This month is all about improvement, leveling up, increasing your having-ness, upgrading the quality of your life, and infusing your experiences with more joy, satisfaction and positivity. When you reach for betterment, the debris and murkiness of a low vibration situation you may have been putting up with will certainly surface for examination. This examination and reflection could lead to some hard choices that may affect relationships, work and community. August is a very dynamic month but may not be the easiest psychologically. At the same time as you have opportunity for expansion and leveling up, you also have a need to go inward to explore more deeply the patterns and situations and attitudes that have kept you from improving your lot in life.

What will be helpful is to stay neutral around triggers that stimulate the deeper investigation into what you need to upgrade. Self-criticism, judgment, shame and guilt will only get in the way of productive action. Curiosity is another ingredient in the process that will be most helpful in keeping you looking forward with optimism instead of getting trapped in the obsessive overthinking of what you could have done better in the past. And, it is important to try and make the process fun. Finding humor in the “that did not go well” scenarios will set your leveling up on a fast track as you let go of the “what was I thinking” judgment with humor instead of shame.

Try not to get caught up in the overwhelm of the task ahead and remind yourself that the intention, plan and commitment is the most important aspect. Rome was not built in a day and no one expects change to happen overnight. It is a gradual process that requires a mature look at your blind spots and an acknowledgment of what needs to change so you can increase that having-ness and bring yourself to a higher level of improved quality of life.

Raising the bar is of course a metaphor drawn from track and field, the high jump and the pole vault. Each time an athlete completes a jump successfully the bar is raised to see if they can navigate the next height.

So, what is involved in raising the bar? Let’s look at the necessary ingredients. First, raising the bar cannot come from ego or a desire for personal gratification alone. Why not? When your motive is only personal gratification, you are automatically coming from a weaker position because there is fear involved. What if someone else beats me? What if I fail? The moment fear is on the scene you are magnetizing it to yourself. Therefore, personal gain cannot be your only motivation. There has to be a higher motive that comes with a higher vibration. “I’m raising the bar to experience something I’ve never experienced before, freedom from limitation, a belief in getting it done with ease and grace. The experience of saying, “Thank God, I did it. Now I can teach others to reach their true capacity as well. To go beyond where I have gone. So, they can reach down and pull me higher and we can all celebrate together. 

Often, we do not exactly know what raising the bar is for us. Maybe I think raising the bar is a promotion at work, competing for higher pay, having children, getting married, going back to school, or what have you. That is probably what the small self thinks it looks like. Often it turns out not to be those things but ends up looking entirely different from what we thought. So, the key here is to keep don’t know mind at first until what raising the bar really looks like is revealed. The key word here is revealed.

To raise the bar requires not only physical strength and greater agility but increased confidence and a psychological adjustment, a belief that it is possible.  But perhaps that is not enough all on its own. Nothing is done without support of some kind or another. The ultimate support comes from Spirit so it includes asking for help to raise the bar in a good way. “I don’t know exactly how I am going to do this. I don’t know what it looks like or feels like to go beyond where I have been before. Spirit, show me.” In this step you can no longer deny the role of Spirit. If you ask Spirit for help then Spirit is a factor.

And now I must allow myself to have the experience of going beyond where I have been before. The key word here is allow.  I am worthy, I am allowed to reach beyond even if it goes beyond where my parents have gone, my family, my culture, my religion has gone. It is okay if others are envious, are miffed, are wishing I would not reach further. That is their lesson, to overcome their smallness, their fear, their limited egoic selves. I allow myself to go beyond and I have no real fear because I asked Spirit to show me the way and whatever happens is right, even if I appear to fail.

Next is: “I am not separate from my goal, from my vision, from my ask. I am it. It is I, already. There is no daylight between us. Raising the bar is who I am. It looks like me, it is me. It fits exactly into who and what I am causing the old me to disappear.”

Now I can claim it. It is already mine. I own it. I want what Spirit has in mind for me. It is what Spirit wants and I want what Spirit wants because it is always perfect.