“Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.” ~Lao Tzu
What if you had a recipe, a blueprint, an insider knowledge to craft each day and make it great?
What if you mastered the art of joyful living, so much so that you could teach it to your kids, your friends, your clients, your team or your acquaintances?
What if your daily enjoyment, the juiciness of every minute lived, was yours for the making… no matter what is happening outside of you, and it became so easy, that weeks, months and even years could pass with mostly lightness and joy in your heart?
If most of the time, the little ripples of annoyance and inconvenience had no deeper effect than a whisper on the surface of your wellbeing?
And if you could navigate peacefully the bigger, more impactful situations? Deal with grief, turmoil, and upheavals with equanimity?
What if you could be a joyful, creative Life Artist?
I know so many people (and I was one of them) who get frequently overwhelmed by events, people and circumstances, subjected to kneejerk reactions and affected, deeply, to the point of depression, anger, shame, frequent sadness, or chronic fear, or feeling like a fraud.
Triggerred by anything and everything happening around them, and by the very thoughts they entertain, day after day, about those things!
Trapped in a cycle of reactivity, always triggered, easily judging, often wary, unable to feel at peace for long and trying to assuage their desire for comfort with all kinds of emotional bandaids…
Like material possessions, alcohol, food, drugs, sex or working non-stop…
Binge-buying useless things daily to feel only a short relief that will be followed by self-blame, shame and regret… and debt.
Lording it over subalterns at work or bruising a spouse ego, or worse, to feel powerful only for a moment.
Or enduring the brunt of someone’s temper, day after day, with a sore stomach, not daring speaking up.
Eating junk food idly in front of mindless TV.
Getting fake body parts to be more attractive…
The spectrum is wide and the list is endless. In truth, NONE of these things gives lasting relief.It all comes from a simple thing: dreadful insecurity.
Deep unease. Emotional unrest.
Which comes directly from lack of loving self-awareness and an hyper-reactive ego to compensate for it.
A widely spread cultural misery. An emotional plague of sorts.
Has there been traumas, education, culture, circumstances to create that insecurity? You bet! And yet at all times, there is a way out and up…
One can leave the pain of “not good enough” behind, and learn to craft a new way to be.
A new way to feel.
I did.
I did because I wanted to live a better life if I survived the threat of disease.
It took inner work, guidance, time and patience… And it literally transformed my life entirely.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m no Buddha. Not even a zen monk. 🙂
But I am light years from where I was more than a decade ago, and had been all my life before that!
Sure I lose my footing sometimes and I get riled up for a moment, or I let some worrisome thoughts invade my mind for a little while, and my ego is far from dead… Hello there! Ego…
Yes, these things still happen, in small doses.
But all in all, honestly… every day is a gift, even the less good ones.
Every day I am happy and grateful to wake up to my life.
I love what I do. I love where I live. I love how I feel. I love learning always more.
And I love passing it on.
We can all be Joyful Life Artists. Make each day a beautiful piece of living….
Trust me. It’s not as hard as one would think.
And the good news is that we can have been existing for many years less than happy and wake up from it in a relatively short amount of time!We have that wonderful capacity to learn enjoyment and to cultivate contentment.
We can change our minds.
We can reinvent ourselves, we can choose differently.
It takes only a split second to have a breakthrough, when we are willing to look inside and explore new thoughts, new ideas, new skills… and at that very moment, we shift.
Most of us are fortunately in a nice place enough to enjoy plenty of our life, but not fully in charge of our inner weather.
The fact is as soon as we get better at it, thanks to very simple tools and practices, life becomes a lot lighter, and more spacious.It’s worth every effort, every minute spent learning, every step taken into self-growth.
My experience is that we can really become good at daily happiness, in a profound way.
And when we do, it ripples out in the world, always further, no matter what we do and where…
We become beacons of light. We create more joy. We lighten up others.
I invite you to look inside and check if you’d like to take a journey toward more balance, more happiness, more inner spaciousness… more emotional peace.
And if you find that you often come short, please do connect and tell me, what you’d like to create, what you’d like to let go off…
What you’d like to craft and master for yourself, of yourself, to be fulfilled, for your cup to run over…I’d love to help.
To your joyful life-crafting!
Emmeline