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Aloha and welcome to your Heart Magic, an illuminating space where psychology, spirituality and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright. Author, psychologist and spiritual educator.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 0:34

Aloha everyone. Welcome to your Heart Magic. This is Dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright, and today we are talking about finding patience with the process and how to navigate times in life where we aren't exactly where we want to be and we're just kind of camping out and waiting and in a space of forced patience, or things aren't happening as quickly as we wanted. How can we find perspective during those times and how can we let our mind be a friend to ourselves and support the process of patience and allowing for a process to happen, instead of getting caught up in our thoughts and having our thoughts race ahead and give us information that we're far behind or should already be there and those other kinds of mental acrobat information that we're far behind or should already be there and those other kinds of mental acrobatics that we sometimes play when we place expectations on ourself. And part of what inspired this post is that it is a brand new, shiny year. Last week we were talking about finding grace in the new year and approaching the new year with grace, and grace for our process, and I felt like this was a really nice segue of those ideas, because part of grace is also allowing for patience with letting a process unfold, and oftentimes, I think, when we turn the page into a brand new year, there can be such a beautiful sense of not only expectation but this energy of okay, let's do this, let's get going. Where we want to move forward or surge forward, we set these goals for ourselves and we want to be there. It can be hard to allow something to have a slow build, to take the time to build something up. Sometimes we want to see results so quickly and when we're not seeing the results that we want to something, we're not seeing the growth we're not seeing whatever our expectation of the gains was that we had, that sometimes we end up giving up and we don't stay with something. So I've learned that there's a lot of value in cultivating the art of patience in our lives, and particularly this time of year when many of us wanted to turn a new page and chart a new course, or we're trying to stay with ourselves, stay with something in our life, and we're just not quite where we want to be. So I want to share a piece that I wrote for my book Small Pearls, big Wisdom, and then we are going to talk a little bit about some ideas behind it and some perspective shifts that we can have to support a healthy mindset towards patients, which isn't always easy for many of us.

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This piece was inspired by the way from my own life back in it was the year 2018. And I remember that year that I had all these big hopes and dreams. I'd been in Kauai for probably about nine months at that point Kauai for probably about nine months at that point and I moved over here with so much heart, inspired, ambition and these big, giant dreams, and I wasn't where I wanted to be in life and things weren't happening as quickly as I wanted them to, and all these gifts were going to come from that. But at the time, I had done an Akashic reading with somebody who used to do readings for me and I was starting to work on Transformations of the Sun, which is the middle book in the Lamentations trilogy, and I remember asking is there value in writing this book? And something that the Akashic record said to me was that there was value in writing this book. And something that the Akashic record said to me was that there was value in writing about being on the mountainside instead of starting out at the beginning of something or standing at the top after we've accomplished that and that there was value in that in between area where you're like halfway, halfway up the mountain, or you are only a quarter or halfway through something and the end is still so far away that there's nothing celebratory about it, but you've lost the excitement from the beginning stages. And how do we learn to make peace with that? So that inspired this piece that I eventually wrote down and polished up and it ended up in my book and it's called On the Mountainside. This is reflection number 133. I love that number. It feels a little bit magical.

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Today, patience with the process is challenging. There are times on our journeys when we want to be there already, on top of some metaphorical mountain. We've been climbing, enjoying the views. Instead, we find ourselves halfway up, unsure of the path forward, and we feel tired and weary. We're no longer at the exciting origins of the beginning. We've lost our enthusiasm and perhaps our sense of vision. Nor do we have the glorious outcome of meeting our goal and feeling we've arrived and reached the top. We're stuck on the mountainside, hanging out in the middle. The top feels far away and the bottom has long since passed. We are tired, dirty, hungry and uncertain as to why we thought it was such a great idea to climb the mountain in the first place. It's hard to be in an in-between space, no longer in the newness of a cycle, yet far away from whatever destination we've set our sights on. We wonder when and how we'll get there, who we're becoming and if we made a mistake following our current path.

