Jumping Track
October 18, 2007 | Get Inspired!
One of the major things I was pondering while I was away was: How do I want my life to be?
I know, I suppose this can sound like an odd question to be asking, many of you are probably thinking, “It’s not like you can choose what’s going to happen in life!”, or some such thoughts. I can’t choose what happens to me from the outside, but I can choose how I’m going to live the life I have.
I realized that the choices I make open doors for certain experience and events and close other doors. So, as long as I was choosing to behave like work was the most urgent thing in the world and it had the right to consume me then I was opening the doors in my life that lead to exhaustion, material success (possibly, but at least that mentality), and, well frankly, the kind of life that most people live. My experience was of course going to reflect my choices.
Which made me think, what experiences do I want to be inviting? What kind of life do I want to live? And here’s a really odd question: How do I want life to feel?
When I tapped into my answers to those questions I realized I absolutely had to change the way I was doing things. Not because it was wearing me out and making me a miserable person to be around. Not because I wasn’t taking time for myself and therefore not enjoying my life on a day to day basis. Not even because I had started living my life for that far off someday goal without even noticing it. But simply because those choices could never bring me to the results I really wanted to accomplish. They simply couldn’t; the way I want my life to feel and the way I had been living life are on completely different tracks (and possible in completely different nations).
I’m not really sure what things I need to do to get me to my end goal, but I do know I need to stop doing the things I had been doing for the last few months. This week, while I’ve been making an effort to be conscious about the choices I’m making and trying to figure out which are the right choices and where balance lies I’ve been making observations - observations about the world around me and about my own pre-programmed beliefs.
One of the conclusions that I’m coming to is that if I want something different then I absolutely, no doubt about it, must do something differently.
We all know the classic definition of insanity: doing the same thing and expecting different results. I love this quote; I think it’s fabulous; I use it all the time - on a personal level. If you are unhappy at/doing/being A then you must stop doing A to change that result; instead try B, C, or even D. I.e. If you don’t like your job then the answer is the simple (and yet very difficult) get a new job!
But what I’ve realized this week is that this applies on a larger - even cultural - scale too. I’m not all that endeared to the 9-5, keeping up with the Jones’ lifestyle. I don’t like Monday - Friday weeks and I really don’t like the way life feels in that environment. Of course, most of the world lives in that kind of culure (place/mentality) so it hasn’t even occurred to most of us that there’s an option here.
But, I’m an avid reader of people’s lives. I love other people’s experiences, and one of the things I’ve learnt from reading them is that there are other options. Life doesn’t have to feel the way I previously thought it did. It doesn’t have to be about paying the bills and keeping busy and having nothing of value to show for it in the end. I know this because other people don’t live their lives this way and they are happy.
And these people, these people who’ve done something new, who are unique in the way they choose their lives and love their lives, these people all have one thing in common: They didn’t do what everyone else did.
Because (and this is the really profound realization I’ve been having), if we want to get different results then we need to take different actions!
Shocking I know.
The people the rest of us are jealous of; the ones who travel the world (and write about it), or make millions of dollars, the ones who live off of their art, the ones we still talk about a century later, they are the ones who decided they weren’t going to listen to the people around them and were going to go their own way.
We look at them and seem to think that they have something special, something that sets them apart from us - they don’t. We think that it works for them, but it couldn’t possible work for us because (insert your reasons here - money I’m sure will be the primary one).
The thing that my heart keeps telling me over and over as I face each decision of my day is that they are just like you and me, they are no different, except in one thing: They were brave enough to take the action. They didn’t just think about not conforming, they took the risk and refused to do what other people were telling them they were “supposed” to do.
I’m still not sure how to get from A to B, but I am sure that it’s going to involve changing the way I make decisions about my life and the way I think about reality or the world at large (a more powerful - and difficult - step then you may first imagine). It means I’m going to have to jump my former track and get onto a new one and, like I said before, if I want different results I’m going to have to take different actions.
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On October 19th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Becca Says:
“if we want to get different results then we need to take different actions!”
Wow, this really hit home today. And the reason I say today is that it wouldn’t have hit home as forcefully any other day, I think. Synchronicity is funny that way–things coming just when the should…
After traveling for 2 weeks and being removed from the routine of my life, I’ve started coming to that gut-realization that’s telling me the same thing. That 9-5 mentality, that structure, is not what makes me happy. In fact in makes me distinctly unhappy.
Now, as you say, we have to summon the courage and sight to make the change, to embrace different actions.
Thank you!
On October 19th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Becca’s Cyber Home » Blog Archive » MWF seeking change Says:
[…] A good and wise friend made a startling observation on her blog: changing your life requires changing your approach. […]