S2 EP147 – Think You’re Done with Life? Think Again

Episode Summary

Are you creating the life you want, or do you feel a victim of a disappointing life? Why are you on the planet? What is your life about for you? If you feel like you are done with life, you are likely missing the point of life.

Transcript

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding podcast. Today I’m talking about the fact that you might be missing out on what life is all about. You might be getting discouraged with your life because it might not be turning out the way you thought it would. But you might be missing the real point of life and getting stuck in helplessness and hopelessness.

Dr. Erika Chopich, the co-creator of Inner Bonding, thought of this topic, so I asked her to speak about it, and here is what she said:

“I meet so many young people now who seem older than their actual ages. They seem worn down by life and trapped in monotony and futility. I look into their dull eyes and see that they are starting to feel hopeless. I see it everywhere I go – that vacant look in the eyes that says, ‘I can barely put one foot in front of the other and I can’t stand this one more day, not one more hour, not one more minute.’ The danger in feeling that way is when helplessness also creeps in. When a person feels hopeless and helpless at the same time, they’re very near the point of giving up. But the truth is we’re never helpless. There’s always help. We have our higher guidance for a reason – to lift us out of that darkness and despair and to help us take just one step toward the light. If you reach for it, one step towards the light will illuminate the way for you. It will show you the way out. It’ll bring you back to your joy, your peace, and your love no matter what goes on, on the planet, or what goes on around you, or what goes on in your family, or what goes on in your relationship. The light will always point the way. All you need to do is just reach out for a moment with an intent to learn about loving yourself – just one moment and you’re no longer helpless. That’s the loving action. That is the way to your well-being and your joy and your love. Never give up. Never never never give up.

“It’s OK to feel lost at times – we all do. I see it in the young people who work in our barn, that they become lost or confused. Sometimes they talk about not feeling like they have a future – that the planet is in disarray and college is beyond their reach, and that even being able to afford a place to live is such an overwhelming challenge that they become immobilized. And then this wondrous thing happens when I see them reach out to one of the horses and throw their arms over the horse’s neck and give them a kiss. The love they receive from that healing horse in return seems to open a little bit of a doorway they can still receive! They see the light even if only for a moment and feel it in their bodies and in their souls. It’s as though God uses that wondrous equine, that beautiful animal, as a way to reach out and say there is still hope for you. There is still love here, and I see them transformed during their work shift back into a lightness of being, back into a hopefulness and realization that they are in fact not helpless.

“The barn team empowers each other and if one member has fallen into the darkness, the others will rally around and help lift them, led by the beautiful horses. It’s almost as though the barn team adopts the same herd mentality that the horses have, and they buoy each other, and they lift each other and guide each other.

“If you’re feeling like your life is over and that you’re just done with it, you need to find your herd. Sometimes that’s not easy to do, but have you looked? When you reach for your higher guidance, you will be guided to more of your herd to lift you through the dark times to find your peace, and to help others. There’s no better way to bring life back into your life than to help someone else.”

I so appreciate Erika’s wisdom and perspective!

Are you disappointed with how your life is turning out?

I received the following question from Aubrey, a woman who attended one of my webinars:

“How can you achieve self-love when you have deep disappointment with the way your life turned out?”

This is a very interesting question, because how your life is turning out is directly related to your self-love, but it seems that Aubrey believes that self-love is the result of how her life is turning out rather than the cause of it.

Many people have been taught to believe that life is a random crapshoot and that the best we can do is just go along for the ride.

Nothing can be further from the truth!

The truth is that our thoughts are creative. We are spiritual beings having an experience in a body, and we are constantly being guided and supported by nonphysical spiritual beings and by the powerful love energy we call God.

When we think a thought, that thought has energy. It has a frequency, and that frequency draws to itself like frequencies. When we think negative, judgmental thoughts about ourselves and others, these low-frequency thoughts draw low-frequency results to us. If you often think, “I’m not good enough to be loved,” the Universe says, “Okay,” and goes about manifesting that thought. When you often think the thought “I’m a beautiful child of God and I’m blessed,” the Universe says “Okay,” and goes about manifesting that thought.

The question Aubrey asked indicates that she isn’t currently loving herself, and her life is reflecting that. Instead of going within and noticing her lack of self-love that is resulting in her disappointment in her life, she is saying that she can’t love herself until her life gets better. Can you see the problem with this thinking?

