Being a Hero for Yourself
“Then you know that you are becoming a true Master of your destiny and not just remaining a victim of your circumstances.”
Choosing heroic action for yourself was a hallmark of 2015 for many people who saw that healthy choices meant a healthy life and opted to choose the best of themselves this year. Capturing the essence of all we learnt this year, Dr. Elga Drews prepared the following piece for us to surmise what we should be taking with us in terms on learning, into the new year. Dr. Drews is a Chiropractor, Homeopath and Demartini Method Facilitator based in Windhoek.
Being a Hero for Yourself by Dr. Elga Drews
With another wonderful year coming to an end you might want to reflect on the entire year and make a list of all your achievements, everything you did during the year, all your experiences whether wonderful or not so great, all the people you have met, the friends you shared moments with. As you do this, allow your heart to fill with gratitude for each and every experience, moment and achievement.
Count your blessings for everything that happened to you during this year. While it is easy and obvious to be grateful for all the wonderful and special things in your life from being thankful about the roof you have over your head, to the food on the table, your family ties, your social network and close friends, your job and opportunities, the money you have – no matter how little or how much, your physical health and well-being; it might not be as obvious to you to be thankful about your challenges and struggles. It comes naturally to appreciate the “good” things that happened to you, but it is a lot more difficult to be grateful about the “bad” things.
It is however, precisely the gratitude for your challenges that allows you to grow and develop, allows you to become centred and feel the opening of your heart to experience deep unconditional love for that which is, the way it is.
You ask yourself how it is possible to appreciate something you have a painful memory about, or something you do not agree with, something you experience as stressful.
The quality question to answer is how do/did these serve you? What about your feelings of anger, aggression, blame and betrayal, criticism and despair? These arise from our imbalanced perception that we should be striving for happiness without sadness, health without illness, harmony and peace without strife or war, and heaven without hell. This is an illusion based on unrealistic expectations that our universe is one-sided/unipolar. The laws of Nature teach us that our world and the universe we have the honour to live in, is made up of complimentary opposites like night and day, dark and light, hot and cold, happy and sad, healthy and sick, etc. Everything is in perfect balance! Only wanting the one side without the other, happy without sad, pleasure without pain, reward without risk, benefit without drawback will push you into negativity. Like the Buddha already said:” The striving for that which is unobtainable and the avoidance of that which is unavoidable is the cause of all human suffering.”
Denying this ingenious balance and subordinating to mass beliefs and indoctrinating authorities prevents you from being your authentic self. You start putting on various masks in order to “fit in”. Sooner or later however, you become discontent and dissatisfied, because you are not living an authentic life by playing to everybody else’s tune.
Recognizing what is important to you and what your highest priorities are, and then allowing yourself to live according to these and set your goals in line with these is the first step toward a fulfilled and inspiring life.
Allow your inner voice to become loud, strong and certain, and let the million voices from the outside fade away. Then you know that you are becoming a true Master of your destiny and not just remaining a victim of your circumstances.