What a perfect time to talk more about being vs. doing. We are in a global pandemic where the safest thing for ourselves and others is to isolate and stay home. Events, work, and gatherings have been cancelled and were all just left with ourselves. Depending on your relationship with your inner being, this can be a beautiful time or a quite anxious time. For most of us, it’s probably both.

Less Focus on Doing

The beautiful thing about this time is that whoever we are and whatever we typically are doing, we are forced to do less and perhaps we can take time to “be” more. This time gives us an opportunity to go within, to reflect, and to prioritize our health and our community above simply doing more things for the sake of routine, money, or fun. We can reset, reconfigure, and heck even restart if we want.

The ability to simply “be” is not promoted in our typical fast-paced life. This is one of the reasons why people meditate, to create some separation from the constant doing/thinking to simply just be. It is very hard to just be.

Eckhart Tolle explanation of who we are helped me understand more about our pure beingness. I’ll paraphrase and try to do this justice. He starts with a simple question, “who are you?” where most people answer job title, hobbies, etc. He responds that’s what you do. Who are you? Then, some will go into their body or their ancestry. He explains that today’s body is not the same body we had at 10 years old or 1 year old. So we are obviously not the body as that’s continually evolving. We are also not our experiences or attributes or descriptions of our race or place in the world. These are all things that occurred or that could’ve been different, but it’s not who we are.

In the end, he helps us understand we are pure awareness. We are the ones who hear our thoughts (so we are not our thoughts as we are the ones aware of them), we are the ones who are experiencing life. My understanding of this is that we are the soul or spirit. So, our pure essence is spirit, and we are having a human experience with a body and a mind to help us get through that.

Meditation can be sort of a tuning into that awareness and helping you remember that you are the one watching your thoughts and listening to the the inner voice. You are not your thoughts nor that voice. Many times in guided meditation they tell you that when a thought comes, just let it pass like a cloud. So you are kind of separating yourself from identification with those thoughts, and all the baggage that comes with those thoughts.

What’s nice about this time is that our focus on constant doingness has completely flipped on its head. Most of us, however, are just trying to fill the day back up with things to do to prevent boredom and take advantage of the free time to get more done. That’s a great idea, and I’ll provide some ideas on things to do at the end of this post. However, I want to encourage some mindfulness, reflection, and perhaps meditation even if it’s just for 10 seconds.

Let’s Start with the Mind

Here’s why: Your life up to this very moment was created by you either consciously or unconsciously. What I know is that we live in a world created through energy and vibration. It’s been my experience and of many others that every thought we have carries that creative energy. Ghandi truly said it best:

“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”

Ghandi

I hope you have a dream for yourself. A higher vision of who you want to be and what you want to do with this short and fragile life. I also hope that you are pursuing it with all the passion and love in your heart. I hope even with greater expectation that you are living your dream, and that you are happy where you are as you continue to create new experiences for yourself.

But if you are none of those things, I truly know what that feels like. I know for me it has been tough to believe in my dreams even while knowing the “secret” to success which can be said many different ways, but is simply:

The mind is everything. What you think you become.

Buddha

I will not pretend to understand how the universe works, but as I’ve been doing my own exploration, asking my own questions, and trying these things for myself, I have found the mind to be extremely powerful. In my previous post I touched on this a bit. I’ll summarize it quickly here:

Only a few months ago I hated my job, I was unhappy in my marriage, I felt stuck, I did not like my house… I could go on. I had a day when I was so fed up with my negativity, I simply chose to be positive. I chose it regardless of my circumstances, I didn’t care about what was happening or if anything would even change, I simply didn’t want to feel the way I did anymore. It’s 4 months later, and I still have the same job, same husband, same house, and I am so satisfied and even thankful for everything that I have. I count my blessings everyday and things have gotten better for me. In small ways, I have started my own personal projects, I’m healthier, more fit, more wealthy, more loving, and even made new friendships during this short time.

So yes, there are external events that happen that you and I may not understand and will not have control over, but what I know now is that I have full control over my thoughts, my reaction, and thus, my experience in every situation. It’s easier said than done and I still have a hard time sometimes, but I enjoy the process and I notice what’s happening now within me. I know I’m getting better at mastering my creative process which starts with who I choose to be, then, what I think.

The reason why thought mastery is so important is because our subconscious will believe the things we think and say to ourselves. And our subconscious is in control of everything literally the result of our lives because it controls our energy at any given moment, the things we do while on autopilot, our motivation, even hair growth and immune system. It’s the reason why we can have a good idea, but somehow self-sabotage because our subconscious is on another page.

The other crazy thing is that when we start to pay attention to our thoughts, not only will we realize how negative we are to ourselves, we also think things that are simply not true. Like straight up not true, but as we think it, we believe it, we start to act like it, and then we create it! Like, how long did you call yourself fat before you actually became fat? Or how long did you think about losing your job or having a health issue before it became a reality?

The untrue thoughts or phrases tend to have extreme language like “never”, “always”, or “ever”. For example, “I can never remember where I leave things”, “I’ve always been a slob”, “I’m such an idiot” “I’m always over eating”, “I hate going to school”, “I can’t remember anything!”, “I’m so lazy”, “I can’t save”.

