INTRODUCTION:

What’s It All About?

• Do you wake up regretting what you did yesterday?
• Do you dread today, seeing nothing but the same old, same old?
• Are you depressed about tomorrow, convinced that nothing will change?
• Do you spend too much time condemning yourself about what you could have, should have done differently?
• Do you feel stuck in your job, your activities, your life?
• Do you yearn for more, even if you don’t know what it is?
• Do you suspect you’ve got something to give, even if you can’t identify it?
• Are you sure it’s somewhere inside you, but you can’t seem to find it or let it out?

If your answer to any or all of these questions is “Yes, yes, yes, Lord, help me,” within these pages the Lord and I will help you reach many of the answers you’ve been searching for, even if you didn’t quite know you were asking.

What’s Here?

In the emerging tradition of books on spiritual principles applied to all aspects of life, Trust Your Life is a manual of practical spirituality. Trust buoys you if your imagined failures are stopping you from reaching for your buried Dreams and living more fully. Trust encourages you to forgive your self-judgments, overcome your guilt, step beyond self-imposed “shoulds” and deep dissatisfactions, develop yourself more courageously, embrace your creative strength and power, and learn how to rely on your always-trustworthy, knowing and peace-producing Source (whew!).

Trust Your Life is based on three Universal principles:

• First, there are no mistakes. Miles Davis, the great and enlightened jazz musician, said, “Do not fear mistakes. There are none.”1

Your self-judged “wrong” turns were nothing less than perfect. Your life experiences prepared you perfectly for where you are now.

• Second, we can reframe our pasts. When we realize there are no mistakes, we can free ourselves from branding past experiences as negative or wasted. Instead we can view our mistakes as inevitable steps toward the future we want to create. I guide you to awareness of these steps so you can finally forgive yourself for those mislabeled mistakes and take active steps toward building your Dream.
• Third, the outer reflects the inner. “Out there” is “in here.”

Trust Your Life will help you, at whatever age or stage you’re at, to find another way of looking at your world, yourself and your life. Here you’ll learn how:

• To forgive yourself for what you see as lost time.
• To see the events and turns of your life in a different, perhaps startling way.
• To review, relabel and understand your past differently—as the perfect foundation for reaching your long-cherished desires.
• To recognize that all your experiences have been perfect, nothing less than manifestations of the Divine Order of your life.

In the Bible, Old Testament teachers and Jesus promised and instructed us that when we wholly believe and speak the words of what we desire, we experience it. (Look at Job 22:28; Mt. 9:29; Mk. 11:23.) Later teachings, in newer bindings and flashier covers, reiterate these principles: Napoleon Hill’s Conceive-Believe-Achieve, Neale Donald Walsch’s Thought-Word-Action, Eckhart Tolle’s Power of Now, the ancient-new Law of Attraction. Applying these magnificent teachings, you will learn to name, visualize, deserve, expect and act on your God-planted greatest desires.

You’ll gain insights into why you’ve been stuck on the treadmill of self-condemnation and discover methods for reversing your patterns of negative thinking. You’ll burst through your inertia. You’ll gain courage from the examples of other people like you (myself included, Lord knows). You’ll feel inspired by much practical and spiritual wisdom from venerable and contemporary sources. You’ll learn many simple and concrete ways to jump off your seemingly endless treadmill, stop your procrastination, and get a running start onto the path that takes you where you crave to go.

There’s more … You’ll see your life differently—maybe differently from the way you’ve ever seen it—and become freer from the self-defeating thoughts and labels that have kept you down. You’ll start to shed your old habits of negating yourself and ease gently into the splendid clothes of deserving. In these new clothes, which are much more than zipper-deep, you’ll begin to blossom and develop your talents and abilities as you’ve always secretly known you could.

You’ll start to act with anticipation and excitement.

You’ll feel a wonderful sense of rightness and will know you’re really on the way to your Dream.

As you take in these lessons, you’ll feel a new and possibly foreign sense of peace, satisfaction and hope. You’ll gain a new grounding:

• Not one of dissatisfaction but of certainty.
• Not one of suspicion, frustration and guilt but of fullness.
• Not one of constant anxiety but of confidence.
• Not one of self-deprecation and denial but of absolute deserving.

You’ll notice, too, an unaccustomed sense of buoyancy, even if it’s only occasional. You’ll have more energy and will come to know, with a certainty you never had before, what you really want to do. You’ll be open to, and will start thinking of, the perfect sequence of steps to take you there.

In the process, you’ll go from doubting your abilities, your power, your spiritual heritage, and God to trusting yourself, your divine nature and the certainty of God’s goodness for you. You’ll learn how to discover, develop and trust your innate spirituality and inner direction. You’ll see how trusting yourself, and knowing you are master of your choices, can indeed lead to fulfillment of your most cherished desires and goals. You’ll find, too, with a shock of joy, that you’re enjoying more of the moments that make up your days.

Most important, you’ll learn that you’re not a victim of life or a victim of God—a God who puts us through all manner of tribulation for some perverse, eccentric, mysterious, divine reason.

Contrary to the hard-luck stories that supposedly prove widespread (and contagious) victimitis, you’ll learn that you can take charge. In Deepak Chopra’s often-quoted words, “You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices.”2

Still Skeptical?

Maybe you’re shaking your head and saying, “Sure, sure. I’ve tried this, that and those. I’ve spent money, time and tears and got nowhere.” Maybe, whatever you’ve invested, you feel you’ll never get out of this dark place. Maybe you’ve already dismissed the likelihood that any of those wonderful things above can happen to you.

You may have a lot of reasons for this reaction. Other than low blood sugar, one big reason is that you probably don’t credit yourself with what you’ve already done. A lot of us don’t even remember our accomplishments. The rest of us dismiss them and say, “Big deal.” How can we give ourselves credit and applause and build on them?

I’m reminded of a client. Lilette knew she needed a change of career. For too long, in her view, she’d been a bank teller and, at 36, couldn’t see herself behind the glass cage for the rest of her working life. As we worked together, and I asked squirm-producing questions, Lilette realized she’d always wanted to help children. She decided to go for the master’s degree in childhood education, dreaming of becoming an elementary school teacher.

When we started filling out the application, Lilette stopped cold. She shook her head, almost crying. “It asks for previous teacher experience! I don’t have any!” She threw her hands in the air. “I can’t go!”

“Easy, now,” I reassured her. “Just take a deep breath. Think back. What have you done with kids? Not teaching, but anything else?”

Lilette shrugged. “Babysat my cousins, almost every week while my aunt went to her weekend job.”

“Okay, good. What else?”

Her brow furrowed. Then she lit up. “Oh, a neighbor. My aunt asked me if I wanted to do her friend a favor. So I stayed with the neighbor’s boy and read to him.” She started smiling as she recalled. “We watched Dora the Explorer, and I taught him letters and numbers. He was going to start preschool.”

I nodded.

“And then,” Lilette grew more animated, “I taught Sunday School! Kindergarten kids. We read stories and did drawings and games.” She laughed, finally realizing that she certainly did have “teaching” experience.

We completed the application with little effort, and Lilette looked forward with excitement to enrolling. She’d taken the first step toward her Dream.

Like Lilette, most of us are often the last to give ourselves credit for our positive or valuable experiences. It’s hard for us to step...