Journal
Dying to LIVE
If you do everything you can
to be successful
in your sport, business, art or financial situation,
but you miss meaning, purpose, connection or vibrance,
it isn’t worth it.
It’s exhausting to live with high intensity but no direction.
It’s confusing to always looking for other people for approval and society’s norms about what success look like.
It’s not enough to work for outer success – money, status, trophies, fame, etc –
if you do it at the expense of gratitude, harmony, love and deep connection with others.
When we enter the last hour of our last day in this lifetime, it won’t be the bank account, trophies, and domination of others that you will look back on and cherish, but all the people that you’ve had travelled this journey with.
The people that (hopefully) are there with you, at this last moment in time.
Holding your hand, expressing their love and gratitude for who you have been to them.
Being a great human being is our core purpose.
Yet, it can be extremely hard, especially in the beginning, to walk away from cheap dopamine, shiny objects and the constant chasing of [the next thing/level/position], that often cost us our enthusiasm, positivity and presence with the people that we really, truly, deeply love and care for.
Always chasing the next thing,
always wanting more, more, more,
always using this moment as a tool or vehicle to something in the future,
is often a source of great frustration, no patience, and irritability.
Most often affecting the people that are closest to us.
But if you don’t lead, guide and train yourself,
so that you at any time are invested in what’s important and true to you,
there’s a risk that noise (opinions, distractions, worry, external agendas etc)
will shape who you are becoming.
Enthusiasm, joy, peace and deep relationships are really hard when you’re constantly dominated by worry, by other people’s opinions, or distracted by shiny objects and instant gratification.
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, about the effects of an activity rather than the joy of the activity in itself, life will often feel empty and stressful.
And then there is the digital world, that could be an amazing servant to a meaningful life, but is often doing the complete opposite. 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) at a time.
You get more sensitive, not just to pain, but to minor inconveniences too.
You easily miss the beauty around and the richness and potentiality within you.
You will lose your ability to enjoy ordinary life and magical, daily moments.
You are longing for deep connection, stillness and simplicity, but you are not strong or patient enough to cultivate it, because your mind is too distracted and your soul too hurried to slow down, let go and tune in to this moment.
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.
There has to be something else.
You’re right.
But it’s not easy.
Instead of being slave under digital masters and success-addiction you want to organize your life in a different way. Starting with awareness, then clarity, then discipline of your inner command.
Because distractions often feel good (dopamine) you have a very challenging work to get yourself out of the addiction to speed, validation, convenience and ’the next thing.’
Instead:
- Start to embrace single-tasking. Doing one thing for longer than you (at first) want.
- Do fewer things.
- Install the philosophy and concept of ‘Craftmanship.’ Don’t stress. Commit to do whatever you are doing with more precision, more love and care.
- Train yourself out of convenience. Everything doesn’t have to be smooth or easy. The friction is needed to cultivate patience, to be wiser and more robust in a world that occasionally will test you. Sometimes to your core.
- 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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