Vaishali's Venue with Vaishali
Vaishali
About The Author
As on Oprah & Friends XM, Vaishali is the author of Wisdom Rising (Purple Haze Press 2008) and You Are What You Love (Purple Haze Press 2006). She is also national health wellness speaker, radio host on KTLK 1150am 11-noon Sundays (greater Los Angeles) and KEST (San Francisco). Vaishali is a certified practitioner of Chinese Medicine and East Indian Ayurveda medicine. Vaishali is a faculty member of The Omega institute and The Kripalu Center. Her articles have been published in over a hundred publications worldwide. Visit www.purplev.com or email press@purplev.com
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Posted May 2009
Vaishali's Fab Woman
Story
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How Spiritually Healthy
Are You?
Posted May 2009
Vaishali's Fab Woman
Story
If I’m Not At Square One, I’ll Be Back Shortly
By Vaishali, author of You Are What You Love® and Wisdom Rising
Posted September 5th, 2009
I have had to start over so many times in so many aspects of my life, you’d think Square One was my mailing address. I’m sure we at least share the same zip code. I have been diagnosed terminal twice. Yes, twice. I like to refer to myself as a “terminal” over achiever. Back to Square One. I have been lied to and cheated on by nearly every single romantic partner I have ever had. For me that is a deal breaker. The instant I discovered the betrayal, I packed up and left… destination? Square One. Once again I found myself engaged in the never-ending process of reviving and repairing my life. Due to chronic health problems I lost my business which I spent nearly a decade building. It took every cent I had ever saved just trying to stay alive. I had to start over financially, from Square One. I have been without a home, and as Blanch DuBois from “Streetcar Named Desire” would say, “...have relied on the kindness of strangers.” No home? No problem. I can stay at Square One… they’ll even leave the light on for ya. There is nothing about life deconstruction and self-resurrection I fail to understand. After all, practice does make perfect. By now I should be as perfect and flawless as a diamond.
The best thing about mastering the profound understanding of how to start over ubiquitously, is that when something comes to an end in my life, and let’s face it, in this world things come and go like confetti in the wind, I now waste no time in accepting it, and getting down to the business of growing beyond whatever no longer serves me or has fallen away.
What I have found is that starting over is just another name for growth… unobstructed, unlimited growth. And I ask you, what is life without growth? When I think about it, growth itself really isn’t that scary. As a baby I certainly had no issues with it. As a matter of fact, as an infant, that was my full-time job. As a teenager I couldn’t wait to grow into an adult. Without growth I would never have recovered from illness, trauma, heartbreak or the vaporization of cash from the black hole formerly known as my 401K.
Starting over has taught me how to trust in myself. Life renovations consistently invite me to raise the bar on reclaiming my value, power and worth. Every time life seems to strip me down to my “naked truth,” I know I have the ability, the intelligence and the sheer raw nerve to put my life back together. The fear of having to start over has lost its power to paralyze. At this point, I have far too much real life experience to draw upon, to be daunted by that retro threat. I have hard-earned immunity. I am no longer intimidated by the prospect of finding myself once again enrolled in the Life 101 classroom, taught at the Square One campus. I have witnessed the person of substance within me work through any setback and just keep moving forward. I now feel comforted by past lessons of loss. They have ingrained a living relationship of trust, in myself and my abilities, that no one and no thing can take from me. I now know how to believe in and value my own strengthens. I have developed the faith and discipline to focus on what is within me rather than what has changed outside of me. Every time life takes something away, another precious nugget of self-awareness and self-knowledge has been gained and deepened.
With every rebuilding circumstance, my return engagement to Square One is an opportunity to reinvent who I am and how I experience myself: what outgrown story, outdated role or mold will I destroy next? Inherent in every new beginning is an empowered occasion to eliminate bad habits or unhealthy behaviors that are not improving the quality of my life. It is so easy when things do not change or get shaken up to remain loyal or unconsciously committed to things that are not life-enhancing. When everything falls apart, the gift is the conscious and deliberate re-piecing of only the best and most useful of what I know. Starting over grants me permission to actively edit my lifestyle, inner dialogue and delete whatever I do not wish to take with me into my new life.
