Will You Allow It?

(Part 2 in the series: Can You Make It Happen?)

In part 1, I raised the question of how much you can actually control in life. I concluded that making what you want to happen is about finding your power: identifying what is within your span of control and acting decisively. Now let’s take a look at the difference between making something happen and allowing it to happen.

What Does It Mean To Allow?

Ironically, making your goals and dreams happen requires you to loosen your grip on them. This may seem to contradict part of the Mariah Carey’s “Make It Happen” song that I included in the prior issue.

If you believe
Within your soul
Just hold on tight
And don’t let go

You can make it
Make it happen

Don’t let go. Don’t ever, ever let go.

Don’t let go of your dreams, values, and belief in yourself. At the same time, remain flexible as to how they actually materialize. The challenge is that just as you go for it with all your heart, energy, and passion, you must also soften to the unfolding.

Three Ways to Allow

1. Breathing Room — Give your deepest desires the space to grow and evolve. As I’ve mentioned before in previous issues¹, remember this sequence:

Act-Notice-Integrate-Act

Act on what you know.
Take note of new information, your feelings, and the results you’re getting.
Integrate what you learn. Decide what adjustments are called for.
Take more action.

2. Let Go of Struggle — Although it is appropriate to expect some hard work as all dreams involve sacrifice, there is a difference between embracing hard work and needing to struggle. The assumption that it’s going to be an uphill struggle often gets in the way and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. What if it could be easier? Try this: At your next road-block, ask yourself: What can I let go of? What would make this easier?

3. Be Ready to Receive — If letting go of the struggle means getting out of your own way, then being ready to receive means paving the way². Readying yourself to receive involves cultivating a feeling of gratitude for all you have right now, confident and joyful anticipation of what is to come, and a sense of humility and self-worth.

Think of allowing your dreams as paving the way for them to happen. You are actively participating in creating the conditions for your dreams to unfold. This is both a head and heart process.

Pave the Way

Allowing also requires a fourth element: a level of trust and detachment. In the next issue, we’ll address the paradox of being detached while remaining passionate. Your coaching assignment for now is to allow.

This Week: Pave the way for the biggest goal you’ve set this year:

• What is one way you will put breathing room around your goal?
• Identify one thing you will let go of or stop struggling with.
• What must you do now to be ready to receive?

And the big question: What do you now allow?

“Life gives us not what we struggle for, but what we allow.”
— Alan Cohen

Notes:
¹See also: Act On What You Know, Decide and Act.

²“pave the way” — to make progress or development easier; prepare for, make ready, facilitate; this expression from the late 1500s alludes to paving a road so it is easier to travel on.