How Far?
Per Bronnie Ware, the #1 regret of the dying is that they didn’t have the courage to live a life true to themselves. Ok – message heard, head nodding; but, how, how to break free? Unless you are independently wealthy, the realities of life are traps. Income is needed to pay the bills and family responsibilities are real. These Five Things Trap Us into Unhappiness on www.inc.com, lists traps that I have fallen into. Curious if you resonant with these.
1. The Should Trap – doing something you think you should because of the prestige or expectation
2. The Overwork Trap – working 24-7 because of our need to keep up, because we’re insecure…
3. The Ambition Trap – going goal after goal – not enjoying but focusing on the chase
4. The Money Trap – staying in a bad job for a paycheck, enduring misery for the next pay raise
5. The Helplessness Trap – you feel disempowered, the victim of your circumstances
For me I resonate with #1,4, and 5.
The Should – I was good in math, so I SHOULD be an engineer. The reality is being an engineer is probably the right profession for me; however, I never explored other options.
The Money Trap – I married young, and we had children early, and the financial realities of life quickly followed. In the movie Maid in Manhattan, the mom tells her daughter who was recently fired, “Wake up little girl, you have responsibilities and they come every month like clockwork.”
The Helplessness Trap – this is where I ended up, not where I started. Decades of “cooking the frog” as they say, leaving me numb, immobilized, and “the victim.”
Ok, back to the original question – how to break free? How far are you willing to go? I am inspired by Siddhartha Gautama’s conviction to finding his life purpose – but I admit, I’m not convicted to go that far.
Per lionsroar.com, Siddhartha was born an opulent prince in Nepal, and would never feel LACK or NEED. During one of his very few carriage rides outside of the palace he, for the first time, saw sickness and dying and realized that even his privileged status would not protect him from sickness, old age, and death. He felt empty, lost, and trapped. At 29, he renounced his worldly life, his Princedom, and left his wife and child to kind his purpose. For six years he went on a spiritual quest – a quest of extreme and prolonged fasts and punishing the body to elevate the mind only to end up frustrated. Eventually, he came to realize that true peace and purpose comes through mental discipline and not by material goods and status and doing what is expected. Siddhartha would spend the rest of his life teaching people how to realize awakening for themselves. He walked from village to village, attracting disciples along the way. The world has come to know Siddhartha as the Buddha and his peace is known as Awakening or Enlightenment.
Buddhism provides Four Noble Truths as guides towards awakening
1. Life has suffering and stress
2. The suffering comes from cravings, leaving us anxious and frustrated
3. Liberation comes from knowing WHAT causes YOUR suffering
4. Insight comes from meditation, mindfulness and living a life that benefits others
The Buddha identified 3 poisons that cause most of our problems – greed, hatred and ignorance, and 3 positive attitudes necessary for liberation – generosity, loving kindness, and wisdom. Buddhists focus on cultivating the positive virtues and reducing the poisons.
Ok – peace and purpose come from living Ikigai while being generous, loving and wise! I’m in!
My question for you – how far are you willing to go to live a life of peace and purpose?
PS. I will leave you with 2 nuggets of wisdom that the maid in Maid in Manhattan received after getting fired:
· What we do, Miss Ventura, does not define who we are. What defines us is how well we rise after falling.
· Sometimes we’re forced in directions that we ought to have found for ourselves