Life can be a complicated, exciting, messy, yet beautiful journey. I can honestly say that writing about this journey, my journey, and being brutally honest about it is hard, but also freeing. This is the story of how I came up with my life's philosophy. A philosophy that revolves around peace, balance, and joy. At its' core, my philosophy is:
Live with PEACE in your heart, BALANCE in your life, and JOY in your soul.
As you read on I hope you will find comfort in knowing you are not alone, that we all have our individual struggles in life and each one is very real. I hope you will find a light shining for you that will help guide you to finding your peace, balance, and joy. I hope you will be inspired to uncover your genuine self and in turn spread light into this amazing world. We all, at some point in our lives, find ourselves wondering what the purpose of life is. Well, the answer is both simple and complicated. The answer is unique to each and everyone of us. But, finding that answer lies within having a life that is filled with peace, balance, and joy.
The Struggle:
I was 40 years old before I realized that I was not living my genuine life. I had spent my life trying to live up to everyone else's expectations of me. While I have really always had a pretty good life, there was also a lot of it that was not genuine. That left me feeling incomplete, lost, and often alone. Living your life in a constant state of trying to be everything to everyone will lead to burn out and only letting yourself down. I learned this lesson and found myself at one of my lowest points in life when I was 36 years old. I loved(and still do) my husband and family, I had a comfortable home, and all of my needs were met. Yet, I had so much pain filling me that I had lost sight of those blessings. I remember the day vividly. I was sitting at a stop light in my car. I was feeling so overwhelmed. I suddenly broke out in tears and kept repeating, "God, please help me. Please, please help me. I don't know what to do". I was filled with fear, filled with loneliness, filled with uncertainty. Because I had lived so much of my life trying to be what everyone else thought I should be, or was, I had hidden my true self from the world. I had built up walls around my heart and around my perceived failures. When this happens, people typically find some way to deal with the internal pain. Some turn to alcohol or drugs, some to eating disorders, some to shutting the world out, and other destructive patterns. They may see them as a momentary "fix" to their internal pain. For me, it was "stuff". I bought lots and lots of stuff. What made it worse was that I hid my spending and debt from my husband. I found myself in this vicious cycle of feeling lost, alone, and broken. This would lead to me going out and buying something that made me feel better. I did feel better for a day or two, but then the feelings of being lost, alone, and broken would return. I couldn't talk to anyone because that would mean that I had failed them and their view of who I was. So, I locked my pain away and turned to "stuff" to fill the void. It had gotten to a point that I was using credit cards to pay off credit cards. I had to tell my husband what I had done, but I was so afraid of losing everything that truly mattered in my life. Eventually, one night I did tell him. Shock was his first response. But, he didn't yell. He simply took me in his arms and told me that we would get through this together. Yes, he was angry with me, and I was totally expecting anger. It was his love and support that rocked me, that were my saving. It was after that night that I began to start my healing process and uncover my true self, my essence. This included sitting down with my husband and creating a strict budget, going to therapy, learning mediation techniques, love and support, honesty, lots of journaling and time in nature, and a ton of internal review. I basically had to learn how to rewire my thinking and living process. While it was hard, it has been so very worth it. This process is ever changing, growing and evolving. I now embrace it.
