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Recreate a Charmed Life
by Victoria Moran |
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“The way we used to do it” has to give way to “Let’s try something new.”
Sometimes you have to do it over again. It can happen like this. You’ve created an extraordinary life.
It looks great from the outside and feels wonderful on the inside. All is well. Then everything falls apart (or maybe only one thing but it’s so enormous that it seems like everything). This is the test that separates the charmers from the charlatans. After the fire or the
tornado, the death or the divorce, the pink slip or the dreaded diagnosis, just making it through is laudable. Making it through and coming out better---well, that’s charmed-life country.
Nobody wants to start from scratch to redo what’s already been done. It seems so tiring, so “been there, done that.” And yet recreating a charmed life is not an experiment in cloning.
It’s building anew, and it deserves the same excitement you’d give to building a summer home in Maine even though you’d already built a winter place in Florida. This second time around has to be its own challenge, its own adventure. You won’t be making a photocopy of the way
things used to be: you’ll build on what you loved about your life then to create a life that is even more customized to the incredible human being you are today.
Obviously, this calls for flexibility. “The way we used to do it” has to give way to “Let’s try something new.” Otherwise you won’t have a charmed life, just a below par remake. The
way things used to be was lovely indeed, the same way your kids were beautiful babies and now they’re incredible people. You wouldn’t want to confine them in infancy, and you don’t want to confine the life you’re meant to have now within the mold of one you had in the past,
no matter how idyllic.
One of my readers, a lovely woman named Janine, knows this well. For seventeen years, she lived luxuriously in Bermuda. She did it right, too, and made a point of being grateful for
her beautiful home and the many opportunities to travel. She enjoyed her work, her husband and her friends. Then one day with no warning, she got sick. Her condition was eventually labeled Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and on doctor’s orders she and her husband sold everything
and moved back to their native Jamaica where neither had lived since their teens.
Confined to her room, she spent nearly a year looking out at the mountains and praying---holding the vision of good health and applying that aptitude for gratitude she’d developed
previously to the blessings she knew would come. As she did this, her point of view shifted. The colors of the mountains were richer, the light at sunset more captivating. Her garden became a world of its own, blossoming as she did. The life Janine left behind no longer
seemed as fulfilling as it had, and she started to long for something else, something simpler, the very life she now had.
“It a paradox when I realize I’m living in a country with many social and economic problems,” she says. “But I know now that each day is important to my soul. I know the charmed life
can go on, despite setbacks, ill health, financial struggles, or country migration.” I’d say that just about covers it.
Know this: if you ever made magic, you can make it now. If you once changed the circumstances of your life, you can change them a second time. If you were ever on top of the world, you
can be there again, even if it seems to be on top of you at the moment. You don’t just get one shot at this, or a single golden opportunity that, once past, will never come again. Once you have the attitude and the tools for living a charmed life, you’ll be able to craft
another one if you have to. It won’t be identical, but it will be ideal.
When you know that, you’ll own your power. You’ll feel safe. You’ll find the magic in every instant, the blessing in every breath. Despite some rerouting and reconfiguring and
retracing your tracks at times, you can be assured that, moment to moment, you’re living a life that works like a charm.
Victoria Moran is the author of ten books, including the classic Creating a Charmed Life; its April 2009 sequel Living a Charmed Life: Your Guide to Finding Magic in Every Moment of Every Day; and the newly revised and updated classic, The Love-Powered Diet: Eating for Freedom, Health, and Joy. Victoria hosts a “A Charmed Life” on HealthyLife.net radio. She lives in New York City. please visit her site, www.victoriamoran.com.
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