Be spontaneous. Let Life
happen and you flow through it, with it. This is the only secret to living a
full Life!
As another year winds down to an end, many on the social
networks are assessing the year gone by – recording its highs and lows,
basically analyzing and dissecting the past – and are also drawing up resolutions, hoping to
make the coming year memorable. In my humble opinion, neither analysis nor
resolution can make your year – or Life – more memorable than it will be.
Resolutions indicate that you are going to restrict
what happens to you to a few choices. Let’s say one of your goals is to lose
weight – for which you resolve to work out daily. Now, if you cannot work out
for a whole week, for whatever reason, you will feel miserable about your
resolution, about yourself and your incapability to lose weight. Given your
knowledge of your Life and lifestyle, a point worth considering is, why
restrain yourself with a difficult choice that you are unlikely to sustain?
Anything that you restrain, anything that you try to control, or resist, will
bring you misery.
This does not mean that you must not have a vision
for yourself or that you must not set a goal. But don’t hold a gun to yourself.
Don’t impose conditions. Instead, flow with Life. Choose to be in the now, to
be aware. As your awareness increases, your ability to create new opportunities
or seize opportunities, in the direction of your goals or vision, enhances.
Let’s go back to the weight loss example. You have a
resolution to spend an hour at the gym daily working out, or walking for an
hour. Now, you haven’t done this all your Life. Or you have been erratic going
to the gym in the past. The New Year comes and goes. You are still are
struggling to hit the gym. Work pressure, travel, matters at home and social
engagements continue to keep you occupied. Soon, the ghost of your resolution
comes to haunt you – especially because you have already enrolled at the gym
but have not showed up there ever. And so misery sets in. Instead of things being
this way, consider how would it have been had you been open to each day’s
schedules, allowing yourself to go with the flow, and yet creating time for
physical exercise or activity. This could be at the gym or it could be a swim
or a walk in the park. Whatever. The key is get your body to exercise at a
convenient time slot that is in sync with your schedule. This is what going
with the flow means. As you continue to exercise physically, your body too
responds beautifully and within a few weeks you have fallen into a rhythm.
Well, surely, you have not lost any sleep over scheduling physical activity in
your daily calendar. Besides, there’s no misery. You are going with the flow of
Life – aware and happy!
Awareness is a beautiful tool to employ in your
Life. You don’t have to do anything to activate it. Just let go of all
conditions and restrictions. Don’t resolve. Don’t decide a particular way. Visualize
an outcome and just flow through Life each day and make choices that are
connected to your vision or goals. A principal reason why most New Year (and
birthday or anniversary) resolutions fail is because they are force-fitted by
you into your Life. You are making them to console yourself. You are making
them under pressure and not quite out of happiness. Make sure you are happy when
making any choice. If not, re-examine your choices. Find ways to tweak your
choices to allow you to be happy. More happiness leads to more awareness. More
awareness leads to more responsible choices. With awareness, more gets done
without any misery, without any agony, spontaneously.
Well said sir!
ReplyDelete