do you allow your own thriving?

would you like to get behind that, for real?

Photo looking down into a paper bag of fruit from Kristina Tripkovic on Unsplash

​Start with believing you’re worthy of thriving. Your worthiness is not earned. You’re here, so you’re worthy to be here. Human beings can thrive, so as a human being, you’re worthy of thriving. You have this one brief life in this form, so what if you kept testing your worthiness to thrive, instead of collecting evidence you haven’t thrived, you’re not thriving, and you probably won’t thrive. Please interrupt that useless waste of your time and energy.

Let go completely of whether others are thriving or not. If part of your mission is to support other individuals or groups to thrive, you will do that, you can’t NOT do that, and you will do it best when you’re thriving.

Abraham-Hicks points out that you can’t get sick enough to help others be well, you can’t get poor enough to help others have more wealth. So how 'bout you thrive as much as you can and from there … the best of what you’ve got (which, BONUS, will keep evolving as you keep thriving) can bolster others to thrive.

Interrupt all comparisons to others. They’re neither here nor there—just a royal distraction that keeps you from walking yourself toward what you want to be, do, and have. All comparisons among human beings are apple-and-orange comparisons. Seriously, what does it matter what or how anyone else is or isn’t doing? What matters is what you’ve got, what wants to come through you, what you’re passionate about, where you trip yourself up, what you’d like to try next, what you can do right now to meet yourself kindly and walk yourself toward thriving.

Go ahead and make this all about you—because ultimately, you’re in charge of your own journey and your own thriving on that journey, and this has nothing to do with anyone else.

Catch any whiff of punitive mentality toward yourself and keep releasing it. If you’ve done something that feels off to you or that makes you disapprove of yourself or feel shame or go into self-castigation—pause with that. Be still with that. Breathe it. Let the part of you that still thinks it deserves to be punished come forth. Be with that one. Love them as they are. Love your own humanity. Love that you’re on a journey. Appreciate anything that makes you let go of idealized self-image, self-righteousness, or foolish thoughts that you should be beyond this.

I sat with someone recently who was being very hard on themself for something they’d done that violated their own ethic and shattered their sense of well-being and worthiness. I heard myself say, Well, unless you want to walk yourself now to some special little corner in hell that’s been rightfully reserved just for you, you could consider this too—and literally everything that unfolds in your life (even your missteps)--as your next opportunity to heal and evolve.

Your best and worst moments, and everything in between (especially if you’re not making identity of them) can all be part of the natural evolutionary thrust toward thriving. I believe that life wants to support you to thrive, constantly. Would you like to play with believing that? You do already? Cool, now what if you found the topic or realm of life that you keep excluding from that concept—because you tell yourself that here, in this special case, you really don’t deserve …?

Releasing identity will support you to thrive. Who are you anyway? What if you’re not the one who fucked up? Just like you’re not the one who’s right or who shouldn’t be talked to this way or the one who created that brilliant art or said those wise words or anything else. Practice being nobody more often.

(Hint: play with presence outside of thought. What is revealed to you right now by your five senses, and the grounded sense of being in a body, and the felt sense of your own breathing in this moment? Not much room in there to tell a lot of story and craft much image or make much identity. And not much room to keep yourself from thriving, either.)

I recently got thrown off by something that passed between me and another human beings. After a number of clarifying and clearing processes, it’s dissolving and releasing. It was one of those episodes that hit with a wallop, so every once in a while the ego-mind will grab it again and start to present a case for how mad I should be and what they violated and blah-blah-blah. It would go on ad nauseam, but I interrupt it. Lately I’ve been able to just look at it and say, This isn’t even real! And this has nothing to do with who I (really) am and who they (really) are. This doesn’t need my attention.

And giving it my attention does not promote my thriving. (To be clear, I gave it the attention of processes when that was needed, and will again as and if the need arises.) We think we’d thrive better if they didn’t do this or hadn’t done that, or if they did do XYZ. Nope, it’s all in our own hands—how we choose to make our interpretations, what we hold on to and release, what we choose to give our focus to. Want to give more focus to what makes you thrive, and to thriving itself?
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Photo of 2 horses, one of which appears to be laughing, from Patrick Schneider on Unsplash

​Have more fun. Feel good more often. Laugh more. Focus on what’s fun, what’s easy, what feels good, what you’re proud of, what makes you laugh, what brings pleasure. Cultivate all of this. Make it a project. Oh wait—was the whole start of this paragraph in a recent mailing (on being your own best ally), exactly in those words? Um, yeah. Because that, my friend, is how we believe we’re thriving, want to thrive, practice thriving, get used to thriving, and call forth more thriving.

Love & blessings, Jaya