The Truth About Success and Failure

Do you ever find you’re getting sucked into seeing yourself as society views you?  A lean body is success; excess weight is failure.  Money in the bank marks success; low funds denote failure. Being involved with someone romantically is success, while being alone indicates failure.  There’s no end to these examples, and even if we usually disagree with them, we may give them a little too much consideration during moments of weakness or insecurity.  Once that begins, it’s a slippery slope downward until we struggle to even find hope in our gloom…even though all that’s really changed is our perception.

Since launching Journey of Possibilities, I’ve experienced setbacks, dry spells, times I felt more like I was moving in reverse than going forward, and even times others may have viewed as complete failures.  I suppose my recent decision to cancel Illumination Houston 2013 may be seen that way by some.   This roller coaster ride prompts me to blog about what I’ve been learning:

• Success and failure are relative, and our social measures for that change every few decades.  In truth, I’m highly successful in emotional and spiritual growth, happiness, and clarity.  I’m more focused and know myself better than ever.   My relationships are richer, and my experiences more fulfilling than I’d dreamed possible.  Materialism has never given me the joy I’ve had this past year, although my increasing financial success will now be enjoyed with a new level of gratitude.
• There is no shortage of people ready to criticize, discourage, redirect, and (mis)guide you.  Ignore them; these are not successful people.  Successful, happy people help others achieve the same.  They do not belittle others to feel better about themselves.  Insecure people do that.
• Contrary to popular media, many good people exist.  I’ve been supported and encouraged by complete strangers with such heart and spirit I feel honored to meet them.  Rest assured this world is in many good hands, whether you hear about them on the news or not.
• Every up and down strengthens us and shows us what is and isn’t important.  We learn gradually to ‘let go and let God’, and gain much clarity around what we do and don’t have control over.  We learn to work better with others and trust.  Aren’t these beautiful lessons learned through ‘failure’?
• Meditation and prayer are survival tools.  When the judgments of the world begins to eat away at our confidence and strength, finding cracks in our armor and chipping away at us, meditation and prayer center and ground us again while showing us how meaningless people’s opinions and judgments really are.  Following our Divine Path never misleads us, yet an earthly perspective suggests otherwise.   Beware heeding that and changing course; the prize is likely around the next corner.
• When we’re willing to let go of the big thing we have our eye on and trust God, we are then shown what a really big prize looks like! This does NOT happen until we have heard the call and taken our leap of faith.

Illumination Houston 2013 may be cancelled…for now…but Journey of Possibilities is becoming more successful every day.   We are excited about our new projects and can’t wait to share all of this with you.  Thanks for joining us on this Journey!

Namaste and much love,

Sheryl Sitts

Lay Down Your Cross

Last night I was blessed to spend time with my spiritual healer to go back and piece together the broken little girl somewhere in my past and bring her wholly forward into the present.  In the multitude of lessons that followed, I got really clear about how we protect ourselves from pain by not talking about the truths of our lives that others have taught us were ‘ugly’.  In not talking about our pain and in always trying to make everything look good, like we’ve got it all figured out, we don’t heal or grow.

In going back to find my little girl, I discovered that I had been sexually abused once while very young, long before the other incest I’ve been counseled about for years, by another family member I’d never considered.  (No wonder I’ve been stuck on some deep core issues!) It happened in his favorite chair, which I have since inherited.  That truth so wanted to be uncovered all of these years that I’ve unconsciously drug that chair from home to home without ever considering why.  I never sit in it.  I always try to decorate it in a magazine-ready photo setting and then ignore it.  Now that the ugly truth about this cross I’ve carried with me is in the light, I can honestly say I HATE that chair!   I cannot WAIT to take it to the resale shop and get RID of it! (Even my beautiful cat pictured here on “the chair” doesn’t seem to feel too good about the energy there!)

There were many more lessons in that journey about my own mother, generations of pain, lies, and secrets, and how their broken, pain-filled truths have transferred unconsciously into my world-view.  No one in my family has felt ‘good enough’ for many, many years.    I am excited about the new possibilities that arise for me out of illuminating that very dark, musty hallway. Today, I know I’m good enough just because I Am.

My prayer for you is that you will discover a cross you may be carrying, however unconsciously.  Pray for the strength and opening to shine a bit of light there.  What awaits beyond the pain we so dread, which by the way isn’t half as strong as the pain of hiding, will be Possibilities beyond your wildest imaginations.  Take the Journey of Possibilities my friend, and find your new beginnings!

