Life is really, just one big journey. The journey can be broken down into 1. the small pieces of day-to-day life, or 2. you can zoom-out and look down at the whole picture. When one learns the ability look at life from different points of view, in moments of happiness and suffering, one will see that life is not a big end-all exam, life is a practice. Dust you Shoulders offLife can definately be overwhelming at times and when all hope for the future fades from your mind-set - be that your final test results, a prospected promotion at work or a relationship - when it all becomes too much, it is so easy to give yourself over to self-doubt and give up entirely on life ever working out; as if the end of the world is right around the corner, because you weren't good enough. But the end of the world never comes. Your life will definitely change according to what you do, good or bad - that's up to how you see it - but your life will continue, new people will come and go and different opportunities will continue to keep popping up, inviting you to choose where you want your life to go. You pick yourself up, dust yourself off and continue learning how to walk. Steps to masteryLife is an art with so many skills to understand, learn, practice and master. The foundational basics of learning anything are:
Practice, practice, practice to masteryIf mastery is what you want, then this step is the most important of all of these steps. The only way to mastery is practice. Not only do you refine your skill with each repetitive movement or thought-pattern, but each practice session usually has a new problem you have to overcome mentally or physically. For example let's say I am trying to master a particular yoga pose. Fundamentally it is the same pose or formula, you position yourself in the same way at each practice, but oneday your body might be tired from a party the night before so it is harder for your mind to focus less on the 'difficulties' and more on acquiring 'stillness' in the posture. Another practice session might involve the environment to be less than perfect. You decide to practice this posture out in nature, you hike for an hour to a place where the scenery is beautiful but when you arrive, it starts to rain unexpectedly. Suddenly you are struggling mentally with getting angry or frustrated at the weather and giving up and walking home feeling negative. If you do decide to stay becuase you have decided that you like the rain, a physical test comes up to challenge you, suddenly you are very slippery and it is very hard to balance and you require a lot more physical strenght and mental focus to find stillness inside and outside of yourself. Mastery requires knowing the skill inside and out. Mastery requires that you are able to remain, calm, collected, curious and confident in navigating your way through the situation. Be patient and stand back upLife is a practice, we are constantly being presented with new things to learn so that we can grow. But with learning any new skill, you can't expect not to make a mistake or fall down at least once or many times! I know I fall over a lot.
Falling over or making mistakes can be very frustrating and disheartening, especially if you let you mind wander into negativity. Practice takes a lot of patience and sometimes it requires that you slow down so you can figure out where you are going wrong and also so you can more easily have good technique and form. Don't give up on yourself when you fall down, take a deep breath and stand back up and try again. Life is one massive journey that can be seen as smaller day-to-day pieces that you can easily become lost in; you get caught up in the emotions and the drama of it all. If you do fall down and feel as if you want to give-up might I suggest you zoom-out from your life and look at the bigger picture. Recall your life in its entirety, what happened and what have you learned from all of these experiences. Falling down is one of the greatest opportunites for growth. Remember that. Life is a practice, so be ready to fall down a lot. Don't worry, you are stronger than you know, you got this.
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Suffering. What comes to mind when you think of this word? Darkness, downward spirals, sadness, negative, taboo? It's not exactly a word that society likes to hear and one may feel they will be condemned if they use it to describe their own situation. The world wants everybody to be fighters, with massive smiles on their faces whilst carrying a can-do attitude. Yes, this is great to aspire to, however we live in the world of duality and the opposites to happiness, strength and motivation all exist whether we want them to or not. It is an impossibility that sorrow, hardship and darkness should not exist; or any of the other negative opposites for that matter. Suffering is an integral part of lifeI have been pondering suffering a lot lately and after understanding that we live in the realm of opposites, in that you can't have one without the other - happiness/sadness, dark/light, inside/outside - I realized that I will never be able to squander my suffering. It will always come and go into my life as it will into yours. This thought actually led me to feel pretty bad; that suffering will always be around and so I felt helpless and meaningless to my own greatness for a while. I wrote in my journal relentlessly, trying to understand why I couldn't just be happy all of the time, why can't I just choose to get over it? Then it dawned on me...why can't I just get over it? This led me to a profound realization, that life is all just a matter of perception. The situations may take you on a rocky ride, but we do have a choice on how will shall perceive what is happening. All of the things that society deems as bad and negative, never come to us without a purpose. Create your riches at dawn with a golden morningPersonally, I have always found my strongest transformations always begin with a strong morning routine. You may not claim to be a morning person, but the more you persist in rising earlier everyday, the more you will realize how essential this time for yourself is for your overall wellbeing. The morning is a wonderful time of day, everything has a quality of stillness and tranquility, including yourself. It carries with it a fresh start, you are feeling rested and refreshed, your muscels when warmed up are strong and flexible, your mind is peaceful and at its most authentic and it is the most powerful time of the day to set intentions of positivity. Many very succesful people start there day before 7am, setting this time aside to find gratitude, to physically wake up their body, to find quiet reflection and goal setting and to spend time with friends or family before they start work. Don't get me wrong, this post isn't focusing on being successful, it is about connecting with yourself. The result just might happen to be success, but the goal I believe, should always be living in the present moment the way you want to live, no matter what step up the ladder you are. I am beginning to really understand, that the more I empower myself in the morning, the more I empower myself throughout the rest of the day, even in times of stress. Another hidden egoic agenda, can be that of craving success and riches, again, these should not be the goal, they are merely the result of dedicated work on the self and these results will come naturally when you are the most ready to accept them. An Ancient look into your morning: AyurvedaTongue scraping...it sounds interesting doesn't it? When I first uttered these words, all sorts of weird contraptions and exercises popped into my mind and I wasn't even willing to find out what it actually was until this March, 2 years after I had first heard about it. I thought that maybe I should just stick to a gentler routine involving the back of my tooth brush on my tongue. The problem with this was that I never formed it into a habit and compared to tongue scraping, I'm not sure the back of my toothbrush really does anything. I feel lucky to have stumbled on an article whilst browsing the web that said you could scrape your tongue with a spoon. This made the technique seem a lot more doable and less scary. I thought that it couldn't be so bad, and I didn't have to buy any new products or go out of my way more than 2 minutes each morning. To be honest, at that point in time, I wasn't going out of my way at any time of day, so it seemed like an easy first step. What is tongue scraping?Tongue scraping or Jihwa Prakshalana is an Ayurvedic technique recommended in daily routine as a preventative health measure. If you have ever noticed a milky-like film that covers the surface of your tongue, this is called ama and can range in colour, from white, yellow or green. This is a build up of toxins or digestive impurities that can compromise your immune and digestive systems. Ama poses big downfall if not maintained, but with a quick fix each morning. A small start is better than no start at all |
AuthorMy name is Brittney and my life pursuit has been that of self-improvement and growth. It took me a long time to realize that I don't really fit into societies model that you need to go to school, find a career, strive to be extremely succesful to then get married and have kids, ever acquiring material objects. There is nothing wrong with this model at all and for those who can embrace this with whole-hearted happiness, keep going with it. Archives
August 2017
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