“When you find alignment, the conditions will not matter.”
– Abraham Hicks

Alignment

Alignment in life is the position of closeness between how we are living in life to what matters to us in life. If you can imagine a scenario of hanging up a picture, using two nails – one nail that represents what is happening, and the other nail representing what we wish were happening, the better the straightness on a line that we place the nails, will determine how the picture looks when we hang it on them. The picture will be lopsided if the nails are not aligned.

This metaphor represents the alignment we have in our own lives. What does our own life picture hang like? On one hand, it isn’t about stressing to get the perfect straight lined picture, because life for the most part is not perfect. It is more how comfortable are we with how it hangs? It is our own resonance to what it feels like internally which no one else can determine.

Life alignment isn’t easy to get that perfect line. Think about simply the educational path. Going through school, there was an emphasis on grades, then moving to the work force it’s not about grades but our character, then moving beyond work to retirement, it isn’t about our character but our meaning in life. How can we all be aligned when external criteria keeps changing along our life line?

Perhaps it is that we are focusing on the external criteria rather than the internal criteria. It is about using our internal landscape to guide the decisions for our life. It is about asking ourselves honestly, what is it that matters to me? How do I feel about this? What excitement or lack thereof do I notice in the decision that I have made?

Sharing with you my own experience:

My own experience has been a whole bunch of trials and tribulations. Part of being a creative human being, is always thinking of possibilities and new ideas. The outcome is not so important. Let me share with you an instance where I was not aligned to what mattered to me.

I have discovered I love to talk about the deeper aspects of life with others, and about coaching, mentoring, teaching. I love human development and life topics and it is why my kids say “mom is the spiritual parent’’. I had recently joined a Business Networking group and I had found it somewhat difficult to explain what life coaching really is. How can you explain an experience of awakening to someone? I remember asking my sister-in-law the same question “so, what is life coaching?” and it took me years to figure it out because it took me years to notice my own life transformations. So, instead of signing up in my networking group as a life coach, I signed up as a nutritional specialist. I have a basic knowledge about nutrition but I really was not a specialist nor did I have a passion to become one. That was the first sign of misalignment. In my mind, I thought I could attach the passion of life coaching to the ‘tool’ of nutrition – that if other topics came up with my clients, I would coach them through it.

Though I had a plan to use the tool of nutritional products as my primary business focus and coaching as the added on secondary, the opposite turned out. Throughout the year as the ‘nutritional specialist’, I began to feel more and more misaligned to what was my true calling. I began to notice I was not excited to talk about the subject matter. It felt like work. My true calling is to be a spiritual life coach. And as such, I have elected to change my category….which is so much more aligned to who I naturally am.

I have come to notice that misalignment feels “off”. But do I plug through the “off” feeling or surrender to it and try again? The “off” feeling represents an inner knowing that this is not really me. It is something that I can do, something I can learn how to do, but it doesn’t excite me doing it. It isn’t speaking to my soul. It may to someone else, but not to me.

Turning it over to you:

Let us explore alignment from a place of curiosity and noticing.

1. How does your life picture hang on the wall?
2. How do you come to your own tipping point when you know you are not living a life aligned to your values?
3. What would your life look like if it was aligned?
4. How would it be for you if you continued living the way you do for the next 10 years? The next 20 years? The next 30 years?

Tips and tools to hopefully help you:

1. Take notice how misalignment feels like for you and how did you arrive to this conclusion for yourself?
2. Be honest, not critical to your internal truth.
3. Find one small non-aligned thing you could let go of in your life to make room for something new that is more aligned to who you really are.