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Learn more about their customizable plans at squareup.com. This is optimal living daily episode 1815, permission to be, and leaning into life, both by Angelina Lee of exploringplanb.com. And I'm Justin Molick, the guy that reads to you every single day of the year, including weekends and holidays to help you live a more meaningful and positive life to post today, both from Angelina Lee. So let's get right to them and start optimizing your life permission to be by Angelina Lee of exploringplanb.com.
Well, a man who wants to leave the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd, Maxicato. Have you ever wondered what life could be like if you turned your back on the expected? As a society, we've created, accepted, and followed certain norms. We have come up with a definition of success that entails so much more than being able to meet our own needs.
We've created badges of honor and we call them busyness, exhaustion, and excess. We say to ourselves that we must do all the things to reap all the rewards and that we must burn ourselves out in order to do it right. A slow simmering of unfulfillment from within gradually leads to a tumultuous and rapid boiling over of discontent, anxiety, and despair. I was unhappy with what my life looked like.
This led to anxious thoughts about what course my life should follow. This in turn led to complete and utter despair, as my instinct was to believe that I was failing at keeping up. I was failing at being able to do it all. I was failing at life.
Mind you, if you asked me then to identify exactly what I thought I was failing at, I likely would have explained some version of my life that I was programmed into believing was the only mark of success. Over time, after much wrestling with fear, I've come to realize that the life that I'm crafting looks a lot different to the life that I had mapped out for myself so many years ago. The life that I thought would have been most pleasing to those around me. The life that would have signaled success to myself and to the world.
Over time, after much longing for peace in my inner being, I've come to realize that it is possible to be happy. It is possible to take time for myself. It is possible to live the life that makes me feel truly alive instead of merely marking my days. I recently had a conversation with a friend who left her corporate career to follow her passion.
In that conversation, she said to me that she never knew that it was possible to be so happy. Sadly far too many of us have yet to experience this level of fulfillment. The fact is that we crave validation. We need to know that our decisions will please those around us.
We need to know that we are in alignment with the norms that we have unknowingly created and accepted. But the truth is that there can be no true fulfillment outside of finding our purpose and living our lives in a way that brings joy to ourselves and to those we meet. You need no validation to do what you feel called to do. You need no validation to be who you were called to be.
You need no validation to follow your dreams and live the life that you want to live regardless of the expectations that others may have for your life. But if after all is said and done, you still believe that you need someone to accept or approve your decision, then here it is. I give you permission to be leaning into life by Angelina Lee of Exploring Plan B dot com. Quote, life if well lived is long enough.
Seneca, I've always had this picture in my mind of what my life would look like. My life would be marked with great success, a testament to many years of hard work. My life would look seamless with every detail fitting into a neat little box of accepted standards. My work would be enjoyable and its impact would be far reaching.
But this picture only captured big things. The reality is that my work hard, I've achieved a measure of success and I have enjoyed the work that I do. And yet, these very things have created a life of obligation, expectation, and overwhelm. We easily find ourselves stuck in a cycle of responsibility and productivity and we become enslaved by the mundane.
We've all victim to the trap that tells us that we must choose function over creativity, that we must be worn thin in order to have worth. In turn, we begin to feel like we are somehow lacking, lacking purpose, liking meaning, liking fulfillment. And so we look to the future for reassurance. We look to the next big event in our lives, our next vacation, our next family gathering, our favorite holiday or season.
We tell ourselves that we must endure the everyday humdrum today so that tomorrow we live our best life. But life has so much more to offer to us. Instead of merely moving through the motions and living our lives from one big moment to the next, we can lean into life and discover the beauty that lies in the everyday moments in the unremarkable events that, for the most part, fill our days. When we learn to truly live each moment that is gifted to us, a new level of freedom is attained, freedom to revel in the simple moments, freedom to pause and to reassess the course that our lives have taken, freedom to choose to find joy in each insignificant moment and to inspire others to do the same.
When we become attuned to the blessings that surround us, to the abilities that we take for granted, and to the opportunities that could lie and wait if we can only look past what we have always pictured our lives to look like, we change our mindset. The mundane things that we first thought had enslaved us evolved to become the very things that we appreciate most. The next time you feel trapped, stuck, or otherwise uninspired, take a walk outside, feel the breeze gently caress your face, listen to the silence that only nature can harmonize and lean fully into the moment. The next time you feel overwhelmed, means efficient or lost, close your eyes, feel your chest move gently with each breath that you take, silence the mind and rest in the knowledge that you are not what you do, but that you are enough.
The next time you feel like your life is passing you by, pause, look around you and choose to feel alive in the moment, knowing that you will never live this exact moment again. A life filled with these moments of gratitude, peace, and appreciation will equate to a life well lived. You just listen to the post titled Permission to Be and leaning into life both by Angelina Lee of ExploringPlanB.com. Local news is in decline across Canada, and this is bad news for all of us, with less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void, and it gets harder to separate truths from fiction.
That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more places across Canada, reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories that matter to all of us, because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise, CBC News.