Until Aubrey opens to understanding that we create our lives with our thoughts and our resulting behavior, she will be stuck continuing to create a disappointing life.

I used to believe that being a “good girl” – which meant giving myself up and sacrificing myself for others – was the loving way to be. This resulted in feeling alone, unappreciated, and unloved by everyone in my life. At the time I didn’t realize that others were treating me the way I was treating myself, and that the Universe was supporting my self-abandonment. It wasn’t until I become quite ill – even though I was eating well and getting enough exercise – that I started to realize something was very wrong. Fortunately, that’s when I met Dr. Erika Chopich and we created the Six Steps of Inner Bonding with the help of our higher guidance.

Of course, it took time for me to shift from trying to control others by being a ‘good girl’, to focusing on loving myself, but as I learned to do this, many more people, other than those who I had been caretaking and were mad at me for no longer caretaking them – started treating me with respect, and my life became much more rewarding. As I changed my thinking from self-sacrifice to self-love, it didn’t take long for my health to greatly improve.

My anxious, fearful judgmental thoughts were creating my poor health and my disappointment in my relationships. In the same way, my accepting and compassionate thoughts have created an incredible life that I couldn’t even imagine when I was abandoning myself. I’m so blessed now in so many ways – My Golden Girl best friend, where I live in nature, my deeply fulfilling work, how I spend my free time, my beautiful art studio and my creativity, my friends and family, my animals, and my profound spiritual connection that I can feel is always here, supporting me in my highest good.

If you wait for your life to change to change your thoughts and behavior from self-abandoning to self-loving, you will wait forever. Change your thoughts and behavior from judgment of yourself and others to gratitude, love and compassion for yourself and others, and you will see how profoundly your life changes!

Are you living your life or just getting it over with?

How often do you find yourself wanting to just get something over with, even if it’s something you enjoy doing, rather than being in the moment with whatever is happening?

My client Jacob always has a list of what he needs to do, and he feels safe and worthy when he can check things off his list. His list keeps him busy with the next task and the next, leaving him no time to be present in the moment. When I asked Jacob during a session to go inside and feel what he is feeling in the moment, he told me that it doesn’t feel very good to be inside his body. He doesn’t like to be present because he is often in emotional pain.

However, it’s a circular problem: ignoring his feelings is causing him the pain of self-abandonment. Avoiding the pain that he is causing by staying in his mind, focused on tasks, then causes more pain and emptiness. Until Jacob is willing to feel the pain of his self-abandonment, he will continue to create this pain with his addictive avoidant behavior. He then feels like his life is just something to get over with and doesn’t actually see a point in life.

I, too, used to avoid being in the moment. I had an intense busyness addiction. I didn’t want to be in the moment because, whenever I tuned inside, what I felt was loneliness. I learned as a small child to avoid the feelings of loneliness by being very busy and productive, and I received some approval for my productivity. In fact, I was so good at it that I didn’t even know I was lonely, and I didn’t even know that I was addicted to busyness! Busyness was just one of the ways I had learned to avoid my painful feelings.

After starting to practice Inner Bonding and learning how to manage painful feelings, I finally opened to my loneliness. Whew! It was very intense when I first contacted this feeling. But as time went on and I learned to welcome, embrace, learn from and release this feeling, I learned not to avoid it. As a result, I find myself being more and more in the joy and peace of each moment. For me now, life is about loving myself and others, something to be lived and savored, moment-by-moment, rather than something to get through or get over with.

Are you missing out on what life is all about?

Author Leo Buscaglia, said that “Love is life… And if you miss love, you miss life.” –

Take a moment to think about this quote. Have you ever thought about love this way – that you actually miss living your life if love isn’t what your life is about?

If your life isn’t about love, then what is it about?

I’ve often spoken about the vast difference between getting love and sharing love. If you believe that your life is about love, but your focus is on getting love, then you are missing what love and life are all about. As Erika said, “There’s no better way to bring life back into your life than to help someone else.” And there’s no better way to bring life back into your life and your relationships than to learn how to fill yourself with love from spirit and share it, rather than trying to get filled with love from others.

What would be different in your life if you were focused on being loving to yourself and others rather than on getting love? Would your life take on new meaning? You might want to take a few minutes to think about this.

What I think is that we would be having a totally different experience of life on our planet if people were focused on being loving with themselves, each other, and the planet, rather than on getting what they want. What might be happening right now on our planet if love had a higher priority than power, greed, or avoiding pain? I will offer some guesses.

