I M Perfect lady

Tag: expectations

  • Bring to Christmas

    Just being me on Christmas is a huge peaceful relief…no stress is lurking, (now that the mail volume will begin to decrease) and I didn't string up any expectations or false ideals of anyone.

    In the past, I would plunge down deep after Christmas, but it was due to all the expectations and hopes I put into Christmas…and their failure would leave me empty hollow and down.

    It is insane how the mind can expect the undeliverable and believe it.  How I would believe that the Christmas season could change people, and like magic they would realize or see things that hadn't before…

    When in fact, it seems that what is off is really off on Christmas…instead of healing things, it magnifies them.

    And the opposite is true too.  When you are filled with love and peace about yourself and your life, Christmas arrives and there is nothing to want.  For you already want what you have.

    I feel such great emptiness of hopes…I am not standing on a mountain, that I will have to fall from tomorrow and for weeks afterward.  Instead I come to Christmas needing nothing from anyone…it was never about the gifts, but rather the Feelings I wanted from them.

    I wanted them to feel this or that way towards me….

    I wanted to feel this or that way towards them.  No matter who they or them was.  I always arrived with false expectations and in the state of need.

    When I arrive at Christmas empty of expectations and hope, I can sit in peace and let it all be.  

    Loving me and accepting me is the greatest thing I can bring to Christmas; if I am Merry with me, Christmas doesn't have to make me Merry.

    Just as Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor says, "each of us are responsible for the energy we bring into the room," it is up to us to bring Merry to Christmas.

    I love that I have a Merry me to bring to Christmas….

  • Christmas Is Always Within Me

    I have been sitting and looking or feeling Christmas this year and in a much different place.  In the past Christmas came in and swept me up and carried me off…filling me with huge expectations of me and wildly false expectations of others. It seemed the magic of Christmas was about changing my life.

    It was suppose to ease my burdens and replace resentments with love…it was I guess suppose to act like magic.  Where all I had to do was 'wish' and my wishes would be granted.

    If I believed.  And I wanted to believe that magically miracles would happen, and all I had to do was wish them so. That perhaps the right present would bring in happiness…that would stay the whole year through.

    Today, Christmas seems overly garnished on an already peaceful life, that none of the 'stuff' will make my life better…that the purpose of Christmas lost its purpose.

    Tis the season of love…seems odd, when love is always in season.

    My remembering of Jesus and how he lived is not set aside for certain days, but lived, always. 

    His birth represents to me, awareness that we all come from one God, we each are but a wave in the ocean of humanity…created by one God.  We are all equal…no one is more special than the other.

    In the past, when I felt less than, Christmas mattered more.  When I felt that it was Jesus or God's job to save me, make me happy etc, I was left in the place of always wanting. Waiting for the right gift, the right person, the right action, and then like magic, my life would change.

    Now that I realize, that what is bound on earth is bound in Heaven; when I consciously am aware that I am co-creating with God, that nothing happens without my active participation, that I am the center of my Universe, that He can only give back to me what which I send out…I am left without the magic of Christmas on this one special day…for I feel the Christmas magic in me always.

    My love isn't found underneath the tree, it is within me.

    My peace isn't when the right circumstances come together, peace is within me.

    Joy is knowing the meaning of Christmas is always within me.

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  • I need nothing from Christmas.

    What I haven't realized until it was gone, are the feelings of heaviness and weight of the added stress of holidays…What I had thought was extra work, was actually being slammed by feelings.

    Feelings come alive and merge and meld in multitude of ways during this 'Family' time.

    If you have reconciled all your feelings, trimming the tree is just trimming the tree….there is no hidded wound it has to fill, no making you feel 'overbright'.

    When I hadn't come to terms with all my feelings or felt truthfully all that I had felt, It seemed like I was being scrambled by the holidays, that they were forcing me to do things I didn't want to do or were exposing things I didn't want exposed.  And during this family time, well, we had just damn well better be a family!

    It was trying to bend into the Spirit of the Holiday with feelings that didnt' match.  

     

    I have come to terms with the new me…and feel okay, settled and the Holidays are not asking anything of me…or putting me in a position that brings up feelings that I don't like.  And I have no false expectations of Christmas making a family that isn't already there.

    I am not sure I can put to words the absence of my feelings being pulled and prodded; where hidden in each 'tradition' lay a sword that could split me in two.

    I had three Christmas filled days and nothing bite me.  Nothing felt bad or overburdened and sad, no Blue Christmas….tones floated in.

    I am not sure I have ever had a Christmas minus awkward feelings of something.

    The childhood expectations always were left wanting…when I was young, and I thought I was seeking a better gift, when what I actually sought was to live in a space free of expectations…perhaps expectations that were impossible to deliver.

    Christmas had to deliver to me what the rest of the year failed to do.

    Without expectations, there is zero stress.

    My gifts are just gifts, they expect nothing in return.

    The tree isn't there to bring me happy feelings…with happy feelings I trimmed the tree.

    The difference is like breathing or not breathing.

