Learning from Gravity

Day by day, we live by the story we tell. The story can be anything, and it perpetuates itself in what we encounter. It alters our experiences only because it has become our center of focus.

“To know what is important to the person, one must only observe what they actively cultivate.”

Gravity offers a lesson about how to become more aware of your focus, commitment and sense of stability. You can be committed to either success or failure, and the result of your actions will always reveal which is at play. Anything else is just part of the story you tell.

Over many decades of coaching leaders, healers and artists to manifest, one thing stands out as the key to their success: becoming mindful of our focus. Even individuals working to understand why their relationships fail will ultimately work through any unconscious motivations that sabotage partnerships.

We can be committed to going or staying and whichever is at play is how we will interpret what unfolds around us. An unexpected detour can fortify our sense of commitment, or become the validation we needed to run away.

Commitment is like gravity because it pulls us inexorably toward the result. This means that energy is at play that is impossible to stop or prevent. Without understanding the root force operating from our motivations, either conscious and unconscious, we’ll have difficulty achieving lasting success.

Gravity is also a stabilizing force. Perhaps when we were first learning to walk, we might have felt how the earth was turning at 1,000 miles per hour, and moving through space at 67,000 miles per hour. Imagine trying to stand, while overcoming a sensation like that! That was your first real accomplishment.

Because this movement is constant, and not speeding up or slowing down, we are not aware of this sensation. We grow accustomed to it, and take it in stride. Like gravity, commitment helps us stabilize and focus on our forward movement so that we keep our bearings, no matter what life is doing.

Gravity is not some weird force that operates alone, pulling objects toward the center of the earth. Gravity is the result of geometry, or how the weight of a body bends the fabric of the space around it.

Everything is free falling through space, and being pulled into the orbit of the curvature of space surrounding a body. You can imagine the earth like a bowling ball, and the surrounding space like a rubber sheet in three dimensions. The heavier the body, the stronger the curvature.

In this case, it is the weight of the body that we need to explore. It can help us understand our unconscious motivations and therefore, what will lead to our eventual success. In other words, what are you carrying? What is your vision? What are you unwittingly creating?

If you are wallowing in a sense of being a victim, you will look for reinforcement to confirm this. If you are frightened of being abandoned, you might be enacting the very scenario that will lead to this outcome. In this case, the partner doesn’t abandon you. The weight of your story of loss overwhelms everything that comes into your orbit. Rather than reinforce how happy the relationship makes you feel – you can pick it apart.

This is how an unacknowledged fear of abandonment can reveal your commitment to ending relationships before anyone can hurt you.

Knowing that you satisfy your partner’s needs should bring you comfort and joy. Anything else will lead to a game of perceived adversaries and eventual defeat. You are left holding the bag and you can then add this to all that you carry. You grow heavier and repeat the same scenario.

You pull those most likely to fortify your story into your orbit. You may unconsciously be aware of their unavailability, which can feel safe. However, a commitment to acknowledge your vulnerability, and actually see it as part of your organic identity, will improve the authenticity of your relationships.

As you go into the New Year, picture yourself as a body…that shouldn’t be hard. But imagine your constant focus, what you nourish – your intention bending the fabric around you.

Are you committed to authentic interaction or loneliness? Are you committed to going or staying? What is your vision for success? Nobody can tell you what this is.

Pay attention to your dreams – they always reveal your blockages. They also reveal the pathway to your unique vision of success.

Commitment is like gravity because we hold the power to change the world around us.