Need Guidance? Pick a Page, Any Page
Recently, I’ve become a big fan of creating fun ways to get guidance with minimal effort.
Whenever I’ve faced a particular challenge or perplexing situation, I’ve often done what I call Motivating with the Masters.
In short, without ever meeting big-name gurus, I’ve received personal attention from them, but they don’t even know they’ve been helping me. Cool, eh?
While seeking guidance from the masters, I’ve created the super-simple Pick a Page, any Page Process, which helps you to easily tap into Infinite Intelligence, God or whatever you want to call it so you can know what to do.
Here’s how to do this simple technique.
First thing in the morning — or whatever time appeals to you — select a book from one of your favorite motivational authors on a subject that speaks to you.
Sit down, turn your head away, and randomly select a page, pointing to it a finger.
Start reading. Almost inevtiably, I’m willing to bet, you’ll soon find your day’s message whether it’s in the first sentence, a few paragraphs down or hidden in two pages.
Now, if that passage doesn’t connect with you, continue reading to find what you need. Or, if you prefer, repeat # 2 so you can land on another passage that’s better suited to your situation.
In addition to doing this Pick a Page, Any Page Process in the morning, you also can rely on it whenever you’re stumped about a particular challenge, dilemma or situation.
Let me give you three personal examples about how this simple Pick a Page, Any Page Process worked so well for me. One day I was feeling stressed out although I’d recently moved to a healing place after my mother’s death.
Longing for some simple, but great advice, I turned to Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., a leading expert on stress, spirituality, and the mind/body connection, whose book, Inner Peace for Busy People: 52 Simple Strategies for Transforming Your Life was inviting me. I landed on pages 72 to 74.
Here’s the guidance I got to help yank me out of my Dark Night of the Soul, which I went through after Mom died.
“This week, think about the simple pleasures that give you the time of your life. Walk around your house and take stock. Do your possessions energize you, or are they a drain? If you own things that are more trouble than they’re worth, simplification is in order. That’s why God invented garage sales.”
What incredible timing! As I was reading this, I had just completed my move of about 500 miles from northern to southern California and I was still donating, recycling, displaying, or temporarily hiding items that were mine or my late Mom’s.
When I read further, Dr. Borysenko hit another telling chord when she discussed my newly acquired boob-tube reliance.
“If you’re a habitual television watcher and want to discover more simple pleasures this week, try a TV fast. Lots of time will open up. Spend it with your loved ones making music, reading, painting, repotting your plants…* tending a fish tank, or any hobby that needs time and care.”
Although I didn’t put her strategy to use right away—since Mom’s death, I’d become hooked on such TV shows as “Charmed,” “Perception” and “Necessary Roughness”—I decided to slowly move in that direction by watching TV less rather than cut it out cold turkey. I even took time to bike on the beach.
Dr. Joan Borysenko then offered me more hope in a section called, “Take Time for Simple Pleasures.”
“Life is lived in the small places, the in-between spots whose magic lies in their capacity to reconnect us to our souls.”
How cool! See what I mean about how picking a page can help you?
A morning or two later—and many other mornings—I turned to the pioneering Geneen Roth, who has helped millions struggling with compulsive eating to transform their relationships to food. I found more pearls of wisdom from her on pages 780 to 781 in her landmark book, Women, Food and Good: Unexpected Path to Almost Everything. She writes:
“The shape of your body obeys the shape of your beliefs about love, value and possibility. To change your body, you must first understand that which is shaping it. Not fight it. Not force it. Not deprive it. Not shame it. Not do anything but accept—and, yes, Virginia—understand it.”
Ah yes, many of us have embarrassed ourselves into dieting and only briefly shed weight. Geneen continued:
“Because if you force and deprive and shame yourself into being thin, you end up a deprived, shamed, fearful person who will also be thin for ten minutes. When you abuse yourself (by taunting or threatening yourself) you become a bruised human being no matter how much you weigh…”
Later, Geneen hit the jackpot for me:
“When you believe in yourself more than you believe in food, you will stop using food as if it were your only chance at not falling apart. When the shape of your body no longer matches the shape of your beliefs, the weight disappears. And yes, it really is that simple.”
On a number of occasions, I also got A Hahs! from Marianne Williamson in her book, A Course in Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for Surrendering Your Weight Forever. On another morning–which coincidentally fell on Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the Jewish New Year, when you review your past year and atone for your mistakes—here’s the “Ding” I received. It was a prayer:
Dear God,
As I enter into this new chapter
of my life,
please bless my steps forward,
With this ceremony,
may Your Spirit come upon me
and release me from my former self.
Please deliver me to sweeter realms
and teach me how to be, dear God,
a freer person, a happier person,
a saner person,
without compulsion or fear.
And so it is.
Amen.
I hope you’ll enjoy my simple Pick a Page, Any Page Process.
Join the Conversation: Tell us what passage has inspired you.
thanks to Pam Lawhorne for this fabulous image shown above. Hope I’m able to use it. If I goofed, contact me, and I’ll pull it.)