    Bring a happy person to Christmas is what I could not do before…Christmas was to make me happy, while I struggle and stressed to make it just right, so I could be happy.

    Imagine.

    Now I don't need Christmas to deliver to me that which is impossible to deliver, I need nothing from Christmas.

     

     

  • My expectation.

    There are two ways to live, one with your expectations packed and ready for each day and each encounter… leaving very little room for surprises or impromptu circumstances, a very rigid needy control expecting life to follow your lead.

    You have plans and life works much better when life falls into step behind you. You are the mover and the shaker and all need to bow to your expectations.

    Expectations are very selfish little things that steal freedom from others, one little need at a time. Especially if you throw a tantrum when they are not met, or spunk or sulk in silence.

    The odds of our expectations being met are slim to none, unless we have become a tyrant and have stolen the lives out of those we love making them march along with our expectations.

    The other way is to follow life without expecting a certain flow, without scripts written and people’s parts picked out, instead it is all improvised as you go.

    When I found my freedom within to say no to others expectations of me, I also have freed others to be free of mine.

    It wasn’t an easy won battle within me, but I simply became overjoyed with my newfound word…NO and the freedom it brought to me.

    I loved not having to meet expectations of others and in disappointing them I grew to like me more and more.

    Each time I find myself unhappy, I look and see where I am stuck, what am I saying or doing that is stealing my freedom and whose expectations am I catering to?

    You would be surprised how much of life is lived with an expectations floating out ahead of us, a little thought that becomes a giant storm.

    Mostly the landscape ahead of me is blank. I have no expectations planted out ahead of me.

    I can’t plan the weather so that is out.
    I don’t own others actions so I am free there.
    I can’t even know for sure if I will do what I plan for what I know for sure is that there are a million things that can waylay me along the way.

    Greeting each day and each moment without expectations allows you to have your hands free to carry what comes in.

    If you are standing there with an armload of expectations…how open are you to receive?

    I didn’t on my own get rid of expectations, but rather all my expectations were unmet and unrealized, so it was either suffer or drop them.

    I thought confusion and mayhem would erupt if I had no expectations and instead peace, love and joy grew inside of me.

    When I let go…I was free.

    I was free to receive what is.

    What is is enough for me, no matter what it is.

    My new expectation is to be a peace with what is.

    To have no more expectations above what is or beneath what is.

    What is, is my expectation.

  • Pedals of his Life.

    What a great visual for co-dependency to see a person peddling a bike pulling a trailer with someone sharing the seat, but dragging their feet, a third person giving orders as where and when to stop.

    The life of a people pleaser perfectly depicted.

    While I have been working on removing the trailer and kicking off the people, they are finding it difficult to know how to walk or manage their own lives, that life isn’t done by telling someone else to get you there.

    They have a right to be mad when I suddenly decide to ride solo, to unhitch their lives.

    My son has been riding on and off, there are many things he does without my assistance, however, I have also let him ride longer than necessary for simple things.

    They are little things, little boy things that he now as a young man can take over; it is time for him and I to let the little boy go.

    As a mother you have to know when to get rid of the wagon.

    Some worry about the empty nest, I worry about a full wagon.

    Resentment grows when you allow them to ride longer than needed, when you get used to doing for them, and forget to allow them to do for themselves. Resenting my own lack of removing his chores from my life.

    What I am experiencing is his weakness in places I carried him, and how it is hard for him as he learns to take control of his own life, and the consequences in failing to do so.

    It is hard to know when to let them ride and when to kick them off, but I am thinking we under estimate their power.

    And the lightness of my load is hard to explain, it is like coasting down a hill feet off the pedals, at least the pedals of his life!

  • Christmas Joys

    My Christmas’s of old had a huge agenda to fulfill, they had to bring magic and make belief, and they had to make me feel better. It was like waiting for the elixir or medicine bringing love, peace and joy.

    Waiting for a gift that would change my life or a gift from the least likely person, great changes hung in the air.

    The season of Christmas had the power to make right a life that was way off kilter.

    Or the feverish hope that if I could create the perfect Christmas season, life would fall into place.

    Christmas had a sleigh load of expectations, loaded up by me.

    Yesterday, I felt the absence of this manic desire, it seemed that Christmas had lost its fever.

    It was like my life no longer needed this magic, that Christmas or no Christmas I was way okay.

    I am not in the need of gifts that shout, “I love You,” or trees that must hold the joy of the season, or that the stockings are hung, pleading for attention.

    There doesn’t seem to be anything missing in my life that Christmas can fulfill.

    The Christmas tree stands alone in its glory, smelling delicious with ornaments from years long ago, a bright presence of joy, matching joys I have inside.

    Whether I bake Christmas goodies or not, my home will maintain its steady calm atmosphere, relaxed and homey.

    It was shocking and delightful to know that there wasn’t anything we needed to make this season bright.

    The brightness of the season lives here all year long.

    The contrast between the two Christmases is unreal.

    To add Christmas to life that was so upside down is like adding a bow to confusion and expecting it to unravel like magic.

    What a wonderful feeling to have a Christmas without an agenda, to just be with the Christmas joys…