Do you ever feel deeply disheartened by your own (perceived) lack of progress?

Do you wander what in the name of all that’s holy could have made you think YOU had any chance of success – of getting what you want?

Maybe it feels like absolutely nothing is happening, or at least not fast enough.

Or maybe it’s that friendly old chestnut – “I’ve missed the boat. I’ve made mistakes and wasn’t [fill in the adjective – strong/smart/whatever] enough to get… ‘there’.”

And sometimes we can reassure ourselves with spiritual-sounding thoughts, designed to make us feel better, for example: It wasn’t meant to be. I just didn’t have it in me. If things had been easier I could have done it. THOSE people over there, who made it, had more advantages than me… or, ouch, I’m fine as I am. Really, I am.

So this is a tricky one, right? Because acceptance of what is – of where we are, what’s happened and what’s happening – can be a beautiful thing. We gain nothing, ever, by resisting, by denying or pretending.

But sometimes, when I talk with clients, we discover they’re conflating acceptance with passivity. The spiritual path seems to call us to surrender – even if what we’re surrendering to is NOT AT ALL what we actually want.

Then we can easily fall into shame and self-blame, and feel the need to start deploying the tools of self-help – managing our thinking in order to create what we want. Analyzing thoughts and feelings to try and improve them. Manipulating our outer world so we’ll feel better. Affirming that all is well, while not believing it at all, in order to see something manifested.

In my experience, all of this is based on misunderstanding, and comes with a side of anxiety, despite masquerading as spiritual work.

And this can be so very disheartening.

It was for me.

It can seem way too complex to figure out what’s actually true.

It did to me.

But here’s how I see it now:

I can stop trying to change, improve or otherwise tinker with my (small s) self, and realize that all that I want – change, transformation, health, peace, wellbeing, happiness – is actually already built into my (big S) Self.

It’s intrinsic to the design – it’s who I really am, instead of this flawed and inadequate person I’ve believed myself to be.

So when I can look beyond what seems to be true – that I am limited, that I’ve missed the boat, that there’s not much left for me – then I can see that actually I am ALL possibility and ALL potential for change.

To quote coach and writer Michael Neill: Hope is the magic elixir that energizes dreams, fuels possibilities, and lets you live beyond the limits of your habitual thinking. It’s not a promise that something you want will happen – it’s an invitation to enjoy the possibility of what you want while you and life negotiate the eventual outcome.