As we age, we close ourselves off to who we are which affects our ability to show up with curiosity and play. This week I again want to talk about the limitations we place on ourselves, but I want to talk about it from a different perspective.
How are you limiting yourself?
At any given moment you have the space to change direction. If you sit in the stillness (and presence) of what you are experiencing, you can bring loving, gentle, awareness to the experience. This moves the experience from an unconscious sensation you react to, to a conscious sensation you can respond to.
The latter has intention. The latter welcomes curiosity and empowerment. Your life, in this regard, when you attune to it, is infinitely malleable by the choices you make and how you show up to any momentary experience.
You have to notice that some unconscious force, some unhealed pain or mental blueprint of “this is how I should/ have to act” is influencing your perspective and your behavior. You have to notice the moment you are in and recognize that that moment is inherently subjective.
This is easier said than done.
Respond to your limiting beliefs with love
And yet, it is a fundamental component to mindfully showing up in your life from a point of self love.
Mindfulness at its core is nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment by moment experience. Showing up with non-jugdmental awareness is very different then just showing up and reacting to your experience. There’s space and that space is kind and objective. In that you could say that such awareness is naturally curious, expansive or calm because it’s not projecting a story onto what is happening. When you approach with awareness the beliefs and actions that limit you to a certain kind of perceived being, what you are actually doing is listening.
Learn to listen to yourself
Listening fully, attentively, does not seek to speak. You are listening, perhaps, to understand and to empathize rather than make a counter argument or distort what is being said by putting it into your own words. Listening, the kind that is true, is inherently objective, curious and open to what is being received.
This is how we can approach ourselves in non-judgmental awareness. We can listen and in listening try to remove ourselves from the natural desire to narrate our experience or put conditions on our experience or filter our experience through some kind of thought process.
When you can apply listening more fully to a moment, your understanding of that moment changes. You can see the limiting beliefs you hold, hear the story they tell of rejection or loneliness. The more you listen, the more you might also notice the feelings that accompany these beliefs: the anxiety or the sadness or even the anger. Again, instead of trying to make your argument in your head while the experience is talking, you can intentionally sit with what is being expressed to you.
With this awareness, you can hear the whole conversation and then in the pause respond.
What could the depth of your relationship with yourself be if you chose to show up for yourself in this way?
Listening is a tool to create the space we need to shift our actions, to change direction and respond with intention to what is actually being said.