One purpose of living is to keep expanding your life by discovering more about who you are, taking new risks and exploring new experiences. Does this sound true to you? I have learned that life is meant to be a never-ending journey of expanding our definition of who we are and how we live our lives. We keep building on our experiences and gaining a clearer sense of who we really are. Our experiences help us to develop a greater understanding of who we are and how we want to live our lives.
We may find ourselves at a place where there is little expansion or growth. We are living the same routine that we have lived for years. We no longer seek new experiences--we are perfectly happy with our familiar routine. We fear any disruption in our routine life. We feel comfortable with knowing what to expect and not exposing ourselves to any new challenges. We know what our routine demands from us. We know that we can be successful in our safe routine. We have been told that life is supposed to be about establishing and maintaining a routine way of living.
Whenever we find our routine existence disturbed, we quickly try to deal with the new problem or crisis with the hopes of returning back to our normal routine. If a crisis creates confusion about who we are, we quickly try to grasp to our familiar ideas of who we are. We do not understand that our desire for maintaining a routine is actually shrinking our personal growth and the potential of our lives.
We are also shrinking our lives when we are unwilling to allow our personalities and our sense of identity to evolve. We are afraid to experiment with discovering more what we want and who we are. We ignore our instincts' guidance about how we can express more of who we really are within our daily lives. We are unwilling to allow our personalities and our sense of whom we are to be open and fluid. Instead we become locked into fixed personalities and identities that we developed earlier in life. We simply stop expressing who we are and we never allow our self expression to grow. We stop digging deep within ourselves to figure out who we are and what we want. We fail to see all the powerful ways that our personalities and identities are evolving from our experiences and our changing needs.
Our lives are shrinking when we continue to deal with the same life patterns. We have not learned what we need to learn from our experiences, so the situation returns to us. We may not understand yet that there is a greater purpose to all of our circumstances and experiences. Until we stop viewing our circumstances are meaningless annoyances, we are going to stay stuck. Until we learn how to change our perceptions about our circumstances, then we are going to stay in the same place. We have not learned to love and trust ourselves, so we may stay locked in a difficult cycle. If we are dealing with repeating cycles, we should not be angry with ourselves. We simply need to understand that we have some powerful, important lessons to learn. We have to break away from the familiar way of coping with and interpreting our problems. We have to see everything within our lives from a new fresh perspective.
How do we expand instead of shrink our lives? Here are some questions to ask yourself to determine if your life is expanding or shrinking: Do you listen to your instincts and actually act on its suggestions? Are you taking on new challenges? Are you stepping outside your comfort zone? Do you know yourself better? Are you comfortable with expressing your true self, even if it means marching to a different drum than everyone else? Do you have a healthier, more positive relationship with yourself? Is your personality and sense of identity open or fixed? Is your life expanding on a spiritual level? Are you creating a more meaningful life that allows you to be happy and serve others in some way? Are you learning from your experiences or just wishing them away? Are you dreaming bigger dreams? Do you have a larger vision for what you can do with your life? Are you finding positive lessons from even your most difficult experiences that allow you to get more from life?
How do we develop the courage to expand our lives if we have been stuck in a routine way of living for years? Listen to and follow your instincts. Our instincts are always guiding us to expand every day, but we largely ignore them. We are always in a state of expanding when we allow our instincts to guide us. Our instincts gently suggest that we take certain actions or consider new ideas. We usually talk ourselves out of following our instincts' suggestions, which may not always seem logical to us.
Getting more out of life means learning how to trust our instincts instead of relying solely on the analytical interpretations of our rational mind. Our instincts speak our soul's wisdom--our soul knows the big picture of where we are going before our rational mind can even understand it. We have to learn how to trust our instincts, even before we understand how taking a certain action will lead us to expanding our lives. Our instincts are always guiding us to take big and small actions that lead us beyond our comfort zone.
You can get more out of life by allowing your personality to evolve as you move through life. Resist labeling your personality. Be open to the idea that your personality is evolving--it is open and fluid. Who you were and what you did in the past may not always define who you will be in the future. Let yourself grow.
As we close out 2007, we can consciously choose to allow our lives to expand instead of shrink in 2008. We can check in with ourselves regularly and ask, "Is my life shrinking or expanding?". Understand that sometimes our lives will shrink or remain in neutral before our lives can expand. If we find our lives shrinking or remaining in neutral, it is not a reason to make ourselves wrong or put ourselves down. We need these periods to gather up our strength, learn our lessons and plot what we want to do next with our lives. Later, we will be ready and free to expand our lives in exciting, powerful new directions.
If you are open and ready to expand, listen to your instincts for guidance. Our wise instincts are always guiding us to where we need to be. Our instincts hold a vision larger than what we can see for ourselves at the moment. We simply have to trust the wisdom of our instincts and allow ourselves to be guided into a larger vision of our lives.
Give yourself permission to grow personally. You deserve more from life. Believe in yourself. Know that you are an unique person. Be open to expressing who you are in how you live your life. Listen to your instincts' guidance for how you can connect with a greater sense of who you are. Know that you are larger than your circumstances. Understand that your concept of who are will change over the course of your lifetime. Be open to discovering who you are as you move along your life journey.
Copyright©2007 Jeannine Robinson All Rights Reserved