For years I pushed myself over the edge with incessant doing!
There was a strong social template in me which came from a deep sense of unworthiness, causing me to subconsciously play out an internal dialogue in my mind. It said if I wasn’t successful then I wasn’t worthy.
Years went by playing these subconscious backing tracks in my mind without noticing them and I was driven to complete burn out and ill health.
It’s funny, isn’t it? Whilst struggling to surrender the universe pushed me to such extremes that I had to take stock of what was going on. It had to make me so uncomfortable before I could change the things that were causing me deep unhappiness. It had to cause such intense overwhelm that I could push no more, and it was here that I finally started to change.
Although this incessant doing and need to feel validated pushed me over the edge and into a chronic illness, it wasn’t the illness itself that caused the most amount of distress but my resistance to it.
Even when I was bed bound and being physically limited, I still pushed myself into action. Even when I was trapped in this state of paralysis, the mental dialogue took control, because I just couldn’t cope with the inaction. My templating had led me to believe that this inaction meant being a failure!
To me any moment of not doing equalled this FAILURE. I couldn’t even bare to look at the possibility of life without success and my vision of success did not include a chronic illness.
It became more and more evident to me that my notion of success was unrealistic and unhealthy because each time I reached a goal the target moved.
This belief only stopped when I healed deep wounds of unworthiness and started to live in a state of self-love regardless of the external validations.
I had to become completely immobilised for me to realise that these templates were not coming from my higher-self but from years of media conditioning and a deep lack of self- love.
Now I know that to be free we must go within and release attachments. Asking ourselves: Can I be happy exactly where I am-right now in this present moment? What would my life look like without attachments to certain things?
If you’re not sure whether you’re attached to something or not, simply imagine it dissolving from your life and notice the emotions that arise. If strong feelings of fear, desire or panic come up then you can be sure that these are attachments. It’s all well and good having these when things are good, but when our happiness depends on them, we have moved into an unhealthy state of being.
We might also start to look at how our environment gives us validation. Do we only feel proud of our achievements when someone else says they are worthy?
To reach our ultimate goals directly, we can ask ourselves: what are the final outcomes we want to achieve? Happiness? Love? Freedom? And look for a way to directly reach these without the middleman.
We can have happiness without a new car.
We can have love without a partner.
We can have freedom without a trip around the world.
These states always live inside us and can be accessed at any point if we can go directly to the emotion without the need for the object to see the true value.
Finding my state of harmony came from an acceptance that even if there is nothing more to life than this exact moment then I am perfect to whole and complete regardless.
It was only once I found acceptance in inaction, surrendered to the state of impermanence, and allowed myself to be present in the moment that I could finally release attachment and live in harmony with my higher self.