Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess. (Funny, there never seems to be an ugly princess).

Anyway, the beautiful princess had a huge heart and loved to help the flowers, bees, butterflies and birds grow and be happy.

She was also a talented ballerina who loved to dance. Her dancing was so magical that the birds would sing special songs to entice the princess to dance more.

The flowers would sway to the beat and the bees and butterflies would act as the chorus to her fantastic choreography.

One day an evil witch came to catch the princess. Luckily, the princess’s best friend was a dragon who came to rescue her.

GODDESS: No, that’s not what happened. The dragon doesn’t come until the end.

Oh, OK. What happens next?

The witch catches the princess and traps her in a shed. She is trapped for a long time. Then the princess breaks out, but now she has the badness in her.

What does the badness do to her?

It makes her be mean and not sharing.

And then the dragon comes……..

No, it doesn’t. It’s not the end yet.

The princess has to work hard to be nice again. She wants to be good but it’s hard because of the witch’s spell.

What does she do?

She has to keep dancing. When the badness goes she has new powers.

One of the Goddesses was creating this story with me the other day.

The princess used her new powers to help others who were trapped, according to the Goddess.

NO DRAGONS TO THE RESCUE IN THIS STORY

The urge to stop storytime in order to create a princess house meant we never reached the end, so, sadly, no dragon. And I do love my dragons.

What struck me was the insight in that sentence “She has to keep dancing. When the badness goes she has new powers”.

At just five, this little girl has grasped the concept of not giving up (she has to keep dancing) and that overcoming obstacles (the badness) leads to new power.

I know several adults who still struggle with these concepts.

The dancing can represent anything in life – our goals, our passion, our creativity – or even life itself.

The badness represents the hurdles – our own doubts and fears, our reaction to the criticism of others, mistakes that keep us stuck.

When the badness goes we have new powers, the greatest one being freedom from that which was holding us back.

As the ‘badness’ is within us, we cannot wait for that magical dragon, a knight in shining armour, parent, friend or partner to help us get rid of it. That job is for us alone.

FINDING FREEDOM IN A FAIRY TALE

The first step is being aware of its presence and then recognising how it manifests itself. Does it make us mean and unsharring? Maybe it makes us insecure and fearful? Does it make us jump to unkind and unfair assumptions? Make us judge others negatively to take the spotlight away from our own ‘badness’? Does it steal our freedom?

We may not like what we see when we take the time to examine the ‘badness’, but giving up will not make it go away. If anything, that gives it breeding space.

The challenge is to keep on dancing, creating, working, loving, living, all while we work towards finding the goodness and the power of freedom again.

In truth, we are often our own jailers, the bars being our negative thoughts that serve only to reinforce our lack of freedom.

Breaking free is not easy. We have put ourselves under a spell.

Regardless of what is going on around us – the evil witches, the atrocities of terrorists, the fools who contribute to climate change while denying its very existence – we can choose to be the victims of our story or the heroes.

We may not have control over these outside forces, but we do have control over our reaction to them.

We can let the ‘badness’ rub off on us or use those forces as an excuse to give up.

Or, we can choose to use our biggest key to freedom – our minds – to create our own fairy tale life, full of flowers and dancing.

HOW TO MAKE THE BADNESS GO AND OPEN THE DOOR TO FREEDOM

So how do we make the ‘badness’ go away?

Once we are aware of it, we can work towards removing it but, as the Goddess pointed out, it is hard work because we are under its spell.

We need to constantly monitor our thought process and our reactions to outside influences. I truly believe we are what we think.

When we don’t like what we see we first have to forgive ourselves and understand no one is immune to the magic spell of ‘badness’, one way or another.

Next, it’s time to replace those jail bars, our negative notions, with positive thoughts.

It’s a fact that our minds, as amazing as they are, are incapable of focusing on more than one thing at a time. Therefore, if we choose to contemplate the positive, there is no room for the negative bars that lock us up and take away our freedom.

The beauty of this is that the law of attraction states positive attracts positive, therefore the more positive thoughts we have, the easier it becomes to break the spell and make the ‘badness’ go away. Did you read my post, How to Create Your Own Happy Ending?

It’s not a matter of putting our heads in the sand and ignoring what is happening around us – that’s another form of giving up. Rather, it’s a conscious decision to stay powerful enough to deal with those forces while still enjoying the dance of life.

Wishing you much dancing, freedom and a gleeful week, Tamuria.