The young people would feel alive and hopeful, and teen suicides would go way down.
We would not be having a problem with climate change, which is bringing a sense of hopelessness to young people.
There would not be a few rich people and many poor people, so people would have many more opportunities for higher education, and for housing.
There would be no homelessness or food insecurity
The issues of racism, sexism and misogyny, and homophobia wouldn’t exist, and the young people struggling with issues of sexual identity wouldn’t need to be afraid.
We would have no crime, no child abuse or spousal abuse, no bullying, and no mass shooting. Schools, businesses, and public places would be safe places to be.
Our food would be clean and organic.
There would be little divorce.
There would be little stress.
We would have a much higher level of health and well-being. Everyone would know that junk food causes a gut imbalance, which can cause anxiety and depression, and with an abundance of inexpensive and healthy organic food, there would be no need for drugs for anxiety and depression. People would know that anxiety and depression are not caused by a brain imbalance but often by a gut imbalance.
There would be no war.

In fact, most likely none of the major problems in our society would exist. Why would they? Food producers would be interested in producing healthy food rather than the junk that currently passes for food but that makes millions of dollars for the food producers while making millions of people sick. There would be no Big Pharma putting out drugs with outrageous side effects, at outlandish cost. Instead, the focus would be on research that truly helps and heals people. We likely would have focused on energy sources other than coal and oil long ago – as soon as we realized that the use of fossil fuels was harming our planet. There wouldn’t be laws against natural healthy foods like raw dairy, which I’ve been eating for the last 62 years, or against medicinal marijuana. Psychotropic drugs would be used sparingly for consciousness rather than to avoid pain.

Creativity and productivity would soar for the joy of it, because when love is our highest priority, our inner child, our true soul self, gets to be all he or she came to the planet to be.

And we would feel safe.

Think about this a moment. How often do you feel truly safe on our planet? Safe from theft, rape, violence, war, financial ruin, or loneliness? Safe from anger, rejection, or punishment? Can you even conceive of what life would be like if you never had to deal with any of these?

If love were our highest priority, everything would change. Just imagine what our planet would be like if it was filled with people like the Dalai Lama and the current Pope, for whom love is their highest priority. What if people followed these loving role-models rather than the sociopaths that today are so often in control? What if people listened to the voice of love rather than the voice of fear that led them to follow Hitler, and follow others like him that today are causing so much fear and pain and ruining our planet?

Let’s make this a reality. As each of us makes love our highest priority, we each do our bit to heal this planet. Of course, this healing has to start with ourselves, so I invite you to begin, or continue, a deepening commitment to yourself and everyone else, by practicing Inner Bonding.

“Love is life… And if you miss love, you miss life.” Don’t miss out on what your life is truly all about. Today, make loving yourself and sharing your love with others your highest priority, and you will know deep in your soul that you are not done with life.

I hope you are not missing the point of life.

Many people get hooked into trying to predict life rather than actually live it.

Eleanor Roosevelt said that “There never has been security. No man has ever known what he would meet around the next corner; if life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.”

We go to psychics and astrologers and read our horoscope to try to predict the future, hoping to hear something that will calm our fears. But we are missing the point.

How can we live with love and peace in our hearts and souls when we don’t know what’s around the corner?

I once read a great analogy for life: Life is a total-immersion movie. We enter the movie theater when we are born, and we soon forget that we are in a movie theater. We go through pain and joy and learning and loving, and after the movie is over, we go back to reality – our real life in Spirit.

When you know that your soul is immortal and that you are a spiritual being living an earthly journey, then you always know how it comes out – you go home to Spirit, hopefully having evolved your soul in your ability to love and having manifested your love through your individual gifts. And when you are asked by your higher guidance, “How well did you love,” you will be able to answer, “With my whole heart and soul.”

Occasionally I enjoy seeing a movie more than once, but most of the time I don’t enjoy it as much the second time. Knowing what is going to happen takes away some of the enjoyment. If we always knew what was around the corner in our lives on the planet, what would be the point?

The point of life is to learn to be in the present moment with love and truth, especially now with all the challenges we are facing. When I’m fully in the moment, I can’t worry about the future, and I have peace in my soul and love in my heart.

Often, in my Intensives, themes emerge.. The theme in one Intensive was safety – safety over not being left alone, not being rejected, not being controlled and losing themselves, not losing their jobs or their money or their health.