Do a 7 day or 30 day challenge

If you want to get started with a simple technique to change your life, simply stop saying out loud any of these things. It will take time to reprogram your mind to stop thinking like this, but you can quit saying this for 1 week or try 30 days. If you say something negative or untrue about yourself, try correcting it out loud even if people are there listening. I’ve done this.

For example, I’ve been remodeling my house for almost 2 years. It was supposed to be a 4 month project, so you can imagine the experience. People always ask about my house progress and for the last few months I’ve been cheerfully saying to people “oh we’ll never finish. You know what they say… You’re never really done with a house. I don’t even care anymore.”

First of all, that’s two lies. I will never finish. Really? Never? And you don’t care? OK. The crazy thing is for the last few months I didn’t even consider this a negative thought but obviously it is. So last weekend I made some comment along those lines to a friend, and I recognized it. I immediately corrected and said, “I’m just kidding, we just have some shelves to put up. Mini-projects. You know?”.

Once you believe with certainty that you are creating your life and what you say will be done, you will be so much more careful with the words that come out of your mouth. So try this. Start my focusing on the words that come out of your mouth and correct yourself. Don’t stop until you can do at least a week straight without self-sabotaging your desires.

Choose who you want to be

Now let’s go back to the Ghandi quote.

“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”

Ghandi

We just talked a lot about thoughts, but beliefs actually come before that. One crazy idea I just covered is that you are in control of your life and your happiness. Do you believe this?

If you said yes, I want you to take a deep breath, and after you read this sentence close your eyes and imagine for as long as you want what it would feel like to be happy.

For some, this may be difficult, and if so, I want you to focus on your heart. Take your time. Think of all the emotions your heart has experienced. Some have been hard and challenging, but it has also had so many great emotions and experiences. It has done some great work not only allowing you to experience life through emotions, but keeping you alive by running blood through your whole body all day and all night. Be grateful for everything it has done. Now, think of all those times your heart felt love or felt happiness? Take time to think about those moments or people you love. Breath in some of that love. Do you feel happiness in your heart now? If you desire, imagine it as a light in your heart and watch it expand as if it has a mind of its own until it surrounds your entire being. Now you are glowing. You are literally glowing of love and happiness.

I hope you are smiling. These concepts are hard for me to explain, but so easy for your body and soul to feel. This (what you just experienced) is how you can simply be.

You can just be you and be aware of your current feelings/thoughts (negative or positive) or you can choose to be whatever you want (like glowing of happiness) literally in a matter of seconds. You can also choose wisdom, compassion, peace, joy, or anything else you desire. This is your creative power to be able to create an experience for yourself, and also be aware of your creativeness. No other creature on earth can do this.

Be-Do-Have

You get in life not what you want, but who you are.

Les Brown

Part of the secret of life as quoted above is that we create by who we are not what we want. So many people see a house, a car, or a family and try to use brute force to try to get the man, the vacation, the job, etc., and to be honest, that method can really leave you frustrated, burnt out, and feeling like a failure. Now, if we are honest about why we want what we want, we usually believe that if we had that we would feel better. We would be happy, and if we get more specific, we could say we want to be free, be confident, be smart, be more, be better, etc.

So the issue with how many of us have approached our goals is that we focus on having what we want (money, time, love), so we can do the things we want (travel, start a business), and then be the person we want to be (happy, abundant, free). The law of attraction emphasizes that you must be a “match” vibrationally to the things you desire. This means we have to reverse the formula. It is not Have-Do-Be, it is Be-Do-Have (See Conversations with God Book Series for more on this).

The crazy thing is that until you feel happy, and confident, and wealthy, and capable, you won’t get the things that you think you need right now to feel that way. It sounds backwards, but this makes sense when you think about Ghandi and Buddha’s quotes. We must think and believe first. You might say, “How can I feel or be what I don’t think I am?”. I just showed you how. I just showed you how your mind and imagination works if you simply choose it.

It’s great to want to have something, but think about who you think you might need to be to have it. I like to ask myself, “what would it feel like to have that or be that right now”, and just like we did with happiness, I go into that place with my imagination. From that place of “being”, you can then “do”, and surely as the law states, you will then “have” what matches your new beingness.

Things You Can Do To BE Who You Want To BE

It will be very hard at the beginning to sustain your new beingness, but keep choosing it. In every moment, especially in the mornings when your day and mind is fresh. Choose who you want to be. I have to listen to talks and affirmations and lectures for at least 1-2 hours a day to keep me going in the right path. Even then, I have days when I’m just ready to start over because I know I cannot and should not go into a place of action if I’m not in the right state of being.

The coronavirus quarantine is a great time to reset your mind, focus, and try meditation. Take time to dream, daydream, write some goals down, sing out loud, dance, express yourself. Do something different. And if you have any questions, please let me know. I am at the beginning of my journey, so I know it’s not easy, but I also know how quickly progress can be made.

More Ideas During The Coronavirus Quarantine