The Courage To Thrive

By Jennifer Elizabeth Masters

Everyday life can be wrought with worry, struggle, strife, depression, loneliness, despair and feeling there is no way out, or even no way in sight. Others feel that life is fun, a joy to live, filled with ease and grace. So what gives? How do we get from the struggle part of life to living a life filled with joy, fun and happiness? 

Courage. Yup. It takes courage to decide you want a better life. It takes courage to decide to work on yourself. It takes courage to let go of the struggle, resistance and to allow yourself to love you. It takes courage to allow yourself to be vulnerable, authentic and be loved.

It takes courage to leave the woman who hasn't had sex with you for the past 20 years, but says she loves you.  It takes courage to leave the man who puts you down and calls you worthless that you are terrified of. It takes courage to leave the man you fell in love

with, only to find out he really preferred men to women. It takes courage to be vulnerable with your partner and allow them to really see you for who you are. Risking it all takes tremendous courage. Choosing to work on yourself takes courage and perseverance. Leaving the comfort of the home our children grew up in and the one we have been married to for 26 years is a big risk. 

We have to ask ourselves, is the pain I am experiencing now, worth risking what pain I may experience alone? 

Making The Leap Into The Void

Moving ourselves forward can be scary. Change can be scary. Sometimes we have to take that leap forward into the void not knowing what to expect. The not knowing can be scary. When we begin to respect ourselves and reject judgment, abuse or an unloving partner, that can be scary. We may have lived in an

abusive environment all our lives, where walking on eggshells was what was familiar. Just because something was familiar, does not mean it is beneficial. It may feel uncomfortable at first because you are stepping into a world unknown to you previously. It may feel foreign and strange in an environment that is not abusive. 


Loving ourselves through all the challenges that life offers is key. We can look at all the mistakes we have made, all the people we have hurt or those we have let down. Or, we can look at each experience as a gift and a lesson. Each experience we have goes into our rich tapestry of our lives that creates us. 

I would not be who I am today without all my experiences, divorces and challenges. I certainly would not be filled with joy and love each day, if I continued to dwell on what a crappy daughter I was, or how many men I left. Isn't it time to recognize that your life was showing you who you are? Each experience just spurred you on, helped you grow and made you who you are today. You are a unique expression that is you. 

You are completely worthy, loved and already beautiful inside and out. You just need to sand blast all the negative thoughts and love all of you. Not just the perfect parts, but the shadowy, smelly parts as well. 

Each of us deserves love. The love begins and ends with you. Love is what needs to be poured into you. We need to be kinder, gentler to ourselves, nurture ourselves. When we feel separate from others, we often feel unloved. We are the ones that have to love ourselves. Everything comes back to the love that is inside of each of us. Often we look to another relationship, job, car, home to fill us up. Yet these things only offer solace for a short time. We are the key to the ending of our own suffering, no one else.

Letting Go

Trying to be perfect, controlling others our environment and manipulating to get what we want are all negative behaviors. We can be the best "us" we can be, without striving for perfection. In striving - we never arrive. We are setting ourselves up for failure and added stress. At first, it will take courage to accept yourself as enough. It may not feel comfortable. You may have doubts. Recognizing that we are already enough, and letting go of what others think of us, or trying to please anyone will relinquish the "trying to make others happy" paradigm. It is our personal responsibility to ourselves to be happy. Pleasing others all the time does not bring us any happiness. In fact, it often leaves us feeling resentful, bitter or angry.

I  live in concert with my inner child, it is my inner adult I am trying to find! JEM

Connecting With Our Inner Child

Connecting with our inner child is the way to get to joy. Most people are disconnected from their inner little boy and girl and have forgotten how to play, be playful or have fun. It is only our decision to make our lives better that will change our perspective.  Once we

join forces with our inner being that is ageless, we begin to live in joy each day. 

Dysfunction, struggle and strife cause joy to be shut down or closed off. We make life harder than it needs to be with our thoughts and negative focus. It takes courage to let go of embarrassment and say, what do I have to lose, "let me have some fun and play today."

Laughter and Fun

In my family, we would get together regularly. My brothers and father were boisterous and loud. No one would get drunk, but we certainly let loose and consumed a few glasses of wine on those occasions. My father and the boys would tell stories and we would all laugh. My dad would have tears rolling down his face from laughing so hard. 

When we really began to have a good time, my mother would take the bottle of wine off the table and shout, "Enough!" I would look at her in disbelief. She did not know how to have fun. That would be the end of our laughter and enjoyment.  My mother was much more comfortable with struggle and strife. Conflict was where she lived and breathed. She was closed off from her inner child. Her parents died when she was 5. Fun was foreign to her. It still is.

