Do you feel in the core of your being that there must be more to life than what you are experiencing? Do you want your life to mean something? Do you want to be known and loved? Do you feel there is some reason you are here even if you aren’t sure what it is? THERE IS! I am convinced of it from personal experience and from the vast number of courageous people exploring the paths of joy and truth who have found the same.
But when you’re not feeling it - how do you get there? With setbacks and disappointments, It’s so easy to believe that’s just life, that’s the way it is that we have to deal with irritating circumstances and give up on our dreams of happiness. We get habituated and even addicted to the dissatisfaction that creates a sense of martyrdom and self indulgence. It’s not the only way though. A life of your dreams awaits you when you cross the valley of fear and negative habituation. So when you’re feeling dissatisfied, disappointed, completely jaded about life - what do you do?
Here are 3 approaches to addressing your dissatisfaction and finding freedom.
Change Your Mind
Change Your Actions
Lean in to Spiritual Transformation
Change Your Mind
This is a great place to start. We become habituated to focusing on the negative - and where what we focus and attend to grows. In stressful work environments or other shared experiences, it is relatively easy to connect through negative victim stories. It is common to find ourselves complaining about seemingly innocuous life circumstances - the weather, the professional football coach, celebrities, our co-workers. While it may not seem to be a big deal and can fly under the radar of our awareness, these complaints take up space and communicate with us how to feel. Shifting mindset involves identifying ONE THING to start we regularly complain about. Instead of continuing with the complaints to others or ourselves, we ask ourselves:
What can I learn from this situation?
This is a powerful question! And doesn’t require us to not be irritated but immediately puts us into a different brain space of openness and curiosity. Regular, repeated effort at asking this question is necessary. If every time you get irritated in traffic and stop to ask what you can learn from the situation, you will find extremely interesting answers ranging from practical to deeply introspective. Asking this question helps to lessen the negative self-talk occurring and can be practiced with things that don’t matter up to truly irritating things in our lives. It also frees us from the emotional stickiness (even sickening sweetness) of indulging in all the stories of victimhood. While we have the opportunity to change our mind from complaining to learning, a next follow up question is key for shifting into a mindset of openness and gratitude.
What in my life is going great right now?
Remember what we focus on grows - this question helps us identify what we love so we may be aware of how much of that goodness actually exists in our lives. Right now. Knowing our lives and this beautiful thing we are grateful for will inevitably change (or transform into something even better), the time is now to relish in the goodness of what it offers.
After practicing changing our mindset, we benefit from being more in tune with what is going well and what we need to learn. We are then in a better position to identify if there is actually something in our lives we need to change, which brings us to the second approach to transforming dissatisfaction into lasting fulfillment:
Change Your Actions
There are times a change in behavior and/or environment is necessary to live the life you want. My brother wisely said if he does not like something about his life, he either decides to do something about it or let it go. If you cannot “let it go” so to speak, take action on changing instead of keeping yourself in a rut of unworthiness or lack of self acceptance. This could range from small decisions about daily habits (use of your phone, drinking too much coffee) to big life decisions like a career or marriage. After having gone through the exercise of trying to change your mind about what you don’t like, persistent internal knowing could be your inner self communicating with you. Especially if you’ve built habits and a life around pleasing other people or doing what was expected - and not really living your authentic truth. It is essential to ask the question:
What is my inner self guiding me to do?
This takes patience and quiet. It takes consistent commitment to listening. When you do sit down to listen to yourself, what you need to change will eventually be so obvious you will not believe you had been ignoring your intuition so long. If you are unsure if you need to make a change, keep listening and waiting. Ask the follow up question:
What do I deeply desire?
See what comes up. Be open to it. Know that you don’t have to live a life of martyrdom at all. It serves no one, harms you, and likely hurts those closest to you as well. Opening up to the truth of your desire in life creatives energy, aliveness, and joy in you that magnetizes people to you.
If you’re doing this work and really not getting a clear message to change, it may mean it’s time to lean in.
Lean in to Spiritual Transformation
This approach is especially true if you are doing persistent internal work and not yet seeing the changes you desire externally. Very common for this to come with some frustration and even fear that your “work” is not “working.” I urge you to continue. For anyone who has gone through spiritual transformation, the phase of irritation, anger, and fear is part of it. Part of the change. Sit with yourself and smile, trusting you are changing. It is working. The seeds have been planted and are currently plunging their roots in the soil. They are actively growing, so much happening underneath the surface. No need to dig them up - lean in, wait, let those seeds grow. Shortly, you will see evidence of them poking out from the soil. Trust the process and continue.
If you are on this path and want to connect about which approach you need to take right now, reach out by email stephanie.rouch@gmail.com or visit the web at www.stephanierouch.com.
Comments