What are you doing with "your" life?

We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.

Friedrich Nietzsche

What are you doing with your life? There you sit in a coffee shop or a trendy bar staring at couples kissing or a game on the television. You question yourself about what you are doing with your life. You ponder and look in the spectrum of the past and see that you are not being fulfilled or not who you want to be at the present moment in time. Maybe a few of life's curve balls have directed you down a new path. A path that you thought you would never encounter. You may question yourself constantly about what you are doing with your life, but are not making necessary action.

You get caught up in the tornado of work, school, family, relationships and the small escapes of vacation and entertainment. Your job may not be meeting your needs and anymore and has trapped you in a spiral of mediocrity and stagnation. Your habits have perpetuated themselves and you see your friends in real life and online doing "cooler" things than you. Instead of expressing gratitude for what you have, you wallow in the wading waters of "want". Instead of looking inward for your direction, you seek for the pleasures and rewards in the outer world. Your "life" turns into a series of repetitious moments where you may or may ask yourself,  " Wait, haven't I been here before? Haven't I done this before?" You fall into learned patterns and behaviors and the thought of any discomfort makes you adverse to change. So, What exactly are you doing with "your" life?

Let's Break this down!

Let's look at the "doing" part of the question. Our society makes us believe that we must be doing something all the time in order to be successful. It rewards the pleasures of accomplishment and gives us that the constant habit of doing will get us to a place of peace and happiness. The act of doing is mostly of the mind. The mind doesn't allow you to sit still and enslaves you in to think that you must always be "doing" something. Instead of mindfully doing tasks and goals, you try to get from point A to point B as fast as possible.

We all praise people that can multitask, when in reality multitasking takes us more and more away from the present moment and what we actually are trying to accomplish. You are doing simply for the act of doing. The doing does not add any particular "value" to your life. As you sit thinking and ask yourself what you are doing with your life, you fail to realize that life itself is not a task to task to do list frantic fest that will add any true meaning to your life. The mind tricks you into thinking that doing a particular thing without awareness will lead you to fulfillment. When you follow that illusory doing path, you reach a means to an end and will circle back to the same place you were before going from one thing to another without knowing why. When you look inward, meditate and become aware of where you are at the present moment, you will get a rush of fulfillment and contentment that will never come when you are constantly searching in the acts of doing. When you align yourself to the present moment , you shift your energy from a human "doing" to a human "being".

Listen. Observe. Let the thought or idea surface or pass. What sticks will stick and you can take action.

“The past has no power over the present moment.”
― Eckhart Tolle

Now that we have covered some of the aspects of the doing with the question. Let's tackle the "your life" part. What is "your life"? When you are saying "your life", you are talking about the culmination of experiences and events that have made the self. The self is a product of time. When you look back, you are looking at all the lessons and experiences that have shaped who you are at that very moment. The past informs you into making decisions based on what has worked or hasn't worked for you. Successes and failures are compartmentalized into different folders on your brain computer that can be accessed at times of need or times where certain repetitive habits or events occur.

"You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life."- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Is it really "your life"? Is life your possession? Is life a bull that you are consistently trying to lasso or discipline into working for the benefit of yourself? When you make life a possession, you are falling into the trap of ego identity. Life then becomes a struggle, endurance test, or a means to an end that shifts you from a state of gratitude, spontaneity and awareness to a state of discontent, murkiness and anxiety. When you treat life as a possession, you immediately divorce yourself from the present moment and put on a false sense of identity driven only by the ego. Instead of doing, take more moments to observe and listen. When the small voice inside of you speaks, you will know that it is not the voice of the ego or mind trying to get you to do it's bidding. What are you passionate about? What adds value to your life? What makes you get lost in the act? These are some important questions to ask yourself and may not always yield solid answers right away. Questions open up the doors of opportunity and shift "your life" to an act of discovery, spontaneity and important lessons. When you stop trying to lasso the bull, you can float down the river of life and stop off at places that offer the best value to you at the moment that will influence the best decisions in the future.

“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.”
― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose  

So...
What are you doing with your life?
What are you doing at this moment?
What are a few of the things that you value the most?
What do you LOVE doing?
What actions are you taking to accomplish your goals?
Are the things you want to do going to add and value or fulfillment to your life?

Take a breath. Enjoy and be grateful that that what you are doing by aligning yourself to the present moment is what you should always be "doing" with "your life".

Love. Learn. Grow. = Life. 

DG