Browse published articles attributed to Bettina Goodwin, with full-archive search.
As I headed off to the market this morning, I realized how much I actually enjoy this simple task. I love walking along browsing all the stalls to see what fruit or vegetables are in season checking the prices and talking with the vendors. People are smiling and talking, the sound of music comes from a gentleman sitting on a chair in the centre of the walkway playing an accordion.
Often in life, there are days when we don’t even want to get out of bed, let alone get on with our day. We can look at the day ahead as something to dread or we can change our vision of what it will be with a breath. This is merely a matter of changing your perspective. When you wake up in the morning, think of the brand new day and smile. And feel how that smile changes what you feel inside. Now, take that smile out into the world with you and each time you see or meet another person, smile. How does it feel? It’s kind of hard to be miserable when you’re smiling isn’t it?
I was always one to not pay much attention to all I’ve read about affirmations seeing them as merely lip service and not of much value in my life. Louise Hay writes a lot about affirmations and is a firm believe in them as are many other teachers and writers. Recently, I attended the I Can Do It Toronto Conference and had the great pleasure to listen to several of the many great teachers that were presenting throughout the weekend.
Ah, home again after a ten day vacation that included a week at a cottage in Prince Edward Island and a few days on the road touring around. It’s always a little tough to get back to routine after being away on a relaxing holiday. But eventually you settle back in and things get back to normal. What is sometimes a little more difficult is to keep that peaceful feeling you so easily felt while away from the hustle and bustle of life and all it’s sometimes chaos.
I’m sure I’ve talked before about how other people can feel our energy. It’s not always what we are saying or the volume or tone of our voice that people react to. It’s more often the energy with which the words are spoken.
Here I am again, talking about beliefs, but they are such a key ingredient in how we are in the world, that it bears repeating – over and over again! Our belief system is what creates the blueprint for our lives. We watch our parents and those around us as children and we decide what works for others. We then choose which beliefs will work for us and we adopt them as our own. And off we go into the world, armed with everything we think we need to get along. Eventually, we start to realize that things aren’t working out quite the way we expected them to.
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But it is also said that beauty comes from within. If these statements are true then it all comes down to our perception and what we, individually, consider beautiful. In order to call something beautiful we often use judgment to disce why one person or thing is beautiful while another is not. Why do we not see everything as beautiful? We are all divine creatures of God and in so being this makes us all beautiful.
So you’ve made the decision to be more positive and upbeat in your life as a step to feeling happier and maybe achieving some goals you’ve set. And it’s all going really well, until you step into an environment, perhaps your job, your family situation or some other experience, that is full of negativity. What do you do then? The first thing to look at is what makes the environment negative. If we look at it from our own perspective which is how we look at all of life, then our perspective (or judgment) is what makes it negative.
How many times have you caught yourself saying, “This is boring,” when referring to a task, event, movie, work or experience? Have you ever looked at exactly why it seems boring? We are always looking to feel a certain way, usually happy, fulfilled, peaceful, joyful. And generally if we are not getting any of those feelings from what we are doing we will most likely find it boring. When we are not connected to our own source of happiness, peace, love and joy, we will find ourselves looking in the world for it and usually only finding momentary satisfaction.
We all have it, we just don’t always know how to get to it or keep it. And when stressful things are happening around us or we are confronted with someone who is angry, we wish we could feel it. We look for it out in the world and yet we never seem to find it there. We long for it and sometimes struggle because we cannot find it. What is it? The Soul Connection. The soul connection is the love, peace, tranquility, compassion, happiness, kindness and joy that live in limitless quantities within us.
There are a lot of teachings out there about how to manifest what we desire in our lives. And it’s so easy to get caught up in it all and want to be able to manifest, but it doesn’t always work the way we want it and we often find ourselves wondering what went wrong and why we still don’t have the life we want. Desire is a tricky thing. And we can sometimes confuse desire with neediness. We want something so badly that we forget to let it go so that the universe can do its work. That’s neediness.
How often do we truly accept what is? We can all probably think of many instances during our day when we do not accept what is. From our hair not going the way we want to getting stuck in traffic and being late for work. Why can we not accept what is? Usually, non-acceptance is accompanied by judgment. Because we are always searching for happiness, love, peace, and contentment in our lives we are always finding ways to control what happens. Because we have certain beliefs, we are always looking for ways to support those beliefs.
