From Grief to Gratitude

So the challenge then becomes to focus on love rather than fear. The emotions and feelings generated by love include – joy, peace, contentment, compassion, gratitude, connection, happiness, ease … which equate to a physically relaxed state. Some of the emotions and feelings generated by fear include – jealousy, derision, anger, frustration, depression, separation, dis-ease, discontent … which equate to the physical sensations of discomfort, uneasiness, anxiety and more. When we feel suffocated, restricted and unable to move then fear is the culprit. When we are in flow, when we are relaxed, confident and calm, we are operating from love. Fear grips onto us, so we become immobilized, love sets us free and we feel safe in our wanderings. In order to reclaim your dreams and your passions, you need to make them big enough that they are worth putting effort in for, they become worth striving for. If they are mediocre, they won’t sit at the forefront of your mind and you won’t have the desire and persistence to achieve them. So don’t be afraid to dream big! We should be afraid of not dreaming and staying small! This journey to working out who we want to be and who we want to meet continues to evolve throughout our lives. I know I want to continue writing, I want to continue with meditation group work and I believe my purpose is helping others and there are many ways in which I can do this. So please take the time to sit down and work out what you want to be, what thoughts are blocking you, or holding you back? If you are feeling stuck here, consider what you enjoy doing the most in your life, what part of your work do you really connect with or get satisfaction from? Try to narrow this down to the fundamental aspect of what it is you enjoy. For example, if you are a software engineer and you finish a project, what was the part of this that you enjoyed? Was it writing endless lines of code? Was it problem solving? Was it helping others achieve what they wanted through your process? Was it being able to listen and help people clarify exactly what they need? Was it being innovative and approaching the issue from a less obvious angle? Gay Hendricks talks about uncovering our purpose by examining the things we love and why we love them by taking off the layers of the initial thought. He uses the example of Russian dolls and taking them out one by one until you have narrowed it down to what your area of genius or your special gift is. We need to find out what our purpose is, what we feel our strengths and desires are. I believe our true desires are our purpose. Once we find our purpose, find our strengths, we are on the right track to becoming who we are destined to be. It doesn’t mean we all need to become Bill Gates or Richard Branson or Kim Kardashian. The world needs you in your best form. We are all integral cogs in the wheels of life and existence. If you were not here, the world would be changed. I do believe you need to become your priority and in doing so and in being the best version of you that you can be, others will truly benefit from being connected with you. We can keep it real and realise that yes, we can have financial obligations that require us to make some money to survive, so maybe we can’t change what we’re doing overnight. But is there some element of choice in how we spend our time when we’re not working that could serve to help us to work towards who we want to be? Can we take a break from TV, social media and other mindless activities to create what we want to do? How many hours in a day are spent in purposeful pursuit of becoming our best selves? We need to start to make attachments to things that are truly important to us, to help us become the best we can be. Having the best house, the best cars, and the most expensive shoes is really putting a lot of energy into inert objects that don’t really give us anything back. Real happiness, joy and love come from within ourselves and from those we are surrounded by, not from our possessions. We can move house, we can change cars, we can buy new clothes and we may feel better for a little while. But how long will it be until we need to change things again? Once we feel connected to ourselves, we will know exactly what sort of life we would like to be living, where we would like to live and why. If you find you are someone who is always changing things, seeking pleasure from external sources such as material things, you may want to really consider why this is so. Perhaps you are seeking the approval of others. When you approve of yourself, you will care less about what others think of you (and where you live, what you drive, what you wear and so on …). You know you have this one life to live right now; it’s never to late to change how you’re living it and make this life worthwhile. We can make plans and start to make changes. I wonder how many people are like me, and after the loss of every person they have loved or had connection with, they have made a pact to honour that person’s life by living their own to the fullest, and within a week or two, they’ve got stuck back in the rut of obligation and blah? Back on the well-trodden path of mundaneness—without your dreams, without a vision of what you really want in your life—you are truly aimless!