Dear ,
Let’s say you're going through life, holding a cup of tea, and something or someone bumps into you. What spills out of your cup? You might answer, “tea.”
Wrong answer.
What spills out of your cup is whatever was in your cup. You could have been carrying coffee or tea or confetti in your cup. When life bumps you… and it will… whatever is in your cup will splash out.
When my aunt (who raised me) was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, what spilled out of my cup in the beginning was hopelessness and fear.
Then someone taught me about
The Power of Intention
and I added that to my cup.
The Power of Intention changed everything. I had been feeling powerless until I set the intention,
“May we all be better because of this experience.”
That intention changed how I showed up. The Alzheimer’s experience was happening — I couldn’t do anything about that — but I could choose who I was going to be and how I was going to show up on the journey.
Two years ago, my sister was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. My cup was bumped again. But because I had put The Power of Intention into my cup, in addition to the usual fear and sadness, powerFULLness splashed out too. We dubbed her cancer journey, Love-fest, and this intention added beauty to the experience.
I also put gratitude into my cup and experimented with that.
Whenever I went to Colorado, I would take her friends out to breakfast and thank them for helping my sister when I couldn’t be there. One time, I even decorated the table with roses and a crystal angel ornament for each person. My sister loved these breakfasts. We all did. They were filled with love and gratitude.
Then life bumped my arm again last spring, when my son was diagnosed with testicular cancer. BUMP. Fear spilled out of my cup, but there was also love, gratitude and the-power-of-intention.
I discovered two new things to add to my cup too.
The Power of Words
and
The Power of Unconditional Love
The words “chemotherapy” and “chemotherapy ward” made us all feel tense and afraid. So we started saying we were going to the “healing center” for a “healing session.” It was a simple word change, but it helped a lot. Words are powerful.
One morning, I was journaling and my pen felt like it started moving by itself. It wrote the words:
Unconditional Love
A voice in my head said, “Unconditional love isn’t just about people, it’s also about the events in your life. You have to love the cancer too and look for the good.” I learned to ask, “What if this is happening for us, not to us?” Now that is a powerful perspective shift.
I have an 80/20 belief about life. I believe that 80% of the time we create our life through our choices. But I have also experienced that 20% of the time “sh*t happens.” We can’t control the event, but we can choose how we are going to feel about it and how we are going to respond to it.
That’s our power. We can add some beautiful things to our cup now that prepares us for those moments when life bumps our arm.
I hope you are living a bump-free life right now, but if you have some stuff going on, know that I am sending you love.
This is Rebecca with Journaling.com.
“Let’s put some cool stuff in our cup.”
P.S. I recorded an interesting podcast that you might like, about how Eckhardt Tolle manifests. (If you click the “follow” button for the podcast, I believe it will notify you whenever I create a new podcast.)
It’s available on iTunes at: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-power-of-journaling/id1550538439?i=1000631307460
It’s available on Spotify at: https://spotify.link/YEynk6W14Db
If you use a different podcast platform, just search for “The Power of Journaling with Journaling.com” and the complete list of episodes will come up.
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