Photo by Nathan Ziemanski on Unsplash
Do you ever catch yourself dreaming about your ideal life? Gazing off into the distance looking longingly at a new horizon where everything will be just as you want it to be?
Maybe you dream of your ideal home, where you’ll create food to nourish the souls of your ideal friends, who enjoy the ambiance you’ve created through the curation of delightful pieces collected from adventures around the world……….
Or you dream of the day when you’ve finally escaped the demands of your employer and are earning money doing work that matters to you……..
Perhaps you simply want to get your latest project off your desk and then you can start living again…….
Whatever your version of ‘Paradise’ looks like – that place when everything is ‘just right’ and you’ll finally start to invite friends over/develop that business/be happy/learn to salsa. How is placing that on the horizon far, far away impacting on your ‘real life’, right now?
Perhaps it’s a little off putting to consider how different our reality feels from how we imagine it could be; perhaps it feels that there is little point in even daring to dream, to consider the possibility of something different. Maybe there’s a sense of resignation that “this is just my lot in life.”
So, what might happen if we allow ourselves to experiment, just for a moment and offer ourselves a gentler word than resignation and open up to the possibility of acceptance? Accepting life just as it is, is different to resigning ourselves to situations that don’t support our growth.
To use the Buddhist teaching that ‘resistance is persistence’ we can bring greater acceptance into our lives as a way of opening ourselves up to different possibilities, different perspectives. Simply the act of letting go of our attachment to a specific outcome (Paradise), can allow us to feel a greater sense of calm by opening our eyes to other ways of being – freedom in action!
From a coaching perspective, the idea of acceptance doesn’t mean that we give up on our goals and dreams. Rather, we can explore the possibility of creating goals that support our long term ambitions that allow us to both accept and appreciate the journey. The practice of acceptance creates space for us to cultivate the idea of adding some juice to our life right now, rather than waiting for that ‘one day’ sometime in the future.
In essence we can bring more balance to our lives by accepting what is, noticing what matters whilst planting seeds for future growth. With patience and over time we can move away from ‘all or nothing’ thinking and embrace opportunities to make different choices that enable us to live fuller lives as it happens – because one thing for sure is that life is going to happen anyway!
For some ideas on how to start considering how to create your own personal ‘Paradise’ read part 2:
HOW TO CREATE YOUR OWN PERSONAL ‘PARADISE’ – PART 2
The Midlife Mash Up 
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