I’m cleansing.  And no, this time I don’t mean nutritional cleansing.  On New Year’s Eve my husband Jeff and I sat down and discussed our goals for 2010.  We examined all areas of our life and faced the fact that our financial spoke was shorter than the rest and perpetually throwing our wheel of life out of alignment.  We agreed that we need to do whatever it takes to become financially free and simplify our life and that means selling our home and downsizing.  My husband and I have become very attached to our large, beautiful home.  We have a great location with 5+ bedrooms, an art studio addition, plus a big backyard and a lovely view.  However, we’ve become overburdened by the bills and upkeep and struggling to make ends meet.  We’re empty nesters now that our 5 children are no longer living at home and hanging onto a big house just doesn’t make sense any more.  Keeping up with the Jones’s has lost its appeal.

This reminds me of a story I once heard about the way that a hunter catches monkeys in the jungle.  The hunter finds a small clearing and puts a banana under a plexi-glass dome on the ground.  The dome has a hole cut in the side of it just big enough for a monkey to slip his hand inside.  The hunter leaves the dome with the banana in it and goes away for a couple of days.  Sure enough, when he returns he will find a monkey caught in the trap.  Why?  Because the monkey will come into the clearing, see the fruit in the glass and reach his hand inside to grab it.  However, he won’t be able to pull his hand back out because his fist and the fruit he’s holding onto are too big for the opening.  And he won’t let go.  The only thing separating the monkey from freedom is his unwillingness to surrender the banana. 

So I ask you, what’s your banana?  What are you hanging onto in your life that’s keeping you from achieving peace and freedom?

Let’s say I offer you a bowl of ice cream and I give you a choice between chocolate and vanilla.  Well, that’s fine, you get to pick whichever flavour you prefer.  But let’s say you want chocolate and I suddenly say "sorry, we’re all out of chocolate”.  Do you complain and waste time being miserable?  Or do you learn to love vanilla like never before?  It’s all up to you.  Either way, you’re getting vanilla.

We made the decision to let go of this house and voila!  The perfect agent arrived to help with our sale and found the perfect family to buy it.  The perfect banker arrived to help us with our finances.  Within one week of listing our house had sold at a mutually agreeable price and already it feels as if a dark cloud is lifting.  We’re meeting this week with a landlord to look at a beautiful little home on a lake just 10 minutes outside of town.  Everything is working out like a dream, but only because we’re embracing the changes that we need to make instead of resisting.  I look forward to painting and creating artworks in our new home and coaching from my office overlooking the water.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed and I’ll let you know how it goes. 

In the meantime, did I mention how much I’m learning to like vanilla?! 

How about you?

XO Maura

PS.  The solution is to make a banana split!