How often do you stop to think, and I mean deeply think, about what you are doing? It's one of those silly things that require constant reminders. Because guess what? It's too damn easy to get comfortable and complacent and maintain your status quo.
When you stop trying, you lose your edge. When you stop growing, you lose opportunity. When you stop caring, one day, life will slap you upside the head with a reality check, and you might not be ready.
And what if you do think about what you are doing? How do you know if you are in alignment or not? How do you know if you are Congruent?
We crave progress. We need something to show for our humble existence. When we are creating, we find bliss. As opposed to the "just do something, anything" approach, I would submit that some quality contemplation is the best first step.
In my recent Mastermind Session with the most incredible group of 13 that you can imagine, we dove into Congruence, but first, we spent time and reviewed tools that helped us get better Clarity of what the heck it is that best defines our Being. Understanding your values and what you value most (two different things) is job one. And it's a job that never ends. Yet, counterintuitively, this is what brings us hope.
We constantly change relative to our world. Your life's backdrop is continually shifting; change is the only consistency. Do you change in response?
Our path is in service to either our dreams or fears. The great Les Brown once said, "Fears are nothing but False Expectations Appearing Real." When we accept a known hell, we sell ourselves short. When we embrace strange dreams, we lean into the liberty we have a natural right to employ. If you punctuate your statements with the words "But," "Woulda," "Shoulda," or "Coulda," then I am sorry, but you aren't even trying. The words we use tell us all we need to know about whether we align with our dreams.
Most people you see around you are like the Walking Dead' aimless and stagnant. Yet, the thing that breathes life back into all of us is simply this: Take time to define your passion, then pursue it.
It's so damn easy to be overwhelmed. Heck, I'm not living if I'm not overwhelmed. I suppose what I mean to say; It's easy to submit to the swamp. Sure, I can without trouble waste 5 minutes that turn to 30 and get just a little bit less done today. Or I can take 5 minutes to research how to start a restaurant, which will lead to 10 minutes, that will lead to 30 minutes. And when I dig a little deeper, I might find that I don't want to run a restaurant, but I sure want to become a chef. One step's done and another begun, I wonder how many more miles.
"Oh, but James, I fear that I will put in all this effort only to fail." Of course, understanding this fear is the first step to conquering it. But, again, Les Brown said, "If at first, you don't succeed, well, that's just about average."
These concepts aren't about a utopian future that is foretold by any political ideology. Instead, those quests like those defined by Thomas Hobbes in "Leviathan" are about the collective. We want to focus on what we can control and align with this highly personal dimension.
Tolle wrote, "You will not have any doubt that psychological time is a mental disease if you look at its collective manifestations. They occur, for example, in the form of ideologies such as communism, national Socialism or any nationalism, or rigid religious belief systems, which operate under the implicit assumption that the highest good lies in the future that therefore the end justifies the means. Real transformation is rare and depends upon whether you can become present enough to dissolve the past by assessing the power of the now. The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence the quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future – which, of course, can only be experienced in the now."
In the presence, you find infinity. Define yourself, align yourself and create the new.
I don't know, but I've been told, It's hard to run with the weight of gold. Other hand, I heard it said, it's just as hard with the weight of lead.
Be well, dear reader.
