What’s Driving Your Behavior Your Shoulds or Your Inspiration?
I promise this is not a paid testimonial. Barb Patterson is a colleague and good friend. She is also a brilliant coach and a genius when it comes to business development. I love working with her in our Masterminds for Solopreneurs, and a few weeks ago, I got the personal benefit of participating in a Business Accelerator with her. It was a beta test, and Barb knocked it out of the park. I learned from her and all of the other participants. What the group did was help me get perspective on my business. I hadn’t realized I had been so caught up in running my business that I had not given myself time to go to the hundred thousand foot level and work on it.
This was especially fun to do in a group setting. I find it hard to have perspective on what my strengths are and to see where it is truly leveraged to place my energy. This is a learning curve for me. I am good at working hard. When I get scared, I compensate with hard work. When I feel insecure, I overdo it. This tendency has me push through and work harder rather than step back and take inventory.
I am better now than in the past. I recognize sooner when I am pushing and take my foot off the gas. I have a significantly better work-life balance than I did previously, but with my business expanding this was being encroached on. I can’t seem to catch up on my emails. I’m not spending as much time with friends and family as I would like. I haven’t read a novel in ages. I am doing what I love, but there can be too much of a good thing.
The three days with the group gave me the opportunity to let go of my attachments and “go back to zero”, a phrase used by Lila Turner that we have now coined in our Mastermind, and see what I really wanted to create. I wasn’t surprised at what came forward, but I was surprised at how easy and clear it was to see my next steps.
I realized I couldn’t keep doing everything I was doing. I was ready for reinvention with my work. When I gave myself permission to follow my inspiration, I felt a weight being lifted. I hadn’t noticed how much of the “should” was still at play inside of me. How I thought I should be. What I should do. What needed to happen? What I needed to do to be okay. Standing in the place of knowing that my okay-ness comes from within and is a given independent of my circumstances, feeling that in the moment, helped me to move from my “should” to my inspiration.
From there it was clear. I needed more space. I wanted more time for myself and more time for my family. That was what was in my heart. From there it was easy to see what I needed to do. I am taking July an August off. I am closing my therapy practice at the end of June. In addition to launching the six-month Soul-Centered Series, and writing, I will be working with a handful of six-month coaching clients, and with the help of the accelerator group, I came up with a really awesome yearlong apprenticeship program that feels very exciting.
I felt the freedom of letting go of my limits and personal restrictions. This is what I do for my clients all day long. It is so easy to see the potential in another person. It feels good to look through the eyes of love and recognize the magnificence of another. The group supported me in doing this for myself. This made it easy to step into the unknown and open to what wants to come through me.
What is your opportunity when it comes to seeing yourself more clearly and letting go of limitations? Do you have “shoulds” that are constricting your vision for yourself? Are you being driven by hard work and effort? Are you willing to take time to step back and allow yourself to reconnect with your inspiration so you can live more fully into your potential?
Your magnificence is innate. How do you want to share it with the world? What feels good to you? If you know you are 100% okay and connected with infinite potential, how do you want to express yourself into the world? As Howard Thurman said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” Are you open to allowing your inspiration to call your forward rather than pushing yourself to succeed? What happens when you step out of the way and relax so your true nature has more room to come through?
Rohini Ross is passionate about helping people wake up to their true nature. She is a psychotherapist, a transformative coach, and author of Marriage (The Soul-Centered Series Book 1). She has an international coaching practice helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of well-being, resiliency, and success. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, watch her Vlogs with her husband, Angus Ross, and subscribe to her weekly blog on her website, rohiniross.com.
Christine Heath & Judy Sedgeman – Spirituality and Resilience
When you no longer give authority to the fear-based thoughts in your consciousness, all you are left with is happiness. Through the teachings of Sydney Banks, you can see how your psychological functioning works, which makes you less compelled to follow those thoughts that do not serve you. Becoming more aware of the wholeness and integration of both your human and spiritual natures helps to ground you in the unchanging essence of who you are, and ride out the ups and downs of your emotional experience more gracefully. Accepting the normalcy of your humanness will naturally reduce your anxiety and fear and enhance your joy and happiness in each moment. By placing less pressure on yourself to feel a certain way or be hung up on self-improvement, you may find that low moods do not derail or debilitate you; instead, you will become much more attuned to your innate wellbeing and peace of mind and experience more happiness as a result.
Greater psychological freedom is the gift that keeps on giving. How grateful would you feel if you no longer had to listen to your negative, self-punishing and painful inner narrative, day in and day out? Understanding the role of thought and recognizing how it creates your feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is truly liberating! You will be better able to hear and heed your inner wisdom and become less driven by the noisy thoughts of fear and constriction. As an ongoing practice, this allows you to more fully experience your resilience and reach a greater sense of clarity about how you want to move forward in your life. As a result, you can live in a way that feels authentic and true in every area, including your career, family, home, creative expression, play, relationships and overall well-being.
