Great Awakening #2The Great Awakening #2 About a year ago, I was standing in line at the DMV when I had a great awakening. The person at the front of the line, who was currently being helped, didn't have the correct paper work and forms and was asking a lot of questions. As the minutes rolled by, I went from feeling mildy irritated to very angry. "Why is this person taking so long? I have somewhere else to be", I thought angrily to myself.
Then, my inner voice asked me a key question, "What do you want your day to be like? Do you want to be annoyed? Or, do you want to be happy and filled with gratitude today?" All of a sudden, I had a great awakening. I saw how caught up I was in the busyness of my life, always striving to get more done than the day before. I could see that I spent most of my time getting a lot of tasks accomplished, but I realized that checking off my "to do" list wasn't making me happy. With this great awakening, I saw that very little time was spent doing what made me happy or being with the people I love. "This is an insane way to be living my life", I thought. Since I believe that perception is reality, I decided to change how I viewed time. I shifted from thinking about time on an hour-by-hour basis, to thinking about time in weekly, monthly, annual, and even entire life-span segments. I started evaluating everything that I did from this new view point. Did it matter if the beds got made today? What if it waited until tomorrow or next week? On my death bed, will I care if the beds were made or not? This helped me to take a step back and think about what is really important to me and to figure out how to live a simpler, more enjoyable life. Want to experience your own great awakening? Here are some steps: Figure out what is really important to you. It can be helpful to think from the end of your life and work backwards to the present day. What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind? What do you want to remember about yourself and your life? What do you want others to remember about you? What do you want to do to make this world a better world? Write down your answers on a piece of paper. Put the answers to the big questions at the top of the page, leaving room beneath each one. Next, for each big answer, provide one idea of how you can achieve your goals on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis. For example, if it is important to you to have strong family connections (big answer), then you may want to write down 1 relative that you will email or talk to on a weekly basis, or perhaps you would like your immediate family to have Sunday dinner together. On a monthly basis, you could have a family fun day (go to a park, the beach, the movies), and on an annual basis you could send out a family newsletter or holiday cards. If you have the means, a yearly family reunion would be a great way to reconnect. Every day, do at least one thing that is important to you. Doing something that is important to you may take an hour out of the day...which means you will have to decide not to do a couple of 20 minute chores or errands in order to have the time to do what you really want to do. Accept the fact that a simpler life may mean a messier house. This one goes hand-in-hand with the point above. Creating the time to do at least one thing that is important means that other things won't get done. Instead of making sure the house is clean before working on your personal development plan, you should work on your personal development plan, and only designate 20 minutes to clean the house every day. When the 20 minutes are up, you will simply pick up with the chores again tomorrow. Giving myself two hours a day to blog means that my laundry often sits on top of the dresser, rather that in the dresser drawers. But, I sure feel happier every day and sleep better every night since I started writing.
Be in the present moment. One of the easiest ways for how to be happy is to be in the present moment. Notice each breath you take, curl your toes in a shag rug, or feel the pleasure in stretching.Pay attention to what you are currently doing, instead of allowing your mind to race around with a lot of different distractions. Focus on the task at hand and allow everything else to become a blur. Since it can be easy to step out of the present moment and get distracted, turn it into a game: set the goal of remembering to be in the present moment at least five times a day. At the end of the day, ask yourself what your five moments were. Did you have a present moment while driving the car? While walking in the hallway? While experiencing the feeling of pulling on your socks in the morning? When you slow down and take the time to be fully aware of each present moment, you allow "space" in your life for you to experience your own great awakening.
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