It’s common to come to a lull in life sometimes. It could be for any reason. So often when a plateau confronts us, it means it’s time to re-evaluate. Look at any pause as a gift and let it show you what you’re capable of doing.
“Reshaping life! People who can say that have never understood a thing about life—they have never felt its breath, its heartbeat—however much they have seen or done. They look on it as a lump of raw material that needs to be processed by them, to be ennobled by their touch. But life is never a material, a substance to be molded. If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your or my obtuse theories about it.”
―Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
1. Re-connect with your childhood you.
What did you love to do or think about when you were younger? There is always a kernel of truth in those beginnings. It’s common to get involved in the minutiae of daily life. If you stop and slow down, however, and close your eyes––and remember what you loved to do when you were 8, 9, 10. You might receive a spark of that initial energy. It’s there waiting for you.
“Anybody with artistic ambitions is always trying to reconnect with the way they saw things as a child.”
––Tim Burton
2. Step back from your current reality for a bit.
Spending time with yourself and turning off the everyday chatter will allow you to feel freer and have more clarity. Turn off the TV. Take a quick walk. Take a bath. Go to a cafe. These ideas may seem simple enough, but, they work. These actions get you out of your head and into an open space where clarity awaits.
“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
––Rumi
3. Write to yourself.
The act of writing to yourself with pen and paper sends new signals to your self that bypasses any form of current monotony. The writing doesn’t have to be any specific length. It can be a paragraph. It can be one page, five pages––any number. Write it with pen and paper though. Not on the computer, not on your phone. The act changes your perspective when you see what you’re thinking in written form.
“The greatest discovery is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.”
––William James
4. Believe in yourself.
When you re-align with you and your passions, believe in them. Start at a base level of thinking. Erase all else from your mind. Think about what you want to do. Now, believe it is possible. Believe you can do what you want. It all starts with self-belief. The rest falls into place.
“Believe it can be done. When you believe something can be done, really believe, your mind will find the ways to do it. Believing a solution paves the way to solution.”
––David J. Schwartz
5. Find out some new truths for yourself.
They say “you don’t know what you don’t know.” I’ve found that any anxieties I have had were areas in life that I didn’t understand or weren’t informed on. So, unknowingly, I made up fears about them. Once I became aware of my concerns, one by one, I would knock down each fear by becoming informed. Or jumping into the issue. Poking around. Experimenting. Rather than hiding from whatever that truth might be, dive into your truths and find out what’s on the other side. You might be surprised.
“As wave is driven by wave
And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead,
So time flies on and follows, flies, and follows,
Always, for ever and new. What was before
Is left behind; what never was is now;
And every passing moment is renewed.”
―Ovid, Metamorphoses
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