The path to mastery is being here & now, earnestly & conscientiously performing your life tasks

"The secret of happiness is freedom, the secret of freedom is courage." - Carrie Jones

How would ultimate success look like to you? "Metaphorically, it would be like standing at the peak of the Mount Everest with my arms wide open and feeling the breeze on my face. I will see the world from the top most point, I will hear an unusual calmness that I have been longing for & feel peace from within, a sense of freedom that I had never experienced before. And when I experience all of these, I will be sure of being successful." So, literally there was a starting point and an end point. A line segment, from point A to point B, that I had defined for myself to experience the feeling of being successful, free and calm. My happiness was attached to an outcome that I had defined for myself! Anything short of that won't make me happy.

The spotlight of my life was not on my present moment, but into the future. And as I craved for that experience, it went further & further. My present looked gloomy to me because I started to draw the line from the past and stretch it in a similar way that I am habituated to do. Picking on the excuses, explanations for not being able to make it happen despite of the desire, feeling frustrated at the results that I was creating for myself. Oblivious of the fact that the best that anyone can do is here & now, performing fully, to the best of your ability right here, right now! No dragging of lines from the past, or fixating on the future; but living the moment like painting a fresh new canvas everyday with renewed zeal & vigour, is the key to real happiness, a master's journey! And there is a master in each one of you only if you allow yourself to see that. 

It is rightly said that when you live either in the past or the future, you live your own sweet lie, your cooked up story, denying the here & now. And so you loose out the possibility of creating the future that you desire. Because it is in here and now that your power lies. You can't go back and change things in the past nor can you guarantee that this is exactly what will happen in future. Here I am talking of future in a broader perspective. Power lies in this moment to create a new beginning from where you are and just perform earnestly & conscientiously what you want. It is in the process that you experience happiness, a sense of contribution; a feeling of worth and peace within. But can we accept whoever we are at this moment?! Can we shift the spotlight not to the past or to the future but to the present moment?! Are we ready to perform in the hot seat and in the moment experience everything that we are wanting to?! For that we need courage. Yes, courage to perform our life's tasks with the believe that we are self-reliant & we make a difference by just being who we are at this point. Psychologists say that the greatest needs of human beings are to feel worthy & to have a deep sense of belonging; community feeling. And we all do things to secretly meet these two needs. We focus more on the future & the past because it is easy to help us evade from our responsibilities & not muster the courage to act now.

Our feeling of worthiness comes from external achievements, rewards, recognition and eventually because we fear to be disliked and focus only on recognition as a sense of worth, we loose the freedom to live a life created by us but live a life defined by others where they are the guiding star who has the power to either give/take away recognition from us. And eventually we don't feel like making any contribution, nor get a sense of belonging to the larger community when we get rejected, when our growing expectations get rejected in the process. True feeling of worth comes from self-acceptance, building deep unconditional relationships with people & from that space contributing to the world right now, in the present in whichever way you would love to. This feeling is something created by you and is not dependent on anyone else but you. 

If you really want to create an outcome, you do it no matter what. You don't pick excuses from past nor dwell into the future. But, sadly we spend most of our energy not on the now but every other thing. Once we get lost in this trap, until we muster the courage, we can't get out of it. We then constantly live in excuses fabricated by us; stories we create to cover everything up. We live a life of lie. And when we encounter someone living a life of freedom & real happiness, we detest or don't buy in because secretly it reminds us of our incapability and cowardice.  

When you are ready to uncover deeper truths of life, you are given subtle hints. If you are conscious and mindful, you will be able to pick on the cues at right time. So, thankfully I picked on the cues that Universe was sending across me. Instead of feeling happiness and freedom only after climbing the mountain top, I realized wisdom lies in daring to let the spotlight shine on me now, shine a light on the here & now & from that space earnestly & conscientiously perform. It is in every performance that I derive that same metaphorical experience of being at the top of the Mount Everest. 

What would you like to choose: run away from the spotlight adopting the escapist route or let the light shine on the here & now?

Love & respect,
​Priyanka