Susan Jeffers's Blog

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“A relationship is a goldmine . . . We would be much richer if we mined the gold.” Susan Jeffers

It’s that month of the year again when everybody goes crazy for the idea of love. Hearts in shades of red and pink are everywhere. For those in romantic relationships, it makes us feel pressured to show our love. For those of us without romantic relationships, it makes us feel pressured to be in one. While love is the theme of the month, it doesn’t always feel like the most loving.

That is where Susan’s idea of “relationship gold” can help us to get to the heart of our loving relationships. She wrote about it her her book, The Feel the Fear Guide to Lasting Love. Every relationship has a layer of gold. In romantic relationships, it usually shines brightest during the time that we fall for each other and make a commitment. In platonic relationships, gold is revealed when you know you can rely on one another. There is even gold in our relationship with ourself. It shines when we feel confident and at peace with the world.

But then life comes and layers of sediment build up in the form of stress, worry, sadness, grief, and all those feelings that can make day-to-day life a strain. The gold is still there, but isn’t visible due to the layers of time and experience that have accumulated on top of it.

Susan wrote, “Yes, a relationship is a goldmine. It has the potential for teaching us so many things about giving, loving and caring. This is because life hands us so many difficult situations that can interfere with love, and we need to learn how to handle them. When problems occur, that’s our signal to mine the gold, and that means learning how to become a more loving person in the middle of it all.”—d

Why is it important to tap into relationship gold? Because that is the foundation that upholds our commitment, that underlies our love. It’s what is essential in our loving relationships. Beneath our day-to-day living with our partner, our friends, ourselves, there is something much deeper that supports our bonds. Because we live so much on the surface, we have to dig deep to remind ourselves of the best parts of our loving relationships. The longer we know someone the deeper we have to dig to find that gold, but the more rewarding the gold will be.

“In all things we need to determine to keep our love a priority if we expect to create a lasting love,” Susan advised, having learned it through her own difficult experiences. “Sometimes this is easier said than done. We all have our own issues. But whatever these issues are, the basic rules of love apply. And it is these rules that we all need to learn in order to help us strengthen our sense of self—and our love.”

Knowing that seam of relationship gold is there if we look for it can help us through tough times. All relationships will face some adversity in their course, but if we remember the treasure that the relationship was founded upon we will be able to weather any adversity we face.

That is why we have to keep our commitment to our relationships at the top of our To Do list. We have to make it a priority or it can get buried beneath all the day-to-day drudge.

Of course, when we have a To Do list a mile long, it becomes harder to put our relationships first. It becomes easier to take them for granted, believing they will still be there for us when we are ready to pay attention to them.

Even when it feels like there is too much to do to work on our relationships, we need to still make it a priority. Sure you are stressed and need to feel the love and support of your partner and friends. But as in everything, the best way to get something is to give it away first. The more loving you are the more loved you will be and then you’ll really find out what mining for gold is all about.

We have to remember, when life gets in the way, that there is gold in the foundation of our relationships. Something precious and vibrant, that when we connect with it will support us through bad times and good. As Susan put it so eloquently:

“No relationship is smooth all the time. They all go through patches of change and adjustment; but if we keep putting our relationship first, we can always find a way of being at peace and being more compassionate to the person we love. In this way, our love grows . . . and grows . . . and grows.”

If we were really to unset our heart, even while setting goals for ourselves, we need to let go, to give our troubles to the Universe. We need to trust. Trusting that things will turn out for the best—not necessarily how we want them to be—is one of the hardest things you can do.

When we don’t trust, when we get our heart set and are disappointed, we are giving our Lower Self free reign. In End the Struggle and Dance With Life, Susan used this example to describe what happens when we don’t trust: “Imagine that you are angry because you didn’t get the job you were hoping to get. It doesn’t seem fair that someone else who was not as qualified as you got the job instead. In addition to being angry, you are worried about what this means for your future success. Your Lower Self is giving you messages of gloom and doom and it is telling you over and over again, ‘You’re not good enough to truly succeed.’ Heavy baggage, indeed!”

When we trust, we know that we have choices in how we react to a negative situation. We can let it destroy our peace of mind, making ourselves miserable. Or, we can turn the anger and disappointment over to our Higher Self and trust that everything is happening perfectly.

