Create an Anti-Vision for your life.
One of the most effective ways to define a life that you love is to define a life that you would hate.
I now see it was my fear of wasting my life, and not the allure of a better life, which drove me to make drastic changes and take massive action.
Wake up.
Rush breakfast whilst watching TV.
Scrape the ice off the car windshield.
Sit in traffic for 45 minutes in a beat up car.
Get to work precisely 1-minute before.
Look forward to my strategically timed poo scrolling on social media.
Doing just enough work not to get fired.
Leaving at 1-minute past my finish time.
Drive to the gym.
Train.
Go home to a room in a shared house.
Eat.?
Sleep.
Wake up.
Repeat. Again and again. Every. Damn. Day.
This wasn’t a life I was scared to live - this was actually my life.
I used to walk past the same Wetherspoons pub in Northwood Hills highstreet terrified that I’d be one of the old boys drinking in the same pub half a mile from my house.
The pain of future regret outweighed the then present state of optimism.
Optimism is a gift bestowed to us, and for many of us, our limiting beliefs shield the light of optimism from our awareness.
We daren’t dare to dream.
And, for many of us, we need to start with the weight of our pain as the resistant force to build the strength needed to change your experience of life.
A harsh yet honest truth is that we are exactly where we deserve to be.
But, somewhat paradoxically, we are also at all times doing our very best. If any of us was capable of doing more, we would. And the only way to do more is to become more.
So in order for our life to be different, WE need to be different. For our lives to get better, WE need to get better.
We are, at all times, in the process of becoming, but encapsulated in the process of becoming is the ongoing moment to moment state of being, and there are, frankly, times we are disappointed with who we are.
And this was the REAL fear…
It wasn’t the fear of living a life unlived. It was the fear of becoming a person I hated.
The fear of disliking the person I could become is what drove me to become the person I am in the process of becoming.
We have what we have, and not wanting what we have can sometimes be all we know.
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We do not know, when starting out, what it is like to wake up in a tropical climate, grab your laptop, head to the beach, order an iced latte and a fresh coconut and work on meaningful work whilst staring occasionally out at the incredible scenery laid bare before you.
But what we do know, is we hate working in a job that robs us of enthusiasm for life.
We do know we hate long, cold winters.
We do know we hate not being able to provide adequately for our loved ones - and ourselves.
And we can harness the dislike of our present situation to drive us forward to that which we believe would be favourable.
As you expand your awareness you’ll come to see humans are but a repeating set of processes and behavioural patterns which repeat in varying time windows.
Sometimes we repeat patterns every hour. Sometimes daily. Sometimes weekly. Sometimes monthly or yearly.
Our heart beats every second. You have a dump every day. You shave your beard every week. You cut your hair every month. You replenish your cells every 7 years.
We are but a series of subconscious and consciously repeating patterns accusing again, and again, and again.
We are what we repeatedly do. And our life is a result of what we repeatedly do. But what we repeatedly do is a reflection of who we are. It is intimately intertwined and growth comes through this complexity, not despite of it.
We cannot escape who we are, but we can change who we are.?
And by changing who we are, we can change what we do.
And when we change what we do, we change our life situation.
And when we change our life situation, we change who we are.
The Buddha taught us that life is suffering.
Pain is temporary, but pain can also be harnessed to make progress. Fear, when refined, can be the sharpest of blades to slice through your self-fabricated cage of delusion your sense of self exists within.?
It’s easier to simply distract ourselves than to sit and feel the pain of our present situation. But pain is neither a blessing nor a curse - it just is.
Fear drives us towards confidence.
Insecurity drives us towards security.
In rare moments we make accelerated progress before we regress to the mean of the standards we are willing to accept for ourselves.
It is our life’s work to break through our self-imposed barriers to reach the greatest heights of our potential.
In order for life to change, we need to change.?
In order to get “there”, often it can start with deciding we don’t want to be “here’.
Get angry at life - but not resentful.
Get angry at your life situation - but be grateful.
Be disappointed in yourself - but be loving.
There is a space in which you feel the pain of your past actions, and the disappointment in yourself, as well as the excitement of what life will being, and be proud that you’re now the person who uses the pain of their present situation as fuel for change.
It is easier to decide what you do not want for your life, than to decide what you do want.