You are tired of feeling average!
You didn’t see it coming, but in the race of getting a secure and high-paying job, you have landed the zone of ‘no passion’.
You know in your heart, it doesn’t even align with your strengths, yet you struggle every day pushing yourself over the edge, trying to prove your brilliance.
Will you ever be the best at something you don’t even enjoy doing? You are completely out of your element, stressed to the maximum.
Well, you are not alone.
So many of us live lives that we don’t want to, day in and day out. Round pegs in square holes.
Have we lost our chance of doing something we can be best at, forever?
Absolutely not!
Let me take you through my own journey and prove to you, you can live your passion again.
The Dawn Of The Dead
I knew something wrong was happening with my mind and body. Yet, I couldn’t stop it.
I only realized things had gone utterly downhill when I couldn’t even get up from my bed.
I lay down on my bed, eyes closed and rarely open but blank, staring into nowhere. My blood pressure had gone extremely down and I was moving towards hypotension.
It was clear to me now, only two days of continuous stress had done this to me.
Immense, inexplicable stress. In technical terms, a burnout.
Stress to complete a quarterly presentation at my office, to analyze the numbers right, to defend what I had achieved against all the reasoning.
Basically, stress to work my left brain more than I could, although I always knew I am a right-brain person. More creative than analytical.
I realized it was time to make a change.
As wise men say, if you keep doing what you are doing, you keep getting what you are getting.
What followed was a series of actions – all different from what I had ever done, because I wanted something different from my life.
Here they are, to inspire you to live the life of your dreams!
#1. The Magic Emotion That Kickstarted My Journey Of Dreams
Stuck in a job that I didn’t like, with no vision of the future, how could I have started a new journey?
With Gratitude.
Yes, after a lot of moping and moaning, I decided it was time to do something different.
I had heard about the law of attraction many times before, but always rejected it. I had a preconceived negative opinion about it and refused to even consider it. Sometimes our conditioning teaches us not to believe in magic.
But the truth is, magic exists. Everywhere.
It is a simple game of energy, you attract the same energy as you send out.
Keep getting upset, and you shall have more chances to do that.
Start getting grateful for what you have and you will have more things to be grateful for.
I pushed myself to not complain and to be grateful for what I already had.
- A job that was paying me handsomely and allowing me to travel more than an average person
- One of the greenest and most culturally alive cities to live in
- A well-located, beautiful, and friendly home with friendly housemates
- A group of friends & colleagues, with who I can start to open up better and enjoy my life with
- A chance to live another day every morning I got up
- A huge patch of greenery that soothed my eyes as soon as the Delhi metro cruised toward Qutab Minar…
Basically, every small thing to all the big ones. I started enjoying my life in Delhi, each moment of it.
Not only did it deepen my connection to everyone and everything around me, but it also awakened a real sense of happiness inside my own being.
I became more confident, more open, healthier, and happier.
The result of being open? Great things came my way!
#2. The Beginning Of A New Era In My Life
One of the things I hated about my job was sitting in a chair the whole day, in a chilling temperature. The exact same amount of light, day in and day out. Not knowing when the sun set, or when the rain came.
So, when a friend painted a vivid picture of the abundant nature in Sivananda Yoga Ashram Kerala where he was taking a course, I decided to make him a visit.
My first morning in the Ashram was a silent meditation in a huge hall before sunrise. As I sit there with my eyes closed, gusts of cool breeze from the tropical plantations and lake around the Ashram made me feel alive more than ever! I have not experienced the joys of pure nature in a long time. A feeling of freshness deluged me.
It only dawned upon me later though, how tight the Ashram’s schedule was. The day started at 5 a.m. with morning and evening Asana classes, two hours each. The rest of the day was sprinkled with Karma yoga (working in the fields, cleaning the toilets, cleaning the dishes – things like that), lectures, and meditations, ending by 10 at night. Hardly any time to rest.
For the next 10 days, every part of my body hurt like it had never hurt before. All I could think of was running away from the Ashram as I dragged my body from one session to another. After two years of sitting in the office and zero exercise, I was doing Yoga Asanas 4 hours a day! A recipe for murder.
At the end of the day, I didn’t even have the energy to sit straight, let alone make phone calls or browse the internet.
Somehow, between my friend requesting me not to run away and seeing people from all over the world dedicated to Yoga, I made it through.
The result?
Ten days of no phone usage, total engagement in activities, and no time for worrying about life spawned something powerful in me. I experienced a state of peace I had never experienced before.
