New Year New You?

So that’s around 30 years of failed resolutions, goals and commitments to further compound my view that I needed to change this, change that, improve this, improve that, stop this, stop that, be this, be that, learn this, learn that…

…before I could feel I’d earned the right to fully enjoy my life or accept myself.

Crazy eh?

So a few years ago I quit making resolutions and striving to be different and started spending more time… well… just ‘being’.

Enjoying the moments.

Savouring precious time.

Being really thankful for the simple things.

Working my way through the various painful emotions that bubble up from time to time and learning to be OK just as I am.

Choosing where to place my attention; focusing on pleasant thoughts and letting the others float away.

I find it incredible even now that spending just a few minutes each day quietly meditating can bring such incredible freedom and transformation.

Gone are the emotional peaks and troughs I used to have to wrestle with – where every frenzied, fragile high would be followed by a black hole of depression. My poor, knackered wreck of a body - burned out from constant stress, anxiety, not sleeping properly and churning negative thoughts and beliefs over and over. The need to please others to make me feel worthy. The need to achieve to make me feel worthy. The need to be someone else to make me feel worthy. The need to tell tall tales to make me feel worthy. The need to put myself down because I felt unworthy. (Did I mention I struggled with a sense of unworthiness?) The feelings of guilt (and, of course, unworthiness) for being a crap friend, crap son, crap brother, crap father, crap teacher, crap provider, etc. etc. etc.

Yep, thankfully all those messed up beliefs and issues are pretty much gone. Oh, there are always more things to work on, more things to discover of course. But it’s a totally absorbing process and once you start, I don’t think you can stop.

So there’s no need for goals, commitments, timetables, schedules. It becomes a habit. A bit like cleaning your teeth, in the spirit of Nike... you just 'do it'.

A gradual unfolding; peeling back layers.
Liberation.
Freedom.

If you fancy learning to meditate and learning to be ‘OK” just as you are, leave a 'yes' comment below and stay tuned for notifications from our website at www.theliferaft.org.

In the meantime, whatever way you choose to find happiness in 2020, here's wishing you all the best.

Rob and Sally
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