Life Lesson 2 From Rumi
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25 life changing lessons everyone can learn from Rumi
Life Lesson 2
Part two of life changing lessons from a post with a Rumi article-here we go with blog number two.
2. Your job is to live your life in a way that makes sense to you, not to “them”
Live your life in a way that makes sense to you. Seems pretty straightforward, live for you, not “them”. However simple and straightforward it appears, living your life the way that makes sense to you is not always easy. Most of us have other people in our lives that would like to be considered when you are making choices for your life because your choices will directly impact others. When you think of how you want to live, the values and morals that you have and expect from yourself and others, I invite you to consider something. I invite you to consider if you are basing your life on the belief systems that you grew up with or of those you are living with now or if they are true to YOU? I hear people all the time talk with pride about “being there for everyone else”, “I never have time for me” and they feel good about themselves or appear to yet they are in therapy much of the time when I talk to them? It is at that part of the conversation I like to point out that this does not seem to be working for or you would not be in my office. It seems to come as a surprise sometimes that giving your self-care up to take care of others is not a particularly healthy or appropriate way to life your life. However, this is what our society often pushes, do more, do for others, it is selfish to take time for you…this is often the underlying or overt message we get. I challenge you to make self-care a priority over doing and taking care of everyone else. Radical, extreme, self-care, self-care that you need and you deserve so that you can in turn help others and do the things that are expected of you in life. When we are overwhelmed, exhausted and emotionally drained we are not of much use to anyone. I have played this role really expertly in my life in the past and I admit I have to struggle to keep this from happening all the time. I am a people pleaser and I want people to like me and in the past I have taken on, done and accepted responsibility for things that are not my own. At the time it felt exhausting and draining and created a ton of resentment but I would get stuck in the “I am so helpful, people need me” thought processes. I played the pleaser for years but I decided to hang up my superwoman cape because I am not superwoman and neither are you! When I live for others I leave out the most important person- me- and if I don’t respect me then why do I expect that others will? We get caught up in “guilt”, oh if I do this or don’t do that then this person will be upset or angry but it comes to a point where you simply cannot maintain the pace of supporting you and everyone else. I invite you now to consider something else, with the exception of your children, every other person in your life right now has lived without you for a period of time and guess what? They survived, they did what they now want you to do or they found someone else to do it but this “help” is not helpful at all. It creates unhealthy and unproductive relationships with one person doing, working, trying and the other person taking and taking and taking and while it may seem that “I like to help- it is ok” it is indeed not ok and goes against everything Rumi is saying here. Once again I would like to invite you to make self-care a priority. The best way to change a behavior in anyone else is to model the behavior you would like for them to have. We learn from what others do so much more than what they say, don’t you agree?
“Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.”
Start a huge foolish project….wow how fun and scary. What would you do if you were guaranteed not to fail? Our society and most people’s family/home life teaches them to take on “safe and smart” jobs, projects etc. We succeed then or at least our chances of succeeding are pretty good. A huge foolish project with no concern to what people think of you, that sounds to me almost like a challenge. When I consider what that would mean to me I have a few initial thoughts surrounding work ideas, projects and such but what more is there? What is more important than work or projects at your house or garden? For me, right now, it is searching for my soul’s true mission, the reason for my experience here in this time and space. What kind of path am I truly supposed to be on? What will fulfill my soul’s desire? How does one go about discovering their soul’s mission? I am learning as I go. I know for me it includes quiet time, meditation, mindfulness, yoga and I am finding that being creative opens me up to hear, really hear what I need to hear. It would be easy for me to start a huge foolish project for work, create more programs, write a book, or anything along those lines- it would be easy at least compared to discovering my soul’s desire. It may be that I do these things or some of them on my journey but I want to stay mindful of the fact that finding out who and what I am is the most important thing I can do in my journey called life. It is something only I can do though it is and will be necessary to ask for help along the way. I am listening to what I am led to do and then I am going there, there where I am led, where I am supposed to be. I am learning to trust the process and know that this is the only way to find my way to where I belong, and wherever I am, at that point in time, is where I belong. I believe this to be true. How about you? What huge, foolish project, like Noah can you start…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you. I would love for you to share this in the comments and we can take this journey together.
love and light
Jamie
