Striving

Our culture raises us to strive for the next thing—bigger, better. We spend very little time looking around and being grateful, being satisfied, and being in awe of where we are, what we have, and who we have become. In doing so, we often unknowingly start narrowing our focus, our ways of being, our perspective, and our purpose. We become rigid in our exhaustive searching for more.

Expansiveness, as a concept, is not just about moving up or forward. It’s about growth in all directions. And it doesn’t work to push; pushing only creates resistance. What if we opened, gently, to what was around us, taking it all into our being, considering each molecule, and connecting from the inside out? You start to notice that life is always more than you are making it. You are no longer striving; you are accepting.

But if we accept, doesn’t that keep us stagnant?

If you want to know what direction you’d like to move in, you need to know where you are right now. If you lived in your mind, only satisfied with the destination of your dreams, the journey would feel arduous. Then, once you reached the original destination, you would already have a new one in mind, and you would be back on the hamster wheel. What would it be like to stop right now and thank the earth, your own inner being, a higher power, or your ancestors for allowing you to live right now? To breathe air. To feel things—even the hard things. To know what it is to be alive.

There is an idea that if we stop striving, we stop progress. Quite the opposite. When we are open and accepting, we allow inspiration to enter. We allow ourselves to feel renewed and excited. We allow grief and deep feeling. We allow aliveness to enter us, allowing us to become a vessel for messages, art, beauty, and love. We also allow rest. We allow ourselves time to recover and come back stronger. We allow play. We allow ourselves to be human. When we enable self-acceptance, we fill with compassion, love, and trust in our capabilities. In this way, we connect more fully to ourselves and others. We begin to really live.