Namaste,

Sheryl Sitts, Founder & Chief Inspirational Officer

Journey of Possibilities

Don’t Be Vulnerable – Surrender!

This week, I have been consciously seeking to be in a place where I see all that is possible for myself personally and professionally.   In that light, I had the privilege of spending an evening with a very spiritual and gifted healer whom I’m blessed to know.  One of the messages that I received loud and clear during our meditative, prayerful, openhearted time together was to use my innate gifts from a place of vulnerability and humility.  Only then, with love and focusing on others, will I find my most rewarding Path and blessings.  I spoke of this to another wise spiritual woman later during the week, and she pondered a moment before correcting me. “Vulnerability is a state of weakness.  Don’t be vulnerable.  Surrender.”

That sentence has sat in my mind and heart for a few days now and come into my awareness at different moments and conversations (like my radio interview).  I have prayed and meditated to feel the difference and be conscious of that in my actions.

I have seen and experienced that being vulnerable while we have an open mind and heart can place us in dangerous positions with other people that actually do more harm than good.  If we are being vulnerable, we allow others to hurt us with their words and actions and diminish the Light that we shine in this life.  We give away our Divinely gifted Power and endanger ourselves physically, psychologically, emotionally, and economically.

Conversely, when we surrender to God, we walk in Divine protection and healing, and we have the greatest love and protection possible.  We give up trying to understand and control, and we allow ourselves to be guided by our heart to our brightest and most rewarding Life.  We stop holding on to what we THINK we need, or THINK will protect us or provide for us or love us, and we allow ourselves to FEEL that we are safe, loved, and protected.  We feel forgiveness and forgiven, safety and protection, and above all, LOVE.  Our feelings are a Divine voice when we allow ourselves to hear them.

May you find your way to the next step in your life and through whatever is frustrating, hurting, or worrying you by living in a state of surrender to the Divine orchestration of the Universe…God as you know and understand God.

Namaste,

Sheryl Sitts, Founder & Chief Inspirational Officer

Journey of Possibilities

How We Disagree (Words Can Hurt!)

What do disagreements sound like in your family?  Do they turn into horrible screaming matches where you are reminded of every wrong you’ve ever done?  Do you walk away scared, ashamed, or embarrassed?  Do you feel loved?

As I’ve shared, I come from a family in which alcoholism dated back to…the dinosaurs?  Anyway, because they didn’t often drink (my folks were a shopaholic and a workaholic), I didn’t understand until my 20s and 30s that we had the same broken communication patterns, and those are especially evident during arguments.  Insults, digging up old disagreements and rehashing them, yelling louder and louder to ‘win’, the idea that someone wins and someone loses, suggesting that not seeing things my way (opinion) means you are stupid (fact), one person allowing insecurities to fuel jealousy that they take out on another person who didn’t do anything to bring them about in the first place…does any of this sound like your family, too?  No one agreed to disagree or tried to learn something new from another disagreeing with them, they simply felt threatened and yelled louder until the other gave up or broke down, which meant the loudest person had finally ‘won’.  How painful!!!  Besides, when everyone in a loving family is hurt, scared, and defeated, how can anyone be a ‘winner’?  Aren’t these the people who are supposed to have our backs no matter what, be in our corner, be on our team?

When there is physical abuse, there are physical signs and we can seek legal action and get protection.  However, we may go years, or even a lifetime, without healing the effects of hurtful, destructive words said to us by loved ones in the heat of an argument.  There are no restraining orders for broken hearts and bruised egos, or destroyed self-esteem, yet they surely shape our lives every day moving forward until we heal that hurt.  We take those broken communication patterns and that win/lose, smart/dumb, right/wrong attitude with us into every relationship, picking the same types of partners, and wonder in the end why that one doesn’t work out either.

Today I simply want to share a very strong reminder that you deserve to love and be loved in a way that builds you and the other person up, so that each of you becomes MORE, not less, of yourselves.  That love begins with loving and healing ourselves so that we can approach others as a whole person and end the cycle of punishing others for our own insecurities and incompleteness.  You deserve to love and grow and heal!

For me, this has not been a weekend retreat or a year alone to heal 30 or 40. It is instead a lifelong process that starts with some deep work and then continues as I grow and change, and more of myself is revealed to me.  However, the Journey to self is our greatest Journey of Possibilities, with God as our navigator loving us through every step of the way.  A good book that helped me begin to open and may do the same for you is Your Sacred Self by Dr. Wayne Dyer.

