It sounds like the cry of a toddler, not a full-grown adult who’s discovering the real journey of healing. I was talking to a friend who’s been in extreme back pain for 3 months. He was describing to me that he’d been so fixated on being 100% better that he never noticed the little improvements that were taking place. It was all or nothing for him, as if anything less than 100% was too trivial to acknowledge.
This is a common pattern. I come across it all the time in my work with money. I call it a lottery mentality. You become so hooked on manifesting some extreme amount of money or amazing house or huge global project that you never take the time to learn how to change your reality through the little steps that build confidence and produce real, satisfying results.
People often describe my work as grounded and practical. I’m constantly looking for tangible results, not airy-fairy ideas that don’t turn into anything. It’s not as dramatic or emotionally stimulating as the lottery approach, but it actually works and that’s a lot more fulfilling in the longer term.
I spent many years rushing into everything, never finishing anything, and never having any significant outcomes. I had endless ideas, all of them creative and inspiring, but I eventually discovered that ideas have little value unless you do something with them. The ideas themselves are not the mark of creativity. It’s creating something with those ideas that makes you a creative person.
Creating a body that works better, or a business that’s profitable and enjoyable, or a relationship that’s loving and fulfilling takes more than ideas and inspiration. It’s deep work that demands dedication, patience, persistence, open-mindedness, and courage. It’s much easier to give up and accept that your body is sick, your business will never be very successful, or you married the wrong person.
The creativity that gradually transforms your life, so you experience more of what you want and less of what you don’t want, is a powerful and elevating experience. So many people would rather complain about what’s wrong than take steps to improve it, which is a pity because they miss out on discovering the deeper essence of life.
When you start to recognize how powerful and creative you really are, life becomes endlessly fascinating. You can play with your health, relationships, work, money, and contribution the same way children play with blocks, Legos, and collections of toys, only your play is different because it’s for real.
You receive constant feedback. Your health improves or gets worse. Your relationship becomes happier or deteriorates further. Your business becomes more or less successful. Your work creates more or less impact. If you’re honest with yourself, you can use these outcomes to make better decisions.
This is where the deeper secrets of life are discovered – in the increments of creating and tending to results along the way – not in a spoilt toddler’s demand for instant gratification. Strangely enough, as you get better at this your results come more quickly.
It is really possible for pain to disappear if you master the inner technology of self-healing. It’s possible to build a very successful business doing what you love and creating a significant impact for others, if you’re willing to let go of working so hard and, instead, explore how to play with your creativity. It’s possible to expand your capacity for love in your relationship beyond anything you have imagined, if you can give up popular images of what love is supposed to be and find out what it really is. And with such skills, you’re inevitably going to make a significant contribution to others.