Susan advised to say to ourselves in times of disappointment, “I trust there is a good reason for my not getting [what I wanted]. And I trust this outcome was for my highest good. I trust you will tell me exactly what I need to know and exactly what I need to do about this situation.”

When we trust we need to ‘turn it over’ to the Universe, we need to let go of any outcome and trust. Susan wrote, “When I say, ‘Turn it over’” I mean TURN IT OVER. And when I say ‘Trust,’ I mean TRUST! My own experiences in life have convinced me that things happen in our lives for very good reasons. Our very limited minds may not understand it all, but the Spiritual part of who we are understands perfectly.”

When we can focus on learning and growing, instead of disappointment and fear, we let go of the burden of controlling everything. We can lighten up and life becomes simpler.

“The reason things happen the way they do unfolds just in the process of living itself,” Susan said. “Remember. while none of us understands the ‘Grand Design,’ we can commit to using all our experiences, good or bad, as the building blocks of a powerful and loving life. Then it is, indeed, all happening perfectly!”

This month we are talking about achieving our goals for 2024. Here is one of Susan’s visualizations from End the Struggle and Dance With Life that can help us let go of our resistance to change. This visualization can help us go with the flow no matter what comes our way.

To help you get in touch with what it feels like to let go of your resistance to life, repeat the following visualization over and over again.  You might want to repeat it slowly into a tape recorder and listen to it with your eyes closed.  It provides a very healing image.

Imagine yourself standing at the edge of a beautiful, flowing river in the middle of a rich green valley.  You’re curious as to where the river is flowing.  You decide that it’s time to find out.  A sturdy looking row boat sits at the side of this wonderful flowing river.  How handy!  You climb right in and then notice that there aren’t any oars.  Feeling a sense of safety and adventure, you know that you don’t need any oars…that you are going to let the boat take you where it wants to go.  You climb in, untie the rope that holds the boat to the shore…and your Journey begins.  You sit up tall and eager, determined to enjoy the Journey, no matter where it takes you.  You take a deep breath and relax as you feel the boat drawn into the flow of the river.  Knowing you have no control over  where you are going, you say to yourself, “I let go and allow the river to carry me to new adventures.  I trust that I am safe.”  Just feel the freedom as the boat carries you forward.  You know you will hit bumpy times and you know you will hit times of great calm.  They are all part of the Journey.  You know you will enjoy the mystery of wherever your sturdy boat is taking you.  And you know that when the Journey is over, you will be glad to have tasted it all.  What a beautiful image!  In so many ways, our life is like that Journey.  We’ve all been born as passengers.  Time is taking us—body, mind and Soul—to new places every moment of every day.  And we have to develop the trust that our little boat…our Higher Self…knows the way.  My little boat has certainly taken me down pathways I never could have found by myself.  The more I allow myself to tune into my Higher Self for guidance, the more my need to control the future disappears…and the more wonderful this Journey called life becomes.

“When we have done our best, we should await the results in peace.” Naturalist John Lubbock

The New Year is here again. It’s time for a fresh start, new outlook, new goals. It’s always exciting to start something new, even if only just a new calendar. Most of us likely have plans about things we want to accomplish in 2024. Whether you call them goals or resolutions, your plans and intentions for the upcoming year are important to living your best life.

Susan wrote that creating intentions helps the Universe to help us. “Knowing what you want, what you

really want, sends radio waves to the Universal Energy, which helps get you where you need to be. A strong intention can have amazing results.” Intentions are a powerful way to create what you want in life.

Whatever you call them—resolutions, goals, or intentions—they are about purposefully stating what you intend to achieve through your actions. You are consciously directing your thoughts and energy towards accomplishing what you have set your mind to. Setting your intentions is working with your Higher Self to make positive changes in your life.

Whether you want to start eating healthier or pursue a new career, setting your intentions can be a powerful way to help you actively achieve your goals. However, when you set your intentions, it’s important that you don’t set your heart on your goal. Set your mind, yes, set your heart, no.

Setting your heart on something means that you want it very much. You put your hope and trust into it happening. You become attached to the expectation that it should happen. You become attached to the outcome. It is a Lower Self type of feeling. Like when a child desperately wants a puppy. Or a teenager who wants more than anything for their crush to like them back. Or an older person hoping for their friends to call. There is a different type of want involved. It’s a want for the Universe to deliver, and a broken heart when it doesn’t.

