Life Can Be Easy

It is joyful to come to a place of rest and acceptance of life.  Rather than railing at the past, or lamenting about the present, or even worrying or pushing towards the future, today and yesterday evening I have found a place of comfort and ease with what is.  The Three Things idea is great for me right now.

What is interesting to notice is that outside circumstances have not actually changed all that much.  It is merely my attitude that has brightened up, and in this lifting of spirit, what were once grave problems now seem small and manageable, or even non-issues.  I could live like this, in ease and playfulness, forever.

I have come to realize that I have had some very limiting beliefs about money, about friendships, about love and about success.  Knowing that my ideas have been throwing lots of adversity into my face, I am starting to let them go.  Actually, I don't know anything about how money works.  I don't know about how friends or lovers or success work.  I'd rather allow myself to be surprised by how awesome and easy all of this can be than to continue to believe that it all has to be some kind of triumphant struggle.  My romanticization of struggles and tragedies has been landing a lot of those into my life.

I seriously had some idea that success has to be hard-won.  My belief has been that it is hard to get ahead, and that I am special because I will always somehow succeed, even against adversity.  Actually, I am special because I can conquer adversity and prove to the world that I am better than the challenges that turn up.  And I think life gives me these challenges because I kind of requested them.  Without all of this difficult struggle, I wasn't able to have success as I defined it, which was managing to "do all this stuff" even though it is hard.  I push and strive, and make small headway, always just barely staying ahead of my problems, because to me it has been this staying ahead of problems which was success.  I have given myself all that I asked for, and it turns out what I asked for kind of sucked.

Well, now that I see I have been doing this, it all appears laughable.  Why would I want to struggle all the time, barely getting ahead and calling that success?  For sympathy, I think.  But now I don't really care for sympathy.  I would much rather have congratulations and joy.  I am telling the universe that I am letting go of my attachments to specific outcomes and will start to ask for what I really want.  I don't want struggles.  I want joy.  I want money.  I want love and laughter.  I want health.  I don't want it at a high cost, I don't want it after hardship and only by the skin of my teeth.  I just want to enjoy my life and do fun things like tattoo, paint, cook and spend time with my loved ones playing.  I am tired of buying into the consciousness that life is hard and we all are undeserving of pleasure and so we have to earn it all and feel guilty about it.  What if it is as simple as believing that life can be easy?

In the past, every time I tried to pick up that belief, I quickly was told that it was unrealistic, even if it was already bringing results into my life.  And I agreed and felt guilty and stupid for thinking it could be that easy.  But somewhere deep in my soul I do believe it is true that whatever we believe comes true, and so why would I keep choosing to hurt myself and others around me by creating difficult situations with my limiting beliefs?  It's hard to talk about this concept, because the words sound overly simple and foolish - but the idea that what we focus on becomes our reality feels pretty irrefutable to me.  As I understand life, from a personal perspective, it pretty much reflects to us whatever we expect to find.  We see it in others all the time but often fail to notice it in ourselves.

This week, I am going to try expecting money, laughter, good food, snuggling and joy.  When I notice myself expecting struggle, pain and disagreements, I will admit to myself that I have no idea how the world works, actually, and ask for what I really want instead of what I expect.  Chances are any dissonance comes up mostly because I believe it will be there, and not because it has to be there.