I often hear from clients…
“I just have to get out of this rat race!”
What is the mad scramble in your world? What is that fierce competition that keeps you in a constant hustle and bustle frame of mind? That rush, rush, rush that can leave you numb and tired and wondering what is the purpose of this?
We set these expectations…bars we feel we must rise to grasp.
Has the doing become more important than the being? Has the result become more important than the process? Has the striving for perfection started to smother the joy of the moment? Have your feet constantly stuck in the flux of the future lost the sure footing of being grounded in the present?
In Shauna Niequist’s new book Present over Perfect, she speaks of her own journey leaving the rat race…what she discovered was giving gas to her go go go, how foreign it was to slow down, and the freedom she found in the midst of the journey.
She shares, “When you decide, finally, to stop running on the fuel of anxiety, desire to prove, fear, shame, deep inadequacy – when you decide to walk away from that fuel for a while, there’s nothing but confusion and silence. You’re on the side of the road, empty tank, no idea what will propel you forward, It’s disorienting, freeing, terrifying. For a while, you just sit, contentedly, and contentment is the most foreign concept you know. But you learn it, shocking as it is, day by day, hour by hour. You sit in your own skin, being just your plain self. And it’s okay. And it’s changing everything!”
Sitting in your own skin realizing that the constant striving for perfection is truly just a mirage of reality…
the rat race in your life loses its pull…
and slowly but surely you become comfortable with the imperfection of the here and now and the beautiful, definitely not yet arrived, mess of self.
And this is when you can begin to smile from the inside!
