Life: Bricks or Pressed Concrete?
Just to be clear, this is not a post about design choices for your new drive way!
During my life I have been through some ups and downs. Such is the nature of being a human.
After going through a divorce (which I choose to initiate), I started to struggle with emotional turbulence. A deep fear of the unknown was manifesting as anger and frustration.
I decided to go and see a councillor.
It was one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life. My councillor with able to open my eyes to knew ways of thinking. I started a process (which is still on going) to refocus on what really matters and peel away the layers to discover a new version of me. Growing every day.
When I started the counselling process I used a couple of analogies to describe my state of mind:
Playdough
Remember the playdough press machine from when we were kids? The one where you could shove the playdough in the top, stick on an attachment, then press down the handle and the playdough would squirt out in your desired shape. Well, my mind felt like I had done just that with it and had chosen to use the spaghetti attachment. It was all a big muddle!
Supermarket Sweep
Imagine a nice tidy aisle in the supermarket, all full of stock with everything in the “right place”. Now Imagine an earthquake had just spilled everything on the floor, and to boot some of the shelving and stock were damaged in the process and needed to be thrown away.
Just like my mind, the stock needed to be picked up, assessed and either put back in the new appropriate place or discarded.
I likened this process to rebuilding a brick wall.
Laying Bricks
When it comes to planning, sorting and prioritising, I have learnt to take a compartmentalised view. That means grouping similar aspects of my life together into little collections so that I can prioritise them and tackle them accordingly.
This is an effective process for getting things done and making progress.
I did not realise that this process is the entry level way of doing things.
While the concepts of grouping and prioritisation retain effectiveness, the perception that everything can actually be compartmentalised will eventually become the limiting factor to your success.
Pressed Concrete
You see, what I have come to learn is that everything truly does relate to everything. The more I reflect on this I think well… How can it not?
All physical matter is a composition of the same energy which circulates throughout the entire universe. Coming from one source and returning back to it.
So just in the same way that fractal patterns repeat throughout nature, the patterns and behaviours I was seeking to improve were repeating and playing out throughout every aspect of my life.
Life is not a set of nice bricks all piled up. It is more akin to pressed concrete.
A giant homogenous slab which we have chosen to press a pattern into so that we can perceive it as compartmentalised bricks.
Awareness of this interconnected nature enables us to realise that every moment we live, we need to embody the most authentic version of ourselves. Living and behaving the way we want to. With pure honesty and integrity.
If we view work as being separate to home life which is separate to hobbies and pass times; we are choosing to deny ourselves the freedom to fully express who we are.
Spot the repeating patterns in your life and make changes to elevate the whole system at once.
Consider this:
Every moment we are alive is life.
Moment after moment, choice after choice. We naturally progress along the mountain pathway of our lives.
Enjoy, for now.