Life Is Like a Slinky

Have you ever noticed how our lives are lived in spirals not straight lines? Despite our attempts to straighten out those curves and proceed in an orderly fashion from Point A to Point B, too often we recognize familiar terrain on our journey and realize we're back where we started from. The good news is that although we seem to be back where we started from, we are actually revisiting this "place / experience" from a higher perspective. Some days it feels only slightly higher, but it is higher, nonetheless.

Think of your life as a slinky. Surely you played with a slinky when you were a child &endash; or maybe more recently. A slinky is a tightly coiled metal toy that can be stretched out to increase the distance between the coils &endash; or rounds of the spiral. Our lives are like that &endash; at times tightly coiled and seemingly going nowhere. At other times we are stretched to the max and covering a lot of territory in each spiral round.

Now think of your slinky as divided into three realms. There are no clear boundaries between the realms, one just eventually merges into the next. I call these three realms:

~~~ At the Mercy of Life

~~~~~~~~ Living an Empowered Life and

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Living a Life of Grace

Let's look at each realm and identify where we are spending the most time and where we might prefer to be.

At the Mercy of Life

To be at the mercy of life is to feel that life is happening to you. You take what you can get. Sometimes life delivers something pleasant or even wonderful. At other times life delivers disasters. Lots of folks in this realm feel victimized or taken advantage of. But not all. Most, however, do not feel powerful or effective in their lives. There is often a wistful desire to change anything, anyway. Anything would be better than this, right? That random grasping for change can be a strategy that backfires and actually keeps you in the tightly coiled spiral rather than expanding into another realm.

Living an Empowered Life

Living an empowered life is living a life of your design and your choice &endash; at least to some degree. You get in touch with a desire &endash; whether it be for a new car or a new attitude &endash; and then you do your best to bring that into your life. You might work hard and save money to buy the new car. You might position yourself for a promotion that includes that company car. You might enter every contest you can find that has that car as the prize. Yes, some strategies are more effective than others. The significant difference here is that you feel you can and are having an impact on your life. When you are clear, intentional and persistent you see results. Not always 100% and not always in the time frame you had in mind. But results nonetheless.

You are stretching your slinky and envisioning what's around the next curve or even many curves down the line. You are designing your unique journey and using your life experiences as feedback on your technique.

Living a Life of Grace

Living a life of grace is getting what you need for your life's purpose and development just when you need it without expending a tremendous amount of effort. Someone living a life of grace might not look different than someone living at life's mercy or living an empowered life. The outer trappings may or may not be the same. The difference is in the internal experience. Living a life of grace is characterized by peacefulness, joy and fulfillment.

Living a life of grace by definition means that you are always in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. You are perfectly aligned in the present moment, noticing what's showing up on this bend of the slinky. You are able to reflect on how this moment's experience relates to the last related spiral coil. You welcome each new moment / experience knowing that you have everything you need to deal with what shows up. You welcome what comes whether it's wrapped in pretty wrapping paper or disguised as misfortune.

Slinky Questions

Questions are a very effective way to expand your spiral or to move from one realm to another of your slinky. If you want to be at the mercy of life, ask yourself some or all of the following questions &endash; or substitute your own favorites:

Why does this always happen to me?

What's wrong with me anyway?

What difference does it (or anything) make?

Why are they always picking on me?

Why is life so unfair?

What's the point?

When are things going to go my way?

If you want to live an empowered life, ask yourself some or all of the following questions:

What don't I want to be / do / have in my life?

What do I want to be / do / have in my life?

What would be the first step toward being / doing / having that?

Who might show me the way or help me along?

How is this experience like others I've had? What does that tell me?

Where is my focus? On what I want or on what I don't want?

What am I grateful for?

If you want to live a life of grace, ask yourself some or all of the following questions:

What is my purpose?

Why am I here?

When do I feel most alive? Most in alignment with my purpose?

Is this a friendly Universe?

What is my body telling me?

What are my emotions telling me?

What is my intuition / inner guidance telling me?

Expanding Your Slinky

At this point you may be wondering how you can trade being at the mercy of life for living an empowered life or a life of grace.

Living an empowered life starts with having clear intention(s), proceeds by building a base of easily learned skills and is perfected with daily practice. Your intentions are up to you but whatever they are state them in the present tense, in a positive form and with detail and specificity. For example, I am a daily runner covering 4 &endash; 6 miles per day and enjoying the physical and mental benefits.

Skills required to live an empowered life are somewhat unique to the individual but typically would include a high level of competence in the following: inter-personal skills (communications, boundary setting, conflict management, etc.) and inner-personal skills (self-care, positive self-talk, vision creation, emotional intelligence, creative expression, etc.).

Daily practice includes all the individual thoughts, words and actions that move us toward our vision(s). At times daily practice may include learning or integrating a new skill. At other times we get to coast on our accumulated experience and wisdom though we still must take whatever action we can to move us forward on a daily basis.

Living a life of grace can result from the addition of transpersonal development to our inner- and inter-personal skill set. Transpersonal practices include such things as meditation, energy work, Qi Gong, Tai Chi, yoga, martial arts, prayer, fasting, poetry/arts, biofeedback, dream work, shamanism, intuition development, to name a few that are fairly common in our culture at this time.

Living a life of grace can also result from a "peak" or spontaneous experience that suddenly and thoroughly transforms an individual. Although this is less common, it is well documented and sells books and movies. We love stories of people whose lives have been miraculously transformed with no apparent effort on their part.

While you are waiting for your own miraculous transformation, I highly recommend beginning with some of the more mundane, but very effective practices mentioned here. Start today to develop a plan for expanding your slinky. Get a clear picture of how you want your life to be and then be on the alert for assistance in moving in that direction. Assistance might look like a book that jumps out at you from the bookstore shelf. It might arrive as someone new in your life who lives a life you admire and can model after. It might mean hiring a professional to work with you as you expand your coils. Therapists and coaches can both be tremendously useful to you on your journey.

Get out your calendar right now and schedule time to review, reflect on, and redesign your life. Whether we get to go around just once or many times, it makes good sense to make the most of this time. Design your life to discover and fulfill your purpose and in such a way that you can enjoy the whole slinky ride.