Are you stuck? I mean, are you paralyzed by fear? Are you tolerating your current circumstances because you don’t want to disrupt the status quo? Are you resisting changing? Are you complaining about things you have done nothing to improve? Are you afraid of upsetting others with your dreams? If your answer is yes to any of these questions, read the excerpt from my book Women, Rice and Beans, Chapter Nine: Stop the “Bearing.”
I came to learn that too many women lose their power as early as age nine. We all have it when we’re born. If you don’t believe me, just look at the babies and how they can get you up in the middle of the night and have their needs met. Look at how happy they are and how much joy they spread around just by being present. That’s the true nature of happiness.
When you lose your power, it’s like when you misplace your cell phone. You know it’s in the house, but you can’t find it. You call the phone and realize you have it on mute. You retrace your steps and could swear you left it in the same place you always leave it, but it isn’t there. You accept that you’re going to be late and take a deep breath, only to finally find the phone in your purse or pocket. You had it with you the entire time.
The same is true of our power. We never really give our power away. We just lose sight of it. We keep it dormant and wait for something or someone to change. All we need to do is wake it up.
Many women confuse “to bear” with “to wait.” We wait for the bus, we wait for the rice and beans to cook, and we wait for the water to warm up for our shower. But we need to stop tolerating physical, mental, and spiritual abuse. How long can one tolerate abuse for the sake of “bearing”? One day, two months, or thirty years are all too long. These actions only take our personal power away. Without our personal power, we just exist instead of living. Life was meant to be lived consciously.
The Power of Acceptance
“To bear” also means “to hold onto.” When we hold on too long to something that has served its purpose, we stop the flow of abundance, and I don’t mean just money. It is also happiness, joy, prosperity, health, connection, and so on that loses the flow into your life. While it’s hard to accept, loss is always good. Everything that goes makes room for something new to come. Sometimes, we miss the bus and later find out that it got into an accident. Other times, we lose a boyfriend who ends up being an unfaithful husband to his new wife. When we lose something, it’s a sign of growth. We’re ready for something better.
Instead of bearing or tolerating any undesired event, we need to accept that what happens is for our well-being, even if it doesn’t look like it. The beating, the abuse, the pain, the loss of a loved one has happened for a greater good. We can cry, be angry, be sad, mourn and then accept it and move on in the appropriate time you need to accept it. There is major power in accepting. It allows us to move forward. When we bear or tolerate what makes us unhappy, it weighs down the soul; with a heavy soul, you are no good for yourself or anyone else as a matter of fact. When we accept, we step into our power. It doesn’t mean that we agree with what happened, but acceptance fuels the power you need to leap out of it.
When we accept, we step into our power.
What’s the difference between accepting and tolerating? You can feel it in your body and soul. When we accept, we use our personal power, we may be sad but our emotions are centered, and we can easily go about our day and life. When we tolerate, we don’t feel good, our power is being held hostage to our feelings, and we’re tensed and stressed. We can’t see abundance even if it stepped on our toes wearing a red-and-yellow polka-dot tutu carrying a purple elephant on its shoulders.
Fear is what causes us to settle on “bearing.” The best medicine for curing fear is to confront it and take action with love. When we drink water, it’s because the body is thirsty. When we feel fear, it’s because the soul wants to grow. Fear has its advantages when we are not paralyzed by it.
So the first step to growth is to have faith. When we have faith, we know that what we need or desire is on the way. When we take action, the fear is reduced. Doubts may arise along the way, but if we focus on what we desire and why we want it and keep taking steps toward what we want, fear becomes a catalyst and not a destroyer of your desires.
Often, when we look back at our lives, we realize that fear kept us stuck longer than we needed to be. We discover that what seemed so difficult wasn’t nearly as hard as we thought. You may think that you could have taken steps sooner, but this is faulty thinking. You didn’t move earlier because you didn’t have the level of consciousness you had when you finally took action. You can only see it when you look back because you’re wiser now.
Accept where you are. No one takes action until they’re ready. At the same time, don’t spend your life allowing fear to dictate the “whens” and “hows” of what you do. When you finally decide to be happy, all the obstacles you see will be less important than your happy self.
We must let go of tolerating self-violation and accept the things that must go without anger or fear. When we know that everything that happens is for our own good, we move forward. There is a learning opportunity waiting to be discovered in each “bearing” of self-violation, and the faster we accept the changes and move toward self-love, the faster our connection with our spirit grows and so do you.
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