Walking Your Own Yellow Brick Road
Transported from her home and her comfortable frame of reference, Dorothy embarked on a path of discovery that took her to the strange Land of Oz on the other side of the rainbow. After she inadvertently killed a wicked witch, she was thanked by a grateful "good witch," who awarded her the ruby slippers of the dead witch. Thus began her journey of self-revelation. Toward its end, she consciously faced and destroyed Oz's foremost villain, the wicked Witch of the West. Finally unlocking the secret of personal fulfillment, Dorothy found that she was the only person who could get her what she desired most - back home. Her gift, the ruby slippers she had worn since the very beginning of her journey, was the key to get back to Kansas.
As you move down your personal yellow brick road, you are more likely to enjoy the journey as your range of choice increases. While it may not get you to Oz more quickly, the ability to make conscious choices will ensure that you are more mature and less naive when you get there. A naive person continues to make poor choices. The only path toward consciousness is through the heart.
Life is fundamentally a journey of consciousness, a state of growing awareness. Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice.
The beauty of developing awareness of human behavior patterns is that you can gain insight into your own way of seeing and responding to life's ups and downs. If you change your belief system and begin to live positively in uncertainty, you can face each day with faith that you will be provided for in every way. Though coping mechanisms fluctuate from helpful to detrimental, they ultimately prevent us from creating our best selves. Your desire for a new way of functioning is must be stronger than your desire to cling to old defenses. Your inner observer is ready and present when higher consciousness expresses itself.
I Want What I Want
The greatest freedom in life is that of choice. The single most powerful investment you can ever make in life is in yourself. Your goal should be to add choices so you can define a different and positive pattern. This is the essence of growth.
Choice is a precious gift: the gift of independent thought and action. Many of us are slaves of the stories we unconsciously tell ourselves about our lives. Freedom begins the moment we become conscious of the plot line we are living and, with this insight, recognize that we can step into another story altogether. Our experiences of life quite literally are defined by our assumptions.
You alone are responsible for the design of your life. The choices you make become your road map.
Once you develop a personal voice and move beyond conventional limited roles, you will develop the courage to act upon your personal purpose. By honing the specific behaviors of courage, you can transcend personal and societal barriers to succeed in whatever arenas you choose. If we're willing to make difficult decisions that define our character, decisions that come straight from the heart, and we're also willing to take responsibility for the consequences of actions, we will discover that choice is what guides our personal destiny.
The goal of life is to invent and create, not to simply get by. It takes will and choice to break out of your behavior pattern. Stephen Covey states in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, "Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose. Within the freedom to choose are those endowments that make us uniquely human-self-awareness; imagination (the ability to create in our minds beyond our present reality); conscience (a deep inner awareness of the principles that govern our behavior, and a sense of the degree to which our thoughts and actions are in harmony with them); and independent will (the ability to act based on our self-awareness, free of all other influences). Once you have decided on your highest priorities, conscious choice takes over. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon."
For example, I know of a couple that has lived from hand to mouth ever since they got together. Neither of them is motivated to work, so their source of support has been derived largely from unemployment and disability. When they run out of benefits, they work just long enough to qualify again and then they go back on the dole. Occasionally the unemployment check doesn't arrive on time, and they have to beg their family and friends to provide them with groceries. So what do they do when their check comes in? They buy lap dances at the local strip club, and, toys for themselves (because they don't want to "spoil the child by buying toys for her").
Do they ever think of actually putting some money by to cover themselves when the check doesn't arrive? Perish the thought. Do they actually think about looking for work? Why, as long as they can get by on the dole. And then they lament that they can't buy a house, have a functioning car, etc. They post about how materialistic other people are and on how other people should live their lives, laughing at others beliefs. Yet it's those "Other" people who work and pay taxes that support their own sorry asses.
This couple is a perfect example of someone who has squandered their opportunities and make poor choices out of laziness, cowardice, immediate gratification, and immaturity. Surprisingly, their child is more mature than they are, probably because she sees the effects of their poor choices every day and has rejected their reality.
Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion fell asleep in the poppy field because the wicked witch had cast a poisonous spell on them. Most of us want to sleepwalk through life. We have fallen asleep to our essential self. In The Wizard of Oz, the good witch wakes up Dorothy and the Lion by making it snow so they can continue their journey to Oz. Change takes hard work. We must wake up and use conscious choice to follow our own yellow brick road.
Your Energy: A Force to Be Reckoned With
Our energy is the power of our hearts and spirits to choose courage as a way of living. Choosing courage means not needing to be defined by the opinions of others or to gain the approval of others. Each journey begins by choosing new thoughts and attitudes and describing them through language.
Conscious choice requires taking responsibility for the experiences you create. You do many things out of habit. Sometimes the choices are little ones, such as deciding to honk your horn in irritation at another driver. Or they may be big ones, such as spreading malicious gossip about another person. These decisions affect the outcome of your life. Managing your choices is a full-time job.
Joseph Jaworski said in Synchronicity,'I discovered that people are not really afraid of dying; they're afraid of not ever having lived, not ever having deeply considered their life's higher purpose, and not ever having stepped into that purpose and at least tried to make a difference in this world."
Discovering life's higher purpose requires courage. To see your purpose clearly is the gift of insight. Fulfilling that purpose requires even more courage.
You may deceive yourself into believing that choice can be enjoyed without responsibility. William H. Nix writes in Character Works, "The freedom to choose brings with it the mantle of responsibility. True freedom of choice does not exist without responsibility. Responsibility does not exist without a standard, or set of standards. It is the standard that creates the need for responsibility. The standard is a person's purpose."
I know of a woman who claims that leaving her ex-husband was the most courageous act she has ever done. But what she fails to mention is that she left him with a Dear John letter. She fails to see that an act of 'courage", without taking responsibility for the act, is in fact an act of extreme cowardice.
Hopefully, all of us have some awareness of our specific purpose. To live on purpose means not by accident. One way to start the process of discovery is to simply ask yourself: "What is my purpose here on this earth?" and "What am to do with my life?" The answer to these questions provides insight and help you to discover your heart's desire. It takes courage to experience life in a new and different way.
Courage is not a tangible commodity. Courage is an inner-essence like love, creativity, and energy. Although you can not buy it in a store, it is one of the most valuable possessions on earth. Without courage, we could never learn from our mistakes. Rita Mae Brown in Rubyfruit Jungle says the definition of insanity is doing the same thing, but expecting a different result.
For example the same aforementioned woman who left her ex with a Dear John letter, further exacerbated the act by then spreading lies to family and friends about her ex. But that was expected by everyone, since she did the same thing with her previous ex. She doesn't get it that no one believes her since they see her repeat the same actions again and again. She continues to re-create herself again and again. But she always returns to her old patterns of behavior. And the cycle begins again.
Sue Patton Thoele, therapist and author of several books, said, "No matter how much we learn the language of courage or how much we change our behavior, I am not sure we'll automatically be courageous one-hundred percent of the time. Fear is woven into the very fiber of our DNA-perhaps from the burning times (fifteenth to seventeenth centuries Europe)." People were tortured during the burning times, and their courage was ripped away. People were made to mistrust each other. One of the most courageous things we can do is to realize that we may have to re-choose and re-choose and re-choose to consciously act in new ways. Every once in a while we'll do that spontaneously. Then we should congratulate ourselves, underscoring the behavior so that we'll be more likely to choose it again when presented with similar circumstances or feelings. With this approach we can erase the mistrust that was imprinted into our souls through torment, and trust each other again.
At the moment you realize courage, you become fully identified with it. This connection reinforces your courage. Eventually, you will consciously feel the kinship, recognize the language, and realize you are living courageously.
I Want My Dream Back!
As a child, you had a dream about your future. But, perhaps the winds of fate blew you off course. The truth is, your life's journey depends on how closely your inner map matches the language of your outer reality. Surrendering some of your personality defenses such as pride, blame, humiliation, or greed, can facilitate change. The ultimate purpose of such surrender is to heal your judgments about yourself and see yourself anew. The fundamental goal: seek endless compassion, diminish old assessments, and use courage as a personal compass to direct your choices. Each day contributes in a meaningful way to the vision of your whole life. Manifesting your personal vision conveys courage.
