There IS No Other Shoe
Written by Suzanne Eder | October 9, 2012 |
Posted in Power of Beliefs, Trusting Yourself/Inner Guidance
Earlier this year I experienced a real highlight of both my personal and professional lives, which was the opportunity I had to interview bestselling author Anita Moorjani, author of Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer to Near Death to True Healing. I had been profoundly moved by a video I’d seen of her on YouTube, and after reading her book had the impulse to reach out and see if she’d be willing to talk to me, a writer for Living.Well Magazine. I had a strong desire to connect with her personally – and a sense of intuitive “rightness” about it.
So I acted on the impulse and sent an interview request through her website. My so-called reasoning mind tried to protect me from disappointment by reminding me that she must get thousands of such requests, and the chances of her spending quality time for an interview with a small regional magazine were slim to none. After all, she is an internationally known bestselling author on a world tour! It wouldn’t be wise to get my hopes up, said the sober one within me, with her backhanded brand of comfort. In effect she was saying, “Don’t feel bad if she doesn’t respond, you’re not important enough to garner a response.”
Yet deep within me I knew the interview was “supposed” to happen. Even with the voice of caution hissing in my ear, I felt an odd sense of destiny about the interview. And sure enough, within days I received a response from Anita’s assistant. She told me Anita would be delighted to schedule an interview with me, and we proceeded to email back and forth to work out the specifics of when, where and how the interview would be conducted. I was, quite simply, thrilled.
Each email was kinder and more generous than the last. I felt I was establishing genuine rapport with Anita’s assistant when, suddenly, all communication stopped. It happened after I sent the email with my list of specific questions for the interview. No response. I sent it again, and yet again. Still no response. I was baffled, frustrated and immensely disappointed. There was nothing further for me to do.
A heated conversation bubbled up within me. The seemingly “spiritual” part of me recommended I just let it go; clearly it wasn’t meant to be, and we all know that attachment to a specific outcome is the biggest recipe for unhappiness in life. Another part of me went over the sequence of communications and steps, looking for the mistake I must surely have made. Maybe the interview questions were somehow offensive. Maybe I had done something else wrong. If I could just figure it out, perhaps I could somehow correct it.
Another part of me was simply angry and hurt and prone to dramatic brooding.
Thankfully, deep in the eye of the swirling hurricane of confused thoughts and emotions, sat a very calm and centered part of me who offered the reminder that the sense of “rightness” I had initially felt was real and true. That sense, that knowing, was what I could trust.
So I gave myself time to simply feel the chaos of emotions that the other parts of me had churned up. After they subsided, and I sat in the blessed silence following the storm, a crystal-clear insight floated upward into my awareness. I suddenly realized that the sober voice who had tried to caution me from getting too excited about all of this was vibrating strongly within my energy field. She was the one proclaiming a very commonly held belief in mass consciousness that the whole thing was simply too good to be true. She had waited expectantly for the other shoe to drop.
And so it had dropped.
I could see with new eagle-eye vision that I had created the whole experience. The initial positive response from Anita’s assistant reflected my own initial enthusiasm and sense of destiny about the interview. The sudden halt in communication mirrored back the deeply held expectation that it was simply too good to be true. In that moment of recognition I declared, “Nothing is too good to be true!” It became my new mantra, and as I repeated it to myself I felt better and better.
And from that better-feeling place I decided to email Anita’s assistant one more time. I boldly ignored the worrier within who cautioned that I was being a pest. (She is such a killjoy.)
Within hours a response came back. Her assistant thanked me profusely for emailing again, explaining that their server had crashed and they’d lost many emails, including mine. They had no record of my email address or even the correct spelling of my name and were unable to contact me. Our warm and friendly communications resumed, and the interview was scheduled.
In one of the last emails I sent, I told Anita’s assistant that it had been a real pleasure communicating with her. What came back was a response from Anita herself, saying the pleasure had been all hers. It turns out her assistant had copied Anita on all of our emails, and Anita had actually read them. She was genuinely looking forward to our interview. Just as my inner sense of “rightness” had predicted she would.
If you haven’t already, I hope you’ll take the time to listen to our amazing conversation, which is posted here on my website. I’ve received so many positive comments about it and I feel honored to have been part of something that has such tremendous potential to support radical healing and transformation across the globe.
And here’s what is so amazing to me as I reflect on the experience: it was created through love and trust in that deep sense of “rightness” I’ve mentioned several times. Powerful old beliefs such as, “It’s too good to be true” and “The other shoe is going to drop” almost prevented the interview from taking place – but love is always stronger than fear. When we dare to trust love, when we dare to honor our inner sense of “rightness,” we can move mountains. (Or at least, we can remediate the effects of a failed server.)
Of course, I’m also struck by how entrenched those fear-based beliefs are, and how powerfully the deeper expectations they generate can affect our experience. Yet the more aware we become of them, the less power they have over us. Be willing to acknowledge those ancient beliefs and let them go. Be willing to declare a new reality for yourself, such as my “Nothing is too good to be true!” mantra.
In a recent Facebook post, I commented on the power of letting go of the fear-based beliefs arising from mass consciousness:
“Sometimes we’re afraid to let ourselves be happy; there’s an underlying fear in mass consciousness that if we feel too good, the “other shoe” is going to drop and something unwanted will happen. But what if there is no other shoe? What if the happier you are, the more fulfilled and generous and secure you become?”
One of my friends posted back a couple of weeks later:
“Suzanne, I have been trying to stay with the concept of enjoying the moment and not looking at good things with the underlying thought of “when will the other shoe drop?” I find that I am enjoying the good stuff even more than I had before, and that the snafus are actually LESS affecting, because I am riding on a higher life line…”
YES! Let’s all declare that there is no other shoe! The more deeply we appreciate all that is good, and the more we expect good to flow into our lives, the better our lives get. And the better our lives get, the greater is our gift to the world through our very example and presence.
Trust your good. Trust your own sense of destiny and “rightness.” Dare to believe that nothing is too good to be true.