The angels have worked with me for years to find the freedom between my ears!
I used to argue for my limitations. I used to blame others for my mood. I used to feel victimized and unhappy about much in the world. I didn’t love my engineering job. I felt confined and bound to it after my parents paid for an entire college education. I felt stuck in a marriage that wasn’t bad but wasn’t growing. And I wore a big “V” for victim, energetically speaking, often defending to the heavens my right to be displeased! Looking back, it makes me laugh. Why on earth do we insist on defending our pain and digging ourselves deeper into it? I know the answer, of course. We just didn’t know otherwise at the time.
It wasn’t until I stopped digging into my pain and started tilling the soil of my soul that things got better. I had to admit I had a choice. I started taking self-help classes, reading books, and experimenting with personal growth modalities. I would not be the loving and happy person I am today had I not gone through all that. I would still be stuck if I had never used my free will to choose a focus beyond my circumstances.
The crucible of difficult situations, coupled with the free will to think beyond them, is often exactly the catalyst we need to grow into the person we want to be and to have the life we want to live.
And while pain isn’t necessary for growth, it often results when we want something different but don’t choose to think differently or do something different. Change your focus. Make small changes to feel better in life, and soon you’ll see the painful circumstances begin to shift.
Had I had my way with the external world at the time, I’d likely still be climbing the corporate ladder in engineering. Nothing wrong with that, except it wasn’t what thrilled me. Now I work with souls I adore by day and have a creative outlet making coloring books and other fun projects by night! I love my life most of the time. And when I don’t, I know I can change it.
In fact, I had an opportunity for change last weekend…
I’ve been having issues with the increasing insanity of computer programs as vibe coding becomes a thing. What used to take an engineer days to create and debug now can be done in a few hours. You tell a computer what you want, walk away, and it writes the software. However, it does exactly what you tell it, and if you’re not careful to be specific with your instructions, it may not know to consider the gazillion other factors involved. So many of the design programs I use are incorporating insanely brilliant features while losing their basic functions at times… like editing text correctly or showing the cursor.
Being a former engineer, this drives me nuts. I started to pray for my soul and sanity! “Dear God, help me be patient with these programs so I can create better interactions with them.” Most of my life, my tech stack has been supportive and kind to me.
I had a great opportunity to see what I had created and shift my thinking last weekend!
Last Friday, right as I was finishing up the week’s work, one of the drives in my RAID konked out. A RAID is a set of disks that all work together to create a safety net for your data. If you lose one drive, there are copies of your data on another. But when one konks out, you can’t mess around. You need a current backup ASAP in case the other one goes, or you risk losing a lot of your life’s work. Although I had prior backups in the cloud and on an external drive, they were days old. In my life, that might mean thousands of files that remained to be backed up. I changed my weekend plans.
As it turned out, the normal backup programs didn’t play well with the compromised drive, so I spent the weekend manually comparing 12 TB of data with what I had already saved and dragging all the changed files to the backup. It was not hard work, just a lot of grunt work.
I didn’t feel too free about the situation until I sat, breathed, received, and saw it through God’s eyes. I have a lot of data. It needed to be better organized. And I had asked for an attitude adjustment about computers! So I used my free will to focus on the fact that I am loved, that all would turn to good, and that I was lucky to be able to recover my files.
Suddenly, the grunt work felt like a meditation.
Suddenly functions on my computer that had driven me crazy mysteriously started working.
I started feeling great about my new organization. I found replacement drives easily. I was even able to complete another project and tidy up the house.
Using my free will to ask for help, receive love from heaven, and look for the good in the situation turned things around almost immediately.
I still “lost” a weekend. I still had a huge expense buying the new drives. But I’m organized. My data is safe. And I feel great.
There are many times in life when we face far more confining and difficult circumstances than rebuilding 12 TB of data. In my late twenties, I thought I was stuck in engineering for life and couldn’t see a way out… until I started focusing on the good where I could.
I never would have guessed I’d be talking to people I can’t see, working with thousands of people, and designing T-shirts—not to mention having beautiful, loving relationships with people in my personal life that I once considered impossible. Using my free will to love myself, find the good in life where I could, and focus on the good in others that I could see has changed everything.
Life now feels like freedom! Not because life always does what I want. Not because people show up exactly the way I’d wish. Not because I’m always the person I want to be, but rather because I now know I’m free to think a different thought, focus on a different thing, and find the good wherever I go. And in so doing, life changes… quickly.
Here are a few ways to use your free will to shift life when needed or to make it better when it is already good:
1. When Feeling Limited, Focus on What You Can Do
Sometimes we feel remarkably free. At other times, life, our bodies, or circumstances feel confining. It is easy to focus on a lack of freedom—what we can’t do, don’t have the energy, time, or money to do, etc.
But if you can pivot and ask yourself, “What can I do right now?” “What can I enjoy right now?” You will be using your free will to find the path to better circumstances. You will breathe a little easier and allow the body to recalibrate. And you’ll remember your freedom, which brings relief to the mind and emotions.
2. When “Stuck” in a Situation, Look for What You Can Enjoy
You might be in a job you don’t care for or in a situation where it is right to care for a child or an elder. It may leave you feeling stuck at times since there is no immediate way to create change or find balance. At those times, finding what you can enjoy is the way to exercise freedom, shift your vibration, and create opportunities for change.
If you’re in a job you don’t like, try to have fun on weekends, and in that happier vibe, you’ll receive new inspirations or bump into people who give you new direction.
If you are caretaking and find it hard to find balance, find simple rituals and pleasures that you can enjoy. A sip of tea while watching a program with your loved one. Holding hands and feeling your love flow to them. Simply telling yourself that doing your best is more than enough can shift a situation to feel more loving.
There isn’t always a big solution or a big change available, but by using your freedom to find whatever pleasure you can, you enter into a higher energy where new solutions, new ideas, and new opportunities become easier to access.
3. Take Baby Steps
It isn’t always feasible to quit a job, leave a relationship, or heal a health condition right away. But we are free to take baby steps. You can make a small change to be kind and compassionate to yourself. You can sit, breathe, and receive help from the angels. You can watch one inspiring video or read one uplifting passage a day. You can appreciate something other than what bothers you. You can brainstorm with a friend or AI about how to create change. Or you can do it the easy way and focus on the feeling of a better situation and let the Creator of Universes guide you.
In all cases, we can use our free will to take small steps that bring us closer to kinder realities.
On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by a lovely, high-vibe woman—Elaine Starling, host of the Abundance Journey podcast (available on Apple podcasts), and the Abundance Journey Video Show which you can find on YouTube. By the time I talked to her, I was in such a great mood that we riffed off each other’s good vibes, and an hour flew by as if it were five minutes. I’ll share the link when it airs on August 20. For now, you might find great inspiration in her work. She, too, owns her freedom to be grateful, to choose actions that forward her dreams, and to look for the good.
And wherever you find your inspiration, remember you are free—free to think better thoughts, free to be kind to yourself, free to focus on the good, and therefore free to work in cooperation with the benevolent universe to create a life you love, connections that satisfy your soul, and days that flow kindly.
Happy Fourth to those of you who celebrate it. No matter what, may freedom ring in your heart and soul, and may you always know the joy that comes from (as the angels say) wielding it wisely!
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