Failed Fucking Fairy Tales

Do you remember Aesop’s fables?  

Slow and steady wins the race.

The fable always ended with the turtle winning the race.  I knew the moral was to go slow and make steady progress.  Be a turtle.  But I did not want to be a turtle.  The rabbit was full of love for life!  He visited with friends, enjoyed a good meal, and took pleasure in napping! He didn’t win, but he certainly enjoyed himself along the way.  

Hard work makes us stingy.

All day, every day the ants work hard while the grasshopper plays music, relaxes, and enjoys life.  The ants grow mean because they take no pleasure from life, and leave the grasshopper to die.  You just know if that grasshopper had food he would share it with the ants, because he’s happy and enjoying his life!  I could not understand why the ants were so mad at him for being in his joy.

What about those fairy tales full of quick fix magic?  

Beans grow into a ladder that leads to wealth.  A kiss can reverse death, and transform love into it’s true form.  Spinning wheels turn barn straw into purest gold, and Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo solves all that is wrong in the world.

In my child’s mind – to make it in this world, I either needed to find my fairy godmother, or work my fingers to the bone.  Magic leads to happily ever after, and the path of hard work leaves one hardened, cruel, and unwilling to share.  

Is it any wonder people are always looking for a panacea?

panacea ~
noun - cure-all, universal remedy, elixir, wonder drug, magic bullet.

I can’t tell you how many times I wished for a pill that would magically let me eat anything I wanted, while becoming slender and fit, or how many times I started a diet hoping I would become model-thin as quickly as possible so I could get away from boring rabbit food and return to eating what I wanted to eat.  

Once it became clear that the required magic was missing, I returned to my favored foods until the next quick-fix diet came along, and I’d jump on that bandwagon hoping for the magic doorway to a perfect body (whatever I thought that meant at the time).

Magic is real.

Real magic is not in the beans, the wand, or the kiss.  Real magic exists in the slow, sustainable, baby steps.  The turtle had the magic all along!  Sure we recognized that his slow and steady progress won the day, but he made it look so dull!  Of course we want to keep moving toward our goal, but we need some fun while we move through our days.  Remember those stingy ants!

So we want to be both a turtle moving toward our goal in small sustainable steps, and a rabbit bouncing through life enjoying our journey.  I know that’s not what the fairy tales promised, but they fucking lied.  The magic is not outside us.

Real magic is inside each of us.  We are powerful beyond measure!

So why do we frequently NOT feel powerful?

We deplete our own power when we look outside ourselves for magic.  We literally hand our power over by denying that it is inside us! To wield our power, we must first own it.

Looking for the quick fix draws our attention away from our true Source of power.  If I believe that I am going to find a magic bean to fix my issues, why on earth would I ever try to do it on my own?  If we believe the answer is “out there,” we forget to look in here.  We forget that every goal is within reach if we just take one small step today, and another small step tomorrow, and one more the day after that.  We have the magic to manifest anything! 

Time is the missing ingredient. 

We own the power to create sustainable change one step at a time, but since we believe magic is supposed to happen overnight, we give up too soon before the magic has time to get a foothold.  We cry that we haven’t got what it takes, and that magic must not be real.  Real magic takes time.  We can create real change that lasts by believing we have the power, and mixing in the crucial ingredient: time.

When we choose fairy tale magic – we try, expect instant results, count it a fail, and give up.

When we choose real magic – we try, give it time, move toward the goal, give it time, adjust our efforts, move toward the goal, give it time, grow more confident, take bigger steps, paint broader strokes, and create the most beautiful, magical life we can imagine.  But we’ve got to believe in our own magic, and give it time to transform us.

Happily Ever After!

I hate to break it to you, but fairy tales fucked this up, too.  We will never reach a place where all is perfectly perfect, and no change, growth, or expansion is desired or required! Happiness is not a destination to reach someday, which is REALLY great news!  We can choose to be happy now instead of waiting to be happy at the end!

We can choose to be happy for no reason at all other than it feels GOOD to feel happy.

We can choose to be happy because we know we have magic.  We know that mixing our magic with time allows us to wield great power that transforms – our bodies, our lives, our careers, our relationships – whatever we wish, into whatever we want.  

Magic is a process.  Own your magic.  Give it time.  
There are no magic fucking beans.

Grow on! 

What is it you most want to transform? 
What is one small action you can take that moves you toward that transformation? 
Play with making a list of several actions that might lead toward that transformation, and play with the one that sounds most fun, or that you found effective in the past when you tried it. 
Play with that action for awhile and see how it fits. 
Try giving it time for the magic to grow. 
When you’re ready, choose another action and integrate that for awhile to see how it feels.  This is the process of creating magical transformation.

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