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Life can be beautiful and wonderful and challenging and painful.
We experience so many different kinds of experiences, some that uplift us and some that rock us, some that alter how we view ourselves and the world.
As long as we have an open mind, and we’re curious and interested, there’s always space to learn and grow and discover. Each moment is an opportunity to awaken, to open our eyes, to see with more clarity. Each heartbeat is an opportunity to connect to ourselves and to the world around us.
We can open our hearts and our minds and seek to move with more awareness and understanding. We can shift our beliefs and let go of patterns of thinking and habits that don’t serve us. We can move with intention, consciously choose how we move and react to the world around us and the thoughts and feelings that move through us.
We’re all doing the best we can to move through life, in each moment. We’re learning as we go.
Here are six tips to help us walk our paths in life with more ease:
1. Sit with difficult feelings.
We all experience difficult feelings sometimes. We experience anger and grief and sadness and frustration and a whole range of other feelings. When we learn to sit with these feelings—feel them, watch them, allow them to move through us—we can learn from them. We learn how to navigate them, how to feel them, what they’re trying to tell us. We feel them for a reason, and when we sit with them, hold space for them and for ourselves to experience them, we learn why they’re arising, what lingers beneath them.
2. Accept what is.
We are where we are and what’s happening is happening. Often, we resist what doesn’t feel good in life or what we don’t want. We resist pain and loss and situations that don’t fit what we’d prefer. But whatever is happening is happening—it just is. If we can allow life to be what it is, we release some resistance; we release the tension and energy of that resistance. It doesn’t mean we have to like what’s happening, and we can certainly work to change our situations in the ways that feel right, but it feels more easeful to move from a space of also accepting where we are…because we are where we are.
3. Learn to watch and observe ourselves.
When we learn to watch and observe ourselves—our thoughts, our feelings, our knee-jerk reactions, our beliefs—we learn more about ourselves, we gain self-awareness, and we develop the ability to choose how we react to what is happening within us and around us. Instead of automatically giving into triggers and habitual patterns and knee-jerk reactions, we can consciously choose how we want to act.
4. Listen to our intuition.
We all have a silent space of wisdom within us, a voiceless voice that is there to guide us—a place within us that knows what’s right for us and what isn’t. It’s important that we learn to listen to this voice, that we move with what feels right to the deepest parts of us.
5. Look for things to appreciate each day.
There are so many things we can appreciate each day, even if we’re going through more challenging periods. Maybe it’s a cup of coffee or a nap or seeing the beauty of nature. Maybe it’s breathing fresh air or a moment of silence or a sunrise or a conversation with someone we love. Maybe it’s feeling accomplished at work or cuddling a pet or drinking a refreshing glass of water. There are little beautiful moments in our lives that we can appreciate each day.
6. Learn to reframe and shift our perspectives.
We all experience life through our own filters, through our own perceptions. We’ve all had experiences that have shaped who we are, and these past experiences may color how we are living our lives now, the way we view things, see things, understand things.
When we can look at situations with an expanded perspective, with curiosity, with an openness of being willing to learn or see things differently, even more challenging moments can feel more spacious. When we can look for the opportunity, the lesson, what we can learn, when we can reframe to seeing an experience through a potential, we open up space to experience life in new ways. We expand our view of life and our thinking.
~
AUTHOR: LISA ERICKSON
IMAGE: MIRAALOU/INSTAGRAM
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