While chilling out and snuggling with my 12 year old, she asked me the question, “What’s it like when you know the world?”
I smirked, knowing that she was picking up on my extremely happy state, at the end of a week where life had been so dang good and shown me how supported I am right now. Synchronicities had happened in so many conversations and so many ways during the preceding week, everything seemed to be happening effortlessly.
But as I sat there snuggling with her, I pondered her question, and what it is that I, as her mom, want to teach her, so that she too knows the world.
Knowing that she has her teenage years ahead of her, I decided to let her in on what my 40s feel like to me. At least to give her an end-state to shoot for! (Let’s hope she feels it sometime before then.)
Here’s how I described the feeling of ‘knowing the world,’ as she calls it: “It’s a happiness that’s deep and that lasts,” I told her, “but even more than that, it’s knowing how life really works that makes it all easier. There are some things you will learn and understand more as you grow up.”
Deep words to share with a pre-teen perhaps, but I reckon if she can ask questions like she does, she’s looking for the deeper answers. She wants to learn. She wants to know the world.
So, what is it that I have learned about how life really works that I can share with my daughter and you?
Lesson 1: Every relationship reflects a part of you.
Our lives are full of relationships. Each and every one of them is a reflection or a mirror to some part of you. Whether it shows you something you need to heal, forgive, grow or just enjoy, how you experience each of your relationships is what you need to own. Relationships offer us the opportunity to grow. In each one, we should seek the lessons we need to learn. Whatever changes you wish to see in others, make them yourself first. The relationship will then begin to reflect your shift or change. You can never change another person, but you can change yourself. This is how relationships shift, because they simply reflect the changes in you.
“You must be the change you want to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Lesson 2: Happiness is an inside job.
There is nothing in this world that will bring permanent happiness to us as an outside-in job. Happiness that lasts, can only be found on the inside. Happiness is made up of two essential components: 1) our mind-set or positivity set-point and 2) having personal goals that we are working toward, bringing a sense of fulfilment, passion, and zest or zing when we’re doing ‘our thing!’. Despite our thinking, our lifestyle circumstances have little influence over where we register on the happiness scale.
“Happiness is not something readymade. It comes from your own actions.” – Dalai Lama
Lesson 3: When you change, your external world changes, too.
Anyone who has studied manifestation principles or understands the Law of Attraction knows that you attract where you are at. Raise your vibration, let go of what does not serve you, change your beliefs, and your whole world will change, too. But how much will your external world change? It seems it’s well capable of doing a U-turn or a full 180 degrees. Opportunities appear when we are ready for them. Doors appear in places we had not thought about or predicted.
“The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.” – J.P. Morgan
Lesson 4: There are no limits.
The stories we tell ourselves are our only limits. Change your story and vamoose, the limit is gone. In a way, our stories are part of our ‘stay safe’ program. If our story says we cannot do X, then we can safely leave X for someone else to do while we comfortably sit within our own comfort zone. But playing small never brought anyone that feeling of magic in their lives. It’s in the stretching, growing, taking on new challenges, and finding new extended limits, that we begin to find out who we truly are or, at the very least, the next version of ourselves! There is nothing that you cannot change. You can be, do, and have anything you desire, as long as you tell yourself the story that allows you to get there.
“Believe there are no limits but the sky.”- Cervantes
Lesson 5: It’s all about NOW and opening to what the future wants to bring.
This may be the holy grail… learning to be in the present, being okay with ‘now’. Letting go of what happened in the past and not worrying or fixating on the future. Be present to your life and those around you in this very day. Make peace with your past and the stories that brought you to today. Learn from the past, see how far you have come. Look forward to the future, with eyes of child-like wonder and curiosity… “I wonder what will happen next?” Open to the possibilities of where life wants to bring you.
“Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.” – Wayne Dyer
And lastly, don’t forget to smile! The smile that comes with happiness, a deep sense of trust and inner peace that comes with knowing the world…
