Life Isn't A Dress Rehearsal, This Is It!

Using time out in silence to fall in love with a vision for your future is a practice that should never be underestimated.

We all want something more in our life, to have a loving relationship, to have the career of our dreams, a higher income or maybe we want to change the world, raise awareness and support a worthwhile cause. However, as we sit there in the job we don’t like, day dreaming about how we’d like our life to be, that isn’t manifesting, that isn’t going to get you closer to your dream. Rather, it’s wishful thinking that usually ends up leaving you feeling quite depressed and in a state of ‘lack.’

As most of you already know, meditation is a wonderful method to slow down high beta brain wave patterns into a more rhythmic and coherent state of alpha brain waves. When we reach this place, as long as we stay present and remain aware, we have the ability to gently move to one side the habitual thoughts that are with us every second of our waking state. And in this place of calm, inner peace and quiet solitude we can maintain this open channel of pure potentiality or we can use this space to start manifesting the life of our dreams.

Now this may sound a little bit too unrealistic for most people but if you think of any invention, work of art, music composition, the electric light bulb, they all started with a vision. So, let’s say you have a vision of ‘running your own company.’ You find some quiet time, close your eyes, take long slow deep breaths. You focus on the inner body. Then when you start to feel your mind and body relax you allow your imagination to take you to a place in the future where your dream has already been achieved. Allowing the images in your mind to become so real you can feel the emotions inside of your body as though it has already happened. That vision together with elevated emotions, will in time, inspire a plan of action. And when you’ve rehearsed it many times over, a plan naturally develops and grows. You’ll start wanting to research your vision, finding out how you’d go about achieving this goal. You’ll meet others who have accomplished what you want. Your focus will shift and you’ll start to notice things, places people around you that could be a part of your vision. And then with a whole mixture of inspiration, fear of stepping into the unknown, motivation, self-doubt and conflicting advice from the people around you, you start to take action to make it happen; a natural extension of the vision.

If you can visualise a vision for the future so clearly you can feel, touch, see, smell and taste it, then to the brain this image is as real as the ground under your feet. And if you keep on with this visualisation every day, your brain will start to fire and wire new neural networks to support that vision as though it has already happened. To the brain, there is no difference!

If you’re still here reading this then I have no doubt you too have a burning desire to make a dream come true. Maybe you’re on the path already or maybe you’ve imagined what you want occasionally but you haven’t made it something you do on a regular basis.

I suggest finding 15-20 minutes of quiet time in your busy day to dive into a state of mindfulness. Focus on the breath, and then diving deeper, move through the 5 senses one at a time. Focus on all the sounds you can hear. Then move to what you can feel. The air moving into your nose, the texture of the clothes on your skin, the soles of your feet on the ground. Can you taste anything in your mouth? What do you smell? Pick up any subtle hints of perfume, deodorant, the smell of coffee. Then with your eyes still closed, what do you see? Perhaps you see images, words, colours or dark infinite space. As your mind and body come into a coherent and relaxed state, go ahead and find out for yourself the power of your imagination. Take yourself to a time in the future. Where are you? Who’s with you? What are you doing, feeling, touching? What are you wearing? What can you hear? Maybe someone you love is there watching you, proud of what you’ve achieved. Your eyes connect and you feel the love and admiration from this person. Stay there a while and allow yourself to experience the emotions.

I always tell my students, life is not a dress rehearsal, this is it! We get a very short time to experience this gift of life with all its challenges and time is so very precious.

So, my advice to you my friend:

Try a little mindfulness practice today and allow 15-20 minutes to fall in love with your vision for the future. Allow yourself to really feel it. Any hesitation you experience to do this will be your fear driven ego wanting to keep everything in your life just the way it is right now. Recognise this and move on.

Most of us go through an entire lifetime and don’t even come close to unleashing our potential. So, do this for you, and in turn you’ll be affecting those around you in such positive ways. In fact, anything we do to raise our energy always, always contributes to those around us.