The Power Of Choosing Your Response

 

Good morning angels how are you today? I hope you are well wherever you are… so today for our Sunday article I wanted to share something that happened to me this week, which was an absolutely perfect example of how the choice to shift into ease can just change everything. 

As you most of you know, I just started my new month-long collective experiment Easier: an experiment in expanding the field of ease. And SO many of you jumped in and were so excited about it, and just as excited about it as me! 🎉  And I am just loving that so much. 🥹 😭 ❤️ 💕  So thank you all for joining! And for those of you who haven’t joined, you still can, you just won’t be on the same pace with the rest of the group, but that doesn’t matter as it’s taken individually, so you just take it at your own pace. 

As you can probably tell, I feel extremely, extremely passionate about this and the importance of this subject, especially at this time in the world. But at all times really! So anyway, I wanted to share a story about my experience with that this week, and a beautiful example of how easily things can turn around when you have the willingness to be open to that.

 

So I received a letter in the mail suddenly that Haddie (our dog, if you’re not familiar, we have two little under five pound long haired Chihuahua’s, Haddie and June, or Juni as we call her. And they are the sweetest things you’ve ever seen! And I have had vet insurance for them since they were puppies. I made sure to get that for my own peace of mind. Which has been a priceless and incredible peace of mind to have.

 

And so I made sure I did that. And Haddie is now nine years old! So he’s not a puppy anymore. And anyway so I got a letter from his pet insurance company letting me know they were just discontinuing his insurance out of nowhere and he would not be insured anymore. For no reason other than “they can’t offer it in California anymore” or something’s changed. And then they offered me some alternative insurance for him, that was totally unacceptable. I won’t even go into the details, but it was totally unacceptable coverage. 

 

And so my reactive human self in that moment was obviously really upset. I had made sure I got this insurance when he was a pup so that he would be insured for the rest of his life into the age when he needed it, and now that he’s older and now that I’ve paid these premiums all these years without even using them, they’re going to cancel it?

 

So… I could have gone down that road. You know the road I’m talkin’ bout! 😂 😆  THAT road. 😂 😅 

 

So let’s picture that okay? So here’s Sunni, standing on this dot in the center, and there’s a road extending out from her on the left, let’s say, and down that road, we just go with the reactive self. We just go with “how dare they!” and “this is what happens!” and “you can’t trust anybody!” and allllll the emotional reactiveness that might have come up if I had gone with that story of, you know, “when you age and when you get older, they just drop you”, and all these stories that are attached to things like that, these deeper meanings that are attached when things like this happen. Things like “I’m not safe. I’m not going to be taken care of. I’m going to get left behind. I’m going to get dumped by whatever things are keeping me currently safe”. All these deeper meanings we make when these little things like this happen, they bring that all to the surface. 

 

And so I could have gone down that road and I could have gotten really angry and written a really angry message to the company. And there wouldn’t have been anything “wrong” with that choice or that response, but it would have led to a certain outcome. I don’t even know what that outcome would be, but whatever the outcome would be, it would be a stressful road to go down. A much more “hard” road to go down. A more deeply unsettling in my body and soul road to go down. 

 

I would have to FIGHT to get what I need if I go down that road. And that’s not who I am. I’ve DECIDED that’s not who I am. I could choose to go down that road, yes, and I’ve gone down that road many times in my life!! When I thought I had no other choice. When I didn’t even know I had a choice!

 

But this time, I now know and have done this enough times to know: I  have a choice. I DO have a choice. And that my response, the way that I respond to this, WILL be reflected back to me in my reality. How I respond to this will perpetuate.

 

So I stopped. I let my reactive self have her reaction for a moment in the privacy of my own mind. I did not take any ACTIONS out of that reactive state, though. No actions. I just set the letter aside, and I let the anger, the fear, the panicky feeling move through me about “is he going to be insurable even at this age? And am I going to be able to find insurance for him that we can afford at this age?”. All these questions that I didn’t know the answers to yet, but just decided to breathe and let that pass, and then reminded myself who I am. 

 

“I am fully supported at all times in all ways”. That’s who I am. That’s who I have decided to be, and that is what I have decided to create and trust in. So I asked myself “how can I let this be easier?” 

 

And my immediate knowing when I asked that was just to set it aside, let the emotional wave pass through without taking any action and then when I am calm and back home in myself, then look and see what’s out there. 

 

So that’s what I did. So instead of getting online and writing an angry message and going down THAT road, the one to the left. I went down the road that was extended out for me on the right, the road where I am totally supported, and this is easy. I told myself: “I don’t know how. I don’t know if that’s even true, but I’m just insisting that’s who I am. That’s how it’s going to be. I’m going to find a solution that works for me, or if I don’t, it’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna meet whatever we need to meet when we meet it. And I’m going to meet that with peace and with love and with acceptance and with gratitude. Because I don’t want to live my life ANY OTHER WAY. That’s why. Not because I’m trying to be a good person, not because I’m trying to be kinder to the company or some saint. None of that. But because I NEED to live this way for my own well-being, for my own heart and soul, I need to”.