One gentleman on this site suffered a cataclysmic loss in losing his life's partner. But, after mourning this tremendous loss - instead of shutting himself off from the world - he chose to live life again. He found the courage to open his heart to someone new. Further he chose, this time, to live his life as he had always wanted to live it.
One woman on this site, after she thought all was lost in her relationship, dedicated herself to a year long journey of making the personal changes necessary to successfully re-ignite her relationship.
And yet another woman here, chose her children as the focus in her life choices - only to discover that the sacrifices she made to ensure that she would get custody of her children - have opened up new doors to her dream job and possible a new love.
And another has reassessed her future and made a commitment to investing in her education to enhance the future for herself and her son.
There are so many people here - who have the courage to make the right choices to live their dream
By owning and applying courage, we can make choices that lead to more satisfying lives as well as empowering themselves to make a significant impact on the lives of other people in our lives. Recapturing the original meaning of courage - to act from one's heart - can stimulate your resolve in daily life. Thoele says,"The most courageous thing for us to do is unearth our own authenticity with love, compassion, and gentleness."
Making choices that expand our lives offers a richness of living - a different way of moving through life. It is the difference between living narrowly or broadly. Issues that arise in our lives do not announce they are coming. We must make choices. Embracing supportive virtues such as courage guides us down a path that allows us to live our own truth.
Life's Challenges
The faces of courage change with the circumstances in our life. Like Dorothy in Oz, we travel down the uncertain road of life. If we are attentive to the lessons learned in each new experience, we can activate our innate energy that enables us to face challenges and to respond appropriately in accepting new opportunities. We do not want to fall asleep in the poppy field and later wonder if we missed our higher purpose. George Konrad said, "Courage is only an accumulation of small steps."
At the end of the journey, our words, our choices, and our actions reveal whether we followed our hearts.
Everyone - give a big round of applause to Wyldewolfe - See his comment below!
Transported from her home and her comfortable frame of reference, Dorothy embarked on a path of discovery that took her to the strange Land of Oz on the other side of the rainbow. After she inadvertently killed a wicked witch, she was thanked by a grateful "good witch," who awarded her the ruby slippers of the dead witch. Thus began her journey of self-revelation. Toward its end, she consciously faced and destroyed Oz's foremost villain, the wicked Witch of the West. Finally unlocking the secret of personal fulfillment, Dorothy found that she was the only person who could get her what she desired most - back home. Her gift, the ruby slippers she had worn since the very beginning of her journey, was the key to get back to Kansas.
As you move down your personal yellow brick road, you are more likely to enjoy the journey as your range of choice increases. While it may not get you to Oz more quickly, the ability to make conscious choices will ensure that you are more mature and less naive when you get there. A naive person continues to make poor choices. The only path toward consciousness is through the heart.
Life is fundamentally a journey of consciousness, a state of growing awareness. Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice.
The beauty of developing awareness of human behavior patterns is that you can gain insight into your own way of seeing and responding to life's ups and downs. If you change your belief system and begin to live positively in uncertainty, you can face each day with faith that you will be provided for in every way. Though coping mechanisms fluctuate from helpful to detrimental, they ultimately prevent us from creating our best selves. Your desire for a new way of functioning is must be stronger than your desire to cling to old defenses. Your inner observer is ready and present when higher consciousness expresses itself.
I Want What I Want
The greatest freedom in life is that of choice. The single most powerful investment you can ever make in life is in yourself. Your goal should be to add choices so you can define a different and positive pattern. This is the essence of growth.
Choice is a precious gift: the gift of independent thought and action. Many of us are slaves of the stories we unconsciously tell ourselves about our lives. Freedom begins the moment we become conscious of the plot line we are living and, with this insight, recognize that we can step into another story altogether. Our experiences of life quite literally are defined by our assumptions.
You alone are responsible for the design of your life. The choices you make become your road map.
