16. DO WHAT YOU LOVE
The world is really demanding that we follow our ‘mission’ in these times that we live in, to step up. But what is our mission, I hear you ask? Our mission is the thing we came here to do – our life’s purpose, if you will. Put another way, were we born into this world to just work a 9-to-5 job and get by? Or are we here for a more important reason than that – do we have an individual calling?
I believe each of us has an important reason for being here: a mission, a spiritual purpose. Something more than just working a job to pay the bills every day. Our job is to find out what that mission is.
And if you are caught in the 9–5 treadmill, the trick is this: start doing what you love and find a way to make it your job. This will help you to cut out any extraneous crap in your life and will make your path a simpler one to travel. This simplification will only increase your happiness in another one of those wonderful upward spirals I have mentioned before.
Let me give you a personal example… When I was younger I was well and truly caught in the rat race. I was stuck in survival mode. Working in jobs that I didn’t enjoy. Jobs that drained my life force, depleted my energy and disconnected me from my essence. I was depressed, tired all the time and constantly on the edge financially. One day I was at a friend’s house and I noticed a fridge magnet with the words ‘May What You Love Be What You DO’ on it. I asked my friend what it meant, and she explained, ‘It’s simple! Find what you LOVE to do and make it your job!’
Those words changed my life that day and have come back to me time and time again. Simply seeing that little fridge magnet with those words on shifted my focus. It was so simple yet so potent! I took those words on-board and with them in my mind I started to turn my life around. I phased out working in jobs that didn’t inspire me. I started to do more and more of what I loved – making music – until it became my full-time occupation. I found myself actually wanting to get out of bed in the morning; I felt excited waking up, ready to spend my day doing what I loved!
It took about three years to implement those changes; it took some risks financially, and some re-arranging of my life priorities, but those words truly inspired me to change my life.
Another way of saying this invokes another great saying that’s spoken in circles of people making life changes, and it’s this: follow your bliss.
Again, this simply means follow that which makes you happy. Follow what really fires you up. Follow your passions – things that make you feel alive! Follow your excitement. Look for ways to turn this passion/love/feeling/excitement into the thing that you do, as your job making a living. And the amazing fact is that the universe wants you to do that which you love to do.
So try to find a way to do this. Find your real mission. Be that a healer, a pop star, a yoga teacher, a bread-baker or a mathematician. The more of us that start doing what we love to do, day to day, minute by minute, the faster this Earth is going to change for the better.
Just imagine a world in which everyone is doing what they love to do as their living. Breathe that in… see it… feel it. It’s pretty beautiful, isn’t it?
It’s very much down to changing our work mentality. Banishing a ‘work slave’ mentality and creating a more compassionate world where we all allow each other to be exactly who we are, and do exactly what we love to do. Possible? Totally possible. Needed? Hell, yeah.
Finding your mission is singularly the best thing you can do for the Earth at this time.
So get happy now! Get on it and follow your bliss! Find that which makes you feel ALIVE and do it! Live with PURPOSE. On purpose.
And there is another part to this – it’s all about the gift of joy. Joy is our birthright. It’s who we are and who we came here to be. Our joy is the biggest gift to the planet. So, I repeat, make your work your joy. And make joy your work. Play. Dance. Move stuck energy, and lift your vibes.
Your joy and enthusiasm will become highly contagious. You will infect unjoyful people with your zest for life. This is something we often had as young children that became muted over time as we gradually turned into serious adults. But we need to know that we never need turn off the tap of joy!
So lighten up dudes and dudesses. All this heal-the-planet stuff doesn’t mean diddly squat if we aren’t having fun! We are here to change and heal things, yes – but we are also here to enjoy the process. We don’t need to take it all so seriously! If we all do our bit – then things will change. So play – like a child, but on a mission.
Warrior practice
Start focusing on placing your energy and attention on things you love doing, and take your energy away from things you don’t love doing. Start today!
Every day for a week think of something that you really like to do and make sure that you do it! It might be as simple as baking a cake or taking a long relaxing bath, or booking tickets to the cinema or signing up to a new yoga class. Just do it.
At the same time, bring to mind something that you don’t really want to do, and resolve not to do it. Don’t go to that social event that you’re actually dreading. Don’t spend time speaking to that person who makes you feel insecure. Say no to the person asking just too many favours.
Where energy goes, energy flows. So be careful what you do with your energy – be in CHARGE of your own energy. Don’t leak it away. You will soon find that your positive energy will increase the more you do what you love, and the things that you don’t love will become less as times goes on. Feed that which makes you feel good and let that which doesn’t drop away. Feed your soul, not ‘the man’.
17. PRACTISE GRATITUDE
Albert Einstein once said, ‘There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.’ This perfectly sums up how to live a life with gratitude.
The practice of gratitude is an amazing tool to have in your life’s toolbox. The simple act of remembering to be grateful for life and so much in it can be such a powerful practice. We have a lot to be grateful for, yet we get stuck in our problems and we often forget to be grateful, don’t we? The very simple fact that we are here, alive, able to eat, sleep, experience the whole spectrum of what life offers us – that’s a miracle!
I find the very act of remembering to be grateful can take me out of any suffering I might be caught in and bring me back to the present. The simple fact is that life is a gift. Our lives are precious. We just get caught in our heads and forget to appreciate the simple things. Gratitude brings us back into the remembering of this, and it is a great practice to remind us of the beauty and peace there is to be found in simplicity, for it’s often the simple, little things that we realize we are most grateful for.
Many, if not all of us, have certain programmes running in our heads that often sound a bit like this, ‘Life is shit, life is shit, life is suffering, life is crazy, life is hard, etc, etc.’ In a loop. Round and round it goes – until we start believing it. My advice is this: change the record.
Put on a new one.
It’s all about your mindset. Adjust the frequency so that this rubbish doesn’t get played out in your head. Change the record to a different radio station. One that plays positive music! Funky music. The music of gratitude. It’s about what you let into your head. What you let play out in there. Instead of settling for programmes that run like negative mantras in your mind, choose positive ones. Try replacing the words ‘Life is shit’ with ‘I’m grateful for my life – life is beautiful’ or ‘I am grateful. Life supports me. I’m amazing!’