“I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something
beyond the daily life.”-Virginia Woolf
You rush through every day, doing the same thing. Your alarm goes off before you are ready to wake up. You skip breakfast-again. Go through the Starbuck’s drive-thru on your way to work. You have five minutes of free time and use it to scroll through the Facebook feed. You sit fuming in traffic after work (forgetting that you are the traffic). You eat food that’s bad for you for dinner because you don’t have time to cook. And, you sit in front of the TV after work because you are too tired to do anything else. If you have any free time at all, you rush to fill it because you know that if you just are, if you just be in the moment, it will be scary.
When was the last time you really felt now?
If you embrace the moment and just be with it, you will have to actually be with yourself and get to know who you really are. Most people avoid doing this because it is scary. Our ego is terrified. Our ego is afraid it will find out that it is nothing.
Our ego will lie to us, and tell us we need to make the best use of time. It will tell us that we have to keep busy to create a life so that one day we will be able to slow down and enjoy it. We do everything we can to defend our busyness. We let ourselves get anxious and upset if our schedule is disrupted, if someone gets in our way, or if traffic blocks us from getting home at our usual time. We rush to get home so we can prolong the busyness because we can’t handle sitting still.
We are so busy that we are busy while we are busy. We don’t just do one thing at a time. We have a conversation via text message with one friend while we only half-listen to the friend who is sitting in front of us. We catch up on the news while we eat our dinner. We look for ways to get things done faster and better than we did yesterday. After a week of vacation, we dread coming back to our real lives. We use “being busy” to feel important and validated and to escape our true selves.
We never stop.
The result is we are never fully present for one single moment in our lives. We have food in the refrigerator, but we don’t even remember how it got there. We got home, but we missed the scenery along the way. We don’t remember a single thing our friend told us about themselves at lunch because we were too caught up with our own thoughts to really listen. We live life like it is a race, but we forget that the only thing waiting for us at the finish line will be ourselves.
Yes, you will be the only one waiting for you, but will you recognize yourself when you get there? Your soul has given you this time on earth to create who you really are, to manifest into physical reality your own glorious being. Are you getting so caught up in what’s not real that you have forgotten this? Every source of unhappiness is this. If you are unhappy, it’s because you have forgotten who you are. And who you are wants to be noticed. By you. You are the only one that can give yourself the love, the attention, and the glory that you so desperately crave. Not your accomplishments, not getting through your to-do list, not making more money than you need.
Do you want to start feeling like there is plenty of time to get everything done? Do you want to start enjoying every part of your life? Yes, even the stuck in traffic parts.
Instead of a busy life, live a full life!
It all boils down to how fully present can you be with yourself. It’s about choosing to feel gratitude for each moment and learning that each moment is what you make it. Stop comparing your life to others and stop trying to outrun everyone else on the treadmill. (Trust me, they are tired or running nowhere, too.)
How can you be present? By remembering there is only now. By being in the now. By allowing those feelings you have repressed for so long to come to the surface. By being with them. Embracing them. Fully be in each moment by fully being with yourself and by fully being with others.
Break the routine
Break the routine. Talk to new people everyday. Be the one to strike up the conversation that everyone else is too afraid to have. Reveal something to someone who makes you feel vulnerable. Take the time to truly savor your food. Eat your lunch outside. In the sunlight. Or, in the snow. Let your inner child play hookie now and then. Leave work early on Fridays. Change your schedule. Buy a plane ticket and go somewhere new. By yourself. Write a letter to yourself. Let yourself daydream. Take the time to find out what you really want from this life.
And then, be it. Notice, I didn’t say do it. There is nothing you need to do, my friend. You just are. Feel the joy in each moment. Feel the joy of being you. Or feel the heartbreak. Feeling the heartbreak and acknowledging its presence will eventually lead you to the joy that you are. Because your heart wants to split wide open. That’s the only way. Let the light in, and feel yourself shine.
I also want to offer a free 15-minute Skype session (1 per person) to anyone who feels like they need help creating their beautiful life. Email me at [email protected] for your free session today.
photo credit: Scoobymoo via photopin cc
featured photo credit: Natasha Hartono via photopin cc