Stop Changing Lanes

So many of our problems come down to impatience. We have such absurd timelines, according to which we feel transformation ought to happen. We ought to have picked a career by thirty, purchased property by forty. And because others around us also are tortured by these timelines, we project onto these standards an air of rationality.

But the most “rational” voices in our heads are often the most irrational. What does it mean to say you should have learned a lesson before you learned it? What does it mean to say others should behave better than they do? What does it mean to say change should come faster than it does? Absolutely nothing. Our “shoulds” are stories, myths, that keep us from living in embodied reality.

It’s like someone who keeps changing lanes in traffic. He’s sure that cutting left, then right, will get him home faster. In reality, he’s just causing more congestion and slowing everyone down, including himself.

In the same way, when people keep saying, “I’ve got to change my life,” they often can’t see the big picture, which is that the thing they’re doing is the right thing, if only they’d give it a minute.

How do you know the art you’re working on won’t blossom into a masterpiece if you stick with it? How do you know the love and compassion you cultivate won’t blossom into happiness?

You don’t. If you need to know for sure, don’t do anything at all. Don’t leave your room, to say nothing of changing your career or marriage.

But you can know some things. Ajaan Fuang said, “If you doubt everything, don’t doubt you have a breath.” He wasn’t talking about the air in your lungs. He meant that, if you come down from your head and into your body, you’ll see quickly where you’re causing yourself stress.

You’ll know that getting upset about the car ahead of you doesn’t help. You’ll know that no good deed goes unrewarded.

But you have to be in your body. Up in your head, you’re just a leaf thrown around by the wind of other people’s views and opinions.

As always, if you'd like to be held through your own process, contact me and we’ll set up a free sample coaching call.