What’s important to you? What do you value? Do you know?
So often we spend a huge amount of our energy and time on things that don’t really matter. We do the things we’ve always done, the things our family prioritises, that society in general prioritises, the things that were important to us 10 years ago.
And we forget to take these things up to revision. Do they still actually matter? Have we changed? Have our values changed? Our circumstances? Did they ever really matter?
Life gets busy and we chug along on autopilot, doing what we’ve always done, because it kind of works. But what if our values – our driving forces behind pretty much everything we do – are not really our own? Or perhaps they’re out of date? And we don’t realise til years later!
We might be vaguely aware that the balance is off, that we’re drifting through, ticking all the ‘right boxes’, but rarely feeling joyful or experiencing that ease of being, that goes along with being in alignment with our truest selves.
So how do we get back on track? Back into alignment? Back in touch with what’s truly important to us. How do we (re)discover what ignites our soul?
There are many ways, but Mindful meditation is The How for me. And the practice that makes the most sense to me. Slowing down, getting quiet enough to be able to hear my own ideas and truths; what is actually important to me.
Before I learned to meditate, I’d lost track. I couldn’t hear. There was too much noise and distraction, I got easily swayed by louder external voices, telling me what I should value, what I ought to do, who I should be. Sometimes they were even right! But it turned out that often they weren’t.
When we meditate, we turn our attention inwards. We can learn to hear the whispers of our own hearts. To feel when something doesn’t quite ring true. And we can then choose to investigate and make any changes to the way we live our lives.
How can we possibly live wholeheartedly, consciously or authentically, if we don’t know what we value or what is truly important to us? And how can we know what that looks like, without first getting quiet and listening?
Important add-on: Mindful meditation doesn’t have to be only sitting still and focusing on the breath. It could be movement based, creativity based or have many other focuses. But that’s a whole other future blog!
