How To Know If You Have Actually Changed

It was a big day for me.

I was driving 3 hours to hand over keys for the house we had just sold, in the week before we flew out to Italy for our wedding. I could taste the energy release on the tip of my tongue as this phase of our life ended and a new page was about to turn into the next chapter, but it all stopped when I reached my car door.

I thought it was strange to be surrounded by grey concrete as far as the eye could see, except for a round black stain underneath my car. I climbed inside and turned on the engine.

My newly filled tank of petrol had somehow leaked entirely out onto the floor, taking my day trip and week full of pre-wedding travel plans with it. After a mechanic came by shortly after, he said that someone had drilled into the tank to steal my petrol; the £1200 that I was quoted for garage repairs was worth far more than just the £40 of fuel they had taken. To start such a crucial week by losing my wheels when there was a house handover, dress shop trips, bridal beauty appointments and airport pick-ups to be done would have plunged me into a pit of despair 4 years ago…

But not now.

Now was different.

Now I knew what it meant, and I knew that the only thing which could actually harm me was my own reaction to it.

When disaster strikes, we are being called to see our situation in a new way and appreciate everything that we used to have, have and will have. The only thing which causes us such immense stress is our attachment to how we think things should be. If we can be loose with our beliefs and change them at any moment to serve rather than stress us, then we can finally enjoy full autonomy over our experience on Earth.

If we let things get the better of us, then they will. If we can turn any negative into a positive, then nothing will ever get the better of us again.

Our “best outcome time lag” will get shorter and shorter the more that we practice this type of mind control. This is what I call it when we look back to see how everything fitted together so perfectly because that painful, confusing event actually was in our best interest after all…

The sooner that we can switch into this thinking and look through the lens of absolute faith instead of fear, the quicker we can free ourselves from self-induced anxiety and thoughts of impending doom.

This is not to say that it won’t be hard. Of course it will — like all great things that are really worth having. To have something which has not been earned is to never enjoy and appreciate it fully. My grandfather taught me that, and at the time I thought he was wrong — of course I’d like to just win a million pounds on the lottery and have it all now! But there is a satisfaction to something being earned that does not come when it is taken from the hand of another.

If we’re brave enough to control our thoughts and find the best in things, we’ll be able to savour the intricate beauty that’s filling in the gaps of our whole existence. The perfection from which all circumstances and situations come is always there, we simply need to be able to see it for ourselves. As the single subjective viewer of our situation, we’re the only ones with the power to correct our viewpoint at any moment.

If we’re brave to see our situation in a new way and brave to let the old way go, then we’re closer to revealing the truth of how everything is secretly working for us. If we’re brave enough to untie our idea of how we think things should be, then we’re finally free to enjoy how they really are. Everything is always perfect and working in our favour, somehow, but sometimes as humans, we’re so resistant to our own good fortune that we close our eyes to the unspoilt beauty that surrounds us. All events are with a Divine purpose, and our greatest purpose comes from our greatest pain. What is taken away from us is the gift that we will one day soon give back to the world.

When things don’t turn out as planned it’s a wonderful opportunity to compare how you react now with how you used to react. Your comparable pain (resulting from your thinking) is the barometer by which you can know and celebrate how far you’ve come. If we can continue to use our thoughts as an asset, we’ll find the seeds of positivity hiding under each circumstance faster and faster with practice.

You will know how much you’ve changed by how much hope you have for tomorrow in whatever form it may arrive, instead of continuing to be disappointed by what it turns out not to be.

Let it be, and you will see, how the world, is meant to be.

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