Once you develop a personal voice and move beyond conventional limited roles, you will develop the courage to act upon your personal purpose. By honing the specific behaviors of courage, you can transcend personal and societal barriers to succeed in whatever arenas you choose. If we're willing to make difficult decisions that define our character, decisions that come straight from the heart, and we're also willing to take responsibility for the consequences of actions, we will discover that choice is what guides our personal destiny.
The goal of life is to invent and create, not to simply get by. It takes will and choice to break out of your behavior pattern. Stephen Covey states in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, "Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose. Within the freedom to choose are those endowments that make us uniquely human-self-awareness; imagination (the ability to create in our minds beyond our present reality); conscience (a deep inner awareness of the principles that govern our behavior, and a sense of the degree to which our thoughts and actions are in harmony with them); and independent will (the ability to act based on our self-awareness, free of all other influences). Once you have decided on your highest priorities, conscious choice takes over. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon."
For example, I know of a couple that has lived from hand to mouth ever since they got together. Neither of them is motivated to work, so their source of support has been derived largely from unemployment and disability. When they run out of benefits, they work just long enough to qualify again and then they go back on the dole. Occasionally the unemployment check doesn't arrive on time, and they have to beg their family and friends to provide them with groceries. So what do they do when their check comes in? They buy lap dances at the local strip club, and, toys for themselves (because they don't want to "spoil the child by buying toys for her").
Do they ever think of actually putting some money by to cover themselves when the check doesn't arrive? Perish the thought. Do they actually think about looking for work? Why, as long as they can get by on the dole. And then they lament that they can't buy a house, have a functioning car, etc. They post about how materialistic other people are and on how other people should live their lives, laughing at others beliefs. Yet it's those "Other" people who work and pay taxes that support their own sorry asses.
This couple is a perfect example of someone who has squandered their opportunities and make poor choices out of laziness, cowardice, immediate gratification, and immaturity. Surprisingly, their child is more mature than they are, probably because she sees the effects of their poor choices every day and has rejected their reality.
Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion fell asleep in the poppy field because the wicked witch had cast a poisonous spell on them. Most of us want to sleepwalk through life. We have fallen asleep to our essential self. In The Wizard of Oz, the good witch wakes up Dorothy and the Lion by making it snow so they can continue their journey to Oz. Change takes hard work. We must wake up and use conscious choice to follow our own yellow brick road.
Your Energy: A Force to Be Reckoned With
Our energy is the power of our hearts and spirits to choose courage as a way of living. Choosing courage means not needing to be defined by the opinions of others or to gain the approval of others. Each journey begins by choosing new thoughts and attitudes and describing them through language.
Conscious choice requires taking responsibility for the experiences you create. You do many things out of habit. Sometimes the choices are little ones, such as deciding to honk your horn in irritation at another driver. Or they may be big ones, such as spreading malicious gossip about another person. These decisions affect the outcome of your life. Managing your choices is a full-time job.
Joseph Jaworski said in Synchronicity,'I discovered that people are not really afraid of dying; they're afraid of not ever having lived, not ever having deeply considered their life's higher purpose, and not ever having stepped into that purpose and at least tried to make a difference in this world."
Discovering life's higher purpose requires courage. To see your purpose clearly is the gift of insight. Fulfilling that purpose requires even more courage.
You may deceive yourself into believing that choice can be enjoyed without responsibility. William H. Nix writes in Character Works, "The freedom to choose brings with it the mantle of responsibility. True freedom of choice does not exist without responsibility. Responsibility does not exist without a standard, or set of standards. It is the standard that creates the need for responsibility. The standard is a person's purpose."
I know of a woman who claims that leaving her ex-husband was the most courageous act she has ever done. But what she fails to mention is that she left him with a Dear John letter. She fails to see that an act of 'courage", without taking responsibility for the act, is in fact an act of extreme cowardice.
Hopefully, all of us have some awareness of our specific purpose. To live on purpose means not by accident. One way to start the process of discovery is to simply ask yourself: "What is my purpose here on this earth?" and "What am to do with my life?" The answer to these questions provides insight and help you to discover your heart's desire. It takes courage to experience life in a new and different way.
Courage is not a tangible commodity. Courage is an inner-essence like love, creativity, and energy. Although you can not buy it in a store, it is one of the most valuable possessions on earth. Without courage, we could never learn from our mistakes. Rita Mae Brown in Rubyfruit Jungle says the definition of insanity is doing the same thing, but expecting a different result.
For example the same aforementioned woman who left her ex with a Dear John letter, further exacerbated the act by then spreading lies to family and friends about her ex. But that was expected by everyone, since she did the same thing with her previous ex. She doesn't get it that no one believes her since they see her repeat the same actions again and again. She continues to re-create herself again and again. But she always returns to her old patterns of behavior. And the cycle begins again.
Sue Patton Thoele, therapist and author of several books, said, "No matter how much we learn the language of courage or how much we change our behavior, I am not sure we'll automatically be courageous one-hundred percent of the time. Fear is woven into the very fiber of our DNA-perhaps from the burning times (fifteenth to seventeenth centuries Europe)." People were tortured during the burning times, and their courage was ripped away. People were made to mistrust each other. One of the most courageous things we can do is to realize that we may have to re-choose and re-choose and re-choose to consciously act in new ways. Every once in a while we'll do that spontaneously. Then we should congratulate ourselves, underscoring the behavior so that we'll be more likely to choose it again when presented with similar circumstances or feelings. With this approach we can erase the mistrust that was imprinted into our souls through torment, and trust each other again.
At the moment you realize courage, you become fully identified with it. This connection reinforces your courage. Eventually, you will consciously feel the kinship, recognize the language, and realize you are living courageously.
I Want My Dream Back!
As a child, you had a dream about your future. But, perhaps the winds of fate blew you off course. The truth is, your life's journey depends on how closely your inner map matches the language of your outer reality. Surrendering some of your personality defenses such as pride, blame, humiliation, or greed, can facilitate change. The ultimate purpose of such surrender is to heal your judgments about yourself and see yourself anew. The fundamental goal: seek endless compassion, diminish old assessments, and use courage as a personal compass to direct your choices. Each day contributes in a meaningful way to the vision of your whole life. Manifesting your personal vision conveys courage.
One gentleman on this site suffered a cataclysmic loss in losing his life's partner. But, after mourning this tremendous loss - instead of shutting himself off from the world - he chose to live life again. He found the courage to open his heart to someone new. Further he chose, this time, to live his life as he had always wanted to live it.
One woman on this site, after she thought all was lost in her relationship, dedicated herself to a year long journey of making the personal changes necessary to successfully re-ignite her relationship.
And yet another woman here, chose her children as the focus in her life choices - only to discover that the sacrifices she made to ensure that she would get custody of her children - have opened up new doors to her dream job and possible a new love.
And another has reassessed her future and made a commitment to investing in her education to enhance the future for herself and her son.
There are so many people here - who have the courage to make the right choices to live their dream
By owning and applying courage, we can make choices that lead to more satisfying lives as well as empowering themselves to make a significant impact on the lives of other people in our lives. Recapturing the original meaning of courage - to act from one's heart - can stimulate your resolve in daily life. Thoele says,"The most courageous thing for us to do is unearth our own authenticity with love, compassion, and gentleness."
Making choices that expand our lives offers a richness of living - a different way of moving through life. It is the difference between living narrowly or broadly. Issues that arise in our lives do not announce they are coming. We must make choices. Embracing supportive virtues such as courage guides us down a path that allows us to live our own truth.
Life's Challenges
The faces of courage change with the circumstances in our life. Like Dorothy in Oz, we travel down the uncertain road of life. If we are attentive to the lessons learned in each new experience, we can activate our innate energy that enables us to face challenges and to respond appropriately in accepting new opportunities. We do not want to fall asleep in the poppy field and later wonder if we missed our higher purpose. George Konrad said, "Courage is only an accumulation of small steps."
At the end of the journey, our words, our choices, and our actions reveal whether we followed our hearts.
Everyone - give a big round of applause to Wyldewolfe - See his comment below!
VIEW 10 of 10 COMMENTS
cassy:
i am honored that you thought of me and mentioned me.
wyldewolfe:
thank you