What does your life represent?
- Your survival instincts?
- Your parents’ ideas of how you should behave?
- Your teachers’ assessments of your capabilities?
- Your culture’s ideas of what’s successful?
- Your memories from when you were young?
- Your friends’ ideas of what’s cool?
- Your conditioned thoughts on what’s possible for you?
- Your insecurities of not being enough or not being worthy?
We grow up in families and cultures that train us how to live - what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s appropriate, what’s inappropriate, what’s good, what’s bad.
In addition to that, we have a 3.5 billion year evolutionary training in how to survive, and it largely runs the show for us in physical, intellectual, social, and spiritual contexts.
And there are great reasons for both of these! They serve us and our society well in many ways. I don’t think there’s a single thing wrong with any of it.
But at what point do we take it too far? At what point can we finish the chapter on Doing It Someone Else’s Way and begin the chapter on Doing It My Way?
* Our authentic way.
* The way that has integrity for us.
* The way that aligns with our own inner knowing, our own experience of truth.
* The way that most cleanly honors our own spirit, soul, atman, life force, Buddha, inner Child of God.
* The way that best serves us, others, and the world?
There’s a training in the empowerment of the self that is missing from nearly all K-12 education.
This training is the development of tools, skills, and perspectives that frees the mind and our emotions from unhelpful and detrimental constraints. It’s training in How to Thrive in Life no Matter the Circumstances.
This is the key power of adulthood that most of us never learn. Instead, we live conditioned lives that fit someone else’s mold, and we live lives at the effect of our survival instincts.
Those molds aren’t a problem and the survival instinct doesn’t have to be limiting. But we often experience them that way. They’re problematic and limiting because we haven’t baked into our society a promise of emotional, spiritual, physical, and social well-being - no matter the circumstances.
We’re complex creatures, but our emotional, spiritual, physical, and social selves are not very complicated.
So, dear reader: What does your life represent?
What would you love for your life to represent?
- Unconditional love?
- Passion?
- Exploration?
- Curiosity?
- Creativity?
- Discovery?
- Inspiration?
- Courage?
- Compassion?
- Well-being?
- Generosity?
What might become possible if you committed to living your life from there?
Yes, students should learn the things that schools think are valuable to learn. AND, all of us would profoundly benefit from learning what schools haven’t yet seen to be valuable...
Perhaps the most valuable of all possible lessons: How to Thrive in Life no Matter the Circumstances.
Thank you so much for reading. 🙏❤️
P.S. If you're ready to move beyond living your life as a representation of someone else's beliefs - and into living life as an expression and creation from your own spirit, integrity, and relationship to the Divine - schedule a call and let's see what working together might look like. 🔥
