YOUR Ingredients – Souper Charged Life

I listened to a podcast the other day where Dr Rangan Chatterjee was having a conversation with Sadhguru. Rangan was asking Sadhguru what he thought about the current sleep loss epidemic, and his response was really interesting. He said that he felt we shouldn’t put so much focus on a loss of sleep, but instead we should concentrate on what really matters – being more awake for life. Most people are going through the motions everyday, half asleep, living on autopilot and not realising what a precious gift this life is. Time is literally passing them by. I thought that this was a fascinating perspective, and it definitely got me thinking. There’s a lot of truth in what he says, so many of us ARE living our lives half asleep… we go through the motions everyday, living on autopilot, often doing the same things, even if they don’t make us happy. We don’t stop and think about the fact that we’re letting our lives pass us by. Do you need to wake up? It’s a cliché to say that we only get one life and we should make the most of it, but like many clichés, it’s true. Unfortunately, so many of us spend our lives doing jobs that we don’t like and chasing things that ultimately don’t bring us joy, whether that be more money, fame, status or material possessions. It’s only when we start to wake up and realise that what we’re doing isn’t making us happy that we can make changes to feel more fulfilled. The sad reality for many of us is that we don’t wake up and face our deep-seated angst about how we feel about our life. Instead, we give up on our dreams or our goals, and we turn to behaviours that distract us from how we truly feel. This could be scrolling Instagram, overeating, binging Netflix etc. Of course, in the moment it distracts us from facing our feelings, but over the long term, it takes hours of our lives away and doesn’t ultimately make us happy. By distracting ourselves, we numb the inner pain that we feel. Think how many people you know who just accept they have to do a job that they hate because it pays the bills, or that their hobbies don’t matter because busy family life must come first. The problem with this is that we end up spending our life feeling unhappy and unfulfilled. What if we changed our perspective and focused on what actually brings us joy and happiness? You don’t have to keep living an unhappy life, you can always make changes. I’m not saying it’s always easy or straight forward to do this, but it is possible. It’s worth going through the challenge of changing our lives, rather than letting this precious gift of life slip by, wasting our days distracting ourselves with mundane scrolling, overeating or other destructive habits we adopt. Do you really want to spend your life doing these things? No, of course you don’t! Ditch the excuses! As well as burying our heads in the sand and not waking up to the reality that what we’re doing isn’t making us happy, many of us adopt this strange human behaviour of becoming REALLY good at making excuses or justifying why we don’t or can’t do the things that we want to do. We’re always too busy, too tired, too afraid etc...! We have every excuse why we haven’t done the things that we love, and then we wake up 5 years later feeling unhappy and unfulfilled. I’ve talked about wanting to write a blog for AGES, but I’ve always had an excuse not to do it. Most of us have things that we would love to do, but we ignore them or tell ourselves it’s not possible right now, for whatever reason. What are you putting off? We put SO much energy into our excuses and justifying the reasons we can’t or haven’t done something. What if we put even half of that energy into actually trying to make it happen? Get curious The first step to making any change in your life is awareness – the alcoholic accepting that they have a drink problem, the person who realises the relationship they’re in is making them unhappy. Whatever the situation, you can only change by waking up and going through the (often difficult and sometimes painful) process of facing reality, that what you’re doing right now isn’t working. And if this happens for you, I say congratulations. Why? Because this is the BEST thing that you can do. Wake up and lean into the things in your life that aren’t making you happy. Sure, it might not feel great at first, but once you notice them, you can do something about them. Most people are walking around and never facing up to these things, they live on autopilot, half asleep and unhappy their whole lives. They have a list of reasons why they can’t and won’t change, and distract themselves in every possible way so that they never truly face their feelings. Ultimately, you have a choice, you can wake up, and face the areas of your life that you want to change to be happier, or you can live in your world of excuses and reasons why you can’t. It’s a choice, one that only you can make. Sadly, so many of us feel lost or stuck. Maybe you don’t even know what would make you happy, or what you would do instead of what you’re doing right now. That’s ok. You don’t need all the answers, but this is a great time to start getting curious. Think about what you enjoy, try new things, start a hobby, take a course, read a book. Get curious about what things bring you joy and make you feel happy. What do you really want? How do you want to spend your time? When you do something that you really enjoy, it energises you, you feel happy, you feel alive. This is exactly how I feel when I work on my blog, even if it’s just 5 minutes of planning what I might write about. I have put off writing a blog for so long, and let all my excuses stop me from doing it. But when I actually do it, I love it, it makes me feel happy, energised and alive. When do you feel like this? What things bring you this level of joy? Part of being awake for life is being present, we’re not scrolling Instagram or checking emails, we’re fully immersed in what we’re doing. We’re just lost in the moment, doing whatever it is that we enjoy. This is being awake for life, and truly living life. There are lots of areas in life that we could all do with waking up and paying attention to. Maybe you spend too much time on your phone, maybe you watch hours of TV instead of doing a hobby you’d love to try, maybe you procrastinate for ages instead of getting your exercise done. We could all do with waking up a bit more and realising what we are doing, how we’re spending our time and ultimately what brings us joy. The more we tune in, the more we wake up and improve our lives for the better. So, in the words of Sadhguru, how can you be more awake for life? Oh, and if you fancy listening to the podcast I referred to, check it out here: https://drchatterjee.com/why-you-should-stop-focusing-on-sleep-how-to-listen-to-your-body-the-true-meaning-of-yoga-with-sadhguru/