As Susan wrote in End the Struggle and Dance With Life, “Setting your heart on something is entering into a state of rigidity. Un-setting your heart is entering a state of flow.”

And what are intentions for if not changing the flow of our lives? “When we let go of our expectations about events in our life being a certain way, we can allow ourselves the peaceful thought that ‘It’s all happening perfectly’ no matter how it turns out,” Susan said.

New Year’s intentions, like all intentions, are meant to light a fire under us to take action. But sometimes, no matter how hard we work, we can’t achieve what we wanted. When we set our heart on something happening, we are putting enormous stress on ourselves based on what we think the outcome should be. “It is an act of self-love to stop hanging on to the way it is supposed to be. It is this hanging on that causes us to be buffeted about by the unwelcome surprises in our life.”

If we uncouple our intentions from our hopes, we will be able to leave ourselves open to any and all blessings. When what we intend for ourselves doesn’t happen, but that doesn’t mean that those different results will not bring benefits, or blessings.

“Sometimes when things don’t turn out as we want them to, we are later shown how they really did turn out perfectly for our highest good,” Susan said. “Either we learned a valuable lesson or a better opportunity presented itself.”

Susan was convinced, through her own life experiences, that things often happen for very good reasons. It’s our limited ability to see the expansive picture of the Universe that limits our understanding. However, our spiritual side, our Higher Self, understands. She said, “If I don’t remind myself of this higher possibility, I suffer much unnecessary pain when things don’t work out as I had planned.”

As you pursue your intentions for 2024, remember that when doubt starts creeping in, when things aren’t going as you had hoped, that you must unset your heart. You need to release any expectations about how things will turn out. To help keep your mind at peace when things aren’t turning out as you intended use Susan’s affirmation, “It’s all happening perfectly!” This is a wonderful affirmation that reminds us that, while we may not be in control, the Universe has so many blessings in store for us.

When we can turn it over to our Higher Self we give ourselves a sense of peace. As Susan said so eloquently, “You relax into the flow of life’s adventure knowing that in the grand scheme of things…life truly is happening perfectly.”

In Life is Huge!, Susan offers six tips for creating your own holiday blessings. But there is one tip not on the list that underlies each of those lessons—PATIENCE. Each of the six tips begins and ends with patience—with others and especially yourself. It’s easy to get on the blame train when things don’t go as planned, but that is the way of our Lower Selves. A truly wonderful holiday can only be experienced through our Higher Selves—the place of patience, confidence, forgiveness, and love.

So before you use any of Susan’s six holiday tips—

Let go of the expectationsStop trying to change other peoplePick up the mirror instead of the magnifying glassFocus on abundanceFocus on givingLighten up

—Remember to take a deep breath and focus on being patient. When we lose patience, we are still focusing on our expectations for how the holidays and our family should be. When we lose patience, we are burdening ourselves with what we lack instead of noticing how much we have to give.

Even just pausing for a moment of quiet time can help us connect to our reservoir of patience and can immediately help us feel less burdened and more light, more in touch with our Higher Selves. So if you’re starting to feel stressed or anxious or frustrated, remember:

Be patient with yourself…and with others

In this month’s article, we talked about Susan’s “Settling Mind” exercise. She wrote about it in Embracing Uncertainty, offering a way to calm our thinking when our thoughts swirl out of control. Here is the full excerpt.

I “invented” this exercise while on a beautiful walk near my home in southern California.  There was wonder all around me, but I couldn’t take any of it in.  My head was a swirl of clutter, which included thoughts of contracts, deadlines, decisions to be made, and on and on and on.  Thankfully, I became conscious of how overloaded my head was.  It felt as though there was clutter totally filling my brain, preventing me from seeing, hearing, or doing anything with clarity.  I was taking a beautiful walk, but my head was not enjoying or taking in a moment of it.

Finally, I asked myself, “What would happen if I could get rid of all the clutter swirling around my head.  What if I could let it all simply float down like swirling snowflakes?  Would that help?”  So, as I walked, I imagined the swirling clutter as “snow” settling down until my head was totally clear…totally empty.  I imagined myself having an empty glass head.  Relief, indeed!  But there was more than just relief.   