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What we often don't realize in the moment is that this too is a valuable part of our journey. If we pay attention, we find that life brings us gifts when we're on the mountainside that we would have missed otherwise. Maybe the clouds dance overhead, enchanting us and sparking a new inspiration within. We would have missed the moment had we been busy climbing. Perhaps we get resourceful, go foraging and find a patch of the juiciest, yummiest wild berries. We might discover a peaceful meadow, a brilliant wild flowers, take sanctuary and eventually return to the journey fortified and rejuvenated from our respite. Sometimes life can't be forced, nor can our paths. We learn to wait in these moments, discover the gifts and find goodness there. Trust that if we just stay open, things will eventually shift and we will see our next step with greater clarity. Perhaps we even move forward with more resources, strengths and treasures, wiser and lighter in spirit because of our time on the mountainside.

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I think it's really challenging in the human journey to learn to tolerate the feeling state of being uncomfortable with where we're at, and feeling this restless energy and that sense of expectation or pressure that we want to be somewhere already. And here we are. It's the ultimate. Are we there yet? And the proverbial family stuck in a minivan on a road trip and the kids are tired and they're impatient and they're ready to be out of the car and they're bored and they long since exhausted their supply of things to do and everybody's patience is wearing thin and they're starting to get on each other's nerves.

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And there's elements of that experience, of that metaphor that we often feel on our individual paths and earlier when I said the mind can be a friend but it can also be such an enemy, especially when we give ourselves information and really rehearse the story that we need to be further along than we are or we let our impatience get the best of us and go into this impulsive place of trying to force something to happen or force the path or focusing on this negative space that we're not where we want to be. And I've learned the hard way right. I've learned because I've been there many times and sometimes we'll still dip into that space. But one of the bigger life lessons that I have really tried to internalize over the last five, six, seven, eight years is having to just take a deep breath and be patient, and learning to tolerate a sense of unease and things that might feel a little bit intolerable. And I think that when we can shift our mindset and see that there is value when we are in the middle of something, there's value in moments of stillness, there's value in moments of receptivity, there's value in sometimes having to sit down and wait, and in that space of waiting are things not happening as quickly as we want?

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We often find these gifts, if we look for them, that we might not have noticed otherwise. We might have a new inspiration that eventually comes through and it comes from that chafing of being restless and uneasy and having to sit with it, and those two feeling states keep rubbing back and forth and maybe over time that's the alchemy needed that causes a creative spark. And when we get that spark we have the momentum to put behind it, because we have just had all this rest and being in a state of having to tolerate more patience, or maybe we notice things about ourself. Maybe it's an opportunity to face some things inside of ourself or do some inner work, or get acquainted with self-doubt or fears or noticing that if we're being really impatient or judgmental towards our process or having a lot of expectations. What a great opportunity to unpack that and do some self-work around that and do some inner work and try and see if we can create a more constructive framework to think about things.

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There's opportunities for healing or trying a new hobby or doing something different, for clearing out clutter, for taking a nap, for going out to nature or appreciating something or learning about something new. There's so many things that we can do when we are hanging out on the mountainside and I've often found that it's in those moments that I'm more receptive, because I'm forced to be and I'm better able to get in touch with what's in my heart. I will do more deep sea diving, as I like to think of it, and delving into my depths. I might be more sensitive to messages from the angels, from nature, from energy. I might notice more signs and synchronicities because I'm tuning in and I'm not so distracted with all the momentum. So there's so many things that can come from that space and so many beautiful gifts.

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And they're not always the shiny gifts, they're not the mountaintop, it's not the gold medal that we get or the recognition or acknowledgement or sense of satisfaction and accolades that might happen when we've achieved a goal or hit a certain milestone, and it's tangible and so we can tell people or we receive something from it and have that sense of acknowledgement. We learn to have a sense of appreciation and that moment that might go unrecognized by others but we recognize it in our hearts. We recognize it from, perhaps, our spiritual connection and feeling a sense of spiritual support, universal support, a deep resonance inside of ourselves. We might recognize ourself in the pages of our journal and say these are some good gifts that happened today, and I choose to believe this is enough. And so we really learn to be our own cheerleader, to tune into how the universe and life might be cheerleading us along and to develop a deeper appreciation for the gifts in life that might not be shiny and they might not be obvious, but they are rich and things that nourish our heart and nourish our souls, one of the constructive things that I like to do in my personal journal time and I have a lot of journaling practices.

