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As I moved throughout life, I slowly started getting away from this natural state of connection and joy. And soon enough I started to feel sick and unhappy—just a lack of energy all around. Life was hard because that was my mindset. I thought I had to work hard to succeed. And I worked hard. But after some time of suffering, I began to look within.
I came to realize that living a joyful life rested in living a life of ease. I mean a life where you tap into yourself so you can understand just where you are and how best to move forward. Ease is the basis of expansion, growth, healing, and innovation. An approach of ease can take you to—and even beyond—your goal without taxing your spirit or ruining your health. Society tells us we need to push through pain to get anywhere good, so we turn off our natural wisdom and trick ourselves in an effort to achieve in a way that others prescribe.
In this world people who are stressed, tense, and unhealthy are held up as good examples.
You must work hard, accomplish tasks, and trudge on. Being calm and connected and feeling good is OK only as a reward. You have to earn that vacation or retirement with years of punishment. Even in healing practices themselves, pain, tension, and simmering in stress and sadness has been glorified. Instead of tuning in to the effects of these practices, we concentrate on how good we are at them. Instead of allowing them to be a tool to improve our lives, we implement them as a constricting, judgment-filled achievement.
Pushing deeper and applying tension and force has desensitized us from our own sense of reason and taken us through a wild storm of chaos masked in the language of healing. We need to spend some time reconnecting with our own wisdom, brewing in the practice of working in an easygoing manner.
Take a step forward in believing in yourself—not in what society has taught you. So, how do we get to a place of ease? The process of ease is the "how" of doing anything. How you approach things will make them hard or easy. Approaching with a how of ease can solve a lot of problems. We move quickly and rigidly without thinking. We need to get somewhere so we hold our breath, clench, work really hard, and hurry up to get there.
We leave one destination and race to another, move further away from ourselves. So how do we remedy this? This gives us the space and time to explore possibilities. After opening some space by slowing down, take a big, full, deep breath, and keep them going.
Breathing deeply and fully is our lighthouse to sensitizing ourselves to how we feel. When we breathe deeply, we listen to the cues coming from our bodies and our minds. We learn what is going on inside, so we are in an informed position to act positively. Without the breath, we have no space for informed decisions.
Feeling is the final fantastic part of ease. After slowing down, creating the space, and breathing deeply, we are now in a position to feel and then respond to how we feel. Without feeling, we are simply doing, like robots, the tasks of our days or the poses in our yoga classes. We are reacting to external forces rather than responding from a place of intelligence. A rational adult, pleading with a broken little child throwing a fit. He over thinks, over analyzes, and leans into catastrophe at a moments notice. When I was finished, we both sat there silently for a while.
We love you so much.
It was also the first time in a while I was reminded of the people that loved me. People I belonged to, who needed me to push through and find a way. I had seen doctors about my head injuries. Ones about my PTSD, trauma and none of them had ever had a clear path to recovery. It had all been so discouraging. But that day, I decided to give it another try.
Instead, I would get better for them. I would take the wisdom of Ryan Holiday or Marcus Aurelius and overcome my obstacles by going straight through them.
I would loose my ego and make my journey of hope a service to the people that needed me. Most physical symptoms are gone and the others are much less frequent. One littered with challenges, more breakdowns, and a still suffering heart. There were many moments where I had nothing left in the tank to give. Through it all though, they sat by my side best they could and reminded me of my WHY.
Those friends, family and even strangers saved me. I will never be able to thank them enough. To this day, the single greatest source of momentum and motivation when things are tough is not my belief in me, my accomplishments so far, my daily routines, my goals, my peace, my willing spirit, my meditation, my exercise, my diet, or my words.
Serving others gave me purpose when I had none. And as weird as it might sound, it loved me.
So serving others will continue to be my purpose for all the days of my life. You have to grow into your goals. In the end, Jason Fried had the lesson I needed after all. Love was all I had left, and I worked with what I had. All I know is this: The world could use more examples of LOVE as a verb and not a noun. Live a meaningful life for your Mom, your dad, your wife, husband, son, daughter. Live it for your friends, your community, or even a stranger. Live it for me.
Lyrics to "Live Your Life (Down)" song by Tantric: If you live your life If you live your life this way It's gonna change Time and time again I c. The Most Important WHY to Live Your Life Now. read books, written my thoughts down, set goals, meditated, gulped down a gallon of water a.
Contrary to popular opinion these days, you are in fact important and unique. Your life is unique in the sense that no one will ever walk on this earth with your exact mind, exact heart, or exact story.