 

So once I’m really clear on that, why I’m doing this, then it becomes really easy. So what happened was, I didn’t do that. I gave it a few days because I was doing other stuff and I was like, it’ll be there. I’ll figure it out. I had some time before the insurance ended. So I I went online a day or two later, and within I think eight minutes (yes 8 minutes!) I had found not only better coverage, but better coverage that covers BOTH the dogs in one policy  instead of them having separate policies. Plus the new company had a more beautiful, clean, easy to use online interface that processes claims electronically and direct deposits them to your bank super fast so that I get reimbursed, super fast. AND saved over a hundred dollars a month! So I ended up getting better insurance that cost me LESS money for the both of them at this age! 

 

It was the OPPOSITE of my fears. It ended up being a total upgrade, a huge benefit, which always happens when I choose faith and trust over my fears. And I have no doubt that it would not have been the case had I taken that other road. I would have found more fight. I would have found more things to war against. I would have found more things that matched my reactive identity of “the one who gets screwed over by life” or “the one who things are hard for” if I would have stayed in that mode of seeing, that’s all that would have been accessible to me. 

 

But when I chose that other road, and that other identity, other things were accessible to me. 

 

Now… if I hadn’t have found that insurance, then I still would have continued down the path of allowing myself more ease by just saying, “well, if something happens, I know that I’m going to find what I need in that moment. If something happens with Haddie or June, I know I’m gonna find what I need in that moment, I’m going to know what to do in that moment, if that had been the case. But it wasn’t the case. 

 

I found everything I needed and more except without all that stress and without all that warring and without all of that fight. Now this is a power that I have grown over time, so I trust that power immensely, and it works immensely well in my reality. And I’ve had several opportunities to see that this week, but this is definitely a trust in life that I have grown over time. 

 

So that might not feel super accessible to some of you who are listening, but it’s a practice. It’s a trust you grow. You do it in small ways, ways that aren’t super triggering to you at first. And that power just grows and grows because your trust grows and grows. 

 

The experience that you’re having changes, and you begin to trust a different kind of experience in life IS actually available to you, that you didn’t believe was available to you before, because you’ve never seen that modeled around you. You’ve never learned that way of meeting challenges. You’ve never seen that be effective perhaps, but then you see it, and once you do you start to see it more and more.

 

So several other things like this happened to me this week, where I could have gone down that other road. And I stopped myself and said, “wait a second… how could I let this be easier?” And immediately was shown the ways that it could, starting with “just set this down for now, come back to it when the emotions have been felt and heard and seen and passed.” and that opened me up to make the choice to let it be aligned with how I CHOOSE and WANT to live my life… and that led to choices being available that matched that state of being. 

 

The result was better than I expected. And things like this, these little magics happen all the time when you allow them (and find out why you’re not allowing them) and they build and build. They accumulate into a whole new life, many years of these choices HAVE accumulated into my dream life, a dream which is always evolving and changing and being re-shaped, but a dream that I am so enjoying the process of shaping and creating! And plan to be til the end of my days!

 

So I’m super passionate about sharing this, which is why I created this Easier program. And so I just wanted to share that example today so that we could clearly see how our responses take us down roads that lead very different places. But the choices we make are not about where the road leads really, the choices we make are more about how much we’re going to enjoy the journey down that road! 😆 😅 ❤️  

 

I recommend starting to play with this power in areas where you do not have very strong emotional reactivity or attachment though, because in those areas it is going to be far more challenging for you to have trust there. Which is understandable! 

 

So practice as much as you can with little annoying things, like little more “frustrating” things, rather than things where you are in full on emotional reaction. I find that’s where these things work most effectively when you are first learning to reroute these pathways, because things that are too active emotionally are a bit harder to work with and shift, and then you don’t get the result because you’re so triggered, and then you say, “See!! I knew it wouldn’t work for me!” 😆 😅  So that’s why I don’t recommend practicing with those things. I recommend practicing with situations and things that you’re not super, super emotionally invested in to begin with, so that it doesn’t cause you to give up on yourself before you’ve even really started!!

 

I did not give up on myself all these years. And that is why I am here where I am today. I persisted in my stubborn insistence that my reality gets to be different than the one I saw around me. And if I had given up on that or myself I would not be here sharing this with you. I am so grateful to my past self for sticking with myself on that and for her stubborn refusal to let what her heart knew was right for her go. And to my NOW self for continuing to do so, even and especially when I want to go down that other road. 😉 😂 ❤️💕   

 

So I hope that was helpful and if you are not in Easier, you can still join at https://sunnichapman.com/easier, okay sweet pea’s I’ll see you next week!