* This guest post by life coach and all-round gorgeous woman, Kate Swoboda from Your Courageous Life is the perfect follow on from yesterday’s post on intention, embracing adventure and BEING in the moment. Enjoy!
Consider this: How often do we start out on a dream and then give up if we run into several challenges or blocks? What would it look like if we weren’t attached to the end result, trusting that the challenges were part of the process? How much kinder would we be to ourselves if we were more invested in BEing our journey rather than “being on” a journey?
There’s a subtle, yet critical, difference between BEing your journey in life and being on a journey, and the difference between the two means everything when you’re trying to make real life changes.
BEing a journey looks like saying that you’re ready for change and holding that truth, without attaching to an idea of what it ‘has to’ look like at the end. You say that you want to run a business, write a book, or forgive your parents? BEing your journey means you stop having a preconceived idea of what that must look like. BEing your journey makes room for every dream you have to look differently than what you had expected.
BEing a journey is having a commitment to walking a path, not walking a path “if and only if it looks okay to me and I get what I want.” BEing a journey is the way of releasing an attachment to results.
BEing a journey creates more space for not giving up when challenges arise, because one can only give up on a task or a goal—we cannot give up on BEing. The emphasis shifts from attainment of some goal at the end—the job, the relationship, the weight loss, the awards, the money—and becomes about the deep process of living that happens along the way. This is about being present and alert to all of the beauty that you might otherwise miss, if you were focused solely on “arriving.”
BEing your journey is perhaps the most courageous and beneficial step you could take in your life.
Perhaps you’re reading this and thinking, “Wait a second. I want to change things. Now you’re suggesting that I let go of any attachment to changing things? Is this some kind of reverse-psychology? What am I going to get out of this?”
Here’s what we get out of choosing to BE a journey rather than focus on an end result, every single time.
* Less tension or anxiety.
* Less worry about “messing it up” (how can you mess it up if you’re willing to BE a journey and trust that the “messing up” could be part of getting you to where you want to be? Every step, every piece, has value when you choose to BE a journey.)
* Less control of others (You no longer need them act/be/say things/think a certain way).
* What you’re hoping to cultivate in usually comes faster and easier.
* When it doesn’t come faster and easier, you often realise later that the slower/harder path taught you a lot more and you’re grateful for it.
* When the thing you were hoping for didn’t come, without a doubt something even better, perhaps even something you wanted more, showed up.
* Freedom – a glorious feeling of freedom to just. be. without. the. inner. critic. tension. (Basically, the “bad days” just don’t feel as bad when you’re not attaching to them as some kind of evidence of being on the wrong path—instead, BEing is accepting that bad days happen, they’re part of BEing a journey, and that’s that).
Most importantly—a willingness to BE a journey has lets you set a goal and stay on the path. You don’t give up on things; you revise. Journeys are about moving along a path, not magically transporting from one point to another in a second. Because you allow that space, you see the evidence of change showing up in your life on a regular basis.
I invite you to start creating your life for yourself.
Create it by making connections with others and sharing your experience. Create it by staying more internal. Create it by deciding how much time you want to put in. Create it by getting a new, clean notebook or create it by chucking the notebook and writing on scarlet-red paper from the art store or by never writing down a thing but just carrying ideas through your day. Create it in a way that works for you, and be willing to BE a journey, to notice what works for you and what doesn’t, and to revise as you go along.
If you step into BEing a journey, you can’t “do it wrong”. Whatever shows up as “wrong” is the gift of noticing where something doesn’t work for you, and choosing a different path.
Kate Swoboda is a Life Coach, speaker and writer who helps clients to lead unconventional and revolutionary lives through practicing courage. She’s the author of The Courageous Living Guide, and creator of the Courageous Play and Create Stillness retreats–as well as The Coaching Blueprint, a resource just for Life Coaches. When she’s not writing, coaching, or leading retreats in Italy and San Francisco, she can be found sipping chai in libraries, buffing up on her Italian, training for her next road race, or getting all bendy-stretchy on the yoga mat.
You can find Kate at www.yourcourageouslife.com.
Ever caught yourself venturing down the path of “all striving, no arriving?” I know I definitely have, and there’s a marked difference in how much I relish achieving something when I haven’t taken the time to appreciate the steps and lessons along the way.
BEing to me means reading a book without reaching over to check Facebook on my phone between chapters. It means fully listening, giving someone my all. It means putting down the camera and soaking in the beauty of a new location first and foremost. It’s starting my day with an intention, meditating, practicing yoga, refraining from filling every moment with must-do’s, celebrating an accomplishments before diving into the next.
What about you? What does “BEing” look like in your life? I’d love to hear your stories, challenges and lessons learned in the comments below.
Image: Verily Mag
