You are tired of feeling average.
In the race of getting a secure and high paying job, you have landed the zone of ‘no passion’. You didn’t see this coming.
You know in your heart, it doesn’t even align with your strengths, yet you struggle every day pushing yourself over the edge, trying to prove your brilliance.
Will you ever be the best at something you don’t even enjoy doing?
You are completely out of your elements, stressed to the maximum.
So many of us live lives that we don’t want to, day in and day out. Round pegs in square holes.
Have we lost our chance of doing something we can be best at, forever?
Absolutely not!
Let me take you through my own journey and prove to you, you can live your passion again.
Here’s a tried and tested plan to claim your life back – The one that you deserve.
The dawn of the dead
I knew something wrong was happening with my mind and body.
Yet, I couldn’t stop it.
I only realized things had gone utterly downhill when I couldn’t even get up from my bed.
I lay down on my bed, eyes closed and rarely open but blank, staring into nowhere. My blood pressure had gone extremely down, and I was moving towards hypotension.
It was crystal clear to me now. Only two days of continuous stress had done this to me.
Immense, inexplicable stress, in technical terms, a burnout.
Stress to complete a quarterly presentation at my office, stress to analyze the numbers right, to defend what I had achieved against all the reasoning.
Basically, stress to work my left brain more than I could, although I always knew I am a right-brain person. More creative than analytical.
I realized it was time to make a change.
As a wise man once said, if you keep doing what you are doing, you keep getting what you are getting.
What followed was a series of actions — all different from what I had ever done, because I wanted something different from my life.
Here they are listed, for your benefit.
The magic emotion that kickstarted my journey
One of my friends had sent me a link for an online course a few months before — on ‘The Law of attraction’.
I had heard about the law of attraction many times but always rejected it for some reason. Although I knew nothing about it. Unless we are very lucky, the society around conditions us for not believing in magic.
Thinking that desperate situations call for desperate measures, I signed up for it. This proved to be my turning point! Here is where I stumbled upon the magic emotion I am talking about.
Stuck in a job that I didn’t like, with no vision of the future, how could I have started a new journey?
With Gratitude.
I realized that magic exists. Everywhere.
It is a simple game of energy – you attract the same energy as you send out.
Keep getting upset, and you shall have more chances to do that.
Start getting grateful about what you have, and you will have more of such things to be grateful for.
I pushed myself into not complaining and being grateful for what I already had.
- A job that was paying me handsomely and allowing me to travel more than an average person
- One of the greenest and most culturally alive cities to live in
- A beautiful and friendly space where I stayed with nice people, in one of the central locations
- A group of friends & colleagues, with who I can start to open up better and enjoy my life with
- A chance to live another day every morning I got up
- A huge patch of greenery that soothed my eyes as soon as Delhi metro cruised towards Qutab Minar
Basically, I started feeling thankful and saying it out loud often, for not just the big, but even the smallest things in my life.
I started enjoying my life in Delhi, each moment of it.
Not only did it deepen my connection to everyone and everything around me, but it also awakened a real sense of happiness inside my own being.
I became more confident, more open, healthier and happier.
The result of being open? Great things came my way!
How my surprising breakthrough made a silent entry
One of the things I hated about my job was sitting in a chair the whole day, in a chilling temperature. The exact same amount of light, day in and day out. Not knowing when the sun set, or when the rain came.
A friend painted a vivid picture of the abundant nature in Sivananda Yoga Ashram Kerala where he was taking a course, and I decided to make him a visit.
My first morning there was filled with a silent meditation in a huge hall, with gusts of the cool breeze coming from all around the tropical plantations and lake in front of the Ashram. I have not felt nature in such serene form in a long time. A feeling of freshness deluged me.
It only dawned upon me later, how tight the Ashram’s schedule was. The day started at five in the morning, with two hours of Asana classes, morning and evening, and the rest of the day filled with Karma yoga, lectures, and meditations, ending by 10 in the night.
The next 10 days were filled with every part of my body paining, and thoughts of running out while I dragged my body from one session to another. A result of nil exercise for almost two years in a job, suddenly I was doing Yoga Asanas four hours a day! Talk about real-life comedy.
At the end of the day, I didn’t even have the energy to browse the internet. You can make out the gravity of the situation.
Somehow, between my friend requesting me not to run away and seeing people from all over the world dedicated to Yoga, I made it through.
The result?
