“Do something.”
“No, go with the flow.”
“Come on, early bird catches the worm.”
“Yeah, but timing is everything.”
“Make it happen.”
“You can’t force things to happen…Patience is a virtue.”
“If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.”
“Darn you, don’t you give up on your dream.”
“Give it up. If you
let it go and set it free –it’ll return if it’s meant to be.”
“The world just isn’t ready for you yet.”
“STAY OPEN ---- that is what you should do.”
Are you smiling at this?
Go ahead… smile.
I will just put my feet up and kick back as I relax with a
cup a tea.
It is such an amusing thing to watch, as I sit inside of
your brain when you go on this ‘never ending ride’ of these words.
Why is it amusing? Because it is HUMAN. Humans who like to think all go through this at some point in their life. Chances are you went through this LESS when you were an adolescent or in your teens... because you actually just 'went with the flow' of how things evolved in your life when life was less complicated.
As you got older into adulthood, and you tried to navigate the place of jobs/careers, family and friends, dreams/reality, bills and responsibilities, relationships and your schedule of everyday life... well, suddenly thinking as a human kept getting more cluttered with trying to stay sane and make yourself and everyone else happy simultaneously.
WHY? Because of the concept of TIME .... AND YOUR IDEA OF TANGIBILITY.
T-A-N-G-I-B-I-L-I-T-Y. This is the problem you have with openness.
It is challenging for most humans to be open to something that is not tangible to grab onto in their minds. It's natural. It's very human and YES, it is WHY OPENNESS is challenging.
Why is it amusing? Because it is HUMAN. Humans who like to think all go through this at some point in their life. Chances are you went through this LESS when you were an adolescent or in your teens... because you actually just 'went with the flow' of how things evolved in your life when life was less complicated.
As you got older into adulthood, and you tried to navigate the place of jobs/careers, family and friends, dreams/reality, bills and responsibilities, relationships and your schedule of everyday life... well, suddenly thinking as a human kept getting more cluttered with trying to stay sane and make yourself and everyone else happy simultaneously.
WHY? Because of the concept of TIME .... AND YOUR IDEA OF TANGIBILITY.
T-A-N-G-I-B-I-L-I-T-Y. This is the problem you have with openness.
It is challenging for most humans to be open to something that is not tangible to grab onto in their minds. It's natural. It's very human and YES, it is WHY OPENNESS is challenging.
Some days you may not feel as if it is a fun ride to be open.
There will be days your family, friends, colleagues, and
trusted mentors/advisors may shake their finger and tell you one of these many
lines, trying to get you to believe one of them.
There will be days others shrug their shoulders, shake their
head, feeling completely clueless as to what to tell you as you seek their
advice.
THIS IS WHY I am writing this… FOR YOU.
Quite often, when you hear the last sentence “STAY OPEN” –
that term itself is so open-ended, right?
I just did this video on this very question. In case you missed it, here is what went down
with a question I received from one of my blog readers, Barb of Hackensack, New
Jersey….
Okay, so what did we learn watching this video?
·
Are you like Barb… wondering or confused if you
should be passive or active in your openness?
- · Did you think that being open was only one-dimensional?
- · Have you only considered openness to be attached to ‘doing’ vs. ‘being’?
- · What about adaptability and flexibility within openness?
- Were you aware that being open could broaden your perspective about opportunities you might miss?
- How controlled are you by the ideas of others and the boundaries you set in being open?
- Do you limit your own growth because you are SO OPEN to everyone else’s opinion?
Or are you just stuck in your own OPENNESS because of how
this blog started with all of these questions you are pondering in your head as
I sat back and grimaced lovingly in my amusement of what is happening in your
brain?
Rest assured… I AM
HERE FOR YOU. I will not sit here and
watch you spin or stay lost. I am here
to help. Nevertheless, I needed to SHOW
YOU in words, what I SEE so that YOU CAN SEE for yourself what you do to
yourself to create unnecessary confusion.
Here is the thing I want to tell you….