The Concept:
At its' core, my life philosophy revolves around three words. Those words are peace, balance, and joy. I believe that we need to live with peace in our hearts, balance in our lives, and joy in our soul. But, what does that mean? Well, I will break it down a bit for you. But, as you read and take in these ideas, remember that your journey is unique. You need to find what works for you and listen to your inner light. I will begin with living with "Peace in your heart". What is peace in your heart? Having peace in your heart means that you are at peace with all that you are - past, present, and future. We all have things in our past that we would like to change, that we wish would never have happened. We wonder why we have to go through trials and hardships. We make mistakes. That is part of being human. The "trick" is learning how to embrace those hardships and mistakes. We need to accept them for what they were and look to see what lesson we have learned from those experiences. For the reality is, that every hardship and every mistake gives us some lesson to learn. It is those lessons that pull us through other difficult times in life, help us navigate around hardships, and even help others going through a similar situation by allowing us to be compassionate and understanding of what they are going through. We need to learn to forgive ourselves and others so we can heal(and forgiveness can be an ongoing journey too, but an essential one). We also need to be at peace with who we are in the present. Maybe you want a different job, are struggling with a health issue, are financially insecure, feel lost, and so on. We can't focus our time and energy on wishing for some other life circumstance. Instead, we need to focus on loving what is right in our lives, being grateful for our blessings, and finding comfort in the reality that we can work to change things in our life. So, it is imperative that we be at peace and live mindfully in the present. Then there is the future. Wow, we spend a lot of time thinking about and trying to be perfectly prepared(or not) for the future. We worry about saving enough money, following our dreams, landing the perfect job, and in general just about anything else we can think of in regards to our future. In this aspect of peace, we need to realize that we have absolutely NO control over the future. It is good to plan and prepare for it. It is absolutely good to have dreams and goals and work towards those. But, you must always know that you can never control the future. All we can do is live fully and mindfully in the here and now. All we can do is be true to our essence and live a life that stands firmly in the present, learns from the past, and dreams for the future.
The second part of my philosophy is to live with "Balance in your life". This is perhaps one of the trickiest and hardest parts of life. So many things pull at us for our time. There is family, work, community, chores, errands, appointments, sicknesses, vacations, deadlines, taking care of our health, and of course trying to squeeze in some time for ourselves. That is to just name a few things that compete for our time. The basis of balance in your life is to find what is healthy and works for you. Some of us are introvert, others extroverts, and some in between the two. So there is no really "one size fits all" way to finding balance in ones life. It is also important to remember that finding and keeping balance is an ever evolving process. It is essential that we remember to be flexible, but it is also important that we have a schedule of sorts so that we can be sure we find time for that which is essential to us living fulfilling lives. This balance should include time for family and friends, time for work, time for errands/chores/repairs, time for your creative juices to flow, time for physical exercise, time for connecting with social groups, time for yourself to simply be, and time for your spiritual health. In addition, you may have other areas that you may need to include that are unique to you. It is important though that you take the time to plan out/schedule your time. This gives you a framework to ensure that you have time, adequate time, for everything in your life. Remember that this schedule can be changed and it is simply to serve as a way to be sure you have balance. By creating a schedule you can edit the times that you dedicated to things as you learn how much time those items really need. Balancing your time is so very important to living a life in which you can feel fulfilled.
The third aspect of my philosophy is to live with "Joy in your soul". This is one pretty straight forward, but is also the one aspect of life that we most often don't address. As mentioned in finding balance, including time for what brings you joy is imperative. This includes things that truly light up your soul. Again, this will be unique to each and every person. This joy can be found in both time spent with others and time spent on our own. When it comes to filling your life with joy, you simply need to sit back and meditate on the things that make you smile, the things that make you want to dance or sing or laugh. You need to do things that bring joy to you while being with others and that bring you joy when you are on your own. Perhaps you love to volunteer. Maybe you love playing a sport. Do you have a group of people that you really love to spend time with? The options are endless! When you have time to yourself, what do you like to do? Be outside in nature? Maybe read a good book, paint, go to a museum, or go for a long run? Again - we are talking about nearly endless possibilities here. Take some time and really think about what brings you joy and then incorporate it into your life. Make joy a essential part of your life. With joy, it is also important to note that having dreams and following those dreams will bring you joy. It probably means you will have to schedule a plan to achieve those dreams and goals, but as long as they are genuine to your essence, then the path should bring you joy. Be sure you fill your life with people that bring you joy, activities that bring you joy, and a mindset that you are so very worthy of having joy in your life.
To wrap it all up. These three aspects of peace, balance, and joy are truly intertwined with one another. When we are at peace with our past, present and future we are able to clearly focus on finding balance in our lives. When we have balance in our lives we know that we will find joy to fill our souls. When we have joy in our souls, we are at peace with our life. So, my wish for all of you is that you are able to take the time to discover your unique self, your essence. In doing so, may you find that you are living with PEACE in your heart, BALANCE in your life, and JOY in your soul. Namaste' and brightest of blessings.
Comments