I’m starting this blog post with a bold statement:
If you kill your enthusiasm, you kill your joy for life.
I have improved my senses a lot over the last couple of years and along with that my observation skills and mindfulness improved, too. Now, I have noticed more than once that people seem to have lost their enthusiasm. When I am aware and looking at other people, no matter where I am, it just seems like people do lack expression verbally and non-verbally. Maybe it is just a snapshot of a moment, but maybe it is the direction our society has developed to.
And so I was asking myself what people are usually most enthusiastic about.
It is what we call happiness.
Happiness arises when we see opportunities to fulfil our basic needs such as connection and body contact on the one hand, and growth, autonomy and freedom on the other hand. Basically this mean we are happy, when we have the opportunity to grow, in a community or by ourselves.
So then I was wondering, how it’s possible that we lose our enthusiasm? Do we kill our enthusiasm ourselves?
Honestly, how often do you experience a wave of enthusiasm coming over you?
Once a week, once a month? Where did our longing to explore go? Where did our longing to create go? Where did our childish enthusiasm go that made us curious, creative and enthusiastic?
I believe that as we grow older and as we make our experiences, we get stuck in routines and our brain gets rusty. We know our family and friends, we know how things work, we do our job, we have our hobbies, we basically do what needs to be done. But this way life palls. It loses its attractiveness. Life loses its life.
And this is strongly related to the meaning you give to things, to the world you live in. And whilst it’s good to overthink the meaning you give to negative and energy draining situations, it is worth re-giving meaning to the little and beautiful things in your life.
Re-give meaning to the little & beautiful things in your life.
If you don’t make a true effort in spicing up your life, everything will have the same meaning, the same importance. You have arranged and controlled your life so well that its enthusiasm was drained till death. You managed to control your life. You managed to function.
Now it’s time to alter course!
Just imagine you are still a child. Life is not about safety, protection and maintenance, right? Life is about developing skills, about exploring and learning new things, so that we can grow.
It is about expressing yourself, differentiating between the things you love and don’t like, it is about smiling into the world, it is about consciously experiencing things instead of living on automatic mode. It is about breathing new life into your life.
Don’t kill your enthusiasm! Revive your life! For true happiness.
Yours, Nina
NINA SADLOWSKY 