Choices

Life is filled with choices and choiceless choices. Choiceless? Sometimes we don't choose and decisions are made for us. Our partner divorces us, or dies. Or maybe we discover we have cancer, or Parkinson's. Sometimes it is evident which way to go. Sometimes when we don't make a choice, it is made for us. Other times we feel

filled with fear, like we are stuck in a corner like the energizer bunny backing up and ramming back into the brick wall. Even no decision, is a choice.

I am personally familiar with the pain of divorce. I have experienced it more than once. Although I spent much time thinking before leaping, divorce was not a happy thought for me. Leaving the father of my two boys when I had a comfy life, a beautiful home and two paid for vehicles was not easy. However, we were not in alignment. 

I was not free to follow my path. I was a corporate wife and psychic readings and the Spiritual was not something my husband approved of. He did not want to go to counseling until I wanted out. I could not be

My offspring all grown up

authentically me married to him. I have left blame behind. In the early days, I thought it was my husband's fault that I was unhappy. It took 3 divorces to discover that I was the cause of my own pain and suffering. I was the one who kept myself stuck and mired in guilt, shame and self-hatred. I am here to tell you the risk was worth it. I would not be as happy as I am today without leaving those men. In my solitude I found me. It took being alone, intense introspection, letting go and loving every inch of me, even the parts that weren't perfect. 

Each one led me to discover more about me. Did I go through difficult times? You betcha! I most certainly did. I experienced all kinds of struggles and strife. In the loneliness, I discovered the gem that is me. Being alone served me well. You

are a gem also. Within you, under all that pain is beauty and light. When we are bathed in pain, sorrow and suffering that is all we can see. Even being alone, can be far greater an experience than living with someone who clearly does not love you back. Or worse, thinks they do, abuses you, or withholds love from you.

Me very unhappy. I don't even look like me.

My daughter's father was abusive in every possible way. Although he said he loved me, his love was distorted. He witnessed his father punch his mother in the face. He broke her dentures in three. This event traumatized him. He never got over his inner rage. He died far too young because of the blocks in his heart from early trauma. 

Often we are in marriages where love is distorted and not real love. Our childhoods and the marriage our parents have are often a guide for our own. We can try to break out of the patterns that we were programmed with early on and some of us do. When their marriage

was abusive or loveless, yours probably will be also. The blocked emotions and patterns in your DNA need to be released so you can live a happier life.

My experience is my experience. Yours will be different. What I finally found after my divorces, was that I didn't love me. I discovered that those men were simply reflecting back to me how I felt inside. I felt unworthy, unlovable and my heart was clearly shut down. I had no idea back then that I did not trust or respect myself. All of that changed when I began to love me as I am. 

Trauma, horror, grieving can shut down our hearts. Our emotions become blocked in our hearts and we fail to feel fully. We are only half living and certainly not able or available to truly love another. Loving ourselves can be challenging when we don't know how.

Self-discovery is a path travelled alone. Sure we can grow and heal when we are with a partner. However, the time alone, in self-introspection is what is needed. We need to journal, ask ourselves questions, hire a coach to help us see what we can't. Catalyst coaching involves a way for you to discover, through my energy pushing up your issues for you to see. Spending time encouraging you to look at aspects of yourself, what makes you happy, what brings you joy or what you see for yourself in 10 years, could bring you the answers you need.

Staying is Simpler

I stayed in one marriage for five years after I knew it was over. Many people stay much longer. Staying is easier on the pocket book. Staying does not involve having to move into an apartment, paying child support or being homeless. Staying means you keep all your toys and comforts. It is certainly cheaper for a couple to stay together. A Divorce is expensive. Many men struggle to make child support payments and have nothing left over. Money is not what brings us joy or lasting happiness. A house may be beautiful, but it may not bring you lasting peace or harmony in our hearts.

The question is, do those comforts bring you joy, or do they create a prison for your soul?

I recently received a phone call from someone who met me in person. He is facing challenges in his life on every level. His marriage, work and personal life seemed to be wrought with strife. The outside circumstances of his life were showing him something needed to change. He could not do it alone. He hadn't thus far, he knew changes needed to happen. He told me that in my presence, he felt better, happier, and could see his own potential for his life to be better. He wondered what I did for that to occur. I did nothing. I was just present with him.

What Can You Do On Your Own?

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Remember what you turn your focus and energy to expands. If you focus on happiness, passion, joy, that is what you will experience. If you focus on how miserable you are, how your wife is a bitch and life is not worth living, that is what you will experience. How can you take care of yourself while you decide what it is that makes you truly happy? The following is what I did and it worked for me. I will gift you with some of the tools that helped me heal and get to the place of permanent joy.

