Our culture exhorts us to try harder, go for the goal, never give up! The messages are so loud and the training to push our way forward to a 100% level so lifelong, we find it difficult to give ourselves a break.
Once upon a time—which is actually the summer of 2022—I was struggling with intense depression, and it was far from the first time. I had been plagued with depression and anxiety for more than 30 years and I felt like a victim to its comings and goings, never knowing when I would be plunged back into its dark waters and not knowing how to help myself purposefully exit that clingy sea.
This early July morning, around 2 am, I could feel myself descending further into dangerous emotional territory. There was nothing that a hospital could do for me; I had already been there. I was taking the medication and waiting for an increased dosage to work for me, which takes up to two weeks.
I had Abraham Hicks playing on YouTube constantly. Something of a much higher frequency, I thought, would certainly help. I had been listening to Abraham for such a long time, on and off, and I had always been impressed with their “rampages”—rampages of appreciation, rampages of abundance, of self-worth, of forgiveness, and so forth.
Previously I had figured out that the way those rampages work is to started right where the person is and then ramp them up with honesty and small steps. But it wasn’t until that July night that I applied that information.
As I felt myself falling, I knew I was out of answers. I could not descend further without danger, and I had no more tools or solutions I could think of. I was unwilling to fall further and thought that the worst was at hand. Then the idea came to me to try writing my own rampage, even though I had no idea how to do that.
I reached for a journal and a pen and I started writing. Whenever I came to a stop because I didn’t know what to say next, I heard Abraham say something on YouTube that was exactly what I needed to hear to jog me forward. It was so in alignment with my focus and my need!
This happened over and over and over again as I continued writing, focused intently on the page and on my own sensing and feelings inside my body.
I knew that this repeated help from Abraham was incredible, but I didn’t have time to stop and be amazed—I just kept writing, and in 10 short minutes I was no longer in danger! I wasn’t free of depression just yet, but even in those difficult moments the fact that I—myself!—had been able to shift my own emotional setpoint was absolutely mind-blowing to me.
For four days I just wrote and wrote and wrote, and by the end of it I had no more daily depression and anxiety. Oh, I still have to take the meds (that’s a next-step, I suppose), but my quality of life had just changed 180 degrees.
The next step was to embrace Mike’s visioning, now that I felt stable and whole. That was what I did, and life slowly started to get better and better as I began to allow more light into my being, my mind, my feeling body.
And now, in just a few short weeks, I am about to become a Certified Infinite Possibilities Trainer. I eagerly welcome this amazing training, the opportunity to meet a new tribe to embrace and be embraced by, and the change to develop my own training to offer to others who think they have no control over their lives but actually do.
And all this is happening because I have been willing to understand that “go for the goal” is too big. Instead, I go for the next relieving emotion/thought and turn to the self-supporting thought and vision.
Do not underestimate the baby step. Do not mistake running for speed as better—an error I have made in the past. Do not prize the race above the slow, appreciative walk. It is the small next step that is truly transformational; it is knitted to your authentic self, right where you are, and it very simply takes you to more of you.
That is how the divine works: If in the world it’s big, spiritually it’s small. If in the world it’s small, spiritually it is enormous.
In the words of a meme making the rounds right now: “When you slow down, you feel. When you feel, you heal. And when you heal, you grow. Sometimes slowing down is the most productive thing you can do.”
