Journal
Dying to LIVE
You have the agency to influence your life in a meaningful way.
You (can) create who you are.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy.
That doesn’t mean that you won’t face resistance, setbacks and guardians of the next level.
But if you don’t train yourself to lead yourself
external agendas will shape who you are becoming.
Where your focus is.
Not necessarily what to think, but definitely what to think ABOUT.
Enthusiasm, wisdom, joy and peace are really hard in a chaotic world where you’re constantly pushed towards distraction and addiction.
It’s exhausting to live with speed but not with meaning. Yet, it’s extremely challenging and uncomfortable, especially in the beginning, to walk away from cheap dopamine, shiny objects and the chasing of…
Yes. The chasing of what?
It’s impossible to be vibrant, passionate, calm and kind when you lead a 1-dimensional life that is all about doing. That’s all about productivity and efficiency.
When everything is about accomplishments and accumulation and the effects of an activity rather than the joy of the activity in itself, life will feel empty and stressful.
And then there is the digital world, that could be an amazing servant to a meaningful life, but is making many of us more stressed, less tolerant and A LOT LESS able to focus on one thing (one conversation, one book, one piece of information, one MOMENT) for as long as we need.
There is a (great) cost.
You get more sensitive not just to pain, but to minor inconveniences too.
You easily miss the beauty around you and lose your ability to enjoy ordinary life and rich daily moments.
You are longing for deep connection, human touch, stillness and simplicity, but your mind is too distracted and your soul is too hurried that it’s impossible to slow down. You are stuck in the chase, in the grip of speed, in the energy of doing, but nevertheless you never feel that you are doing enough.
That there has to be something else.
You’re right.
But it’s not easy.
Instead of being slave under digital masters you want to organize your life so that there are less noise and clear boundaries against external distractions.
Those distractions often feel good (dopamine) so you have a very challenging work to get yourself out of the addiction to speed, validation, convenience and ’the next thing.’
- Starting to embrace single-tasking, the philosophy of slow and simple, and even discomfort.
- Doing inner work every day to handle the very challenging threshold into the new world of inner peace, human connection and spiritual elevation.
- Perhaps even considering moving so that you live where you feel good instead of where you should.
- Abstinence will be needed to heal a dysfunctional, outgrown way of living.
- Courage is needed to let go of the people around you that, consciously or unconsciously, stresses you to the bones.
- Clarity and consistency will be needed to establish routines, rituals and a life philosophy that are helpful, healthy and long-term.
Discomfort is inevitable on your journey to a new, upgraded version of yourself. It’s hard to do things in a new way, and it’s hard to continue walking the talk when people around you are questioning why you’re doing things in a new way.
And the confusion that arises when leaving old habits, stories and self-concepts can be very challenging to navigate. Who are you now?
But maybe it’s not when we conform to our own rules, stories and self-concept that we are most aligned with who we are. Maybe it’s when we don’t constrict ourselves with a fixed structure that we finally are free to live.
It’s just that it’s really unusual to be that free, and that the new space and lack of control feels unbelievably scary.
If you really were to slow down and tune into the essence of who you are and what you want this lifetime to be about. What would that be?
Many of us are dying to really take our lives in a new direction. Being guided and guarded be meaning and truth instead of being slaves under speed, distractions and the next thing on an endless to-do list.
We want to live a life that we would be proud of when we’re on our deathbed with just a few moments left. And that is way more about relationships than about accomplishments. More about truth than speed.
More about taking ownership than about perfection.
More about real hearts than about an endless stream of red, flying, digital hearts.
Maybe it’s time to redefine what the ’modern world’ is.
Maybe it’s not about living to 200 but the ability to be at peace exactly where you are right now.
Maybe it’s about kindness first and flying cars second.
Maybe it’s not about going fast, but going deep.
If you would write down your own metrics of success, what would they be?
More to do?
Elimination of every bit of uncomfortableness?
The ability to lose yourself in nature’s beauty, your children’s eyes or in the manifestation of your intuition through creation?
Being able to feel joy without having to control the moment’s duration?
Leading yourself forward with gratitude and curiosity more than inadequacy?
Fear, fatigue, comparison, distraction, hurry and constant self-criticism are the thieves of joy.
We are dying to LIVE, but fail to do so because we are incapable of taking ownership of our decisions.
We let old versions of ourselves and a chaotic world make them for us.
Clarity of how we want to live is a great first step. But real clarity lives in stillness, not in intensity.
After clarity we need to invest heavily in mindset, relationships, mental-, physical-, and spiritual training, and our capacity to live our standards, even when it’s hard to do so.
Without being dominated by the tornado made up by the ”modern world.”
A modern world that has a really hard time to just sit alone and quiet for 20 minutes.
That’s progression?
Live your standards.
Standards.
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