Life’s a b*tch and then you die..(?)

Well, think about your struggles and contemplate this for a minute… What would a flower seed become with only sunlight? Doesn’t it also need rain to grow and flourish, and become the beautiful flower it’s meant to be?

Do you feel like your job drags you down and stresses you out, thinking “Is this really the way life’s supposed to be?”. Or maybe you’ve even lost your job which can be a very scary thing. When your worries take over think of small children, they are just naturally spontaneous and happy. Their life is full of magic and creativity. You might say that it’s normal since they don’t have all the responsibilities we have as grown ups. You’d have a point, but is there a way to take care of the responsibilities AND keep the same playful mindset?

Something happens when we start school and this pressure creeps up on us that we have to be like everybody else in order to fit in. We see TV shows and adds around us that show us how we should look, dress and behave. As we are sociable creatures we desperately try to belong and be accepted. We’re always chasing something and we never seem to feel adequate. After school it’s time to make a career. Our job then easily becomes our identity, and if we lose that job – God forbid – we feel like we lose ourselves. All of this creates a lot of stress and we tend to forget the joyful little child inside of us. Who we really are, what we love to do and what makes us happy.

We all have the choice to go down the path of what society and the people around us would approve of. But if we’re not happy there sooner or later we will end up feeling depressed, having a burn out, a heart attack or another serious illness because we are not walking the path we’re supposed to walk. The question so many of us are asking ourselves is “What is it that I’m supposed to do in life?”.

It’s not always easy to discern, but think about what lights you up? What makes you feel good and vibrant inside? What comes naturally for you? Maybe it’s something you loved doing as a child but later forgot about? We tend to think of different positions and jobs we see around us and we say “Well, it’s too late to take that up now, I’m too old and I don’t have the skills”. But if we think outside of the box we can see that there might be a way that we can use our passions to earn a living in other ways than we’ve thought of so far. If you give it some time, and focus on different possibilities you might get new ideas. It’s like when you buy a new car and all of a sudden you start seeing the same kind of car everywhere. The only thing that changed really, was you shifting your focus. If we stop for a moment and really listen to what our intuition is saying about what we really want to do it can change our lives immensely. It may lead you to notice an article, or something you hear or see that might give you the best idea you’ve ever had.

I desperately needed change. My life felt heavy and gray, and it had been “raining” on me for quite some time. But this rain pushed me to finally write down what makes my heart sing, without thinking of jobs, just what lights me up. What showed up on that paper was pretty much this… “Traveling, Singing, Dancing, Writing, and Shining a light in peoples’ lives”. How in the world could I make a living out of that..?

I wasn’t a professional dancer nor writer, but I kept my mind open for different ways of looking at it. Sitting on the bus going to work one day I read an article about a Physiotherapist, Anna Duberg, and her research into the health benefits of dancing. A wave of excitement washed through my chest and I thought “this is it!”. I had a strong intuitive feeling that I needed to contact her to see where it would lead me. It turned out she gives Dance Instructor Courses. By taking this course I could now use my passion for dance and shine a light in the lives of teenage girls with stress related psychosomatic symptoms.

Some time later I stumbled upon an Online Writer’s Workshop with the renowned publishing company Hay House. I followed my intuition once again, took the course and started writing. I could see the clouds slowly drifting away and my life shifting from shades of gray to more sunny, brighter colors. I am now growing and evolving doing the things I wrote down on that piece of paper that day…things that light me up and make me flourish.

Sometimes we need to go through heavy rain for us to wake up, and big changes can be scary. But life is change. It is changing all the time and every second. When we dare to defy our fears and let go of the need to control everything… When we let life have its own timing and its own ways, we subsequently realize that even if we have gone through a difficult experience, life was actually right. It eventually got better than before..!

So ask yourself…what lights you up? Write it down and then be open to new creative ideas, even if they seem a bit crazy. Write down anything that comes to you. Sooner or later it might drastically alter your life..! Just play with the idea for a moment… What if the little children are right? What if we could trust that life actually is full of mystery and magic..? 😉