Ease On Down the Road

Flexibility is the Key to a Life of Ease

Things won’t always go as planned. Make a new plan. The road won’t always be smooth. Learn to navigate it anyway. Sometimes your strength will fail. Ask for help. You won’t always have the tools or skills you need. Allow yourself time to learn and grow.

You were meant to have an easy life. The problem is humans seem to be hardwired to complicate things, not because they need complicating, but simply because they can. Break the cycle, and get your stress down to a manageable level; one that doesn’t negatively impact your health and well-being, not to mention your productivity.

Begin by assessing what is and is not your responsibility. If you’re like most of us, you’ve taken on too much, and carry too many others who may not even want to be carried. Allow yourself to put down some, if not all of the load so you can sort it into piles: yours, and not yours. Then, pick up each item in the “yours” pile, and sort it again into “now”, “someday”, and “never”.

Push Your Limits

Photo-Spiral Tarot

By the time you finish the second sort, your load will be considerably smaller, especially if you’re brutally honest with yourself about what you really need to keep in that virtual rucksack of yours. Too often, you’ve chosen to carry something around in case you need it, when all it’s really doing is slowing you down.

That goes for people too. You may think you need to be available to help someone over life’s humps and bumps, but you’d serve them better by allowing them space to figure things out for themselves. The more you allow people to depend on your for the most basic necessities, the less they’ll learn to stand on their own two feet. Muscles need to be stretched and strained in order to grow stronger, and so do people.

Consider how great you feel when you finally accomplish a task that made you push your limits, and maybe even learn a new skill. Every time you remove obstacles for other people, you deny them not only the sense of accomplishment, but the opportunity to learn and grow. Meanwhile, you’re creating a burden for yourself by taking on their failures without any of the opportunities, or successes.

Letting Go is Hard

Granted, you’ll get some push back, and maybe even guilt when you turn those baby birds of yours out of the nest. Once they realize they can not only fly on their own, but choose their own direction, they’ll be grateful you finally got out of their way.

Yes, that’s right. By allowing others to keep depending on you, you’re impeding their growth, and preventing them from exploring roads you might deem impassible or inappropriate. You’re forcing your own beliefs and experiences on them, without the background you acquired in order to form those beliefs; without the lessons you learned from the experiences. You’ve blinded them to other possibilities, and worse, to their own potential.

Whether you realize it or not, the effort you put in to keeping them flying blind, and depending on you for navigation is exhausting. It’s like trying to keep 15 balls in the air with only 2 hands. Pretty soon, everyone is running into walls, including you. You’re stressing out because you’re unable to keep everyone out of harm’s way, no matter how hard you try, or how diligent you might be. You blame yourself for your failures, and take on everyone else’s blame too.

Simplicity is Key to a Life of Ease

Make a pact with yourself to simplify your life. Choose to focus on your own path, and allow others to find their own. I’m not saying abandon everyone completely. Instead, offer guidance when it’s wanted or needed, but stop forcing your beliefs into the choices they’re making. You might even learn something new by watching them navigate the world by themselves.

For years, I unconsciously tried to impose all my beliefs and plans on my daughters. Ultimately, it drove one away completely, and the other pushed me away while she figured out which direction she wanted, and needed to go. She knew she didn’t want to live my vision, nor my limitations, but until she pulled herself out of my immediate orbit, kept getting stuck.

Both daughters needed the opportunity to pick a direction, stumble and fall, and pick themselves back up again, a little wiser for the experience. Telling them what I believed would happen on a particular path not only deprived them of the opportunity to discover there were other possibilities, but locked them into a pattern based on my skills and abilities.

Allow Others to Set Their Own Course

Once they spread their wings and flew their own trajectories, they discovered skills, abilities, and talents quite different from mine. Their uniqueness resulted in different outcomes than what I’d achieved, and opened new doors I was unable to envision.

Meanwhile, being left to focus solely on my own life allowed me to find, and follow paths I’d deemed impassable for myself. I’ve charted new courses, fallen, and gotten back up. I’ve learned what’s important to me, rather than devoting my time and energy to pushing or pulling others along.

Best of all, I’m learning, slowly but surely, to live a life of ease, where the work I do fulfills me, and is accomplished on my own terms, instead of dictated by others. I set my time, my rates, and who I will or will not work with. I allow myself to take on projects that require research on my part so I can give my clients the best product possible.

