Event driven existence vs process driven living

I don’t know about you but, I do know for me that I spent a great deal of my life waiting for that next thing, accomplishment, goal or experience to happen so I would feel fulfilled, successful, happy, or motivated to move on with my life. When I lose the weight I can really start living my life. When my partner, friend, siblings, parents are happy then I can focus on my self care. When I get that next promotion I will really be successful and … likely look for the next one after that. I continued to put my life on hold. The reality of this way is that it is an existence. I ended up feeling empty inside, unfulfilled and unsatisfied.

Society seems to reward this kind of behavior. Keep yourself busy, everyone else is. If I stop even for a minute I will fall further behind where I need to be to measure up and / or fit in. I am guessing there’s a lot of you nodding as you read this. I knew there must be more but I wasn’t really sure what was wrong or how to fix it. I didn’t know how to get out of this event driven existence.

I know now that my first step was the beginning of the shift from an event driven existence to process driven living. I found rooms where I could feel and process my emotions. Emotions that had been stuck for days, weeks, years or even decades. I saw people around me talking about and experiencing their emotions at the same time. I saw them healing right before my very eyes. Seeing this happen again and again I began opening my mouth and speaking my truth. The emotional truth that I had been afraid of sharing.

As the healing from feeling my feelings started to take hold my life started to slow down. Another thing I learned in those rooms was the ability to listen, really listen. I learned that I was not alone. I wasn’t the only one who felt the way I did. The circumstances of their stories might be different than mine but underneath we all seemed to feel the same. It may sound odd but, I got to know and experience being a human being. I learned to be able to laugh with myself about the absurdity of the things that had been frustrating me so very much.

The next gift was to start hearing intuitional nudges. They were clear, concise and calm. First was “relax”, second was “be present”, next came “accept the things I can not change” followed by “eliminate the unnecessary so the necessary may speak” then “deepen the spiritual groove”.

This small list of intuitional nudges come to me regularly throughout my everyday life. These are some of the tools I use to live a process driven life full of gratitude. This does not mean that everything is easy. Life is full of challenges. These tools provide an avenue for me to remember to breathe, slow down, be in the present, take care of myself so that I have some reserves left to deal with what life is sending my way.