Are your ready to break the habit of waiting?
Then head this way.
Twenty-four hours ago, I began to write an article in which I had no idea where it was going to go. This is not unusual. My topics come to me typically in morning meditation when I find myself closely connected to Source. At that time, my ‘here’ slightly overlaps with ‘there’ in order to gain wisdom and insight that would otherwise be beyond my reach.
Sometimes I take that idea and expound on it solo. I apply my thoughts. My ideas. I shape it. The result is usually underwhelming. It’s only when I find Flow that something of value manifests. And that value is really nothing more that me recounting some Truth provided to me by the Universe.
My charge is to take that Truth and make it physical through these words. To put it out there. So now I write when those conditions are present. Writing without it is just noise.
What is done with these words and the energy they contain is entirely up to you though. You are the reader and possibly a messenger capable of spreading this information a little further across the network than I can alone.
My last piece focused on being scared to live, moving past that fear and then figuring out how to break the habit of waiting.
Waiting is just existing.
Now, as I have come to understand more through meditation and more than a few spiritual experiences, ‘living’ (as compared to existing) might not be what you think.
Living isn’t necessarily traveling to Nepal or India to be instructed by Buddhist monks. It isn’t quitting your job to climb the 14 Peaks or starting a disruptive company, which you sell for millions and then retire at 38. It isn’t writing a best selling novel and then get invited to promote it on the Today show or Late Night. Nor is it the podcast you are working on in your spare time that is going to explode so you can quit your day job. while you interview and hang out with cool people.
That’s the marketing version which everyone thinks about from time to time as either the goal or some opportunity that has passed you by and which you’ve missed.
That isn’t living. Living is much simpler. Living is simply practicing your truth. But what is that truth? What does it look like? How do you know what it is or isn’t?
Ahh, now you are onto the thread. The journey to discover that truth and then to practice it is the definition of living. It’s about Truth. Yours.
Marketing fuels desire for things we want but not necessarily the things we need. This includes the definition of ‘living’.
To illustrate this Truth, let me tell you a quick story. Stick with me. It’s worth it, I promise.
In my last piece, I talked about being in a very dark place several years ago. This was a place where it was nothing but existing. There was no living. In that piece I outlined my full belief that I was in the last chapter and the rest of my life would be a struggle. I was going to be lucky to just move sideways and given where I was, I was surely not lucky. Unlucky people shouldn’t hope for things to miraculously change. We are dealt a hand of cards and must play what we are given, no matter how much it sucks.
Friends, luck has nothing to do with anything. Luck as we understand it doesn’t exist. Possibility exists. Probability exists. Luck, no. You need to recognize this.
But at that moment, I could not see nor understand this concept. Enlightenment was a luxury I could not afford, or so I thought. I was unlucky and a victim of my circumstance. For that moment, I had given up. I had no control. Or so I thought.
On a particularly bad day, I fell to my knees and in a moment of pure despair I pleaded to be free of the prison I was trapped in. Escape the person I saw in the mirror, escape the body I felt now trapped in. Escape the miserable experience of helpless waiting.
So I asked for something I didn’t expect to ask for. Freedom. That was it. That was the ask.
Some time passed and nothing.
Then suddenly a series of synchronistic events that the universe lined up for me unfolded. I had two appointments with the Universe that I decided to show up for. One was a work opportunity. The other was a health opportunity. Fortunately I recognized the synchronicity of both. I was given some obvious signs so it wasn’t too hard, even for me.
What those appointments were is unimportant to this story. I will tell that tale another time. The point is I was given two opportunities in quick succession that required me to take action. It was almost as if the two were tied together in some way. So I followed where they led and just kept moving.
Things changed. Looking back, they changed dramatically and quickly. I didn’t realize how much, or really appreciate it until recently.
This is why breaking the habit of waiting is so important once you move past the fear of living.
Habit keeps wanting to pull you back to the middle, one foot in, one foot out. Hedge your bets.
Fear takes you all the way out, straight to the bottom. Living in the middle…waiting…is squandering the gift of living that we’ve been given. Existing. Being scared to live is ignoring that gift all together.
Never ignore a gift when it is given.
Anyway, back to the story. I had taken my two synchronistic appointments and the gears of the universe were turning, as such, my reality was shifting.
Fast forward a year and a half. I looked like a different person. Actually I was. I was less of a person. I had shed weight (a lot) and I had shed all the beliefs, actions, costumes and fakery that had weighed me down and taken me to the bottom. I was simpler and more authentic than ever before. And this transformation occurred over a matter of months. I wasn’t done by a long shot, but it was one hell of a start.
So there I was sitting at a cafe in New York City in the bright morning sun. I was in town for something else but had the chance to meet up a former colleague and investor. We hadn’t talked since the business went boom.
I was dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, another normal day anymore. My friend showed up in a perfectly tailored suit. We had scheduled 45 minutes over coffee to catch up and it was good to see him when he finally showed up as he was 15 minutes late.
During our time together, which was cut 15 minutes short, his phone never ceased alerting him to some new work distraction. So we ended up with about 10-12 minutes of constantly interrupted conversation. He asked me how things were and I told him of a life experience that was very different from when he knew me.
On the surface, he was to be envied. A senior position at a major hedge fund. A swanky flat on the Upper East Side, a place on the water in Exeter, New Hampshire. You know, the stuff we all tie to ‘living your best life’.
Having to go, he took his first two steps to walk away, but then stopped. Not looking back, but instead over his shoulder, he said to me, “you know you have what everyone wants Steve.”
Surprised by this comment, I asked him what that was. He replied simply, “Freedom” turned his head forward walked into the crowd.
It took me quite a while to make the connection, sadly. The universe had delivered on my request for Freedom but because of habit or drifting back to the middle, I failed to recognize its presence and beauty of this simple yet amazing gift.
Freedom. It is the catalyst I have been given to break the habit of waiting.
I am no different than you. I don’t have any special privilege. I may even be later to the realization than you. You may have more time. You may have the same or less here to move beyond either the fear of living or the habit of waiting, who knows. It doesn’t matter anyway.
What matters is that you ask for a pathway to a higher form of living and then take action and slowly but steadily break the habit of waiting.
Here is how to start:
Ask for help aloud and with sincerity and purpose.
Recognize the truth of where you are and speak that truth without fear.
Be kind to yourself. Be patient, but not too patient.
Be kind to others. Do not judge, project or manufacture perceptions.
Meditate. Do not hold onto energy, positive or negative. Recognize it, experience it for what it is then release it. It is not yours to keep.
Journal. Write automatically and regularly.
Know that opportunity always hides in plain sight. Recognize synchronicities when they occur, otherwise they will pass by unnoticed.
Be grateful for every experience because some of what you will experience is not what you think it is.
Find your tribe. Connect and congregate with the right community of higher energy people walking the same direction as you.
Finally, be brave enough to be authentic. Find the core you and be true to that. It’s in there, but maybe has just been painted over once or a dozen times. Do not read from someone else’s script, wear a costume or play a role that is not yours.
I have faith in what happens when we stop waiting and build the habit of living proactively and authentically, without fear. I have seen enough glimpses of it to know it is worth the effort.
