible. There is no ‘To Do’ list that can ever exhaust this state and its possibilities!

So, write that ‘To Do’ list from this state of INNOCENCE, of Love. Make it a mile long if you wish. Include things that seem fantastical. Let your imagination run wild. Let the freedom and boldness of Love hold your hand, fill your heart and break open the doors that imprison your mind.

A bold ‘To Do’ list is an expression of faith in something greater and more powerful than your conditioned mind and its meager expectations.

Will you accomplish everything you have on that list? Probably not. Does that mean you’ve failed? Absolutely not. What then?

You’ve broken through some mental barriers. You’ve begun to more freely and joyously explore the field of Infinite Possibilities. You’ve started rewiring your brain. You’ve given yourself the freedom to look beyond your current beliefs and expectations. And you will experience the psychological, mental, emotional and physical benefits of all of this. You see, the greatest benefit in making that list is in the making of it!

More importantly, you will have given yourself the freedom to let Love guide you! What could be more important and powerful than that? And it is this same Love that will neither judge nor punish you for not accomplishing everything on your ‘To Do’ list but inspire you further to be its expression in thought, word and action. Isn’t that what you know deep in your heart you desire most?

So, go ahead, make that To-Do list as bold and outrageous as you can 🙂