Color Outside the Lines

When we are young, we are taught to “color neatly and stay inside the lines.” Unfortunately that mentality stays with us and can wreak havoc on our social psyches. It encourages conformist behavior. Even though we may want to push the envelopes in our careers and in our lifestyles, there may be this nagging reminder that maybe we shouldn’t go there – it’s too risky, too left of center and not everyone will think highly of it. In essence, sometimes we sell out. And why? Because we have been taught that the “right” path (or socially accepted one) should be one of comfort and stability and not fraught with risk and uncertainty.

But who is to say what is right on one person’s path versus another? In life, there are no right or wrongs – there are just different experiences. It helps to know that you can NEVER make a wrong turn, you can just choose a different path. When we push ourselves to be who we are and not live our lives for others, we connect to the universal flow of life. This keeps us young and vital and of course, very happy. It is only when we turn our back on our passions and dreams, that we will fall off our paths. Live your life on your terms. If you push yourself to be the best YOU you can be, then life rewards you richly. It is in sitting back and letting life pass you by that you lose the meaning and purpose of your life. Reclaim your power. Set your intentions for your life and live it on your terms.

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The Art of Play

How many of us remember what it is like to play? Remember how summer vacations lasted an eternity when we were young? There were no fears, no perceived failures, no expectations and no anxiety – just a sense that we could go outside, find our friends and simply let go and play. We accepted ourselves for who we were – our own imagined superhero – albeit perhaps a slightly bruised and bumped version of one. What ever happened to our superhero status? We have long abandoned it in favor of owning a new and much more limiting status – one whose roots are grounded in insecurity and fear. It is almost as if adulthood is this bleak and lonely passage from light into an existence of darkness. And one which we eagerly transition into.

When we look at our childhoods things seemed much easier back then or maybe it is just that we have learned how to complicate things? As adults, we spend hours surveying our expectations of others and ourselves. We spend our lives trying to control things (especially things beyond our control) and somehow this deconstructive and repetitive behavior makes us feel safe. Almost as if we will feel better by imposing our own restrictions on ourselves. Setting these limits makes us feel better when we fail; it enables us to justly blame “the parameters set upon us.”

Here’s the big secret…life is meant to be enjoyed. Breaking the everyday spell of control and letting go, tapping into your creative self will yield riches and experiences you never dreamed possible. If you allow yourself to stay stuck, you will stop growing, collect dust and become irrelevant to yourself and others around you. The thing about being a child is that they inherently know how to play – how to take chances, how to expand into the unknown and fully experience it. They take on new and exciting personas (push their individualism and expressionism) with reckless abandon while not obsessing over what others might think about it.  We adults could learn so much from the art of play. After all, some of the world’s best inventions and art installations came about through creative mistakes. It is in allowing ourselves to “color outside the lines” that we may truly learn how to fly.

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Lighten up

Sometimes life overwhelms us with real-life dramas. We allow our lives to be governed by what is going on around us at any given moment. Ask yourself if you are easily influenced by your own dramas? Do you buy into them? Do you make them more real than they need to be?

Sometimes we are our own worst enemies. We tend to complicate our own lives instead of finding better and healthier ways of coping with our dramas. We are not put on this earth to suffer. We forget that we have chosen this precious life to learn certain truths. We forget that we are in essence playing a role in a play. Life is a game and if we could realize that we can never really lose, then we might feel better playing whatever bad hand we are dealt.

The problem is that we take things so seriously – especially ourselves. We have such a hard time letting go and laughing – getting out of the way of ourselves. Things in our world are SO serious. We think they have to be. Here’s a new thought… They don’t. Things are what they are; once you attach a label of good or bad to them then they become something else to you. If we could learn to cultivate a child-like consciousness where everything is new, interesting and intriguing but NOT defeating, then we could change the outcome of every situation for ourselves. Happiness is a choice. If we could learn to find simple humor in life’s every day drama, things would never spiral out of control. The act of injecting an air of positivity into our thinking changes the outcome of every situation.

As Dan Millman mentions in The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, we need to find a way to be “unreasonably happy.” This means happy without a reason in the world. From that place, real happiness and an ability to truly open up to life begins. Life is a game and happiness is a choice. Choose wisely and your game will improve exponentially.

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Where there is Loss, There is Gain

As in life, everything exists in a state of duality. You cannot have black without white. You cannot have left without right. You cannot have good without bad. Everything in life must exist in a perfect state of equilibrium/balance. Understand that when you experience one emotion or situation, inevitably the opposite will make its way to you in time.

When we look at loss… whatever you think you might have lost – a relationship, a job or a loved one, that loss leaves an undeniably empty space in your jar of life. Many of us would like to play the victim and say, “Oh, whoa is me… why are these things always happening to me?” If we choose to play the victim, we will lower our vibration to that of the victim because of course, you only get what you put out in life. But if we could realize that the empty space we have now inherited is just an opportunity to fill it with a new beginning, then we could see this experience for the gift that it is.

Nothing is ever taken away from you that you cannot handle. And nothing would be taken away from you if there weren’t some way to fill that empty space and bring your life back into a state of perfect balance. The empty space is an opportunity to begin again – to find a new type of relationship, job/career or situation that will re-ignite your passions, interests and mode of self-expressionism.

When you lose, you are not really losing. You actually gain an opportunity to re-invent yourself in new and exciting ways. You are free to redefine your life, on your terms. As Masahide said in 1688, “Barn’s burnt down…. now I can see the moon.” Despite whatever tragedy you have experienced, you have an obligation to yourself to look beyond the devastation of the burnt barn and see the beauty and intrigue of the moon as it continues to shine. Life goes on. And if you allow yourself to open up, it will bring you new opportunities that you could never dream possible. From the loss ALWAYS comes new life.

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