1. Focus on you. Your spouse is not your problem. If you leave this person for another, you will find the same issues will turn up, because you have not changed. Patterns still exist within you that need to be reprogrammed. You most likely have emotions trapped inside your body, causing you physical pain. Those can be released with me. So take time for introspection and get to know YOU. 
2. What is your INTENTION? Having an intention to heal is a good intention. Being more specific about what your intention is will help you enormously. Your intention could be to be more productive in your community. Your intention could be to be present with your wife, children and friends. Your intention could be simply to be happy and help others be happy also. Write your intention down. Writing helps bring it into manifestation. Writing helps you see where you are going. Writing brings your thoughts into reality.
3. Write down 10 things that you love about you. If you have difficulty, think about your eyes, your talents, your generosity, kindness... but come up with 10. Don't just think about this, put your hand over the middle of your chest, go inside and feel the answers, rather than THINK about them. Write your answers in your journal.
4. What do you love to do? What brings you joy? Is it a walk out in nature? A trip to the beach. Meditation? Write down 10 things you love to do. Then do one of these every day for yourself. Self-care, self-nurturing is key to healing. Most of us focus on others, so thinking about ourselves is quite foreign. It is important and part of coming to joy.
5. What are you passionate about? Are you passionate about health, fitness, spirituality, giving to others? Your work? Whatever you are passionate about drill down to understand why you are so passionate about these things. Write, write write. Writing about these things will help you move energy and come to a deeper understanding of who you are and where you derive your happiness from.
6. Have a spiritual practice. Begin each day with prayers of gratitude. This should be number one on your hit parade! Without gratitude, you will not receive more. Gratitude focuses on the good you have which will increase the good to more and more GOOD STUFF! 
7. Meditate. Do your spiritual practice daily. Repetitive spiritual practice is needed to heal. You are mind, body, spirit, not just a body with a mind. The importance of spiritual practice is greatly understated. Without it, you will not have faith. Without it you will feel unsupported by The Universe and Source/God/Spirit.
8. Play with your inner child. Do what your inner child wants. Skip, play hopscotch, be silly, laugh, swim. Have some
   
   fun! One of the fastest ways to feeling joy is to reconnect with the little you. Your inner child is real, not imagined. All you have to do is believe! Why do children have so much fun? Because they are connected with their inner child. They play. Most of us have forgotten how to and don't recognize how necessary it is. Just because you are grown up, doesn't mean you can't play! Your soul will love you for it. Life will be infinitely better when you have some fun and play.
9. Get outside every day. Nature, the outdoors will cleanse your energy and ground you. Breathe. 
10. Be present. Looking over your shoulder about what you didn't do, or should have done will cause you stress and keep you stuck in the past. Live and breathe (literally) in the present. Breathe in deeply. Exhale completely. Repeat three times. Breathing will help ground you and bring you into the present.
11. Forgive yourself. Do the Ho'oponopono prayer for yourself first and then anyone you feel you have hurt. You don't need to have anyone apologize to you. Forgiveness unburdens you. 
12. Be kind to yourself and others. Lose the baseball bat that you beat yourself up with. Lose the magnifying glass that you look at yourself through. Love yourself completely, not just the pretty sweet smelling parts - all of you. When you stop trying to excise the parts of you that are unresolved or that you
    
    think you need fixing, you will begin to feel more worth. You are worthy. You deserve love. So give it to yourself and then become a magnet for love and all manner of wondrous people and circumstances to flow to you. 

One of the things that I do, is to clear trapped sorrow, grief, heartache, anger, trauma and other emotions from your cells, and heart. This work is life-changing. E-mail Jennifer now to book a heart healing session or coaching session now. 

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. 

Steve Jobs

I met Jennifer at one of her workshops that a friend recommended to me.  At that time I was searching, and wanting some help out of my deep depression and anxiety.
Keeping in touch, I joined her on line workshops, and eventually her coaching once a week.

One of my earliest coaching sessions with Jennifer, I felt complete trust, like I have never felt with anyone in my ENTIRE LIFE.  I told her my deepest darkest secrets, and she welcomed me into her loving space.  For this, I will never ever forget, and will be eternally grateful.    

She allowed me to be where I was, no rescue, no high expectation - no pat advice that I have heard over and over - not landing anywhere in me that could really grow.

Her advice was simple and doable, small steps to move forward - with kindness, and no judgment allowed me to open up.
The meditations helped me see my guides and myself in a new light.  

As I grew in compassion and respect for myself as a result from the coaching sessions, vast changes in me occurred.I feel happier, more peaceful, more truly loving now.
In both my professional life and personal life, the changes though subtle, were highly significant:  I easily am present with people and they sense this.  If nothing else occurs, I feel that this is a huge gift, to be able to connect with people so that they feel heard and significant. N.A., Atlanta, GA

Contact Jennifer now for questions, or to set up an appointment

Consciousness is our heritage, our innermost nature,
a spontaneous, natural, childlike state. 

~ Swami Amar Jyoti