Let things come to you.
I read this on a Yogi Tea bag a while ago. And it really struck me. It made me aware of my life-long tendency to PUSH towards completion of things on my to do list and towards the achievement of life goals. All of my pushing and striving is exhausting and tends to leave me feeling depleted, flat and empty. If there's any satisfaction, it might be for a fraction of a moment.
There is another way.
There are other times, when I'm in the midst of moving towards something that I REALLY love, that doing what ever it is that I'm doing feels effortless. I get lost in the flow of being in the experience, and it fuels me. It's completely energizing and is all enjoyment and flow.
The secret? Let Things Come To You.
By Let Things Come To You, I don't mean sit back and do nothing. But rather, don't push, don't strive. Allow things to happen naturally, by having an awareness of how it feels in the moment to do the very next thing that wants to naturally happen.
There is a way to not push too hard AND not hold back. But instead employ just the perfect amount of doingand being, together. In this way, the experience is happening, and you are in it and feeling it as it is happening.
I felt this holding and feeding my cousin's newborn baby last weekend. Totally present. Aware. Alive. Being tuned into the cues that baby was giving me, hunger, fullness, wanting to move, wanting to burp.
I felt this while preparing my class notes this week: engaged, creative and in the flow, trusting that the pieces of the class content that were next to be presented would fall into place, and not feeling any need to do anything beyond what felt right.
I felt this jogging in the neighborhood last week, my first jog in quite a while. Slow and steady, deep breaths, steep hills, one step at a time.
Let Things Come To You. Everything happens just as it should on its own time.