Photo credit: Andre Brazil
The world is a dangerous place. I must protect myself. I cannot afford to sit idle. I must do something, I must do everything. Are these thoughts familiar? Do you feel overwhelmed? Stressed? Burned out?
When our lives seem out of control, we often look to find the answer out of the endless treadmill by doing more, by taking action. Surely, there is something I’ve overlooked, something that needs to done. We believe that action equates movement and progress. That busyness is proof of the meaningfulness of our lives. We need to be doing. But our doing can feel like an endless journey that leads nowhere.
What if instead of focusing on doing, we focused on just being? On the surface, focusing on being can seem deceptively simple and pointless. Society rewards those who do. Who you are as a person is less valuable than what you have accomplished. Yet the being is what makes us who we are, what allows us to feel whole, what allows us to better deal with the world around us.
When we let go of seeing life as a series of personal attacks, battles or contests, we allow any given moment to feel more spacious. We relax into the moment and experience the opportunity it provides for us to find meaning. Our being informs our doing. Focusing on being allows the doing to be free of fear, stress, and insignificance.
From Doing to Being
1) Practice mindfulness
Focus on each moment as it arises. Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as “a way of being in relationship to everything.” And that includes how to be in relationship to your thinking. Mindfulness is being mindfully aware of your thoughts as they arise, falling awake in the moment by paying attention on purpose non-judgmentally. See each moment as an opportunity to be self-aware, to understand your relationship to the world.
2) Practice Gratitude
Intentionally call to mind the good that is happening in your life right now. Have the people you love stepped up to support you? Is the day outside especially beautiful? How did your creativity brighten another’s life? Find ways to make your surroundings lighter, more uplifting; walk in bright sunshine, breathe the fresh clean air, see the beauty in nature, be light in how you relate to others.
3) Change Your Attitude
Your attitude is dependent on how you perceive the moment. It is the paintbrush of the mind, it colors everything. Your life, your world, is inside your head. The reality outside of you comes to life based on your interpretation of that reality. In other words, you create your own personal reality. Changing your attitude from threat to opportunity makes all the difference.
The life we live is ours to shape. Recognizing the being within us allows us to experience lightness even amidst stressful situations. When our lives feel heavy, a burden to carry with no end in sight, we allow the heaviness to weigh us down.
Or we can shed the burden and experience the lightness of being.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Henry David Thoreau