I didn’t feel like talking for about 15 days after coming back. I couldn’t relate to anger or agitation of any kind for those 15 days and I started loving my personal space which I wasn’t comfortable with before.
Somehow, me and my inner peace got connected.
Gradually life took over, but I started practicing yoga religiously after that. Every morning before going to work, I emerged myself in doing body and breath practices on my Yoga mat.
Very soon, I started flying on the same stairs to my office, where I was dragging my body a few months back. I took my breaks outside on our office lawns, and I saw my body and my mind transform day by day.
In the meantime, something amazing was taking shape, let me tell you what…
#3. Few Things Are So Close To Us, We Fail To See Them
After a few days of my slipping into a natural silence, my inner talk became very vivid to me.
I became very aware of the self-talk that all of us keep doing all the time.
I started observing my thoughts and I found that I was always full of doubts about myself, I kept telling myself I couldn’t do stuff, that I wasn’t good enough, and so on and so forth.
It was scary how I always felt that I was a confident person and the revelation that I didn’t seem to like myself that much…
At one point, all this talking became very energy-draining. I told myself I must stop it gradually.
So, I started singing the only mantra I knew at that time, whenever I caught myself self-talking.
It was mostly when I was doing mundane activities like bathing, making myself a sandwich, grabbing some coffee, taking a walk, etc.
The whole thing went to the next level when a friend sent me a link to a law of attraction blog and the blogger talked about flipping this negative talk into positive.
Now whenever I heard myself negative-talking, I started saying the exact opposite to myself.
‘I don’t deserve this’ to ‘I am good enough’
‘I can’t do this’ to ‘I can do anything I put my mind to’
‘I don’t look good’ to ‘I am the hottest around town’
I turned it around, every time!
From convincing myself that I was good enough to eventually believing that I am pretty awesome, I became the queen of self-encouragement.
Time to take my destiny in my hands? Absolutely! Here is how I did it.
#4. My Wish Is Thy Command
Now that I had a glimpse of how energy works, I decided to take another step.
Telling the Universe exactly what I wanted every morning.
I wrote down my affirmations –
I am a super optimist
I resolve to live my dreams
I am a celebrated writer
I travel around the world for leisure
I have a beautiful house in the middle of nature
I love myself and much more…
The moment I opened my eyes to go to work, my affirmations were in my mind. I used to wake up with a smile, a sense of gratitude and started repeating my affirmations.
It became a part of my life, just like breathing, having food, and going to work. I never slipped away on them, always finding time to say them out loud with feeling and awareness.
As I write this post, each of my affirmations has come true. Every one of them.
It was a big plunge to quit my corporate job and career in travel, but suddenly one day, I decided to do it. Later I realized, it was not sudden, it had taken its own pretty time 😊
I took my longest leisure trip around South East Asia 6 months after I left my job. It was totally unplanned but I decided to take it because I wanted to loosen up and go where destiny takes me. I had one of the best times of my life and one of my dreams has already come true!
I have become a super optimist – leaving my steady income behind and establishing a new career in writing and yoga teaching. I do these things with absolute pleasure and sans pressure.
I have experienced great amounts of satisfaction teaching yoga multiple times by now that I have not felt even once in my twelve-year-long career as a travel professional.
I am not yet a celebrated writer, but my journey into professional writing has very much begun and is steadily going uphill. I am confident about my progress in it, which I never was in my travel career.
And for sure, I have never loved myself so much. I accept each and every aspect of my nature, enjoy it and try to improve on things without feeling guilty and blaming myself for anything.
Dreams Do Come True Before You Know It
Peace is what prevails in my mind.
While I sit here, writing, I am surrounded by emerald green on all sides.
I wake up every day to the chirping of birds and fresh air.
Taking a uber-uplifting walk on one of the most beautiful beaches in Kerala is my evening routine. And there is no doubt in my mind that I am going in the right direction.
I am slowly savoring my dreams coming true every day.
After a year of traveling all around India and South East Asia, I found my niche in writing and am making a steady career in it.
My students are raving about how they benefit from the yoga classes I teach and the passion I ooze. Building meaningful and beneficial yoga retreats is the next step in planning and is already in progress.
Often, I hear my family and friends saying, you have shown us how to live life, and that I am living a life that they dream of, but can’t live.
My answer is always the same.
Each one of us can live the lives we dream of. We just need to have faith and courage – two most important things to hold on to, in the most despondent moments.
It is your time now. Give yourself a year or two leaving your fears and doubts behind and embrace life with open arms. And the next inspirational story I hear will be yours!