Our parents loved us and raised us the best way they knew.  They were operating within the boundaries of their own family of origin, knowledge, and experiences.  Now it’s up to us to begin here and make our life the best experience possible.  I will admit to having walked through a lot of pain to get where I am.  I will also promise you it’s worth every step along the way to get to a place where I can experience this level of immense joy and love!  I don’t need anyone to complete me but God; I am complete and I feel complete.  Others enhance facets of my life, and this is how relationships should be.  Our disagreements allow me to learn from them an expanded way to view the world and all in it, and we love one another regardless of whether we agree or not.  No more personal insults, painful jabs, or destroyed self esteems.  We build one another up and understand that is how it should be.  I pray that in sharing this with you today you will talk to someone, find a meeting, open a book like Your Sacred Self, and finally begin the most precious Journey you will ever take!  Above all, I know that you matter and you deserve it.

Namaste,

Sheryl Sitts, Founder & Chief Inspirational Officer

Journey of Possibilities

Who, Me?

Who am I to charge that much?  Who am I to stand up to that person?  Who am I to think I’m an ‘expert’ consultant?  Who am I to walk away from this seemingly good job or relationship and think I can do better?  That I DESERVE better?  Who do I think I am?

From the bully in grade school to the domineering boss or spouse in life, we are challenged to find our voice and say ‘no’ or walk away, while our little ‘Who, me?’ demon is screaming inside, “What do you think you’re doing?  Who do you think you are?”

It seems throughout life we face down this question over and over, sometimes with more at stake (opening our own business, taking a stand in our own families) than others.  The core issue, however, is always about us.  Who do we think we are?  When this question arises within us, it is a good time to really examine it and our almost automatic, unnoticed emotional responses.

Do we think we’re somehow less than others?  Unworthy of asking, teaching, telling?  Or do we think that we were born with the same inalienable rights as the next person to our own safety, happiness, abundance, and joy?  Beyond that, have we gained additional insight from experiences, and knowledge or training, that make us even more valuable than another in certain areas?

In that moment, we can stand in our Divine Self, worthy by virtue of our own presence, and know our value is in fact immeasurable!  We can gratefully smile, appreciating all that we are, and respond with love and confidence in our knowledge that any challenge to our value is merely their misunderstanding, shortsightedness, or fear, and not about us at all.

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.  Live the life you have imagined.” Henry David Thoreau

Yours in Spirit,

Sheryl Sitts, Founder & Chief Inspirational Officer

Journey of Possibilities

Conflict Resolution Intro – Changing Them Starts With Changing Us

Nothing hurts worse than arguments with or between the people we love the most.  It doesn’t matter if it’s with a lover, best friend, parent, or child, words said in anger cut deeper than anything.  Sometimes tears themselves can be a insult to the depth of this pain, and before long we’re so caught up in hurt, anger, and drama that we have no idea how to stop the madness.  Underneath our growing frustration, rage, confusion, and pain, we’re terrified.  These are the people who mean more to us than anything in the world.  How can I stop them?  What would other people think if they knew how ugly this gets sometimes?  What if it doesn’t stop…or gets worse?  What if I lose the person I love and end up…alone?!

Isn’t this why we try to avoid conflict?  Maybe if I don’t say anything, we won’t have another blowup.  That’s it.  I’ll be the peacekeeper and just bite my tongue about how I feel.  If I don’t set them off, it’ll stop.  If anybody else around here wants to start fighting, I’ll just stay quiet so it doesn’t get worse, and when it’s over, I’ll be the sounding board for them and make sure they know I love them.  Anything to keep from fueling things!  After a while, we realize things aren’t getting any better.  It’s like responding to a serious injury by draping a tissue over it;  all wounds, physical and emotional, only get worse until they are properly treated.

I dated this guy for several years on and off again throughout my early 20s.  What had begun as a fun relationship was deteriorating with too many arguments and round-the-clock partying.  One day after an ugly argument about how beer was not a breakfast food (trust me, it wasn’t funny), a coworker noticed I was upset and pulled me aside.  She invited me to join her after work, assuring me it would help.  When asked later to introduce myself to the small group and tell them about my relationship, I replied, “I’m Sheryl and I’m here to figure out how to make my boyfriend stop…”

Surprisingly interrupted by empathetic laughter, I sensed I was in the right place and that I wasn’t alone.  The first news wasn’t so hopeful:  the only ones we can change are ourselves.  I wasn’t the one with the temper or a drinking problem!  Nonetheless, the next thing I heard began the steady, healing transformation of my life:  when WE change, EVERYTHING changes!

