I Live A Lifeless Life
Help Me. I don't know how. I want to eat, but I don't want to eat anything. I look in the fridge for inspiration, and I find all the wonderful foods my fiance cooked for us last weekend. And the organic salad I bought for her that's still untouched (she asked me to buy it while I was shopping, that isn't some sick joke...). Well, I sit at my desk and I hunch in my expensive chair that my boss bought me so my back would have support and I would no longer click my neck until it was on fire. I played badminton Wednesday night and met a girl who got tennis elbow a couple of years ago, suffered with back pain... And split up with her partner. 5 months ago. Her pain subsided - not all of it, but an amazing amount.
When my partner is here, things are often great. She challenges me to get up and go, we both want similar things from life - plenty of outdoors, nice cooking, spaces in our house for different things - like meditating, yoga, cycle training, working out, reading books, listening to music or podcasts, ... You know, nice things to do in life. But she leaves her crockery above the dishwasher instead of inside. And I am infuriatingly ill, and waiting for her to return home does nothing to help that.
I've lived the stressed life. I lived in cortisol heaven, facing the lion every day and poking it with my blade of grass expecting a different result because some days I'd use the pointy end of grass, other times I'd use the petal of a flower. Those are bad analogies, I guess I'd use a pen. Flowers and grass would surely settle things down and we could coexist in peace, more like now.
Now my stress levels are dropping, and I'm determined to reduce those of my partner too. She's not doing bad, signed up for a triathlon soon and is training for it - good for burning cortisol. And friends - lots of friends. So many that I actually barely see her and end up being the lonely one even though this is my home town.
But I am not living my life. I hide away in the bathroom watching clips on Facebook or Youtube, of the Surfer guys who cleaned up the ocean with their litter bags that float on the surface. Or the guys who live with rhinos and elephants and they both protect each other endlessly. Or James Veitch. Or Jonathan Pye. I hide.
I hide.
I went to a goal mapping night last night too. He asked us 7 questions to help us identify what makes our heart sing.
1. If you won the lottery, £1million, tonight, what would you do differently in your life?
2. If a doctor told you you had 6 months to live, in good health, before you will die without suffering - what would you do differently with your time?
3. What would you like to leave behind, what legacy - how would you like people to think of you when you're gone?
4. If I could wave a wand and give you an ability or skill, what would it be?
5. What dream would you dream for yourself if there was absolutely no possibility that you would fail?
6. What is something you've wanted to do for a very long time, but been scared to do?
7. What is the thing you would be prepared to stand up and fail publicly, if you failed in support of it?
www.goalmapping.com is the place to go for this.
I am terrified of these questions. My cortisol ramps up looking at them, not because I'm scared of the answers, but because I don't know what the answers to any of them are. Except 3: I want to be the guy who stopped the world. Who made the world stop, look, listen, smile, breathe, and do differently from that moment on.
I am also terrified of achieving something for myself. Or, the power I have inside me. Because if I see that power now, it means that for 33 years I have not wielded that power responsibly. For 33 years I've sat on the biggest power in the universe. Because it's there in all of us. I know it, but I do not want to see it.
That would force me to admit failure, on a mass scale.
But I learnt a new technique, recently, called tapping (or EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique). The Tapping Solution is the place to go on Youtube. It sends peace signals to your amygdala, which produces the cortisol coursing through your body switching off your cleansing lymph and your otherwise harmonious digestion. Peace signals whilst you are confronted with what seems to you to be the biggest lion in the world, gradually (and actually REALLY FAST) reduce that stress response right down. Those points are acupressure points, and the ends of meridian lines. And those signals will allow me to come to rest and look at those questions, facilitating my right brain to come alive and provide me with the answers to them.
From there, I can map out how, when, who's involved, ... And send commands, in the forms of images and words, to my subconscious to steer me in that direction by repeated seeing, saying, and feeling those thoughts - turning them into established beliefs and making myself into them.
Right now though, I am paralysed - and this is why I came here. To allow that paralysis to be. To acknowledge it, to become truly aware of it, and to allow it to pass. This too, shall pass. The wisest words ever spoken. Eckhart Tolle's work clearly states that all forms are temporary. Thoughts, emotions, stones, houses, jobs, companies, governments, every thing we can conceive is temporary. Including us. And the only thing we can truly impact is right now.
