You must? Really?

My beautiful followers, I have been a bit absent here and I do apologise. As we all do, I had to get my head around a few things and so I had a bit of a reset phase. Triggered by a crazy doing phase, I noticed the importance of resetting and resting versus working and being productivity more than ever before.

I must

And now here I am with a topic that I’ve seen with me and I keep seeing with people I meet in my life, be it connections whilst traveling, my friends and family and also my clients. It is the phrase “I must” that we use a lot without even questioning it. Without even reflecting on the deeper meaning of that little, yet so powerful phrase.

The mental prison

With every “I must” I personally feel like putting myself into a prison and I cannot even blame a person other than me. Every time I say “I must”, I limit myself, I restrict myself, I block myself, I get stuck. I mean who wants to feel stuck? Exactly, so how about you get unstuck?

Do you feel like this is a difficult one? Well, I of course am honest with you and yes this is a process. Considering that we grow up with that mind pattern “I have to” “I must” “I can’t”, it is not necessarily an easy task to turn this mind pattern around, but I know it is possible. Because I have done it or lets say I am also in the process. I have increased my awareness a lot about what I say and the way I speak with myself. So, let me talk about a solution of finding your way out of your mental prison and into ease.

The solution

1. Awareness: Notice when you say “I must”. Be aware of when you use it and how often you use it.
2. Observation: See how it makes you feel when you say these two words “I must”.
3. Reflection: Ask yourself where this is coming from. Who says “I must”? Is it coming from you, from another person or society?
4. Replace: Now try saying the same sentence again replacing “I must” with “I want”.
5. Observation: See how it makes you feel when you say these two words “I want”.
6. Consciousness: Be fully conscious of what you say to yourself, how you speak with yourself and every time you say “I must”, gently replace it with “I want”.
7. Results: This little exercise will give you results for sure, if you keep practicing consciousness around your musts and wants.

Results

Be replacing the musts with your wants, you’ll gain awareness and clarity about your wants in life, you will free yourself up for the things you really want to do and overall you’ll feel better.

Now, go off and enjoy your life.

Love, yours Nina

PS: If you want to live a more joyful life and attain a greater health in all areas of your life, please feel free to reach out to me. In a complimentary “Get to know you” call, we will find out together how to best get you into your joyful life. Design your life for results, do not live it by default!

PPS: Please follow me on Instagram as well, where I share loads of life designing content.

 

 

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Don’t kill your enthusiasm

Pic by Bérénice Knöß from My Yoga Guide 

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