Do you take yourself too seriously?
Do you have heavy energy and lots of negativity in your life?
Are you weighed down by life?
Life can feel heavy, like having the world upon your shoulders. I am sure you have heard that before. We constantly worry about the future, take things too personally, wish away our lives, overreact and suffer from procrastination, overwhelm and sadness.
These are burdens in our mind, body, emotions and spirit.
When you have lightness in your life the weight dissipates, you can make great choices, you see the awesomeness in people, time flows, you are creative, you can express yourself easily and you have a smile on your face that is bursting out from within.
Your self talk can affect the lightness in your life. When you start to think things like ‘you are not good enough’, ‘you’ll never succeed’, ‘who do you think you are’, you start to feel heavy or add to the heaviness that is living within you. This can be discouraging. However, we can turn this around.
I remember doing “team bonding” exercises where we had to say something to describe another team member (anonymously); the best someone could come up with to describe me was that I was serious. Who wants to hear that? I didn’t, it hit home that people saw me as someone they did not want to be around. I began to reflect why they see this side of me and I came to understand that I had a negative, heavy energy all around me and I realised this is where I was being overly critical on everything and everyone in my life.
I wanted to be the person who was uplifting, who made people laugh, who was spontaneous, this was not me THEN.
NOW I have implemented some simple little things to get a sense of lightness to life, to laugh at myself and take the weight of responsibility away.
The first thing I do is laugh. Whether I watch a funny movie, go to laughter yoga, tell jokes with my partner or simply giggle at how serious I was with life, it takes the weight off my shoulders.
As adults, we have lost our childlike abandon and have forgotten how to laugh at ourselves.
You need to do ‘silly’ things alone or with your kids. Go watch a kid’s movie, play on a playground, build sandcastles, play hide and seek.
Another thing I dare you to do is to find a pool or body of water and get in naked. This is so freeing. It takes the heaviness of life away.
Be spontaneous to bring lightness into your life; there is such freedom in being able to make a decision on the spot without overthinking it.
Being spontaneous opens you up to new experiences and is more natural in your behaviour. Think about when you are in a new relationship, often you are spontaneous as there is that spark there that keeps the fire alive. As the relationship moves on through its phases, it can become more routine and this is when the spark can be lost, because you stop being spontaneous.
If you bring more spontaneity into your life, (and yes it can take some effort but the pros so out way the cons), it will lighten up the heaviness of life, take out the negativity that weighs us down and is a gift to ourselves.
Here are some ways you can add some spontaneity and lightness into your world:
Have unintentional and impromptu sex
Try something new
Break up the household routines
Take an unplanned road trip
Take a new exercise class with your partner or friend
Listen to what people are really saying so you can be creative and surprise them by showing you had been listening
Send an unexpected gift
Say yes before you can even think about the pros and cons
Add your own to the list.