How Do You Experience Your Life?
Today we’re going to help you explore and ponder the question: How do you experience your life?
We’ll show you a new way to visualize a concept we’re always talking about: the power your thoughts have to help you create a more intentional life.
You’ll learn how thinking of a foundation and a home can help you better visualize all your emotions and circumstances.
Although we don’t always get to control our own circumstances, we do have 100% control over our thoughts and feelings. So how you experience your life is completely up to you!
Okay, let’s dive into the content!
A new way to think of your emotions + circumstances
I’ve started thinking about my life with the visual metaphor of a foundation and a house. Or I might picture a plot of land and what is built and what grows on it.
*Feel free to sketch this out so it makes sense to you.
The foundation that this home is built on is comparable to my thoughts and feelings, or how I experience of my life on a day to day basis.
It’s like a home base, a dedicated place for me to return to to find security and peace. And in its simplest form, this foundation is just my thoughts and feelings.
Foundation = Your thoughts and feelings
What then gets built on that foundation is comparable to the circumstances and results of my life.
I might build a house (or there might be one already there). I might plant trees—and plants or growth may happen spontaneously. I might bring things to this spot of land that I want—and others might also bring things that I may or may not want to keep. I’ll invite some people to stay with me in this place—and others may come uninvited.
Home = Circumstances and results of your life
What You Don’t Have Control Over
I don’t have 100% control of what happens ON TOP of this foundation, even though the foundation is 100% mine. So that includes my circumstances and the results of my life.
The circumstances of my life are a big mix of things I’ve chosen and things that have been handed to me. (Relationships I chose and relationships I was born into. Results I worked hard for and results that were handed to me for better or worse.)
What You Do Have Control Over
I DO have 100% control of the maintenance of the foundation, or how I EXPERIENCE what happens on my plot of land.
My thoughts and feelings about everything that exists are all optional and open to me. And I can choose to create certain experiences from that foundational place that I want. I can plant seeds, cultivate the ground, build a beautiful and safe home to live in, etc.
Using the metaphor of foundation + a home
It’s not a perfect metaphor but thinking of things this way has offered me some freedom and lightness about how I experience my life.
If I have a good handle on the foundational aspects of my life (present-moment acceptance and intentionality about what my life contains) then it almost doesn’t matter what my life actually contains.
Experiencing life this way has changed my perspective:
How much money I have stops being a problem
What I spend my time doing doesn’t matter so much
How the people around me act doesn’t become a huge problem
All because I have the ability to experience the present moment of my life in a particular way. This can be the same for you!
How You Can Experience Your Life
Below is a list of examples of what your foundation consists of and what you can build on top of that foundation.
Take a look at your own foundation and home.
Foundation = Your Thoughts + Feelings
House = Your Circumstances + Results
Foundation:
Feelings
Worthiness
Acceptance
The present moment
FREEDOM
House:
Goals
Work
Relationships
What we do
How we spend our time
Money
Where we live/our environment
Health
The “house” things are all secondary to the primary ability we have to FEEL good about our lives the way they are at this moment.
You Get To Choose How You Experience Your Life
Try doing a quick check in with yourself to see how you’re doing.
1. See how your foundation is looking.
Is it stable? Is it strong?
Is there any work that needs to be done there?
2. Then you can take a look at your home.
Find things you’d like to cultivate there.
Clear out things that no longer serve you.
Just remember those things are secondary to how you FEEL about your life. And YOU get to decide how it is that you want to feel right at this very moment, no matter what your life looks like.
Kristin
Listen to the content below
You can also search The Progress Project on any podcast app.
Episode #165: How Do You Experience Your Life?
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