Imagine a couple dancing on the floor and one stops.  Can the other dance?  What happens next?  They sit a while?  They leave?  How long before…they TALK?  Questions begin.  What happened?  Why did you stop?  What’s the matter?

If any of your personal relationships are in turmoil right now, try something.  The next time conflict arises, or you avoid it, try watching yourself as a fascinated stranger might from nearby.  Observe yourself in the situation and then take a behind-the-scenes look at your own private thoughts and feelings.  Just watch without judgment.  What do you want to say but choose not to?  What do say but wish you didn’t?  When that scene passes, go someplace quiet and privately write about what you saw and felt.

In the weeks ahead, I will post blogs and videos to share communication tips for managing conflict in an effort to help you find peace within yourself and your home.  If you are in any physical danger or someone in your home is physically abusive, please find the nearest Women’s Center or Women’s Shelter (see http://www.thehotline.org/).  My tips are not intended as counseling or a replacement for counseling.  Please consider supplementing this with peer support at 12-step meetings and/or professional counseling.

Yours in this Journey,

Sheryl Sitts

Founder & CIO (Chief Inspirational Officer)

Journey of Possibilities

Healing Spaces

Life sure can knock us down…low! At one point several years ago, I actually walked out of a well-paying professional job at which I was doing well and moved myself to an island. Stressed out and depressed, grieving the loss of my parents, new marriage struggling, I was hurting. This was just the sort of irrationally desperate move in which we surprise even ourselves! All I really knew for sure was that I couldn’t keep doing what I’d been doing anymore. It was only in this state that I finally gave myself the time and space I needed to heal. It was only in this place that I nurtured myself with endless walks on the beach. It was only through this move that I discovered I really was self-sufficient beyond my successful career. I lived on the barter system and met others on the island who’d arrived in similar condition. There was a large movement of healing in this community I soon discovered and connected into. That energy was so powerful! I participated in sweat lodges. I danced with scarves on the beach with a silver haired native American angel. I went back to school. I had an amazing time renewing myself! All of this was made possible because I had finally surrendered and sought healing.

Later in my life, I was again facing loss when I took a retail job at an outdoor recreational store. Not clear why I was shifting to retail, I soon realized that I had been drawn to another healing space to connect with nature and others in pain.  Several coworkers from across the country had been drawn there from a myriad of experiences and were searching for their own healing and Purpose. Not only did we create wonderful bonds and memories, but together we went into nature to beautify, conserve, educate, and enjoy. Once again, sharing nature with kindred healing spirits strengthened and healed me.

Healing spaces are so vital to our happiness and growth! When we find ourselves grieving painful loss, we are more vulnerable and open than at any other times in our life. When we surrender, we find ourselves Divinely guided to people and places that facilitate our healing. When we don’t surrender, we find ourselves quickly getting lost in alcohol, work, shopping, drugs, food, and any other distractions we can find to avoid the pain. Ultimately, walking through the pain is the only path to healing, so how much better to face it now than to add addiction recovery and making amends to our healing process later!

One word of warning about healing spaces: know when to leave them. Such comforting places do not inspire us to move on when our healing time is passed. When the time is right, we must leave or we will not achieve our potential made possible by that healing.   Maintain the beautiful friendships formed there. Visit the healing space for renewal. However, as Master Yoda would say, leave we must. Our final gift is to pay forward the love and healing we’ve experienced to those we meet who suffer. It is also to nudge along those who are ready to fly but afraid to leave the healing space themselves. In seeing us fly, we inspire them. A cycle is completed and we have ourselves become a healing space for others.

Let’s Make a Deal

Do you recall the game show Let’s Make a Deal?  Contestants could either keep prizes they won or gamble them for bigger prizes. It  was fun to watch and consider whether I would keep the prize or risk it for something better.    Of course it was much easier to say I’d take that risk as I watched from the comfort of my own home with nothing to lose.

How we make decisions in our daily lives isn’t really so different, is it?  Every day we opt to live in the Truth of who we are and see where that leads us, or to accept a job/mate/lifestyle that we know to be less than our heart’s desire.  The difference is that we aren’t on a game show, and God wouldn’t tease us with a bigger dream, daring us to take less or risk maybe not receiving the grand prize!