All of a sudden, I became part of the glorious scene around me…the expanse of ocean, the magnificent weather, the color of the flowers, the striking cloud formations, the smell of eucalyptus, the palm trees “waving to me” in the breeze, the people running, walking, skateboarding, biking, enjoying the day. Instead of feeling removed from the scene, as one does with clutter in the mind, I became a part of it all.  In fact the scene was moving through my empty head…I wasn’t simply looking at it.  The beauty was almost more than I could take and tears of gratitude welled up in my eyes.  What had I done to create this miracle of vision?  It was very easy.  I simply made room for my head to take in what was happening around me.

The image that came to mind after this experience was one of those “snow domes”, the little glass balls that you can shake up until they are filled with flakes that look like snow.  When you stop shaking the dome, little by little, the specks float to the bottom until the glass ball is clear.

The end of the year is nigh! And with it comes a lot of busy work—some fun, some not so fun. Whether it’s personal or professional, the end of the year is about finishing up, taking stock, and making plans. And that’s all before we get into the crush of the holidays. Our To-Do lists can be very long this time of year.

What we often leave off our list is taking time for ourselves. Yet, the crazier life becomes, the more we need to give ourselves space to just be. We need to spend time on our self-care.

You have probably heard the term self-care tossed around, but what is it exactly? It is any activity that we deliberately do to take care of ourselves—mentally, emotionally, and physically. Self-care is time or an activity that builds us up rather than takes away our energy. It is a way to recenter body and mind when we feel scattered and overwhelmed.

When we take the time to be present in ourselves, when we take time for self-care, we can reconnect to the world in a Higher Self way.

Susan wrote, “Centering helps us feel fulfilled. When we are constantly focused on externals, cannot centered. In fact, we are pulled out of our center. We are not focusing on our real points of power and love. We are not aligned—body, mind, and Higher Self.”

How many of us put ourselves at the bottom of our To-Do lists? How many of us think, “When I have the time, then I’ll take care of me”?

Self-care allows us to acknowledge our needs. Making sure we actually do it is a hard thing to do at any time of the year, but December seems to always make it harder. It’s easy to get pulled out of center when there is so much going on.

So how do you find the time? How do you carve out the space? How do you make it part of your routine?

First, revisit your Whole Life Grid, as described in Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. At different times of the year, and different times of our lives, we need to review our Grid to make sure that it accounts for the parts of our lives that we are living now. Self-care can be its own square or achieved as part of the Leisure square or Alone Time square if you go by Susan’s suggestions.

The important thing is to fit self-care into your Grid and then commit to it 100%, like each of the other squares.

So how do you do it? What are ways that you can find time for yourself? It can be anything that helps to quiet your mind, that helps to center you, that offers you the chance to connect with your Higher Self and then to the Universe. Does that sound daunting? It shouldn’t. It’s just getting back to the place we should always be living from.

A lot of us have trouble committing to self-care because we find it hard to focus on ourselves when there is so much to be doing every day. When our minds are busy making lists and we’re constantly on the run to do the next thing, it can be hard to give ourselves the space to care for ourselves. In Embracing Uncertainty, Susan created an exercise to help quiet the mind during busy times so we will be able to really be present.

She wrote, “My head was a swirl of clutter, which included thoughts of contracts, deadlines, decisions to be made, and on and on and on. Thankfully, I became conscious of how overloaded my head was. It felt as though there was clutter totally filling my brain, preventing me from seeing, hearing, or doing anything with clarity.”

She then began to think of her head as a snow globe that has been shaken up with all the little flakes swirling around making the scene inside opaque and hard to see. Then she wondered what it would be like if she let her thoughts settle down. “I imagined the swirling clutter as ‘snow’ settling down until my head was totally clear…totally empty. I imagined myself having an empty glass head. Relief, indeed!”

Another way to begin your self-care routine is to schedule a “holihour” into your day. Who has the time to take a whole day—let alone a week—to take care of your mental and physical health? Susan was a self-confessed workaholic and found it hard to take time for herself. “To help myself out, I’ve created the concept of the holihour, a shortened version of the holiday,” she said. “I allow myself at least an hour each day to relax totally. It could mean reading magazines, walking on the beach, or shopping in my favorite mall. This helps greatly in keeping me refreshed in my work. Very often I get some of my best ideas during leisure time, when my mind is not so cluttered.”