A state of peace I had never experienced before. I was away from my phone for 10 days and had no time to think but to engage in what I was doing with complete focus.
After coming back, I didn’t feel like talking for about 15 days. I couldn’t relate to anger or agitation of any kind and I started loving my personal space which felt empty before. Unknowingly, a connection was established between me and my inner peace.
Life became normal gradually, but I started practicing yoga religiously after that. Every morning before going to work, I spent time with myself on my Yoga mat.
I started flying on the same stairs to my office, where I was dragging my body a few months back. I took my breaks outside in our office lawns, and I saw my body and my mind transform day by day.
In the meantime, something amazing was happening, let me tell you what…
The unnerving discovery that changed everything, forever.
After a few days of my slipping into a natural silence, my inner talk became very vivid to me.
I became very aware of the self-talk that all of us keep doing all the time.
By observing my thoughts continuously, I found that I was always full of doubts about myself. I kept telling myself I couldn’t do stuff, that I wasn’t good enough, so on and so forth.
It was scary how I always felt that I was a confident person and the revelation that I didn’t actually like myself as I thought I did.
At one point, all this talking became very energy draining. I told myself I have to stop it gradually.
So, I started singing the only mantra I knew at that time, whenever I caught myself self-talking.
It was mostly when I was doing mundane activities like bathing, making myself a sandwich, grabbing some coffee, taking a walk, etc.
The whole thing went to the next level when a friend sent me a link to a law of attraction blog and the blogger talked about turning this negative talk on its head.
Now whenever I heard myself negative-talking, I started saying the exact opposite to myself.
‘I don’t deserve this’ to ‘I am the most worthy.’
‘This is not something I can do’ to ‘I can do anything I put my mind to.’
‘I am not good looking’ to ‘I am the hottest girl in town.’
I turned it around, every time.
From convincing myself that I was good enough to eventually believe that I am pretty awesome, I became the queen of self-encouragement.
Time to take my destiny in my hands? Absolutely! Here is how I did it.
Do we all have our personal wish granting Genies…!
Now that I had a glimpse of how energy works, I decided to take another step.
Telling the Universe exactly what I wanted every morning.
I wrote down my affirmations. I –
- Am a super optimist
- Resolve to live my dreams
- Am a celebrated writer
- Travel around the world for leisure
- Have a beautiful house in the middle of nature
- Love myself and much more…
The moment I opened my eyes to go to work, my affirmations were in my mind. I used to wake up with a smile, sense of gratitude and started repeating my affirmations.
It became a part of my life, just like breathing, having food and going to work. I never slipped away on them, always finding time to say them out loud with feeling and awareness.
As of today, I have each of these things, every one of them.
It was a big plunge to quit my corporate job and a career in travel spanning 12 years, but suddenly one day, I decided to do it. Later I realized, it was not sudden, it had taken its own pretty time
I took my longest ever leisure trip, around South East Asia 6 months after I left my job. It came as a surprise to me, totally unplanned but I decided to take it because I just wanted to let loose, go where destiny takes me. And I had one of the best time of my life! My dream came true before I realized.
Having become a super optimist, I left my steady income behind, started my new career in writing and Yoga therapy. I do these things with absolute pleasure and sans pressure.
I have experienced great amounts of satisfaction teaching Yoga multiple times by now that I have not felt even once in my 12-year long career as a travel professional.
Though not yet a celebrated writer, my journey into professional writing has very much begun and is steadily going uphill. I am confident about my progress in it, which I never was in my travel career.
And for sure, I have never loved myself so much. I accept each and every aspect of my nature, enjoy it and try to improve on things without feeling guilty and blaming myself for anything.
It’s your turn now, and your time!
You open your eyes with a big smile on your face and excitement to go to work. How fun is going to be the day ahead!
Peace is what prevails your mind, and you are confident that your life is going in the right direction.
You are slowly savoring your dreams coming true, every day… yes, this could be you.
Each one of us can live lives that we have dreamed of. We just need to have faith and courage — the two most important things to hold on to, in the most despondent moments.
It is your time now. Give yourself a year following my magic steps above with non-wavering faith. Take the first step today and the next inspirational story I hear will be yours.
Roli Jain is a Yoga Therapist and Personal Development Blogger. After she quit her conventional job, Yoga found Roli and she never turned back. She helps people achieve their best mental and physical state and live better lives, through Yoga. Find her at www.livelifebetterwithyoga.com.
Image courtesy of Chelsea shapouri.
