What I Have Learned Pursuing More Meaning in Life

To successfully ride a bike you need to create forward momentum and keep it up. If you don’t get that initial forward momentum while you hop on and get your feet in the pedals, or you let the bike slow right down, you wobble and you fall. The trick is to get back on again.

It’s the same with life. In the process of launching my website this week, I shared with family and friends how audacious it all feels and how I need to build confidence to move into the next phase (I’m thinking of building an online course on how to create conscious change in your life).

It’s not that I have zero experience with that kind of thing, it’s just that I’ve never done it in my nakedly authentic shoes before. In short, I’m wobbling.  So much so that I had to give myself a big pep talk in order to just press send on the email to let my friends and family know about the website, it felt like there was no going back, it’s out there.

Then one of my dearest friends responded that they were in awe of my drive and tenacity in seeking out my destiny this last couple of years, and I suddenly realised that the only thing more scary than putting the real me out there, is not doing it at all.

So I choose to get back on the bike and keep pedaling.

After that, as I was listening to Anita Moorjani speak at the Hay House Summit about her experience of dying and being brought back to life, it reminded me  of everything I have come to discover on this journey to ‘who I am’. I’ve become a student of life; I wanted to know why I was here, what the heck it was all about. Honestly there were times, and still are, when I’d feel so depressed I wonder at the point of being here at all.

Not to say I’ve ever been suicidal, it’s more a sense of absolute knowing not to compromise on feeling good because feeling bad seems so pointless; so empty. THAT has been my biggest lesson of all.

The secret to being who you are, to having everything you want in life, to feeling good about your life, is to make feeling good your highest priority in every moment of every day; to tap into the forward momentum of your own energy.

Now when I feel any shade of bad, I step back and I realise I’ve just been sent a really simple message. That whatever I’m focusing on is not in the slipstream of my best life, it’s not what the real me is intending at all.

For that is how I’ve come to view life, the best version of it. It’s a fast moving river, full of light feel-good energy. It is the forward momentum, our job is to tune in to what feels good and get on the ride. When we are not being the real us, we are shrouded in our thoughts, conscious and subconscious, filled with fears, wobbling, unclear.

I also happened to listen to Deepak Chopra this week, not my usual first choice as I often find his words a bit too academic for them to resonate. However, he was speaking on the back of Eckhart Tolle (also at the Hay House Summit) and I just hadn’t got around to switching it off.

He gave a lovely example that summed up what I've come to learn about this physical life. Here was the conversation.

He asked a lady in the audience what she had for lunch that day, “salad” she replies. He then proceeds to rhetorically ask the audience where she just found that answer, in her memories of course. But where is that? This was the pivotal point of the conversation, as Deepak explains no scientist can point to a cell or a neuron where the ‘salad’ memory exists, or any other memory.

Yes science can point to an area of the brain that seems involved with the processing of memories but, as he succinctly points out, the memory of the salad specifically is nowhere on a physical level. Instead it’s where the greater part of your energy is, on the non physical level. He continued, that’s also where you’ll be when you die because you never left there, you are there; non physical energy having a physical experience.

“Very profound” I thought, “I’m with the salad”. It made me chuckle.

Regardless what you believe about life’s big picture, there can be no denying that feeling good feels better than feeling bad. So whether you think there is a meaning to life or not, it just makes sense to do more of the things that feel good.

As I put myself out there, I’ve realised that I’m still all about change and transformation, it’s just more niche, more focused. The best use of me, is to have me help in making the shift from ambition to purpose, from profit to a deeper prosperity, from self to connectedness, anything less just won’t fire my cylinders, it’s too much like trying to paddle upstream in a tremendously fast flowing river.

So I ask you, what’s making you wobble? Are you out there trying to make ends meet, maybe even thriving by other people’s standards, but all the while with a gnawing sense that there must be more to life?

Take heart, there are many of us out there who are on the same journey. In truth, ultimately, we all are, we just all get there at different times. The point is, you can do it. Yes you will wobble, yes it is tricky learning how to get that first kick start and create some forward momentum, but you can do it. Did you get that? You can do it, and it’s a whole lot more satisfying than not doing it.
 
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shonakeachie.com is both a place where you can continue to read my articles (and even watch videos… soon-ish), and it’s a portal for potential clients to get insights and connect with my consulting and mentoring services.  It’s aimed at those who want to create change in their life or those seeking to evolve their business.

Note that the Hay House Summit is an online summit free to listen to/watch until 26 May.