Live your best selves, move towards what you want by repetition (it's the mother of skill) - and remember the first time you do anything it will not look pretty, but after many tries your ability to do it will grow and the difficulty shrink. The task is the same, but you changed around it. And from change comes opportunity. See it. The Universe Has Your Back.
Thank you for reading.
When my partner is here, things are often great. She challenges me to get up and go, we both want similar things from life - plenty of outdoors, nice cooking, spaces in our house for different things - like meditating, yoga, cycle training, working out, reading books, listening to music or podcasts, ... You know, nice things to do in life. But she leaves her crockery above the dishwasher instead of inside. And I am infuriatingly ill, and waiting for her to return home does nothing to help that.
I've lived the stressed life. I lived in cortisol heaven, facing the lion every day and poking it with my blade of grass expecting a different result because some days I'd use the pointy end of grass, other times I'd use the petal of a flower. Those are bad analogies, I guess I'd use a pen. Flowers and grass would surely settle things down and we could coexist in peace, more like now.
Now my stress levels are dropping, and I'm determined to reduce those of my partner too. She's not doing bad, signed up for a triathlon soon and is training for it - good for burning cortisol. And friends - lots of friends. So many that I actually barely see her and end up being the lonely one even though this is my home town.
But I am not living my life. I hide away in the bathroom watching clips on Facebook or Youtube, of the Surfer guys who cleaned up the ocean with their litter bags that float on the surface. Or the guys who live with rhinos and elephants and they both protect each other endlessly. Or James Veitch. Or Jonathan Pye. I hide.
I hide.
I went to a goal mapping night last night too. He asked us 7 questions to help us identify what makes our heart sing.
1. If you won the lottery, £1million, tonight, what would you do differently in your life?
2. If a doctor told you you had 6 months to live, in good health, before you will die without suffering - what would you do differently with your time?
3. What would you like to leave behind, what legacy - how would you like people to think of you when you're gone?
4. If I could wave a wand and give you an ability or skill, what would it be?
5. What dream would you dream for yourself if there was absolutely no possibility that you would fail?
6. What is something you've wanted to do for a very long time, but been scared to do?
7. What is the thing you would be prepared to stand up and fail publicly, if you failed in support of it?
www.goalmapping.com is the place to go for this.
I am terrified of these questions. My cortisol ramps up looking at them, not because I'm scared of the answers, but because I don't know what the answers to any of them are. Except 3: I want to be the guy who stopped the world. Who made the world stop, look, listen, smile, breathe, and do differently from that moment on.
I am also terrified of achieving something for myself. Or, the power I have inside me. Because if I see that power now, it means that for 33 years I have not wielded that power responsibly. For 33 years I've sat on the biggest power in the universe. Because it's there in all of us. I know it, but I do not want to see it.
That would force me to admit failure, on a mass scale.
But I learnt a new technique, recently, called tapping (or EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique). The Tapping Solution is the place to go on Youtube. It sends peace signals to your amygdala, which produces the cortisol coursing through your body switching off your cleansing lymph and your otherwise harmonious digestion. Peace signals whilst you are confronted with what seems to you to be the biggest lion in the world, gradually (and actually REALLY FAST) reduce that stress response right down. Those points are acupressure points, and the ends of meridian lines. And those signals will allow me to come to rest and look at those questions, facilitating my right brain to come alive and provide me with the answers to them.
From there, I can map out how, when, who's involved, ... And send commands, in the forms of images and words, to my subconscious to steer me in that direction by repeated seeing, saying, and feeling those thoughts - turning them into established beliefs and making myself into them.
Right now though, I am paralysed - and this is why I came here. To allow that paralysis to be. To acknowledge it, to become truly aware of it, and to allow it to pass. This too, shall pass. The wisest words ever spoken. Eckhart Tolle's work clearly states that all forms are temporary. Thoughts, emotions, stones, houses, jobs, companies, governments, every thing we can conceive is temporary. Including us. And the only thing we can truly impact is right now.
Live your best selves, move towards what you want by repetition (it's the mother of skill) - and remember the first time you do anything it will not look pretty, but after many tries your ability to do it will grow and the difficulty shrink. The task is the same, but you changed around it. And from change comes opportunity. See it. The Universe Has Your Back.
Thank you for reading.
36-40, M