What are things that you like to do that make you feel rejuvenated, make you feel centered? What activities make you feel that you are in the present and connected to the whole world? Everyone of us will have a different answer. It might be something active, like taking a walk or going to a gym class, or it might be something quieter, such as meditation, drawing a picture, or watching cat videos. Journaling can be a wonderful way to settle your mind and recenter yourself as well.

Whatever it is that you do to take care of your own mental and physical health, the most important thing is to do it. Putting ourselves second—or even last!—is no way to live a fulfilling, whole life.

Message from Karrie
(director of Susan Jeffers organization)

I first met Mark and Susan when they hired me in 2005 to help with Susan’s publishing venture, Jeffers Press. I worked closely with both of them for two years and Mark became a mentor to me. Even after I left, and went through several other jobs, I continued to freelance for Jeffers Press and Susan Jeffers Organization. As anyone who knew Mark or Susan, business and friendship were freely intermixed. You couldn’t work with either of them for long without becoming their friend.

After Susan passed away, Mark invited me to write Susan’s monthly articles and blog posts. It was important to him that whoever carried on promoting Susan’s legacy had also known Susan personally. During the last decade or so, Mark and I worked hard to make sure that we honored Susan’s legacy in a way she would approve. It wasn’t always easy, but it was something that we both believed in. Mark was determined to keep Susan’s work alive worldwide and relevant.

Many longtime fans of Susan’s work know Mark as she wrote about him—her lover, her champion, her partner, her “relationship gold.” For the rest of us, he was an encouraging friend, a mentor and cheerleader to everyone he knew, a loving and supportive father, a doting grandfather, and a devoted husband to Donna.

Mark was also a fighter, as he proved to the cancer that he battled for many years. His last few years were tough, but he was tougher. He lived his life fully, smiled every chance he got, and blessed every day he was given. For me, I will always remember him as my cheerful supporter, mentor, and friend.

Message from Rachael
(director of Feel the Fear Training)

To make a positive difference to someone else’s life is, I believe, one of the most important acts we can do as a human being. Mark changed my life for the better since the first time I spoke with him in 2007, when he granted permission for me to be a Feel the Fear instructor. He supported me as a trainer, then changed my life once again when he made me the director of Feel the Fear Training, so that I could recruit and train instructors all over the world to spread Susan’s message. If it wasn’t for the foresight of Mark, we wouldn’t have built the Feel the Fear training team as big as we have all around the world.

We will never know how many people our instructors have positively impacted through attending workshops. Nor will we know how many people these delegates have then impacted through sharing the strategies from Susan’s books. This positive change originated from Mark committing to ensuring this happened after Susan’s death. Thank you Mark for not only keeping Susan’s work alive but for changing my life too. Your kindness and belief in me will always be treasured.

While we are seeking out our life’s purpose, we need to be careful that the purpose we choose to pursue is one that will make us a better person while making the world a better place. But some of us might feel that our purpose is less spiritual.

In Life is Huge, Susan cautioned against this, “When asking the question, ‘What is my purpose?’ some of you may hear the answer ‘making money.’ There is nothing wrong with making money. In fact, I love making money! It is when making money is devoid of Higher Self thinking that we lose our way.”

Pursuing a purpose that is about accumulating—whether in the form of material goods or emotional goods—is a path to Lower Self thinking. Material forms could be making money, owning property, growing a collection Emotional goods could be garnering praise, being successful, or, even more negative getting away with a lie.

“I know so many rich people who have no sense of Higher purpose and they derive very little joy,” Susan wrote. “I also know people who make their money in a way that hurts and deceives other people. Again, they are unhappy as they haven’t gotten in touch with the best of who they are.”

It’s fine to seek money or praise, but if that is what you believe your purpose here on earth is, then you might want to rethink things. You can still earn money while pursuing your Higher Self purpose. Susan said, “Thankfully, there are those who make money and who are Higher Self thinker, and they truly help the world in so many beautiful ways. They can’t help but feel good about their lives and who they are as human beings.”