Author, life coach and energy healer Pamela Hale begins her three-part series on "Soaring to Self-Love." She believes true Self-Love allows us to break free of old wounds and spread our wings. In her series, she'll share three topics that relate to lessons in her award-winning book, Flying Lessons: How to Be the Pilot of Your Own Life. We warmly welcome Pam as our talented guest blogger.
When I was earning my private pilot’s license in my late ‘50’s, you’d think I would have been feeling great about myself. Not so. Flying lessons provided an opportunity for me to accuse myself of being the world’s worst student, incompetent, and scared of my own shadow.
Have you ever been engaged in a challenge you’d dreamed of, only to find that instead of feeling like a star, you felt like a failure trying to prove a point? Dis-spiriting to say the least.
Fortunately for me, I had a woman flight instructor named Clio who mentored me through hundreds of lessons, many of them turning into lessons for life. And the first one was Know Where You’re Going to Land.
This lesson turned out to mean a lot of different things. Of course in the aviation world, knowing where you’re going to land seems like a pretty good idea. It also seems like a simple one: pick your airport and head there, right?
But one day when I was out with Clio practicing emergency landings, I was parallel to the runway heading in for a landing, thinking the lesson was over. When Clio reached over and pulled off the power (creating one more “emergency”) I freaked. Couldn’t remember where I was going to land, even though the runway was…that’s right…directly over my left shoulder.
Fear, it turns out, causes us to contract, narrowing our vision—in my case narrowing it so far I didn’t know where to find solid ground. Ever been there?
Maybe you can forgive my bumbling through a terrible landing when I was taken by surprise, but the point of this story is that I didn’t. I figured I didn’t deserve to fly. For a whole lot of reasons my inner critic had a great time enumerating.
Now I not only had to work on my landings, I had to work on my attitude. I had to find solid ground inside myself. A safe landing place.
Do you have a safe landing place inside? Somewhere you can always find, where all is well, where you are safe and at peace? Do you know how to return to your Being?
When we’re in our Essence and connected to the part of us that is not ego, not the self-critic, not the mind, but the heart, we remember that we are fine just the way we are.
I’m sure you don’t think less of me just because I made a mistake while I was learning. Do you have the same respect and compassion for yourself? Can you cut yourself some slack during times when you are pushing the envelope?
Here are three pieces of advice Clio would give you for finding your safe landing place:
1. Look beyond the numbers. Gauges don’t tell you much when what you’re looking for is bigger than the cockpit: solid ground.
2. Fear is just a feeling. It isn’t who you are. Neither are your mistakes.
3. You are eternal. These lessons we go through will all pass. Your Being is the Spirit in the Spirited Woman! Return to her, and she will always welcome you home.
Pamela Hale, http://www.ThroughADifferentLens.com
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Pamela Hale is author of the IPPY award-winning book, Flying Lessons: How to Be the Pilot of Your Own Life (a 2012 pick on the Spirited Woman) and the Sand Spirits Insight Cards. Pam partners with spiritually-oriented women who want to make a difference. A graduate of Stanford and Columbia Universities, Four Winds Light Body School and Tacheria School for Spiritual Direction, Pam lives in Tucson, AZ.
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