Don't let a single moment of life pass you by. Be Alive!

Something that surprised me as I emerged from my depressive period into an activated and inspired life was how alive I felt. Part of this was the contrast of being so completely offline for a number of years, but it was also to do with embracing all that was happening to me.

 

There was a very active element to this, I was very motivated about everything and was putting lots of effort into getting fit, losing weight, getting a job, and my personal practice.

Lots of changes were occurring too, little things, and sometimes big things were manifesting or re-emerging, aspects of mind and character that had been dormant, so I was getting a lot of positive feedback which was great.

 

As this continued over a period of months I felt very grateful for all that was unfolding. After about four months, I’d lost all the weight I’d put on over the last 6 years or so. I was starting to feel fit, I’d secured a great job and was enjoying the mental stimulation and sense of achievement being back at work, not to mention the social interaction of the workplace.

 

I was pinching myself at this amazing change of circumstances, because I was in a positive state of mind most of the time, I felt like every moment of my life was a gift. I didn’t want to spend a single second on any negative emotions or thinking, it seemed like such a waste.

 

Life can get its claws into us and it can be hard to stay positive with so many things vying for our attention and resources. Dealing with life problems, personal issues, meeting numerous responsibilities, feeling unfulfilled personally and professionally, all these can all pile up to make us feel unhappy in our life. Some difficulties can be easily reframed with a bit of perspective, the biggest problem we have is our attitude and responses to what is happening. It’s as simple as that.

 

When we feel grateful and consciously decide to take a positive spin on what we’re experiencing, life changes profoundly. Sure, it’s not easy, especially at the beginning, but it is doable, it’s just mental training. We work that positive habit until it starts getting a momentum of its own, which takes less time than you think, if we stick to the practice like glue.

 

One of the reasons why I experienced such empowering and positive states of mind is because I had gone through a very painful experience for about 7 years, from acute suffering into a lifeless depressiveness. When I suddenly bounced out of it, I was so grateful to have left all that awfulness behind, there was nothing in my life now that could keep me down.

 

I felt thankful for everything, even the tiny granny flat I was living in which wasn’t much more than a shack, which was all I could afford at the time. There was this new perspective, that problems weren’t really problems, and that possibility was everywhere, and that no matter what happens, I’m going to be OK. 

 

This extreme experience created the conditions to engender a powerful connection to gratitude and perspective, but it is something anyone can bring to their life, even if they’ve experienced very little adversity and mostly relatively luxurious conditions. Gratitude is an attitude and perspective that is related to awareness. We can choose to bring these mental conditions into being and in some ways, it’s not hard.

 

There seems to be a general tendency in society to think and talk to our friends, partners, colleagues and so on about what we’re not happy about, what we don’t have, what we’re missing out on, what we don’t like and what’s wrong with the world. This is the opposite of gratitude and perspective.

 

A quick honest and incisive look at our life and conditions will quickly reveal how lucky we are, especially compared to the majority of the world’s population. Realising that there’s hundreds of millions of people, if not more, who can barely pay for food and water is not about triggering your first world guilt, it’s about revealing the reality that your focus is out of whack.

Perspective and gratitude go hand in hand, once you connect with the truth that your life is full of riches, potential and possibility, that entitlement we all carry around dissolves into the night.

 

Life is passing us by while we just passively accept the conditions we find ourselves in. We think we are stuck with our habitual mindset, we’ve become accustomed to accepting that it’s just the way we are, or we are afraid of the effort that it will take to change or that we’ll fail. Living your best life is but a tweak of mental attitude away. It’s this positive mental shift that brings us more fully into the present.

 

We start to feel like every moment we are alive is a wonder, we feel invigorated and alive in everything we do. Once we acknowledge that we really do have a choice about what our life can be, we renounce negative thinking and its attendant emotions and instead, reframe our experience ongoingly with a positive view. It’s a choice. Yes, old mental habits will continue to pop up, but we just keep on truckin’.

 

The exhortation to be alive is all about this positive connection to life, it’s about becoming inspired, rejigging our attitude and vibrating with something meaningful. We start to engage in positive action and thinking, our motivations shift to the desire for personal evolution and growth, this imbues our life with greater meaning and positive energy. We naturally start to connect with aliveness. Everything we do becomes important so we act with greater awareness and conscience. All these things create increased positive feedback.

 

The only question we need to ask ourselves is, do we really want it? If we don’t want it deep down inside ourselves, what is it going to take to wake ourselves up, to rouse that self that is sedated and inured to what’s going on? Just asking the question can be enough, ‘what does it mean to be alive, what’s the point?’

 

It doesn’t need an immediate answer, it just needs to be asked and turned over in one’s mind. An authentic engagement with the existential nature of these sorts of questions will bring insights, and this will naturally change us. It begins with you.