Life is exponentially more demanding than it was just 20 years ago. Even with all the passwords we have to remember, and the sheer demands on our time, it is easy for our consciousness to lapse into worry and fear. It’s difficult to find a resting space for your thoughts with the constant bombardment of troubling news and the dings and beeps coming from our phones.
What can you do to bring yourself back to your center?
How can you free your mind from the stressful borage of things you feel you “have to figure out?”
Where is the pathway that will liberate you from feelings of scarcity, afraid you won’t have enough…?
How can you rise above and rediscover your most abundant life?
These three abundance-creating activities are available to everyone. Pay attention to the one you feel is MOST unavailable to you and consider exploring that activity first. When you defy what you “think” is not for you, the resulting wave of inspiration and empowerment can be pure bliss.
- Immerse yourself in nature
“Shinrin-yoku” is a Japanese word for “forest bathing.” The benefits of surrounding yourself with the natural world are so effective that it is a pillar of preventative medicine in Japan. In the United States, studies (University of Michigan, Berman) found that simply walking around outside in any kind of nature, especially trees, increased memory and attention.
When you are in nature there is a softening of your focus, as opposed to studying a spreadsheet or reading through emails, and your perception expands to receive a full palette of stimuli. Your awareness expands to take it all in and, with it, you tap into the “everything” around you, rather than the details in front of you.
- Create
Our Western Capitalist culture has herded us into a mentality that believes there is something “out there” that will fulfill us, make us happy, or give us that “mountain top experience.” The truth is consuming does not lead to deep satisfaction. Creating does.
Life is an inside out job. Creative activity does something similar to our forest bath, it loosens our grip on the need to control and achieve, and conjures up a sense of exploration, discovery, and excitement.
When you choose to paint, sculpt, dance, play the guitar…you are likely detaching from your professional, achieving, earning a living type mindset and attracting the experience of play, of being present, and of following your own inspiration or intuition.
Creative activity exists to balance our logical, linear, performance-driven activity. It also activates a deeply rooted element of human nature as we have created since the dawn of time. It is only in this modern era that we could dare to utter the words, “I’m not creative.”
In her book Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert writes, “A creative life is an amplified life. It’s a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner—continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you—is a fine art, in and of itself.”
- Meditate
The benefits, physical, mental and emotional, of meditation are widespread. And I also know how frustrating it can feel to try to meditate and not be able to let go of the to-do list, etc. Here is another way to look at it. Closing your eyes, breathing deeply, and “doing” nothing provides invaluable contrast to your day, physically, mentally and emotionally. So even if the to-do list continues to scroll through your consciousness, give yourself a gold star for the sheer feat of stopping!
Next, breathe into your center and ask to witness the abundance of directions your mind can travel. Is there any end to what you can ponder, imagine, or daydream into? Try to find the end of that “thread.” In the process of pausing, going within, freeing your mind from the daily grind and asking these questions, you are reconnecting to the energy of abundance that is always right there.
As life gets more and more complicated and the stakes feel higher and higher, I know that it is possible to up level our mindset and our lifestyle, just as we regular update our computer software. Inspired Living is available to everyone and its abundant nature resides within each of us.