While it is nice to LISTEN to people’s opinions … THEY ARE
NOT YOU.
Deep down in the sacred space of your gut/intuition and
within your heart (where I keep telling you to look, but most days you ignore
it) – you have your answers.
All I am trying to do is to show you how smart you really
are… but you NEED TO PAY ATTENTION.
You have what you need.
Yes, it is true. You
have what you need. You already
know. You have the understanding of what
it means to be open.
However, I am here to show you that you do not need to label
OPENNESS only one way.
OPENNESS can work for you or against you depending on what
PASSIVE vs. ACTIVE position you take at any given time.
Let us look at LIFE as a sports game. When you are on a team and you are the player
told to “Stay open” … that usually means that you might be passed the ball at
some point, so be ready.
It is not telling you to go get the ball.
It is not telling you to just stand there once you get it.
In other words, you are being told to STAY OPEN AND BE READY
for when the ball comes your direction, right?
Awareness and being alert may appear to be the same. However, this is where things get tricky. There are many people who are aware, but there are few who are also alert simultaneously and that has to do with 'being present.'
In other words, you can possess the awareness you need to have to stay open, but just because you're open doesn't mean you are consciously in a place to 'choose' to be passive vs. active within your own openness in real live time as it is happening IN THAT MOMENT unless you are actually present for it.
A split second is just that, an increment of time where there is a window to make choices as you are open.
The problem? NOISE. We have a lot of noise - not just in our existing environment, but much of it is transferred from the external opinions which are thrown at you from too many sources. Combine this, with the noise in your head and this is why that split second may be missed or delayed, dismissed or avoided, simply because your OPENNESS LINK is cluttered with too much input.
Awareness and being alert may appear to be the same. However, this is where things get tricky. There are many people who are aware, but there are few who are also alert simultaneously and that has to do with 'being present.'
In other words, you can possess the awareness you need to have to stay open, but just because you're open doesn't mean you are consciously in a place to 'choose' to be passive vs. active within your own openness in real live time as it is happening IN THAT MOMENT unless you are actually present for it.
A split second is just that, an increment of time where there is a window to make choices as you are open.
The problem? NOISE. We have a lot of noise - not just in our existing environment, but much of it is transferred from the external opinions which are thrown at you from too many sources. Combine this, with the noise in your head and this is why that split second may be missed or delayed, dismissed or avoided, simply because your OPENNESS LINK is cluttered with too much input.
It is in the QUIET moments, where the most energy needs to
be generated to motivate, inspire, and encourage the team players to be OPEN to
receive this energy to win.
Like your beautiful brain during Zen time, it is in this
quiet time you can be more open to receiving the kind of energy you need to be
focused so that you can zero in and concentrate on overcoming your obstacles,
develop a strategy and carry onward, right?
Well, OPENNESS now has a different context from how you once
perceived it, and now that you have this extra bit of awareness, you can now
have more clarity on your own OPENNESS LINK to tweak it, as you need to during
the strategic times of being PASSIVE vs. ACTIVE.
Life is never only one direction, therefore staying open and
being open has a more complex directive in how it is applied, depending on the
circumstances of where you sit.
THIS is perhaps the most valuable thing you can tuck away in
your mind, when everyone in your circles start throwing all kinds of opinions
and advice at you.
YOU get to choose how you OPEN your OPENNESS LINK to what
you hear, what you do, how you act, how you react and most importantly, what
you apply AND WHEN.
When you then take this and consult with your gut intuition
and heart, it is easier to get out of your chaotic file box in your brain with
all the noise so you can make your best decision on how to use your OPENNESS
LINK passively or actively.
From here, you are back in a place of feeling more
organized, focused, and productive, even when you choose to let things unfold
because you need to be patient. You will
know when you need to switch gears again.
Life does not function on the same speed all of the time. The more open you become to slowing down, and
yes, sometimes staying in neutral, you will see that it is a good time for
self-maintenance so that when it’s time to hit the pedal again, you can do so
with more confidence and trust in your actions.
Stay open.
Namaste.
