In this game called life, the
minute we become life, we’re participating it.
When you were in your mother’s
womb, you showed up and were already engaging in life itself. If your parents
were progressive, they might have played music for you while you were in the
womb, told you stories or talked to you.
Perhaps you liked what you heard
and you did an enthusiastic dance moving around in response. Or if you didn’t like what you heard, you might
have given one swift kick.
While you may not remember any of
this, or how you behaved, you were present for these moments without much other
distraction.
Cut to your childhood - you may
remember participating in some sort of sport or competition like a spelling bee
or debate team or something in the arts like music, dancing or even a drawing
contest. If there were judges, chances
are there was a first, second and third place position, maybe honorable
mention, and sometimes (but not always) a “participant ribbon” just for trying
and showing up.
In high school, things became more night
and day – you either graduated, or you didn’t.
There was no ‘participant’ ribbon just for not ditching school.
As a working adult with domestic
responsibilities, family, friends, perhaps multiple careers, your life becomes
more complicated and there are no participant kudos. Your participant LINK
either becomes an obligation, responsibility or an extremely conscious joyful
and willing participation link in how you live your life.
The question is… Is it the latter?
How do you view showing up and
participating in life today?
How much of your life is in balance
between obligation and responsibility vs. actual willing participation where
you celebrate doing so?
Do you give yourself credit for
showing up, when your heart doesn’t really want to?
Or do you set boundaries and limit
these participation links in your life to only participating in things you
authentically feel good about doing out of your own truth?
Is there perhaps a little of all of
the above?
In life, there are things we must
do.
For some of us, there are many
things we want to do. However, if you
were to examine your life scales, which way would they tip?
How often have you tipped the scale
the other direction?
More importantly, when was the last
time you participated in something by showing up physically in person and
actually participated mentally by being present, too?
WHAT? YES!
Our consciousness within our own
mind is always multitasking.
While you may not remember all that
was going on in the womb when you were in it, chances are that two weeks ago,
you don’t remember having certain experiences the same way as your friends who
might have participated “more present” for what they did than you.
If you have ever recalled ‘old
times’ with friends or family, you may not each remember things happening the exact
same way, perhaps because something happened long ago. However, it could also
be that not everyone was ‘present’ in their participation, too.
In today’s life where we’re plugged
in 24/7, ask yourself if you can even remember a conversation you had with
someone just last week. If you happened
to be half-in and half-out of it doing something else, you will find that your
participation link was not present.
Do humans compartmentalize? YES.
But do we all do this well? NO.
Some are more skilled than others,
but no matter how skilled you are at doing several things while observing,
listening, and doing – you are going to process all of your experiences in a
muted way.
Our human is always multitasking…
phone, email, eating, (hopefully not driving doing any of this), watching
videos, TV or playing games, listening to music or merely staring out into
space not even paying attention to this thing called LIFE.
When we examine our participation
LINK further, we can see whether we are truly participating or faux/half
participating in something. If you are
experiencing mental ‘disconnect’ regardless of the activity, you are truly not
tapping into your LIFE PARTICIPATION LINK the way you should. This could be the very reason you are feeling
“blah” in life and not feeling connection to anything that interests or excites
you because you’ve actually ‘checked out.’
If you look at relationships, you
will see most people are only half in them if they are simultaneously
multitasking. They are not listening to
what someone is saying or getting the full picture of a mood, tone, or
inflection as to what is behind the words or said actions. When this happens, we have a communication
breakdown. This causes problems for us
in life because we are not fully participating going all-in without our minds
or even our bodies doing ten other things at once.
You can change your own participation
LINK in your lifeline and you can do it almost immediately by focusing on your
life from a place of being all-in, any individual task you are doing.
While you may think this is silly,
the truth is you can savor life from a place of being truly present for every
part of it.
Take for example memory recall back
to one of your favorite moments. Chances
are in that moment, you do not remember doing ten different things.
Say you were hiking on a beautiful
day. You smell the fresh greenery
(trees, flowers) in the air and you feel the breezes and the warmth of the sun
on your shoulders. You hear the birds, or maybe the rustling of nature in the
wind, and you remember what you saw with your eyes looking out when you reached
the top of the climb. You may have noticed your pulse in your neck twitching, how
parched you felt or a trickle of sweat reaching your brow and how it reminded
you of winning a track event. You smile
realizing how accomplished you feel taking on this hike with the same winning
satisfaction. Life is great.
Now if you had been too busy with
earbuds in your ears listening to music blaring, trying to text as you hiked,
yammering away noisily on the phone, you might have missed participating in
your hike and experiencing all of the above that the hike provided.
Your PARTICIPATION LINK might have
been altered more than just a bit and the experience might have been, ‘meh’ at
best and you didn’t get to have that victorious ‘moment’ or feeling again. This is how your life experiences become
muddled into lack-luster experiences rather than glorious ones.
The good news? You have full control of changing this!
Take time to unplug, participate,
be present, and enjoy life because you don’t want to have it pass you by and
miss some if its best moments by only partially participating.
Life won’t be less exciting if you actually
show up to be fully conscious and immerse yourself in one activity at a time.
Namaste.