Some of us are admitted control freaks, others of us claim that control is just not our thing. But the truth is that we all have ways in which we use control for various reasons. Usually the need to control a person or situation comes from a need or a sense of lack within ourselves.
Blame is one of the biggest issues that we come up against in our daily life. We seem to have gotten the idea that the world is there to make us happy. And when that doesn’t happen we lay the blame out in the world as well, through other people, places or events that we think are the cause of our unhappiness. Everything we feel comes from within us. We create it and we live through it.
There are many ways in which we run from our problems. We find distractions such as food, drink, gambling, sex, partying, television, you name it and there is a distraction for everyone. We sometimes think that these things will distract us and help us to forget our problems, but the unfortunate thing is that these distractions only serve to prolong the inevitable which is facing our problems and issues head on. Say you have broken up with your partner or spouse. This is a devastating situation and can bring up all sorts of emotions from anger to guilt and sadness.
So what do you think of yourself? We all have certain images of who we are and how we present ourselves to the world. And we all have an image of how the world sees us. When we are small we adopt a set of beliefs that are the driving force behind everything we do in our lives. These beliefs cause us to create certain images of ourselves that we are constantly putting out into the world. “I am a good girl”, “I’m a bad boy”, “I am a victim”, and on and on it goes. Once the image is created, we then act in such a way that validates this image.
There is always talk about how the world needs to change. There is so much anger and hatred in the world and we all want to see more peace and love spread throughout this earth of ours. We sometimes get stuck in a place of no change because we want to see global change and we don’t believe we can do anything alone to create it. But what if everyone had the same thought? What if we all got stuck in that place and never did anything to shift our own consciousness?
The world is changing. I see it all around me. More and more women are focusing on heart-centered living, embarking on a soul journey that takes them deeper within themselves, creating more meaning in their lives. It’s beautiful to watch as they grow and blossom into more vibrant versions of themselves. Often when they begin to evolve and flourish their relationships begin to change as well. Women feel that they want their connection with their partners to reflect the depth of their personal growth.
At some point in our lives we have all said to ourselves or someone else, “Why do I keep attracting the same type of people into my life”, or “Why am I always having the same experiences over and over again”. We all go through this. We all reach a point in our lives when we realize and understand what we’re doing is not working for us anymore. But what can we do about it? As I’ve mentioned many times before, our belief system is the driving force behind our actions and experiences in our lives.
People frequently talk about living an authentic life but I think that few know what that actually means. And there are others who truly believe that they are living authentically. But when we take a deeper look at how we react to certain situations and the feelings that are behind them we might see that we are not as authentic as we think.
Now before you get all upset about the fact that I mean you have to give up, that’s not what this is about. We have great plans for ourselves most of the time and we have a good idea of what we want out of life, where we see our life going and how it will all play out. And most of the time it is with great success, lots of friends, a lovely place to live, a great car and surrounded by family. These are all wonderful aspirations, but what happens if these things do not come to pass?
I’m not a big bible reader but my Catholic education has left me with a few memories of bits of scripture that have stood out and still have deep meaning for me still today. From 1 Corinthians 13:13, “For there are these three things that endure: Faith, Hope and Love, but the greatest of these is Love”.
Are you someone who moves a lot, changes jobs on a regular basis, cannot stay in a long term relationship or generally creates change in your world to feel good? We’ve learned through our lives that the way to feel happy is to find something or someone out in the world who can do that for us. Eventually we discover that this doesn’t work very well and that no matter how much retail therapy, how many friends, how great our partner is, we still don’t feel the way we want to.
Another year has come and gone and at some point most of us will look back and contemplate what has gone before. Some of us will see it as an amazing year that has brought us to a new deeper understanding of ourselves and others will be feeling the pain that may have shown us things we didn’t want to see. So how do you want to see the past year? Will you be letting go of any pain and heartache that you may have suffered in favor of starting a new year with hope and peace? Or will you choose to hang on to the negative things that were not what you wanted?
Our day to day life is usually lived through our ego, the very thing that knows the least about how to live life. And although it may seem surprising that the ego knows very little, if you take a look at the kinds of things it tells you to do, you will most definitely see this is true.