How To Live A Life That Matters, No Matter What
I’ll be honest with you, there’ve been many times I’ve doubted my choice to travel an unknown path and march to the beat of my own drum.
I didn’t heed the advice of well-meaning friends and advisors who warned me to follow a more established route.
And, so I’m traveling without a map.
“Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it.” — Eckhart Tolle
I’ll admit it hasn’t been easy.
I’ll admit this too, every once in a while I get really pissed -
pissed that there’s no manual for being me,
pissed that no one’s coming to do it for me,
pissed that often times, I don’t know what-the-hell-I’m-doing.
That’s when I envy people who’ve chosen a steady, predictable course and I think maybe there’s still time to get that degree or that job at the post office.
Winning The Battle Within
By now I’m very familiar with this fearful inner voice. It’s a major contender in the unruly bunch of conditioned voices within my head.
It is not my true voice.
It’s the cornerstone of our cultural myths. It pressures us to play small, not stand out, to find our place in line.
It convinces us we need to live according to someone else’s clock and play outwardly dictated roles, all to eek out dollars, all for a pseudo security.
It bullies us into jobs and lifestyles that do not reflect our individual preferences.
It undercuts the efficacy and purpose of our unique desires and impulses that are designed to guide us to our specific role in the world.
It has convinced us that it’s dangerous to step off the conveyer belt to discover something unusual within us.
It has us under a spell.
But, somewhere in us we know we’re really here to grow into ourselves.
We know we’re here to throw off this dusty, antiquated guise that’s been keeping us contained.
We know we’re here to become who we’re fully capable of being.
The one true human voice wants to disentangle from this dying cosmology, the destructive and dispirited myths that have separated us from our true nature.
Make These 4 Agreements With Yourself
#1 Do What Scares You
“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far it is possible to go.” — T.S. Eliot
When you opt-out of playing it safe, you’re opting for self-actualization over security. You’re daring to stand in the presence of something seeking you — your own greatness.
Coming face to face with our dharma, our deepest life calling, scares most of us completely shitless.
If ‘little you’ feels too big for her britches, you’re likely on the right track. If worrisome inner voices are exploding with disbelief that it’s too good to be possible, well then you’re at least in the neighborhood.
Your true life should sweep across your heart like tsunami making your knees jiggle and sending shivers up your spine.
“To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.” — Soren Kierkegaard
Your true life is far more than doing something you love.
Though, it is the life that will satisfy you completely.
Your true life is the one that would be the greatest gift you could give to others.
Your true life makes enduring the hardship and discordance of this world worth every minute.
#2 Allow Yourself To Get Lost
“The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety.” — Goethe
When setting out on an unknown course for your authentic life, expect fog.
Periods of total darkness are also guaranteed to make you stumble.
Be willing. Better yet, count on it. And know it’s true objective is to serve you.
It’s leading you to your own inner compass. It’s giving you the best of all gifts — true security.
It’s helping you become resilient. You’ll be less undone by the unexpected. You’ll become more adaptive. You’ll learn how to recover faster. You’ll have an opportunity to master your emotional response to life.
Bushwhacking through unchartered territory is how you discover who you are and what you’re here for. Getting lost is how you find your way. There is no other way.
It’s how you give birth to solutions and cures of all kinds for yourself, humanity and the earth at large.
Let people doubt your sanity. Let them think you’re nuts. Be the mad scientist, the wise fool, the adventure addict who makes others question there own aliveness.
#3 Follow Your Inner Authority
“There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.” -Rumi
The time is now. Go in and retrieve that inner guidance system that’s been collecting dust since it was banished to the wings. Bring it back. Give it the lead role.
It’s curtain call for the crew of inner voices that have been running their own rowdy performance all these years.
Turn up the house lights. Line them up on the catwalk. Observe their costumes, props and characteristic traits. Let them recite their most infamous lines. Appreciate them. And applaud them because they really had you fooled! Then, let them know one true voice is back.
Throw open the front of the house. Let the light in. Clean up the set. Redesign the stage and start working on a new play.
As you compose the new script, remember who you are.
Remember you’re worthy. Remember you’re accountable.
And then look out at the world from the lens of one true voice.
You’re part of an orchestra. You’re not here to bury your head in the sand or to tune out the world and all its pageantry.
But, you are here to steady yourself from within. Watch the world from there. See the big picture as you view the many vignettes.
#4 Make Your Imperfect Offering, Regularly
“It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.” — Seneca
Ugh. Guilty. Okay, my fellow perfectionists out there… I’m talking to you, too.
This is so important. Share yourself. Now. Please. We Need You.
Share yourself often, easily, authentically and generously from wherever you are in the moment.
Share your voice and your heart. Listen to how it falls in with the cosmic symphony. Let it be imperfect, incomplete, unrefined. The masterpiece is coming.
Yes, we can rationalize we’re not ready, not good enough or the product isn’t perfected.
It’s easy to make excuses that you need another degree, further certification or some other form of external validation to make yourself better.
It’s an excuse.
It’s resistance.
Give the voice of unworthiness inside you a good talking to.
“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.” ― May Sarton
All along the way, you’ve had something to offer.
Don’t focus on outcomes. Don’t wait for the zenith. This is about giving your gift, the gift of your authenticity-every day.
This is about a way of being, your way of being in the world, not achieving perfection.
Give linear time a secondary role. It can so easily become a prison for your eloquent unfolding.
Conclusion
We’re here to be fully alive, to remove the masks that hide our true face, to live out of character and to see ourselves and each other in a new way.
“Security is mostly a superstition. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” — Helen Keller
I’ll sum it up with this:
1st, let’s get clear about why we’re not here.
Though we are here to get along, we are not here to go along.
We are not here to blend in or disappear or to make decisions based on fear.
We are not here to be invisible or miserable, inaudible or unseen, cogs in someone else’s machine — whether corporate, cultural or anything in between.
We are not here to live shallow, to swallow our voice, or to believe following what matters to us most is not a choice.
We did not come to live almost, to sing someone else’s song, or to take someone else’s ride by suppressing the dreamer inside.
We are not here to be careless, destructive, or needy, to prolong suffering, increase the ranks of the greedy.
We’re not here to stand alone, nor here to be chained, powerless, apathetic, unable to change.
We are here on a mission.
We are here on duty.
We are here for mastery, excellence, & beauty.
We are here to heal from our temporary amnesia & remember our purpose as human beings,
to assume our role in the universe’s great “one turning.”
We are here to take chances and claim what matters,
to let inner vision inform decision, to fail, begin again, and revision.
We are here to free the dreamer inside,
to thrive, to rise, collaborate, cooperate, and actualize.
We are here to fill our own shoes,
create the world we would choose,
“let the beauty we love be what we do”,
And We Need You.
Call To Action
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One Last Thing!
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