Be Where You Are, Until You Are Not There Anymore

So I've had this idea I have toyed with for many years now. It might be slightly controversial, and perhaps not always effective, but it has always felt right to me. The idea is to be where you are, until you are not there anymore.

So, what does that mean?

There's always a place we feel that we should be. There are aspirations or expectations we feel we must live up to. Or decisions we feel pressured to take. Perhaps there's the subtle pressure to get married, have kids, or to switch jobs, take on a new responsibility, or simply to eat better.

Sometimes these are things that we truly desire and want. These are places we want to grow into and reach. Other times, if we really sat down and really thought about it, we would realise it we actually don't want to.

And that is okay. It is fine to not want to do the thing that is expected of you. It is okay to be where you are. It is okay to feel whatever you feel, and pay attention to that. When you fight against that friction and try to make a move before you have resolved whatever your issues or real thoughts around an issue is, you end up operating in an incongruent way.

You are forced to put on a face, play a role, and get it done, without addressing the underlying issues and problems, and eventually they spill forth. The scandal ensues, the receipts are revealed, the breakdown happens, the whole thing breaks apart.

What if we just embraced ourselves, and decided to be where we were, wherever that was without judgment. Not to give up and give in completely to it. Not to completely indulge our worst inclinations, but to first of all come to acceptance, an embrace of self, and then to truly think, examine and wrestle with the issues at play.

Be honest with yourself, who you are, what you feel, what you desire, what you fear, what you crave, what you need. In that honesty, we can decide what to do, to make real choices, to do what we must regardless of what it looks like on the outside. There will be always consequences, no action is in isolation, but this way it is a deliberately chosen path of action. We are able to weigh the benefits vs the downsides of every choice and figure out if we want to roll the dice or not.

We can choose to take certain steps or to abstain from them. We can choose the path that helps to drive a real substantial change. And that is the point of this approach. To ensure that when we change, when we evolve, it does come from a deep truly authentic place.

We can sit with ourselves and explore why we feel the way we do, what the conflicting issues are, where you want to evolve to, and what steps you must take to get there. Then we can make our move and when we change it is real.

We move different because in our bones we know different, we are different. it might still be a struggle, we might still fail. But we don't lie to ourselves, we are authentic, we are fully human and intentional, flaws and all.

And that feels to me like a much better way.