I have observed with great delight and entertainment that starting over and being stuck in a rut never co-exist. Square One is where I can always trade in my old, rundown stuck existence for a new high-performance life. Every time I practice refurbishing any area of my life, I am really actualizing the creation of an upgraded version of myself. I am tapping into the option to expand my self-definition. As I let go of every old habit, useless or self-destructive pattern or limited way of relating to myself, I am refining and extending the reach of my personal growth. Any time the flow of life gives me the opportunity to exchange “stagnation” for “enlivened” it is a blessed opportunity to me.
Culturally speaking, I have found that starting over at Square One has a bad reputation. Collectively we seek to avoid it, smearing it with excuses like: I have worked all this time for nothing; now I have to leave everything useful and meaningful behind me; nothing else in my life will ever work; this “crash and burn” means once again I’m playing “Survivor” on the Square One reality series. But what I have joyously discovered is that within every new beginning are the glorious and highly potent seeds of excitement. Like any other seeds these do not just spring up and yield something tangible without the proper environment. These seeds have to be watered with the truth that I am a wiser person now, from what I have learned, and I can move forward fearlessly with greater accumulated experiential knowledge. These seeds need to be nurtured with patience. That happens when I take the time to collect myself, so that I move forward as a whole person and not as a fragmented, injured victim. The seeds also need to find good soil in which to grow; soil that is properly tilled and maintained, which occurs naturally every time I rein in my attention and focus on the positive, what I do want, and not on the negative, what I don’t want to happen. These excitement seeds have the space to flourish when I habitually weed out all the thoughts that do not support the new direction I am choosing, and I cease looking backwards, because I’m simply too committed to looking forward. When I create a new response to life challenges and setbacks, anything is possible. That is a quality of excitement that comes with a much longer shelf life than anything purchased on a “therapeutic” shopping spree.
I have learned that embedded within every setback is the prized opportunity to evolve to a higher level. I know I have thought many times, “If only I had a do-over!” Then I realize I do have a do-over. It’s called Square One… starting over, new beginnings, growing beyond what has hurt or limited me. Only now I have my inner consciousness primed and ready for a brand new accelerated experience of expansion. I have learned from past pains when to trust my instincts when something is wrong, even if I cannot quite put my finger on exactly what is amiss. I have come to value that, without starting over at Square One, I would have to use an old, somewhat shaky foundation to build something original. I would have to use the same piece of paper every time I wanted to write something new. Worse than that, I would have to wear the same fashion outfit everyday. A heinous crime that makes every woman shudders at the mere thought of. Not to mention I’d end up on the Most Wanted list of the Fashion Police. But then I diverge.
I have seen that failure, disappointment, oppression and breakdowns are the launching pads to self-correction and self-realization. Suffering is how I self-correct. Without it how would I know when I was off course? Every time I bounce back my faith in myself blooms and thrives. Life has taught me that resilience is an emotional, psychological and spiritual muscle: use it or lose it. Resiliency allows me to access and draw on a greater brilliance and inner intelligence that I need when creating a new beginning. Flexibility is how I grow beyond fear and insecurity. I am now aware that every time life throws me something unexpected, and I have to resuscitate some dimension of my existence, I can draw on a vigorous quality of self-reliance and a depth of self-confidence in my ability to abundantly renew.
Every time I have been in the midst of a life-altering event I have noticed a tendency to become myopic in scope. It would be only in hindsight that I managed a self-reflective perception that aligned me with the truth: these situations, tragic at the time, propelled me into an enhanced version of life. I look back on my romantic relationships that broke up like the Titanic, and thank those men for their cheating ways. After all it was that action, in the end, that liberated me from the burden of those deceptive, fraudulent and misguided relationships. I am grateful for the very first time I was diagnosed terminal. It forced me to revamp my lifestyle and establish infinitely healthier eating, exercise and life management choices. It also gave me time to build a strong foundation of knowledge from which I constructed my recovery program when I was injured in a life threatening car accident years later.
I have grown into the realization that the path of life is not always straight and narrow. Oftentimes the road we find ourselves standing on has many unexpected twists and turns. Releasing resistance to beginning anew is how I now know to zig, when I was zagging. It is how I feel my way through life’s many blind curves. It is how I see and know which fork in the road to take. And yes, sometimes it seems like all roads lead to Square One. I just remember that life is a journey, covering lots of territory, and there is no wisdom in letting the bumps in the road determine how much ground I’m going to cover in my lifetime.
