So now that shelter-in-place orders have been extended for at least another month, we can now claim at least one small victory: certainty over our plans for the foreseeable future! But with that relative certainty, of course comes some dread and wishing it could be otherwise.
And here's where I'd like to offer a reframe. Instead of seeing "going nowhere" as punishment, being imprisoned, being stuck in stagnation.....
Can you instead see this as a real invitation, true permission, to let go of the need to go anywhere else than the present moment? To let go of all the breathless doing that takes us out of our being right here, right now. To be with and savor what is right in front of you, and meet it with kind curiosity, with a beginner's mind, and see how we might be able to see the opportunities for evolution and innovation in what we've been presented with?
And to realize that to not have to go anywhere in the external world opens us up to a whole host of adventures and discoveries to be had within our inner world. Oh, the endless possibilities!
The mind has a tendency to want to time travel and catastrophize. Both things that rob us of our agency and empowerment to choose how we wish to relate to what is arising within us and around us. Because after all, the past is already behind us, and the future hasn’t yet arrived. So the only place we can actually effect change is in the here and now. And so even if we can’t change the exact situation that’s arising, how about shifting our awareness and how we choose to respond?
Now that we have an extension on this period of a "new normal"...can we use it as an opportunity to experiment with new ways of relating to ourselves, to others, and to circumstances we may not otherwise choose for ourselves?
Curious to hear what you've been noticing arising in you, or shifting in you as you've been shifting your daily routines? And what sort of things or new ways of being you might be experimenting with (or wish to experiment with?)
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