Surprise! You Already Have The Life You Always Wanted
May 3, 2018
Confessions Of A Writer Who Doesn’t Write
April 14, 2019
Your good friend “Life” has been knocking on your door with an important message for you for a very long time, and you’re not answering.
Have you ever taken an expedition where you tour through some really old castle, or a cave, or a jungle? If you did, you probably had a tour-guide. How nice was it to have that tour guide to walk you through the whole thing? Can you imagine trying to find your way around one of those sites by yourself? It would be so easy to get lost, and we most likely would.
That’s how many of us do life. We are walking through it trying to find our way around with minimal to no guidance. You might be finding your self-guided tour very exciting. Or you might be feeling lost, asking yourself, “how did I get here?” or “where am I going?”
Perhaps you were lucky enough to have loving parents and other people in your life that really care about you who always offered you their guiding words of advice. The only problem with that is that the advice they are giving is advice that either worked well for them, or they think will work well for you. In other words, people mostly give you the advice they would give themselves. But you are not them. There’s no guarantee that their provided advice is the best route to follow, nor that it will produce a result as fulfilling as it was for them, because you are you.
As far as tour-sites go, life is a pretty broad site to tour through for 80 years. How great would it be if you had your very own private tour-guide programmed specifically for you; one who’s guidance applies precisely to you 100% of the time.
I have good news and bad news.
The good news is you actually do have your very own private tour-guide in life!
The bad news is that you most likely don’t know how to listen to it.
I can’t say I know for sure where the messages come from, who is sending them, or why they are there in the first place. I can only speak from my own experience. Many people would scuff at this idea, but consider there is so much more to this life and the universe than what our infant field of science has been able to explain.
However, the evidence that I do have is that if you carefully start to pay attention, look closely, and discern, you will begin to hear life’s messages to you yourself. So read on!
I’ll make this short and practical by going straight into the three ways Life is trying to communicate with you starting with the most conspicuous to the most subtle.
1. Your “I Should” List
This one should be loud and clear for everyone. These come pretty straightforwardly in your own inner-voice. Just today you must have had a couple of these. They sound something like “I should do this, I should do that, I should call this person, I should request this at work, I should go to bed now, I should start reading that book, I should start doing x.” and so on and so forth. These are your own suggestions to yourself, and they come from a deep place of conviction. In other words, you have certainty that it would be a beneficial thing for you to do. That’s why they come across as “should’s”. “Should” is a pretty strong word. And you should listen to those.
Recommended Action: Over the next 7 days, write down in a note on your phone every “I should” that comes up in your mind. You will be surprised at the plethora of good advice that you have from yourself.
2. Recurring Experiences
These messages from Life are even more valuable than the “I should’s”. While the “I should’s” point to future actions you can begin taking now, your recurring experiences are situations you have already experienced or are currently experiencing. They will just take a little closer observation than your I-should-list.
Chances are there are situations that you have recently faced, or are facing, that seem very similar to a prior challenge. Maybe you keep dropping the ball in the very same place with one of your projects, or in a certain aspect of your own life. Maybe you keep having what seems like the same argument over and over again with your partner.
Deeply engraved into these situations lie very valuable lessons for you. They are showing you the main obstacle that there is for you to overcome at this current stage of your life. For better or worse, these experiences and situations will continue to show up in an eerily identical fashion. You might get frustrated and ask “Why does the same thing keep happening to me?” Now you know why. Life is preparing you perfectly for what you say you are committed to. And it is just as committed as you or more, to making sure you learn the lessons that will be necessary further down your journey.
Recommended Action: Think back to your most recent recurring experiences and be on the look-out for the next one. Once you identify it, first ask yourself “What is Life trying to teach me here? What am I supposed to learn from this?” Once you discern your lesson, take bold action to finally overcome this. Your findings will be worth gold for you.
3. Novel Thoughts & Epiphanies
These are the toughest ones to learn to hear, but often the ones that will bring the greatest value. While the other two are a lot more grounded in reality as we know it, these seem to come from a different place. If you ask me, they are a true gift that Life is giving you. Unlike Recurring Experiences, they are not limited to life-lessons. This is your tour-guide in her purest form. And she might be guiding you towards a career change, a new adventure, more love in your life, or towards your most authentic self-expression.
They will often show up as an abstract little bread-crumb trail for you to follow. The best way to distinguish them, and to know they are a message from your “Life-tour-guide”, is that these ideas and thoughts will feel semi-foreign in your mind. They are not a usual thought like the vast majority of thoughts in your head. If you pay close attention, you will notice this. Other aspects of these novel thoughts messages are that they will resonate deeply with you to the core, they will seem uplifting, and they might even bring forth a sense of responsibility as they just might offer you a whole new endeavor to take on.
I most often experience these in the shower, or in the gym, during an outdoor walk, or during meditation. They’re often the source of much of my writing. Some articles I’ve written, I don’t even feel like I came up with them at all! I just heard the idea and wrote down what I gathered. Hear them out!
Recommended Action: Make time to listen. I’m not saying sit there and do nothing all day. I am saying, make sure you have some time to spend with yourself. No phone, no music, just you and the world. And when you are present to a novel thought, don’t be so quick to discard it and go back to what you were doing. Contemplate it for a short while and you might want to make a note.
Those are the three main ways Life is attempting to communicate with you. The most peculiar thing about all this is that the more you pay attention and take action in alignment with the messages you are receiving, the more you will see Life’s smoke-signals to you. Don’t get disappointed or resigned if you don’t see or hear any of the messages at first. Be patient. Have fun with this.
Everything in this world loves you, and it’s rooting for you. It’s on your side and it’s trying to help you win your game. I invite you to take on discerning Life’s messages. They are all around you. Feel free to share with us in the comments. I would love to hear what you find!
Happy listening!