Florence Scovel Shinn wrote some 90 years ago (tho The Game of Life and How to Play It remains timelessly accurate today) that God typically sends an “olive branch” as in the great flood as a sign of larger blessings ahead.  This is NOT the prize!  However, if we accept that olive branch and then abandon pursuit of the larger dream, we have left the game as assuredly as if we were a contestant on that show returning to our seat.  How much better to give thanks for these olive branches and continue in faith along our journey of Possibilities to our own best Life.

Sheryl Sitts

www.JourneyOfPossibilities.com

www.Facebook.com/JourneyOfPossibilities

The Spiritual Continuum

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Fear/Stress/Busyness/Resistance                                Love/Peace/Stillness/Acceptance

Have you ever become so frustrated with a situation or relationship in your life that you threw up your hands and said something like, “OK God, I can’t do this anymore!”  Did you give it to God when you couldn’t take it anymore?  How did that feel?  Then what happened?  As it started to improve, did you find yourself slowly taking charge yourself again, as if to say, “Thanks God.  I’ve got it now”?  Maybe you just grabbed it back completely in one panicked moment and didn’t leave anything at all for God to manage?  Honestly, I can’t even remember how many times I have done this in my lifetime.

As I explore my own life as a Journey of Possibilities, I recognize our spiritual Journey as a Continuum.   When I am scared, stressed out, trying to stay busy, or resisting the flow of life, it’s a safe bet that I’m running the show.  I’ve even lost myself in addiction before so I didn’t have to see whatever I was avoiding.  At the other end of the spectrum, I know that feeling of being filled with love, serenity, and acceptance of everything just as it is, trusting God’s perfect Design and Order.  That’s the way my life feels when I put God in charge.

Whenever my life becomes unmanageable, as they say in the 12-step program, I surrender and let go…not of one thing, but of everything.  The moment I do, I instantly begin moving back across the Continuum.  Thankfully, God doesn’t have a waiting period!

If there is such peace in letting go, then why do we resist turning everything over to God? Boy, don’t we always want to be in charge!  We blindly trudge forth in busyness (often by losing ourselves in business), believing that even a little progress is better than the stillness of waiting on God.  However, any gains made this way always prove futile later against the grand Design.  When it is God’s Time for something to occur, all is manifested at amazing speed and often with much less effort on our part.

One way to check our status on the Spiritual Continuum is through daily prayer and meditation.  Give God a bit of your time, and consistently check your human urge to take control.  The sooner we surrender to God, the sooner we return to the flow of Divine Harmony.  Trusting that all is exactly as it should be brings amazing serenity no matter what is going on in this Earth School.

Sheryl Sitts

www.JourneyOfPossibilities.com

www.Facebook.com/JourneyOfPossibilities

Seeing Things Differently

Recently, I’ve begun praying that God would help me to “see things differently and find the best, most healing path” in areas of my life where I become frustrated, hurt, angry, impatient, or confused. It is amazing how quickly a receptive heart praying this earnestly will begin to see other aspects of a situation that open new possibilities, understanding, and healing. Let me give you an example relating to career.

Have you ever chosen a job you just knew you wanted, and prepared yourself for the day it became available so you could apply? Maybe you’ve had a job you loved but something happened there, and you promised yourself you’d return to that work one day.  Both of these opportunities presented themselves for me this week, and the most amazing thing happened.  I no longer see my future in either role!  In fact, I am completely certain that God has something else in store for me, bigger than I ever dared to dream for myself.   I prayed about each opportunity, and instead saw myself much happier elsewhere than I’ve ever been…creating Journey of Possibilities!   God helped me to see things differently and know instinctively the right course of action….and trust this vision will be realized in perfect Divine time and order.   He also showed me that our possibilities are not among those visible to us in this reality, but the realm of ALL possibilities known and visible to Him and made available to us by giving Him control of our life.

Is there someone with whom you are frustrated? Is a particular area of your life feeling blocked? Is there some lesson that keeps presenting itself in the same annoying way over and over in your life?  Try praying with a truly open heart for God to help you see things differently with regard that that person or circumstance and find the best, most healing path for your future.   This prayer opens the door to abundant peace and allows miracles to happen in your  life!

Sheryl Sitts
www.JourneyOfPossibilities.com
www.Facebook.com/JourneyOfPossibilities