The best advice I could give when starting over, is to get out of the head. The ego is not always my best friend. I will not listen to the ego run an inner narrative that is restrictive, negative or limited. The ego likes to tell me that I did not do something right or that I am not good enough. This is not the self-corrective intelligence to rely on when considering moving forward. My heart and my gut always know when I am being true to myself; the ego hasn’t a clue. If the ego knew the all answers, I mostly likely would not have found myself in a position of having to start over, to begin with. A genesis strategy always emerges organically when I embrace a loving, accepting, forgiving and patient relationship with myself. That is a quality of self-integration the head knows nothing about. The ego is purely a divide and conquer tyrannical dictator. The heart knows how to mend and heal; the gut knows what is true and right. Whenever I find myself back at Square One looking for new direction, I take the G.P.S. away from the ego, drop down into my heart, regroup, and remind myself I am here on the planet to grow and learn, and life will never permit me to play hooky, so let’s get going. The bottom line is that in the board game of life, Square One is more valuable real estate than Boardwalk and Park Place combined.
6 Tips For Starting Over
1. Starting over is an other name for growth
What is life without growth? When I think about it, growth itself really isn’t that scary. As a baby I certainly had no issues with it. As a matter of fact, as an infant, that was my full-time job. As a teenager I couldn’t wait to grow into an adult. Without growth I would never have recovered from illness, trauma, heartbreak or the vaporization of cash from the black hole formerly known as my 401K.
2. Starting over is how I learn to trust in myself
Life renovations consistently invite me to raise the bar on reclaiming my value, power and worth. Every time life seems to strip me down to my “naked truth,” I know I have the ability, the intelligence and the sheer raw nerve to put my life back together. The fear of having to start over has lost its power to paralyze. At this point, I have far too much real life experience to draw upon, to be daunted by that retro threat. I have hard-earned immunity. I am no longer intimidated by the prospect of finding myself once again enrolled in the Life 101 classroom, taught at the Square One campus. I have witnessed the person of substance within me work through any setback and just keep moving forward. I now feel comforted by past lessons of loss. They have ingrained a living relationship of trust, in myself and my abilities, that no one and no thing can take from me. I now know how to believe in and value my own strengthens. I have developed the faith and discipline to focus on what is within me rather than what has changed outside of me. Every time life takes something away, another precious nugget of self-awareness and self-knowledge has been gained and deepened.
3. Starting over is an opportunity to make a personal upgrade
What outgrown story, outdated role or mold will I destroy next? Inherent in every new beginning is an empowered occasion to eliminate bad habits or unhealthy behaviors that are not improving the quality of my life. It is so easy when things do not change or get shaken up to remain loyal or unconsciously committed to things that are not life-enhancing. When everything falls apart, the gift is the conscious and deliberate re-piecing of only the best and most useful of what I know. Starting over grants me permission to actively edit my lifestyle, inner dialogue and delete whatever I do not wish to take with me into my new life. 4. Starting over and being stuck in a rut never co-exist: Square One is where I can always trade in my old, rundown stuck existence for a new high-performance life. Every time I practice refurbishing any area of my life, I am really actualizing the creation of an upgraded version of myself. I am tapping into the option to expand my self-definition. As I let go of every old habit, useless or self-destructive pattern or limited way of relating to myself, I am refining and extending the reach of my personal growth. Any time the flow of life gives me the opportunity to exchange “stagnation” for “enlivened” it is a blessed opportunity to me.
5. Starting over is where resiliency and flexibility come from
Life has taught me that resilience is an emotional, psychological and spiritual muscle: use it or lose it. Resiliency allows me to access and draw on a greater brilliance and inner intelligence that I need when creating a new beginning. Flexibility is how I grow beyond fear and insecurity. I am now aware that every time life throws me something unexpected, and I have to resuscitate some dimension of my existence, I can draw on a vigorous quality of self-reliance and a depth of self-confidence in my ability to abundantly renew.
6. Starting over is about getting out of the head and into the heart
My heart and my gut always know when I am being true to myself; the ego hasn’t a clue. If the ego knew the all answers, I mostly likely would not have found myself in a position of having to start over, to begin with. A genesis strategy always emerges organically when I embrace a loving, accepting, forgiving and patient relationship with myself. That is a quality of self-integration the head knows nothing about. The ego is purely a divide and conquer tyrannical dictator. The heart knows how to mend and heal; the gut knows what is true and right. Whenever I find myself back at Square One looking for new direction, I take the G.P.S. away from the ego, drop down into my heart, regroup, and remind myself I am here on the planet to grow and learn, and life will never permit me to play hooky, so let’s get going.