I feel that my last post failed to pinpoint another confusion and further reminder to live in the present and act in each moment as I am moved to.
By amassing information to ‘publish’ when I felt it was good enough (aka when I felt good enough about myself!) I was limiting the infinite possibilities of my impact on the world. That sounds very arrogant to my ego self, but in essence we are all unique individuals who have something unique to bring to the world. Let me explain…
In the back of my mind I had an intent to one day publish an e-book, or an e-course or some such in order to share any knowledge that I have picked up over the years. But I was forcing it. I thought I needed to read lots of other people’s blogs and postings, learn how to do it (properly and perfectly!) and then attempt it myself.
But I have been putting the cart before the horse.
What if there is a new platform, a new paradigm, a new outlook that hasn’t arrived yet?
The fact that I was waiting to be good enough, to have enough information, to be professional enough means that I am not ready yet.
And who knows what form that will take?
I am where I am and that is perfect. I will be drawn to what I need, to what I need to share with others, even if that is not in any published or practical form. I can relax knowing that all is as it should be. I am neither behind, nor not good enough. What a relief!
Over the last few days I have been in a very dark place. Caused by obsessive thinking. I know that outside circumstances don’t cause our stress, but I was totally identified with comparison-to-others-thinking which spiralled into all my default destructive conceptual thoughts.
Whilst I was going through it, even though I had the awareness that it was my thinking that was causing the distress, I still believed all I was saying about myself. It took a lot of determination – or surrender – to accept that I was creating my own despair and to know that I had the wherewithal to make different choices.
In an effort to escape from myself I resorted to voracious reading of texts and books that I thought had the answers, consuming information from website after website in a desperate bid to feel calmer.
Finally, I was so overloaded with other people’s thoughts and advice and suggestions that I went into information overload and had to let it all go.
If there was a message in all this (which, actually, I no longer believe there is but continue to find!) it would be that this process was echoing my innate knowing that, for me, I had become too bogged down in content.
And thinking that content was the answer. It was similar to how I felt as a child. There were times when I wanted – no, needed – to know all the facts in the world in order to feel in control, or to be loved and approved of. Of course I didn’t have that awareness then, I simply felt driven by some impulse to learn everything, an impossible task.
And even currently in my life I am still driven by this need to amass and hoard and collect information. Information that I think may be useful for the future. For others. So I print it all out, and store it all up, so that one day I can put it all together in a Life Manual which I can release to the world…
As if!!
I realised during this last bout of bleakness that I have to let this thinking go. Both the excessive thinking itself, and the concept of collecting information until I am ready to make sense of it.
To hold in my insights, my evolution, my ideas will only prevent further knowledge coming through. And writing about what struck me months ago would only be stale and stagnant. And wouldn’t actually make sense anymore as it would have been incorporated into my way of being in this moment.
This is a frightening reality check for me – a further pointer towards the imperative-ness of living in each moment without having the back-up of old and outdated identities and without knowing what the future holds.
Yet I know it is the only way ‘forward’. To have less security (an illusion anyway) and more faith. And a knowing that I don’t have to hold on to anything as all that I need will be given to me as and when it is right.
I have been struggling with the belief that there are things in life which I am not doing because I can’t, because they are too overwhelming, too stressful, too hard, or simply too something …
I wonder if I am not doing them because I don’t actually want to….
That perhaps I feel I should be doing them to be ‘normal’, to be like everyone else, to not feel odd ….
I wonder if all the things that I am doing is enough. For Me. Right now.
That thought brings a sense of relief. And it means that I can relax into doing those things that are a unique expression of me. In a style and way that only I can do them in.
By giving myself permission to only do those things which move, inspire and motivate me, I can stop the incessant sense of dissatisfaction that seems to pervade my life and which keeps me continually ‘on the run’. If I can really allow myself to slow down and be present with what lights me up I can stop the continual searching for something else, something more, something better than. Which of course never delivers anyway.
What a suggestion! What a challenge!
But one which I am going to adopt from this minute on….