Your ability to enjoy life comes from being present in the moment rather than caught up in habitual, negative thoughts that take you out of the Now. Sydney Banks’ wisdom supports you in becoming aware of how you get seduced by your limited personal thinking and thus, create a painful reality of misunderstanding, fear and restriction. When you recognize how and why this happens, you can step free of the pattern. This understanding assists you to dismiss unhelpful thoughts and not take them seriously. Unlike traditional self-help or therapy, experiencing more psychological freedom and enjoyment does not rely on techniques. There are no magic bullets on the path of well-being. All you need to do is follow an internal compass that points to the truth of who you really are—beyond transient thoughts to your unchanging, formless essence.
In our culture, success is often associated with hard work and narrowly defined as material gain. However, authentic success, as shared by Sydney Banks, includes such intangibles as happiness, well-being, love, joy, compassion, and peace of mind that are innate in each one of us, along with outward goals and achievements. It honors the whole person in all walks of life, whether you are a professional, leader, executive, solopreneur, employee, mother, teacher or student. From this knowing and experience, you can access the infinite wellspring of love that is your essence, then share your gifts with the world from a place of fulfillment and meaning, through a profound understanding of the interaction between your psychological and spiritual natures. While conventional success can deplete you, authentic success only fills you up.
Are you self-critical, hard on yourself, and constantly trying to “fix” whatever you think is wrong with you? Perhaps you have tried all kinds of different personal growth techniques and spiritual practices in the hope of solving all your problems. This cycle can be exhausting and never-ending, because there will always be something to improve about yourself, from that mindset. Sydney Banks’ teachings can help you to see how your humanness is normal and not something that needs fixing: as a spiritual person, you don’t need to change or eradicate your humanness! Seeing yourself as normal allows you to love and accept yourself exactly as you are—warts and all. Adopting this perspective naturally brings out the best in you and helps to find peace with your personality. Self-love and self-acceptance is your natural state, and any disconnection from your true nature is only temporary. What a relief!
One of the first areas people often experience profound transformation from the teachings of Sydney Banks is in their relationships, both personal and professional. While it often seems like another person’s irritation, anger, indifference, insensitivity, rudeness, etc., directly affects your experience, in reality your disturbance is a product of your own individual thinking. By making someone else responsible for how you feel, that person automatically becomes the cause of your suffering. Once you understand that you always have a place of well-being inside, independent of another’s behavior, it is easier to maintain equanimity through their changing moods and behaviors. Romantically, you may experience deeper love and intimacy with your partner, but the teachings benefit all relationships. This awareness supports more authentic connection and expression, while facilitating greater understanding, improved communication, reduced reactivity, more acceptance of self and others, and improved ability to work out differences and find common ground. Best of all, just one person shifting in a relationship is enough to transform it.
Barbara Patterson
Scott Kelly
Barbara Patterson
Clare Dimond
Michael Neill
Rohini Ross
Elsie Spittle – The Soul of the Principles
Spiritual Facts 
Chip Chipman – The Simplicity of Syd’s Teachings
Dicken Bettinger – The Spiritual Nature of the teachings of Sydney Banks
Ana Castronovo
30.04.2018 at 07:51Love it Rohini.,.
Rohini
30.04.2018 at 08:01Thanks Ana!
Liz Goldman
30.04.2018 at 11:36Thanks, Rohini! This is so perfectly timed for me.
Rohini
30.04.2018 at 20:32Glad you enjoyed it, Liz!
Andrea Olsen
30.04.2018 at 21:24I got so much freedom from a realization that made it clear – I was not working long hours and constantly experiencing “I’m short on time” because of my “to do” list. I had this experience because of my thoughts about my to do list. I know we all know this, but I didn’t truly KNOW until… well, until I had my own understanding. Nothing, absolutely nothing had to change about the contents of my to do list for me to experience ease, peace, and satisfaction about what I was up to as I went about my day. This stuff sets us free!
Rohini
04.05.2018 at 07:51Hi Andrea, Thank you for your comment. So glad you had your realization about your To Do list. It sounds so liberating! Appreciate you sharing. It is so inspiring!
EK
02.05.2018 at 17:27Oh my goodness. I’ve just been going through the exact same issue. I am currently taking a step back to be with myself and the kids. I’m so over the pushing. But I have a dilemma. What happens when you’re part of a couple in business together, and you stepping back means them stepping up more…. I think that is half the reason why I feel guilt or why I stop myself from completely relaxing. There’s always the other’s energy to be sensitive / responsive to, but you know with your level of exhaustion that to stay would be a mistake and would take both parties down a spiral of poor thinking. Thank you for a great episode!
Rohini
04.05.2018 at 07:54Hi, I hear you, and whenever something looks like a dilemma, I know it is a state of mind issue. I have not brought my wisdom and creativity to the situation because it is looking black and white, either or, win-lose. I encourage you to see the dilemma as an opportunity to open your mind and have fresh thinking so you can come up with a creative solution that is win-win for both you and your partner.