The point of life is about love but loving will never feel safe.

When I love, my heart is often broken. It breaks my heart when someone I love is hurting, or not taking loving care of themselves, or being mean and controlling with me. If I’m not willing to feel the loneliness and heartbreak of loving, then I will keep my heart closed to try to feel safe. Safe and lonely. Safe and empty. Safe and numb. Safe and anxious. What’s safe about that?

For me, the only safety is knowing that at the end of this movie called life, I will go home. I will hopefully have evolved my soul in love, and I will hopefully return home having learned the lessons I set out to learn about loving myself and others.

What if you accepted that there is no true safety on this planet, and you were still willing to live your life moment by moment, opening to learning each moment about loving and fully manifesting yourself, even with all the challenges we currently face?

We’ve all heard of well-known people who seemed to have everything yet committed suicide. Obviously, they were suffering, or they would not have killed themselves.

Many people, even those who are not alone and have plenty of money, spend much time suffering. It is obvious what the cause of suffering is when someone is ill and in pain, or they don’t have enough to eat, or when someone is homeless and in the cold, or their country is being ruthlessly bombed. There are numerous circumstances and external events that can cause suffering. But what about the suffering we experience when external circumstances are fine – unexplained fear, anxiety, depression, guilt, and shame? What are the causes of this suffering?

When everything is good in your life, what may be causing suffering?

My client, Janet, is a good example of someone who spends much of her life suffering.

Janet is a successful attorney – married, with two children. She has everything she ever thought she needed to be happy, yet happiness eludes her. She often complains of feeling anxious, scared, and depressed.

To understand Janet’s suffering, we need to look beyond her external circumstances to her inner system. On the inner level, Janet is run by her ego wounded self. She is constantly frightening herself by telling herself about all the bad things that could happen to her, or to her husband or children. She is constantly judging herself for not being good enough as an attorney and as a mother. She frequently abandons herself, ignoring her feelings and making her husband responsible for her sense of self-worth. On top of all this, she completely lacks compassion for her feelings of anger, fear, anxiety, depression, guilt, and shame – feelings that she creates through her worry and self-abandonment.

Janet believes that when she makes enough money, she will stop suffering. Then, she believes, her fear will go away, and she will feel good about herself. But the truth is that she has plenty of money. Her suffering is entirely self-created.

If Janet were to treat her children the way she treats herself, they would be suffering too.

If she were to constantly scare them by telling them about all the bad things that could happen to them, or to her or to their father, they would feel anxious and scared. If she constantly judged them as unworthy or unlovable unless they got better grades, or did better at sports, or never made a mistake, they would feel shamed, anxious, and depressed. If she kept trying to get someone else to be their mother and take responsibility for them, they would feel abandoned. If she blamed them for her unhappiness, they would feel guilty.

But Janet does not treat her children this way. She would never intentionally frighten them, judge them, guilt them, or try to get someone else to adopt them. Her children’s emotional health is important to her, and she does all she can to support them in feeling safe, loved, and worthy.

Why does she take loving care of her children but not herself?

The reason is that she does not believe that taking care of herself is her responsibility. She believes that her husband and others are responsible for her sense of safety and worth. As a result of this false belief, she misses the fact that she is the cause of her suffering. As long as she does not get that she is the one causing her suffering, she will continue to think and behave in the ways that are causing her to suffer, and she will continue to feel like a victim.

Janet’s suffering will stop the moment she decides to make loving herself as important as loving her children. When her intent is to be loving to herself, she will stop listening to the voice of her ego wounded self. The moment she feels any anxiety, she will immediately tune into the lie she is telling herself that is likely causing her suffering. She will open to her inner wisdom or higher self for the truth and refuse to listen to the lies. The more she practices this, the quieter the voice of her wounded self will become. With no one listening, the ego wounded self eventually stops talking.

Let’s become loving role models for our children and for others around us by putting an end to self-induced suffering. Inner peace and joy contribute far more to the planet than suffering! Let’s role model the real point of life – to share our love. To be there for ourselves and each other. To contribute to the overall health of our planet. To manifest our love through our individual gifts in as many ways as we can.

If you make love the real point of your life, you will know that you are not done with life until life is done with you. So, if you think you are done with life, think again!

I hope you join me for my 30-Day at-home Course to learn or deepen your Inner Bonding practice: “Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships.”

You can learn so much about loving yourself and creating loving relationships from my recent books: