Stress

Stress is caused by wanting our life or a situation to be different than it is. WOW - this is life changing information for me. I read it somewhere before and it really stuck with me. I had the privilege of taking 2 different yoga classes this am. The first was a yoga sculpt with my friend Roger (he is currently a commanding officer of a submarine) and the second class was taught by my friend Alexis (a sixth grade educator that is a true beautiful hippie at heart) I absolutely love both of these teachers so much. I share about my classes because during my yoga practice - I always get downloads of wisdom from spirit. (insight on life)

This morning I had a realization that my entire life was stressful because I have always been trying to gain acceptance from others outside of myself. When I was young, I craved the love and acceptance from my parents, then when I became older I was craving acceptance from my peers and especially boys, and later in life I was looking for acceptance from community and people I worked for. (and boys) In the thirty nine years of my life, I have been living in stress because I was searching for acceptance from others and living my life in a way that I thought I would get acceptance from others. What I have learned from this is that most of the time our goals and dreams in life aren’t even our own goals and dreams…… (from our soul) most of the time, our goals and dreams are a programmed set of beliefs that we think is our own, but what we don’t realize is that we go through life not even knowing who we are (at our core) or what do we really even like or desire in our life. We get caught up in what we were taught is the “ideal life” or “way life should be” based on old sets of beliefs that may be passed through family or society as a whole.

In the past year, I have really been working on disappointing others. Not in a way that is disrespectful, but because I am learning that it is better to disappoint other people, say no or no thank you to things that truly don’t make me happy. Only when we can have the courage to say “no thank you” to things that we really don’t want or that we are not one hundred percent committed to, can we learn to embrace our souls true desires.

Back to the Stress thing……. my whole life I have been a big “achiever” I was an MVP ball player, Band Soloist, and in the Military won more awards than I can remember, but none of this really made me happy. I have always enjoyed doing well and learning to go for it, but at the core of my accomplishments - I was searching for love and acceptance. I realized that other people’s praise didn’t “do it” for me. It has taken some long and hard deep diving into my emotions this year to realized that no one can love me better than I can love myself and no matter if the entire world thinks I am lovely and amazing - it really doesn’t matter unless I like myself first.

I have really enjoyed the process of letting go of things that I once thought I needed in order to live a respectable life. For example, I sold my home and literally moved into my camper to see what that feels like to actually have to ask people for help for the first time ever and I have realized that nobody cares what kind of home I live in. Actually, I have enjoyed better relationships with friends because I am not being a hermit in my cozy home that I once had. I have learned to be a bit more social and connect with people on a deeper level. Another thing I have let go of is the idea that I need to have some prestigious position in the world, I do not need to be important in the corporate scale of things, but I have learned that by just being alive and existing as a human being is all I need to be. I don’t need to be a boss of people, I don’t need to teach classes, I don’t need have any special skills, I have learned that be being a kind and compassionate person - I am really doing my souls work on the planet.

To be honest, I am pretty embarrassed about how I lived a few years prior (and I am still working on observing my judgement) I realized how judgmental I was of special people in my life, family and friends — I am not proud of that. What I have come to understand is when we are in judgement of anyone, it is truly coming from not accepting and loving ourselves. When we judge another person, we are actually taking out our own lack of self love on another person. I first learned this concept way back in 2011 (during my yoga teacher training) and it has been one of the hardest and I am certain longest lessons of my life. As humans, we are conditioned for judgement because of our past lives and survival needs - humans have been evolving to learn to survive (for example: do I eat this plant or will it kill me) However, now we do not live in those specific conditions, but we still carry those survivalist traits in our spirit. The practice of yoga and meditation is to allow us to see our brains programs and learn how we are thinking and acting so we can see what the heck we are doing and only from a place of understanding can we actually start to change.

It really hit me today during my yoga classes that my whole life, I have been jumping through hoops in hopes of gaining love and acceptance from others. What I haven’t realized until now is that only when we love and accept ourselves will we feel free from stress, and feel at peace once and for all. This is one of the main reasons I am very excited to go to this retreat center on the Big Island and do farm work and not have a car or be involved in society for three months. I am looking for some space to get a better connection with myself, a place to slow down and read all of the notebooks full of notes that I have taken in the past 8 years of studying yoga and myself. I feel only from the place of peace, will I truly be free from stress. No one will ever love me as much as I love myself. No one really cares about me as much as I care about myself. No one can heal me the way I can heal myself. I don’t have an agenda (or I am really trying to not have an agenda) I want to go through the next months of my life by learning to live in a healthier way, accepting who I am, not trying to please anyone else for the sake of their acceptance.

May we remember, we are a soul having a human experience. Our soul forgets its perfection (kind of like memory loss) when we are born as humans we come into this lifetime with lessons we want to learn, it is up to us to surrender to the lessons and say thank you. I have learned that if we fight the lessons, they will happen again, and again, and again until we can surrender.

Life isn’t a race to the finish line. Why are we all in such a hurry to go nowhere? I have lived my life in a hurry, in a competition, or a race….. I am tired of that, and I am ready to slow down. I am ready to slow down, continue to smell the fresh cut grass, the trees, hear the birds chirp, feel the fresh air on my skin, take deep breaths and continue to practice understanding and love for myself.

Remember, when we love and accept ourselves we automatically have a direct impact on the collective (the world) this is where understanding that we are all one is powerful. What we love and accept in ourselves, we love and accept in the world. This type of healing, heals ALL. So never for a moment think that the work you do on yourself isn’t powerful — because you have the power to truly change the world.