Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Technology vs. humans: checking in

Do you know that feeling when you wonder where the day has gone? Sometimes, I wonder where the whole week has gone. So, as this week begins and I remain hopeful of achieving everything I had set out to do and more, I am drawn to experiment with breaking the patterns. We may have the best ideas, but if we do nothing about them, they just go to waste. If you keep on ignoring your creative instincts to create, eventually they will diminish and come to a halt. Upon returning home from a marvelous workshop, the difference in the creative potential and the distractions around us are obvious. personally, one culprit is especially apparent: it sits there,demanding attention, and so I succumb to the call of my "master" and spend endless hours researching information for the future, answering e-mails, connecting with the rest of the world, all the seemingly needed things,yet as the day comes to a close, I am left with the question: "what did I really accomplish today?" Is all this really worth staying up into all hours of the night, falling out of the natural cycles of life, all for the sake of seeing who is "following" us, how many people are interested in your life, what is going on in the world- are we all that afraid to miss something in life, that we'd rather cling onto our blackberries, smartphones, iphones, etc-that to simply relax into the moment and appreciate it for what it is?

How often do you check your phone to see what's going on "out there", to make sure you're staying on top of it all? What if, instead, you "checked in" to see what is going on inside yourself?  What if, next time you're reaching for your latest piece of technology, you stop and ask yourself what is really behind your action, what you seem to be missing in this particular moment? The only way to make sure you are in charge of your life is to know that you are in control of your actions, and it is not your patterns running your life. It takes 30 days to break a habit and create a new one, to re-train the brain to start thinking and acting differently, so I challenge you to pick one thing to focus on for the next month that you would like to change and work on it for 30 consecutive days. For me, it is liberating myself from the negative mind chatter that stands in the way of achieving some of my biggest dreams.

Sometimes the simplest questions are the hardest ones to answer. If something makes you happy, what is it that is stopping you from devoting your life to what your passion is? Is it that fear in the back of your head whispering words of self-doubt :"why bother?.. you will not accomplish anything anyways... only few people live to experience their dreams, what makes you think it's you?...I would like to do it, but..., etc etc" and on and on it goes- the toxic pollutant of our minds. What if, instead, you devoted one hour, half an hour, fifteen minutes, even, to allowing yourself to dream of your biggest potential? If you could do anything at all right now, regardless of the circumstances, what would it be? I'm not talking about dreaming of sleeping in on the weekend, or dreaming of your next vacation- I mean, really big, life-changing dreams.  To tell you the truth, I cannot even recall the last time I've allowed myself to really dream, dream big-  but I am excited to find out what it will be!

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