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It's a very important part of keeping myself organized and knowing what's going on in my inner world. I get a lot out of it and I have a card protocol that sometimes I'll do. That sounds so formalized when I say it that way, but it's the set of questions that I've developed and tweaked over time, and I will draw Oracle cards, whatever deck calls to me or whatever deck I'm really into working with at the time. It might be a tarot card or an affirmation card. I have a big library of different kinds of decks because I find them so intriguing and I just love working with those as a springboard into myself and a vehicle to also receive and receive messages, and I will use a card for each of these questions.

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And the first question is what progress did I make on the path today? And the second question is how did I grow today? And that might also be how did I grow today slash what did I learn today? And then the third question is something along the lines of what is emerging in my life right now that I might not be aware of. So it's this help me see something that isn't really obvious, but that is coming from this time? And then the next question, fourth question, is what's my best focus right now? Like, what's the guidance for this tiny little microcosm of time? How can I focus my time, my attention, my energy? And then card five is usually a message from spirit or a message from my higher self, or something along those lines. It's been such a lovely way in my personal practice to allow myself to tune in to these hidden things that I might not always notice.

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Sometimes we go through a day and we don't really see what progress we've made. Maybe we didn't have a great day, maybe we can't see the forest through the trees and we're really like down in the weeds or there's a big fog in front of us or something like that, and so we feel like we're stuck or we're sitting still, and I love opening to the question of well, I know I made progress right, because we're always changing, we're always progressing. Even when we're stuck, there's still some kind of movement happening and our soul is still doing something in that space. There's still value and something to learn from that, and so it's a question that helps me see things from a higher perspective and a more soulful perspective and looking at the nuance of what shifted today, what was the progress made. And there's times that this beautiful guidance comes through or I really enjoy what a card might reflect back to me that I might not have seen from my vantage point, what a card might reflect back to me that I might not have seen from my vantage point, but when I read the message it really resonates. And so there's always something happening in that space. There's always a hidden gift, there's always something to be gained.

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I'm also a big fan that it's in these very humble moments of life, these very simple moments where it looks like not much is happening, that sometimes a lot is going on under the surface and we can find value in that simplicity. And we can still take a day where we're not exactly where we want to be and we can say well, what can I create today and how can I make this day an offering to love or write a love letter to the universe from just showing up and doing what I can with integrity and commitment in my heart. So part of finding grace for our process and finding patience for our process is learning to develop a wider mindset where we make friends with patients, and learn to be more tolerant of uncomfortable feeling states and we really begin to learn to develop an eye and find value in those in-between moments. And bringing it back around to this time of year in January, which often is a month that I've said before, it feels like a test pilot month. We don't know what this new year is about yet. We don't know what's going to happen. There's a lot of days left on the calendar. There is a lot of time to build things towards our dreams, construct our goals, keep setting our intentions, to figure out what our intentions are and when we can learn to slow down and keep releasing expectations and learn to find more value.

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That we all hang out on the mountainside.

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It's part of the human experience.

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A lot of times people might not talk about that.

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We tend to talk about our wins or what's going on or this really active movement that's happening in our life, but everybody goes through that time.

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We spend more time on the side of the mountain than we do striking out or having those on the mountaintop experiences and so when we learn to make friends with that and to embrace it and to see it as a valuable part of our journey. It's the very important middle between those two bookends of start and finish and when we can learn to see it that way, it helps us relax into the moment and to have more grace and patience for the process and to give ourselves permission to be on the side of the mountain and say, all right, well, what gifts can I find in this space? So thank you for joining me today. I hope you keep finding grace and patience for your process this week and I will be back next week with a brand new your Heart Magic episode. In the meantime, have a beautiful week and, as always, be well, be love, be you and be magic you've been listening to your heart magic with dr bethan kapansky.

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Right tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your light.