Dealing with Change – You Can Ride the Wave or Let it Swamp You!

Imagine this scenario.

You are on a surfboard in the ocean – far from shore, out the back awaiting the ideal wave, and the conditions for surfing are looking great. You're enjoying what seems to be an awesome day so far – perfectly formed waves, basking in the sun, doing what you love.

Then, unexpectedly the weather changes. It catches you by surprise. The chop comes up and then you see it… the mother of all waves heading right for you and not in a good way. It's the type of wave that makes you wish you were back on shore, and that is really saying something because you love to surf.

You Have Two Options Available

Option 1 – You freak out, lose it emotionally and panic about what to do. All control, plus your common sense, disappears and thus the wave consumes you. You submerge, crash, face-plant the sandy bottom and hope with all your heart to surface. When you do surface, you are physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted and a little bit scarred.

Option 2 – You muster all your courage and you decide to ride the wave to the best of your ability. Breathing deeply to maintain a sense of calm and poise, you have all your mental faculties focused in order to make the best decisions about how to ride with this crazy, stormy wave. You know that Option 1 is not going to lead you anywhere but pain, and so you choose Option 2 knowing full well that it may still involve some pain depending on how the wave pans out, but at least you have the potential for coming out the other side physically, mentally and emotionally in tact. Plus, you have the added bonus of actually practising your capability in the face of this stormy wave, thus expanding your skills and comfort zone in the process.

If you hate the water and either scenario is freaking you out, I hear ya! But stay with me…

When a Big Wave Hits

The point is this – when things look uncertain in your life, change is in the air, or you are facing what feels like a storm, then you have two options available to you. You either do your best to surf the stormy waves or you freak out, panic and submerge.

This will happen to EVERYONE at some point. You'll be flowing along quite happily in your life, facing what seems to be a settled landscape. All is going well and you think you know where you are heading (literally or metaphorically speaking). Then, without warning something outside of your control changes and the challenges abound. It's like facing the monster wave in the storm. For example, something in your career, health, relationships, business or finances starts going “wrong”, becoming unpredictable and definitely not panning out in alignment with what you prefer.

If you panic, the uncertainty and external changes have the potential to swamp you and leave you feeling helpless, drained, victimised and beaten up. If you remain calm, you have the inherent capacity to ride with the wave of change, to go with the flow.

There is a natural current to your life, like the waves of the sea. You are not meant to fight against it. It is a powerful energy. It is bigger than you are, and whenever that natural current seems to be stormy and unpredictable, there is nothing “wrong” per se, rather it is that you are being called into one of two things…

1. Personal growth through challenges
2. Change in direction

Personal Growth Through Challenges

There is a design to life which involves you being forced into your own inner growth at particular times. Stormy challenges are a natural part of that design. Challenges are gateways to new insights, and thus gifts for personal growth, which in essence means they are part of your soul evolution.

If you expect that your life should have no challenges, you will be in pain. You will resist any challenges that do arise, and you will make it mean something negative, such as there is something wrong with you, with what you are doing or with your life. This will lead you to beat up on yourself or to feel hard done by. You will say it should be some other way than how it is, resisting the facts of the present moment. All of which is a waste of your precious energy. If you are experiencing challenges, there is nothing wrong with you or your life. Quite simply – life is not always easy. No person on the planet will tell you honestly that it is. Instead, it is a complex adventure, scattered with challenges, and equally scattered with magic, opportunity and fulfillment. Stop resisting the inherent nature of life and you will discover a sense of inner peace.

While you needn’t embrace or rejoice any challenge you face – you can still be at peace with it and cease from exacerbating the issue for yourself with upset, which then frees up your energy from resistance and allows you to reallocate that energy into identifying what learning might be available to you in that challenge and to focus on solutions for moving yourself forward through it. That is, rather than going at the wave with a mindset of trying to survive and expending energy on fighting the impact of the wave, you can instead go at the wave with the intention of riding it as well as possible, allocating all your energy into going with the flow to navigate forward peacefully.

A Change in Direction

If not for personal growth, your wave of challenge/s may be calling you in a new direction that better serves your overall life path. So, if you are ever in a place in your life where you're feeling certain and content with how everything is going and then whammy, something changes, please remember this…

From the perspective of your thinking mind alone, you cannot see the fullness of your soul journey and the expanse of possibilities available to you. While you can conjure up wonderful ideas and act upon them with your free will, there is ALWAYS a greater force at play. You are never creating your life alone.

You are co-creating your life with the Universe (you might call that divinity, highest consciousness, the quantum field of energy, God or any other name you choose for the intelligence underpinning and weaving all of creation).

Your life is a dance between your human free will and that supportive higher intelligence which seeks to guide your soul journey (evolution). If you do not want to dance with that co-creation process, then you will resist it. That resistance will cause you suffering. Why? Because the co-creation is going to happen whether you like it or not, so you can either dance along (surf the wave) and go with the flow of wherever or whatever you are being called into, or you can resist, submerge and suffer the consequences.

The strangest thing about life is that while you may have your heart set on a certain goal or direction that is entirely awesome and compelling, and you can map out why you think that is your best path forward, you literally cannot logically conceive of the array of more magical, more expedient, more powerful paths available to you.  If the co-creative force knows that you are better placed in another space, achieving something else instead, or something else beforehand, or you are needed elsewhere in our world, then you will literally be poked and prodded by circumstances until you either “get it” and go with the flow in that direction, or until you have no other option but to release control and move where the wave is taking you.

I'm Hollering to You from Atop My Wave

The reason I'm sharing this with you today is because the landscape around me just changed. Unexpectedly. It has prompted me to have a wider perspective of various aspects of my life situation, and it seems to be simultaneously calling me into growth and a slight change in direction. I could resist this and take the very narrow and blinkered perspective of things not going the way I thought they would and wanted, but I know with crystal clear clarity that I am being called forth into something else, something more expansive and that if I simply “suck it up” and ride my wave with courage and gusto, then I can be carried into the next phase of my soul path unfolding.

I know this because my intuition deep down is telling me that all is well, and there is not one thing wrong. The Universe has my back 100%, always has and always will. I've had several divine signals (or “signs from the Universe”) guiding me to see this. For years I have navigated my life by attuning to and following signals in this way, and it has always taken me into a new phase, opportunities, immensely powerful personal growth, new places, or to new people, all of which have been key for the flourishing of my life (both my inner and outer experience of life). I also noted yesterday that my personal numerology energy for this month is about “Progress, movement and change. Needing to be flexible and adaptable, and dealing with the unexpected. Go with the flow. Shake things up. Stay focused and grounded throughout”. (FYI for those interested – I draw on the wisdom of the talented and beautiful Michelle Buchanan, international Numerologist with over 20 years experience, and I highly recommend her).

Please – ride any waves you get with the courage of a Big Wave Surfer! Know that Option 1 above (to freak out, panic, resist and submerge) is not really an option. It's purposefully choosing pain over potential. It's choosing victim mentality over victor mentality. You're too good for that. Don't waste your energy fighting the natural current – go with it. With it's incredible momentum and natural force, it will carry you into places, spaces, realizations and emerging paths that you could never imagine from the limited perspective of your thinking mind alone. Your soul is here to dance. Let it dance. Even if that means dancing atop of a scary-ass big wave!

With love, Bernadette