The Gift of Freedom

It’s a freedom I never believed I could achieve. Yet it was always there, once I got out from under the unnecessary responsibilities I took on for others who didn’t want me there in the first place. Until I allowed myself to let go, I wasn’t sure how to get out from under self-imposed duties which were never mine in the first place.

Today, I live a life filled with possibilities instead of stress. I’m doing what I love, and loving what I do. Best of all, I get to watch the people I used to impede as they bloom and grow in their own right, and often, teach me a few new tricks along the way.

Grateful for the Struggles and the Lessons

My gratitudes today are:

1. I’m grateful for the lessons I’ve learned from the people I love the most.
2. I’m grateful for the freedom to pursue my own new roads instead of trying to map out someone else’s.
3. I’m grateful for a life of ease, and excitement where new roads open up at each new turn.
4. I’m grateful for a double-edged skill set which lets me mix things up and avoid boredom.
5. I’m grateful for abundance; opportunities, new clients, learning, growing, inspiration, motivation, dedication, education, friends, love, joy, happiness, harmony, peace, health, balance, philanthropy, and prosperity.

Namaste

 

About the Author

Sheri Conaway is a Holistic Ghostwriter, and an advocate for cats and mental health. Sheri believes in the Laws of Attraction, but only if you are a participant rather than just an observer. Her mission is to Make Vulnerable Beautiful and help entrepreneurs touch the souls of their readers and clients so they can increase their impact and their income.

If you’d like to have her write for you, please visit her Hire Me page for more information. You can also find her on Facebook as Sheri Levenstein-Conaway Author

Ease of Life is a Conscious Choice

You Have a Right to Ease

I learned fairly late in life I deserve a life of ease. It doesn’t mean I sit around eating bon bons all day and expect the world to drop everything I want or need on my doorstep. Instead, it means my life needn’t be an uphill battle all the time. But it took some serious soul-searching on my part to figure out what path would make me happy, fulfilled, and wanting to  out of bed every morning to make it happen.

By the time I was 58, I knew it didn’t involve working according to someone else’s time schedule, or even being around people every day. I realized I’m task driven rather than inclined to run my life according to numbers on a clock. Give me a task and a deadline, and I’ll meet or beat it every time. Tell me I have to sit at a desk from 8 to 5 with an hour off for lunch if I’m lucky, and every cell in my being rebels.

I’ve yet to give myself a regular bedtime, for crying out loud! I go to bed when I’m tired, which typically falls anywhere from 11:30 to 3. Admittedly, I’ve made great strides in getting up at about the same time every day, but the battle wasn’t easily won until I offered myself incentives for doing so.

Doing What You Love, and Loving What You Do

Slacking off all day long because I don’t feel like doing any work is all well and fine once in awhile, and as a reward for major accomplishments, but I found it was as damaging to my soul as trying to march to the beat of someone else’s drum—or time clock. As with everything, there’s a happy medium. It took a lot of trial and error to find mine, and frankly, it’s still a work in progress.

Slowly but surely, I’ve been adding tasks to my daily activities, but never with a specific time on it. For example, I try to get my daily gratitude posts done by 10, and my Facebook Lives before noon. As I add more to my early morning routine, those parameters continue to prove viable.

If the time comes when they don’t, I’ll reassess, and either change the parameters, or move something that’s hindering success. With no one standing behind me demanding I be somewhere, or do something according to their own, mostly arbitrary schedule, I’m free to adjust and expand in my own time and space.

Live by Your Own Rules

Being in control of my whats, whens, and wheres creates an ease no amount of cutting back on expectations could do. In fact, I’m inclined to increase my expectations given the flexibility of my schedule. Knowing I can work for hours on end if I want to, or take a day or two off because I’ve gotten ahead of my self-defined schedule are incredible motivators.

For a creative like me, it also means those pesky writer’s blocks are virtually non-existent. As long as I sit in front of the computer and put my fingers on the keys, I know words will flow. I might have to prime the pump a bit at times, but usually it’s because I’m stuck in my head, and need to throw my analytical, critical side a bone so it’ll get out of the way and let my creative side wander where it will without restraints.

Essentially, ease of life doesn’t mean acting like you’re retired, or on a perpetual vacation. It simply means finding what you love to do whether or not you’re getting paid for it, and when and where you do it best. Until everyone is a clone of the same “perfect” being, what works for you needn’t be what works for me, or anyone else. You spend far too much time forcing yourself into someone else’s schedule as it is.

