| | There
will be times in your business or personal experiences when you feel you've done
all you can do and just don't know what to do next...
Just us girls. You know what you want in life, but
what you want is nowhere in sight. Perhaps your purpose is undefined, your vision
still unclear. Meanwhile, you know you've been persistent and you've done all
that you can do. You've pushed yourself to do more than your fair share of work,
and yet...things haven't yield the kind of results you've been looking for. And
suddenly, you feel you have no clue what to do next. Don't worry if this scenario
feels all too familiar to you. It's just a "human" experience some people
call the meantime.
My angels. When you're not
happy about what's going on in your life, and you're not quite sure what to do
or even if it's the right time to do something about it, you are in the meantime.
It's a state of uncertainty. You are hanging on, ready to let go, afraid to fall,
not wanting to hurt yourself in case you make the situation worse. The meantime
is fraught with can't do's and don't knows. Don't know why I
can't go. Don't know why I should stay. Don't know where I'm going. Don't know
how I am going to get there, wherever there is. Confusion, reluctance, ambivalence,
and paralysis are all characteristics of the meantime. It'll
do you good to know the meantime is not a bad place to be. Most times it may not
feel like a whole heck of a lot of significant events are happening in the meantime,
but on the contrary, so much details are in the works preparing for the next big
picture of your life. So don't let the meantime get the better of you. This is
the time that you have to pay even closer attention to your life so you can plant
seeds in all the right places. Be fully present in every moment and just know
that "miscellaneous stuff" has to happen before the "good stuff"
you want can happen.
With my Playboy Models Hav and Jackie. |
Cake for my buddy Captain ATC Green (Ty). |
This
can be as simple as one of the countless examples in my life during which a business
deal didn't pan out...I was confused, ran out of ideas and didn't know what to
do next. So I went to the gym, chatted with an acquaintance on the way out, went
home, did some work on the computer and decided to take a trip home to Malaysia
to visit my family. While over there, I ran into a man (Drew) who turned out to
be from Vancouver (he was in Malaysia on business). On top of that, he knew the
acquaintance I spoke with while at the gym, back in Vancouver! We laughed about
this "coincidence" and instantly connected and decided to stay in touch
when we returned to Vancouver. (You may have already noticed everything I've described
so far sounds like a bunch of meantime "miscellaneous stuff".)
With friend, former Olympic Silver Medalist Sprinter, Char. |
At Ty's birthday. |
Meanwhile,
my life remained pretty constantat least that's what I thought. But what
was really happening was that life's sequences of miniscule events took
place from day to day slowly working out details of a bigger picture. Months later,
Drew returned to Vancouver and we got a group of people together and started Global
Reach Organization, a non-profit organization to help provide education and improve
medical systems in undeveloped and developing countries. Today, a year and a half
later, our legal papers have been approved by the Canadian government and are
in the process of being approved by the American government. (Our first project
will be to build a kindergarten in Borneo, Malaysia.)
At Gotham's Steakhouse in Vancouver. |
Our good friend Bryant performs. |
You
see, the meantime is designed to help you realize what you know and don't know
about yourself, as well as what is happening or not happening in your life. There
is no prescribed period or length of time you can spend in the meantime. You'll
stay in the meantime for as long as it takes to get your inner workings in order.
You'll also be there as long as it takes, not only for you to get ready, but for
someone else or something else to get ready. In other words, you may be ready,
but the person or situation to bring it all together may not be ready. Consequently,
you'll be in the meantime until the person or situation you're preparing for is
also prepared and ready for you. This is a good thing! The meantime is protective
as well as preparatory.
Bryant just signed a record deal with Sony in Europe (Congrats
B!) The beauty of the meantime is it does not allow
you to stagnate. It forces you to grow, and grow some more. In order to grow,
however, you must work. It is the work we're called to do on ourselves in order
to experience life that makes the meantime so challenging. That's what usually
happens in the meantime. Things fall in on you and they fall apart! In the meantime,
you'll have an experience, or a series of experiencesearth-shattering, heart-breaking
experiences that are designed to eliminate your false needs.
There's always something to celebrate! If
you look at a finished, polished productlet's use a brand new computer for
exampleit looks simple, clean and perfect. But if you examine it inside
out, you'll see that it was once apart in pieces and all its components took some
time to come together. All its mechanical parts had to be sized and positioned
just right, all its little chips had to be put into place with great precision,
and its many wires had to be strategically connected end to end in all the right
places. And such is life in the meantime.
Uhh...we're so cut off... Life's
many little details need to work themselves out to create a complete picture.
In the meantime, what you need to do to help life put the details together
for you is be patient, cooperate, and do your best every step of the way. Don't
judge your feelings or yourself, don't label anything as good or bad, right or
wrong. Just be fully present in every moment and go with the flow, until you know. |