Each moment of life is a new moment, and we get to choose how to experience each one. We can label some moments as less useful than others; we can label a moment as boring, good, bad, nothing special, amazing; we can judge it as entirely purposeless or extraordinarily purposeful. The point is, we get to decide.
We have been fooled by a Western culture that has inculcated us with conventional responses to each moment and we have been trained through our education to affix the same labels to our life experiences as we perceive others around us to be doing. But we don’t have to follow along blindly forever. We can choose our own labels, our own beliefs, if we are consciously aware. This is far from an easy process, as it involves substantial un-learning. As anyone knows who has been addicted to anything, it is VERY difficult to quit old habits and form new ones.
When people realize that life is about the labels and the stories we tell ourselves and the beliefs that we decide to believe and live according to, the world is literally turned upside down. This is no small awakening. It’s HUGE.
A yoga teacher once said, yoga is an inside-out process, rather than the outside-in. Yoga isn’t like a beauty cream you can slather on your body to change. The work happens on the inside.
Discovering that we can change some of our most deeply held beliefs about ourselves and the world and live according to new ones is radically transformative. When you alter the internal landscape of your life, when you live from the inside out, when you trade in the glasses you were given by your culture for a new pair that you choose, the external circumstances of life transform and everything looks different–those same old faces and places in your life suddenly appear to be new places and new faces. Transforming the inner landscape radically alters the external landscape.
There’s lots of advice online about how to be happy or how to be “successful,” usually found in inspirational quotes, memes, and videos, or from motivational speakers, life coaches, and “successful” people, but here, at this site, my goal is to find and celebrate success stories of ordinary, everyday people who are living extraordinarily well.
I invite the people who are traversing the landscapes of life from the inside out to tell their stories here to inspire others to awaken. Because once you “wake up,” one of the first things that you might think to yourself is, “does anyone else know about what I just discovered?” Let’s connect, build a community, and genuinely subscribe to one another’s lives.
