As a shy kid, I had to overcome all of my internal struggles, from speaking up my opinions to going alone to different places. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do.
For some reason, I’ve expected things to be easy. I’ve learnt now that that’s not the case with life in general.
How come we have these expectations of life?
Is it good marketing that is selling us on this expectation? Maybe.
But what would’ve helped me, even more, would’ve been honest people sharing their stories, their real stories, without the fluff and their added details (just to make the story more appealing).
Some say: truth hurts. But what hurts, even more, is having a false expectation, a made-up reality based on false or inaccurate facts of life. We all suffer because of this. There’s no way around it.
We create this fantasy world in our imagination of what the reality looks like, then we start living, and we realise that the reality is so different. Why do we all do this? Or the better question is how can we change that? How can we speak the truth, live in integrity and create a reality that works with our human condition?
Raising awareness. That’s a good start. Once we know and see reality as what it is, then we can make different choices. As Spock would say, It’s only logical. 🙂 Yes, I’m a big fan of Star Trek 😄
Is this path easy? No. Will it give you the best results? Maybe. But it’s definitely a place to start, a better place to start.
We suffer when the reality isn’t as we expected it to be. So we’ll change our expectations. Better fact, let’s just remove our expectations.
Note here: we don’t remove our standards, just our expected outcomes.
There are things in our control and things outside of our control. Why suffer over the things that are outside of our control? Easier said than done, I’ve fallen into that trap myself. And I’ve suffered. It wasn’t pretty.
So, where to start?
Here’s a practical exercise my coach shared with me. Take a piece of paper and divide it into two columns. On the left write: Things I can control. On the right, Things I can’t control.
Start writing on these lists for about three minutes each.
Then stop and read your list. What can you truly control, what can’t you control?
OK, now you have two lists of items. Focus on the items that you can control (which are typically your own actions, beliefs, behaviour). The rest is just out of your control (the outcomes of your actions, the weather, other people, death, the sunset/sunrise, and so on).
When I did this exercise, I just felt at peace. It gave me the clarity of mind that I so needed and wanted.
I would love to read your thoughts on this after you’ve created your two lists. What have you’ve learned? What new questions or thoughts came to your mind? Leave me a comment below with your answers 🙂
Speak soon!
Ana
