May 28th at 10am EST – This week’s topic: How to make your life easier Chapter 22 of “Change your thoughts, Change your life. Living the wisdom of the Tao” by Wayne Dyer
How to make your life easier: Recognizing the cause of your pain
Throughout this book the Tao has been trying to teach us that ALLOWING is much more effective than STRIVING. This particular verse tells us that INFLEXIBILITY is what makes us feel like life is hard.
Generally when we are striving at work, within our relationships, toward goals, to achieve our desires, etc, we have very narrow ideas of what outcomes we will accept to allow ourselves to feel like a success.
This inflexibility is what causes a difficult life.
The more inflexible you are by placing requirements or restrictions on people, circumstances, outcomes, objects, etc, the less opportunities you have for success and happiness to flow in your life.
Success and happiness are actually very easy to achieve if you allow yourself more flexibility in the way things happen. Here’s a simple example…
How to make your life easier: Stop cutting yourself off from opportunities
In this example, your goal is to buy a book and enjoy a shopping visit.
If you go to the store with the intention of only buying one specific book, in a hardback, for only $7.95 or less and you expect everyone in the store to be polite and friendly during your visit, you limit yourself to a very narrow window for success.
If any one of those requirements aren’t met or someone is not friendly, you will feel let down, frustrated, annoyed, or even angry. In this scenario you’ve created more opportunities for disappointment than you have for enjoyment.
Instead, if you went to the store with no specific book in mind and you choose not to allow unfriendly people to bother you, your opportunity for a pleasant visit increases exponentially. In this scenario, a visit to the bookstore is relaxing and fun!
As you can see, the more stipulations you create for yourself, the less chance of success you have. The more flexible you are the more opportunities you give yourself!
It seems obvious in this example, doesn’t it?
How to make your life easier: Improving Relationships
Give yourself more flexibility to be happy with your family members.
Do you have someone in your family that always seems to upset you?
What are some of the things that bother you about that person? Write out a list of ten or more things.
- He always leaves is shoes in the living room
- He forgets to put the toilet seat back down
- He never puts his clothes away
- He always leaves splash drops on the bathroom mirror
- He doesn’t wipe his feet before entering the house
etc…
Got your list?
Now, look at each item.
How many times throughout the day do you CHOOSE to be upset about any of those things? Five? Ten? Twenty? Do you like feeling upset? Do you enjoy frustration, anger, or resentment?
What if instead, you choose NOT to be bothered by those things? How many opportunities for happiness does that give you?!
When Lao Tzu says
“the flexible are preserved unbroken”
He is saying that our own inflexibility for how we want things to be, is the main thing that causes us to become upset(broken)!
When you choose to be flexible, you are choosing the path of making life easy and happy. When you are ridged with rules and restrictions, you are choosing the ‘life is hard’ path of frustration and anger.
I know this sounds easier that it is in practice. It takes time to change how you feel about these things. Sometimes you just don’t want to change because you want so badly for life to be a certain way.
However, if you really do want to experience happiness and you want to make your life easier, being flexible and removing restrictions on how it is achieved is the best path.
You can’t make other people change, but you absolutely CAN change yourself!
How to make your life easier: Share your experiences
In the comment section below, tell us…
How are you making your own life hard?
What areas could you be more flexible?
Read Chapter 22 and see some of the other examples Wayne Dyer gives us. Then meet us back here for the Saturday Morning Mastermind and let’s discuss them!
This is week 24 of our Saturday Morning Mastermind book study of “Change your thoughts Change your life” by Wayne Dyer
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