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a National Heritage Foundation |
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Tools for Technicolor Living |
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We communicate to you through our workshops, our newsletter, our blog (http://musings.achievegrowth.org), and by offering our monthly meeting on the third Sunday of each month. But too often it seems that we only hear from you in return at our workshops; people share their interest and curiosity about the subjects we discuss, and then we never see them again.
One of my goals with Inward Quest is not just to present workshops, but to build a community of support and encouragement. To do that, we need to be able to communicate with one another.
So what I am asking the readers of this newsletter is, what avenues of
communication would you prefer? Do you like the idea of the monthly meeting? Is
there a better time to choose than
This is only a community if we communicate, so I am asking for your help,
your encouragement, and most importantly, your feedback. Let us know what we
can do to help build the cooperative, conscious community we dream of: please
send email to iq at achievegrowth.org or call 317-225-5454 and share your ideas
with us!
Namaste,
Suzanne Vachet
Director, Inward Quest
Power, intention, and
manifesting success
Much is written in personal growth books and articles about creating your own reality, harnessing the power of intention, and manifesting success in your life. I fully believe that this is possible and desirable. However, I also believe that there is a fine line between making things happen, and allowing them to happen. And I believe that the difference is in how we view power in relation to ourselves, other people, and our circumstances.
To avoid confusion, I call the healthy form of power empowerment. When we feel empowered, we no longer feel that we are the victim of either other people or random events. We feel that we have ownership of our lives. We direct our own movie; we write our own story. We take responsibility for our actions and their consequences. We seek to feel powerful and confident within ourselves, and we encourage and empower other people around us.
The unhealthy form of power might be called control. When we feel the need for control, we do so because deep down we believe we are helpless in the face of other people or circumstances, and try to change people or events by controlling them. We no longer feel like we have power over our own lives or our own responses; we are not response-able for ourselves. Therefore, we feel the need to control others, since we think that they are responsible for our feelings. Control often comes from fear of empowerment, from a hidden desire to remain a victim of circumstances, what James Redfield calls the "poor me" control drama.
When we apply this to the concept of manifesting our own reality, we see that our view of power is going to determine our success. When we are motivated by the mistaken goal of power/control, we are going to try to manifest success by controlling our reality, forcing things to happen our way or else! When we are motivated by the true goal of empowerment, we are going to ALLOW abundance to manifest in our lives, not MAKE it manifest. This is a subtle but distinct difference in intention, and in my experience, it makes all the difference in the world to the results.
One way to think of ALLOWING abundance to manifest in your life is to view yourself as the director of a play. You can "set the scene" by creating conditions that encourage a desired outcome. But then, you have to step back and allow the results to happen; just as a director has to allow the actors to play their roles once the script has been written and the scene has been set. The actors in the play are not puppets... and neither are the people around us. Trying to "make" things happen is like a manager who micro-manages. Nothing gets done, and all her subordinates resent her. An effective manager knows to set the guidelines, give people optimal working conditions, lots of encouragement, and help motivate them... and allow them to do the job.
If we try to "manifest success" because we believe
that we are helpless over our own lives, and therefore we have to
"make" the universe send us something good, we will rarely succeed.
If we feel empowered, if we trust that the universe, the divine, our higher
power (however we view That Which Is) will bring to us the best possible outcome
for our own growth; and if with a sense of personal power, we set up optimal
conditions, then step back and leave a space to ALLOW 'whatever is best' to
occur... it always will!
Help us build our community and share our ideas: Join us on Sunday, March
18, at
We would like to begin sharing book reviews in this newsletter. As much as I read, I can't read everything published on personal growth! Send your brief (2 - 5 paragraph) reviews of your favorite personal growth books to iq at achievegrowth.org. If we use one in the newsletter, we'll send you a $10 gift certificate good towards any of our day-long or weekend-long workshops!
(P.S. If you like our articles and want to pass them along to someone, could
you encourage them to visit our website, http://iq.achievegrowth.org, and
subscribe to this newsletter instead? You already know we don't spam anyone, so
it's a safe way for your friend to get some encouragement as well!)
Copyright © 2007 Inward Quest, a National Heritage Foundation
http://iq.achievegrowth.org
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