Learn What Suits You Best

As a child, you go to bed and get up when your parents tell you to. You go to school during certain hours, do homework, eat dinner, bathe, and even play on someone else’s schedule. If you go to college, you might choose your classes and the times they meet, but invariably, you’ll need one that meets outside your prime time.

And don’t get me started about your first job, or even a lifetime of them. As long as you’re working for someone else, you’re at the mercy of their idea of a work day. Sure, there are certain employers and industries who offer a flexible work schedule, but they are the exception, not the rule.

I learned I work best when left to my own space and time, and left alone to do it. Let me work from home on my own computer where I can get a snack or cup of coffee whenever I like, and don’t have to share a bathroom. I guarantee you’ll get a lot more out of me than when you expect me to show up looking presentable at a certain time and perform like a trained seal between certain hours, whether there are tasks to be completed or not. I proved long ago I get more done in 4 hours of working from home than I’ll ever do in 8 or more hours of working in an office. The people-yness alone keeps me from doing my best work.

Love What You Do

With telephones, online meeting programs, email, and instant messaging, I get to set my own work space, both physically and temporally. If I need to focus, I can shut all external annoyances off for a little while, checking in only when I hit a stopping point. Even today, one of my favorite tools is DND. I administer it frequently, and liberally. Seldom is anything so urgent it can’t wait an hour or two for a response.

If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. Marc Anthony

Sadly, our society is stuck in an antiquated value system that says you have to work hard to succeed, and anyone who doesn’t can’t possibly be successful. Yet how many people follow their passion, and work becomes a labor of love, a game, or playtime instead of drudgery? It doesn’t mean you can’t create a schedule for work vs. recreation time. But if you have to put 40 or more hours a week into something, who says you can’t enjoy it?

Not Just for Creatives

Sure, it’s easy to see why writers and other artists love what they do, and want to do it. Why can’t the same be true for engineers, accountants, or even lawyers? I knew a woman once who found joy in being a file clerk. Getting paid to keep things neat and organized was her happy place.

Why shouldn’t everyone get to find their happy place, work-wise, and pursue it? If nothing else, they’re more likely to put their heart and soul into their work, thereby creating a better product, whatever that might be.

Yet many people are brainwashed into fitting a mold from infancy. Some accept it as truth, and plod through life in a job they hate, looking for ways to numb the anger and frustration killing their spirit and poisoning their soul. Others recognize there’s something wrong, but can’t quite put their finger on it. The lucky ones recognize they’ve been fed a pack of lies, and do their best, with mixed success, to break the mold and define their own parameters.

Find the Courage to Break the Rules

I’m inclined to envy those who figure it out early, but realize I got there in my own time. There were things I had to experience, and a frustration level I had to reach before I had the courage to question what I’d been taught, and ultimately, toss it all aside. In the process, I had to be willing to accept a certain level of risk because stepping off the beaten path often comes without a safety net.

Breaking society’s rules means you’re willing to fall and pick yourself up instead of having someone there to lend a hand. It means building your own support system and community who recognize and appreciate the courage it took to beat your own path knowing there would be lots of trial and error before you hacked away the weeds, and created an inhospitable environment for regrowth. Before you created an environment that supported the seedlings of your own crop, allowing them to grow and thrive.

Despite the hard work breaking new ground entails, the flow of life in your own trenches instead of someone else’s creates an ease no one except another trail blazer understands or appreciates. It’s not a path you take if you need or want understanding and validation from anyone but yourself. The payoffs are self-satisfaction and a life of ease. Are you comfortable with those rewards?

Gratitude Helps You Find Your Own Way

My gratitudes today are:

1. I’m grateful for the choices I had the courage to make.
2. I’m grateful for the people I attracted who are supportive of my choices whether or not they agree with them.
3. I’m grateful for a life of ease that’s mine to direct.
4. I’m grateful for flexibility which feeds my creative soul better than anything else.
5. I’m grateful for abundance; love, flexibility, creativity, ease, joy, friendship, support, compassion, kindness, comfort, peace, harmony, health, balance, philanthropy, and prosperity.

Namaste

 

About the Author

Sheri Conaway is a Holistic Ghostwriter, and an advocate for cats and mental health. Sheri believes in the Laws of Attraction, but only if you are a participant rather than just an observer. Her mission is to Make Vulnerable Beautiful and help entrepreneurs touch the souls of their readers and clients so they can increase their impact and their income.

If you’d like to have her write for you, please visit her Hire Me page for more information. You can also find her on Facebook as Sheri Levenstein-Conaway Author