Tag Archives: Challenge

Concluded! The 6th Inspired 2 Write Challenge

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empowerment concludedI’ve concluded that I love writing. That might seem obvious after 765 blogs and a book. However, it’s taken me a while to get to the idea that I am a writer. An author.

I’ve just concluded my sixth Inspired 2 Write challenge on Facebook. This year I took the opportunity to see if I could extend or expand my writing. And I decided it would be great to have some company whilst I was doing it. Hence the six groups and various numbers of people joining me to explore their writing voices. It’s been an amazing journey. Some people have been with me on each challenge. Others have done one or two. Each time I launch it I get really excited that I will be reading pieces from lots of different points of view. In fact I find that the time flies by and the end is happening before I know it. I love it so much that I’m usually working our when I can start another one!

Finishing something also brings a little sadness that these wonderful voices might retreat into silence again. I don’t want that to happen. Writing has given me so much throughout my life. Even in the times when my own writing voice was squished or fell silent. Overcoming writers block enough to get through two years of blogging showed me that I really wanted to get the words out into the world. And they empowered me to stand by my writing voice when I wobbled and worried. I feel that the blocking time has been concluded. Now I hope that the people who have been in the challenges will feel empowered to pick up their writing even when there is no ‘official’ challenge.

Knowing that I am concluding a year of lots more writing has also empowered me to make a big leap. A leap into writing nearly full time. So I want to share the my final piece to the group tonight.

” I love that I set these topics without thinking. I’m empowering my creativity to leap out and bite me on the bum. Especially with a request for 300 words! And after a full on day and a church service. I guess I enjoy a challenge. That’s what I have been empowering myself to do. Grab the challenge, manage the fear and enjoy the leap of faith. For a long time I let other people tell me what to do. Or I responded to their expectations. Without realising that I was giving away my power. It seemed to be one of my obsessions that people had to be looked after, be happy and that I must do as much for them as I could. Yet all of the time my needs shrank further and further into the background.

So much so that I become unable to express my needs because it felt like they wouldn’t be listened to. I was sadly in need of empowerment by the time I realised I had nearly burnt myself out with this imbalance.

Taking back my power has been a long, frustrating and uncomfortable journey into myself. But it has taught me how easy it is to strip the power out of other people. Gaslighting, passive/aggressive behaviour, disrespect or undermining language all take their toll over time. I gave away my power in lots of situations because i wanted to be kind to others, not seeing that they weren’t kind to me. But the regaining of power can be done. I have given myself permission to speak as I find. And allowed myself to let other people’s reactions pass me by. I understand that my intentions are good even if other struggle to see that. And I recognise that I have the same right to life as everyone else. So I make no apologies for living life my way. And enjoying doing so.

Empowerment is about what you will let yourself do to recognise your rights as a human being. It brings with it the requirement to have an ethical base to work from. And a heart full of compassion for yourself and others when issues of power, rather than empowerment, crop up.” Challenge concluded!

Day 736 of my blogging challenge

Challenge yourself!

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imageMy live blog has been posted late! Another challenge came along to disturb my pattern of posting. Life is often like that. You make plans, fix them as concrete but other things step in the way to blow the plans off track. I’m very proud to have kept up my blog posting going every day so to find that I had forgotten my iPad & couldn’t post my Sunday blog was certainly frustrating. However, it’s what we do about the challenges that matters.

A couple of times before I’ve had to write my blog on paper – the old fashioned way to communicate, lol – and get onto the web later than planned. So one valuable thing I’ve already learned is to be flexible about this particular challenge. I could have got angry that I couldn’t sleep most of Saturday night. I could have been irritated at myself for not doing my blog much earlier in the day. I could have blamed the fact that I needed an early night because I had an early morning drive. But what would be the point? I have learned to trust that everything happens exactly as it should if only I let it. This makes life a lot calmer and more exciting at the same time. There is a point to ‘what will be will be’.

When I look back at my life I can understand my lack of patience was one of the biggest challenges I took on in making my plans to come here. I tend to think because I can see what is coming in, or when I have a vision of how things could be, that everyone is at exactly the same point of understanding. So why don’t they follow the plan? Of course, we are all at different point of evolution, sometimes in front and sometimes behind, much like being stuck in traffic when one lane speeds ahead and then we catch up & speed ahead of them. That is why we have set up reminders to encourage us to keep going with our challenges.

Those reminders can include the people who we meet or share our lives with, the books we read, the tv programmes we watch or the activities we choose to do to pass our earthly time. In the Celestine Prophecy the narrator of the story is advised to look at each meeting or connection with another person as a synchronicity; that these apparently random connections are full of information that will help him in his spiritual journeying. In the same way, if we step back and look for the patterns in out lives or the points when we were most challenged we can tease out the lessons we are learning. Paying attention to our challenges when they repeat themselves is a great way to evolve new ways of dealing with them. And if we get stuck you can guarantee that someone will come along in the nick of time to give us the clues we need to solve the challenge.

So I welcome (mostly) each challenge I get. Ok, there are occasions when I think oh no, not again! Yet I remind myself that I set these challenges up as a Spirit long before my body got here so I certainly wouldn’t have given myself anything I couldn’t succeed at. I also set myself challenges down here too. Everything I do has consequences, some of which are completely unexpected and unpredictable, so there are bound to be challenges. It’s a matter of accepting that each time I take on a challenge I will be able to handle it. So staying calm, getting on with it and enjoying what I can achieve without judgement seems to me to be the only sensible option. We can’t avoid the challenges so why not see the positive in each one?

Day 132 of my blogging challenge.