The other day I posted a question on my facebook asking “To create more ease in your life what is ONE thing standing in your way?”
I got a variety of answers which actually made me realize that we all have a very different meaning/definition of what “ease” means to us.
The word “ease” first came into my life when I identified it as one of my core desired feelings. In my 2017 goal setting blog at the beginning of the year, I remind myself of how I want to feel when I accomplish something or even go about tackling a goal in my life.
So as I usually do, I ground down into the definition of the word.
So for me ease doesn’t translate into easy. For me, ease means going about life without stress, going about life without trying to make it harder than it is and to move through phases of life more carefully and gently.
So here’s a recap of the answers that I got to my post on Facebook and maybe you can see why I got so confused on how people answered:
- Economics – Well basically the whole economic system and my inability to find the necessary loopholes in it to fit my need.
- Perfectionism. I can’t say it holds me back though. It interrupts my impulsivity momentarily. I give more power to feelings than thoughts. Perfectionism is thought over. It isn’t a feeling. It can have a physiological response but ultimately, it is a fear-driven thought. Those have rarely served me well. I tend to notice the thought and then move on with a “wow, I must really care about this….can’t screw it up if I’m going at it with love…onward”.
- Many said they are standing in their own way.
- Programs: since we are born, we learn and get to be the way we are according to our experience, the subconscious doesn’t know about time, so when a similar situation in the adult life happens, we react the same way as the first time it happened. We all follow our programs because we act on them without noticing it.
- Self-imposed expectations
- Laziness? Boredom? Fatigue? And not being able to tell the difference. And, apparently, not being able to follow directions… (this was the best because I asked for ONE thing! LOL)
- Cooking
- Self-confidence. Fear of not being good enough. Disappointing someone in my life or myself. Oooooh and big one – self-sabotage.
- Self-discipline, sticking to a schedule!
- Being disappointed in myself constantly, believe that what I’m doing is never enough.
What I gleaned from all the answers is that we actually really love to complicate our lives. When asked how people could bring less difficulty into our lives I got answers that for me really seemed to complicate the situation.
My aim for the “market research” question was to find out how we complicate our lives so I can start assisting with simplification suggestions! Maybe the guy who answered cooking was really on to something. If cooking brings ease into your life then my solution is organized meal prep or consistent fresh grocery shopping before cooking and that I know how to teach 🙂
I think the self-imposed expectations resonated with me. If we are taught that life is just hard, then maybe we don’t always look for ways to simplify or attack problems or goals with more ease. I chose the image of me holding the mug above to pair with the word ease because visually it cues me that when faced with stress or busy schedules to simply take the time to make coffee or a hot cup of tea and pause and for me that is Ease and a visual cue and reminder that we choose ease or we choose difficult.
How has this made you think about bringing more ease into your life?