Managing Expectations, Meltdowns and Moments of Madness

Dear Reader,

So my dears, has anyone slipped up yet on your New Year’s Resolutions? Maybe skipped a workout or ate an entire pizza in one sitting? Or perhaps you went all out and did BOTH on the same day! BRAVO on your humanness! Most of us have this magical aspiration that with the start of a new year, we will automatically be gifted a fresh new start on the new and improved versions of our lives and ourselves. And this super healthy optimism often fuels our willingness to make changes and exert effort and energy into creating our new, fresh selves. But we forget, until our first mishap, that change does require diligence and rarely is the path of success linear, but rather a zigzag towards our goals. It is actually often the set backs that give us clarity into how much we actually want what we are striving for in the first place!

One of my resolutions is to create more down time so I can even HEAR MYSELF THINK! This may sound rather basic for some but we have a rather large circle of souls we tend to and love starting with our combined 6 children and relatives and friends and on and on. I generally love being a nurturer. It delights me to uplift and inspire but for an extended period of time, I have this deep feeling I am on a verge of a change and that I need to get quiet to hear my soul’s whispers. Remember the EGO shouts, the SPIRIT whispers so if we want to hear what our Soul is calling us to do, we must get quiet. Meditation is my main gateway to messaging with the Divine – I get clear on what I am called to do and how to do it with ease and grace. Yet when life gets on overload with too many external demands, I sometimes approach my meditations with a rushed sense of duty, which unsurprisingly, yields anything but inspiration. In Transcendental Meditation, which I have faithfully practiced for over 7 years, we are reminded to approach our meditations with a gentle innocence and no expectations, just a willingness to surrender to the natural process. It is easy yet even easy is challenging when we are stressing out!

So how do we manage expectations, melt-downs and moments of madness? By remembering we are human and our emotions are telling us we have gone faster than we can keep up with and its okay to slow down, re-group and adjust ourselves before re-entering our arena!

When I first heard philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s famous quote, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience”, I nearly heard bells as if my Soul was confirming this TRUTH for me! But as I dedicated my life more and more to expressing my spiritual self, I think I started to cheat my very real human side that has needs and desires of its own that I sometimes push aside in the pursuit of living a more enlightened life.

Let’s honor the fact that we are both SPIRIT AND FLESH. We crave connectedness to our divinity and we also crave chocolate. We need one another and we also need sleep. We aspire to be better and perspire as we go. It’s a zigzag. It’s called being human. And it’s beautiful. Our expectations are just that - OUR expectations. Let’s let the days and nights of our lives unfold gently, letting love be our guiding light, and allow the whispers of our hearts and bodies to matter. Let’s slow down to hold our children, to pamper our pets, to love one another. Let’s be willing to hold space for expectations that go unmet, meltdowns (our own and others) and moments of madness. If we were meant to be ONLY spiritual shining beacons of light, we would still be in the sky as stars. We are here and it is NOW. We get to start anew! With love, Diana

Diana Stone, M.A., is a Wellness Consultant and inspirational writer and speaker. Connect with her at dianalynnstone@me.com or www.dianalynnstone.com