Why Sing your Own Song

Are you plugged into singing your own song or someone elses? Are you in tune with your true nature or tweeting on the internet instead? John Mackey said “Life is short so don’t cheat yourself.” Retweet this until it sinks in.

Sometimes we don’t feel plugged in at all. Instead, we feel lost, we can’t seem to cut a break, and don’t feel like we fit in anywhere. As a result, we can get depressed.  We can get mad and blame ourself, then our depression turns despondent and hopelessness sets in.  Others turn to a substance like alcohol, food, TV or shopping to numb the disconnected feelings, the flat unceasing tone of our life.

Unfortunately that only perpetuates the disconnect and does nothing to solve the misfit with your life. Most of us go through a period in our life like this; between jobs, after graduation, a difficult illness or a breakup, when we’ve done the same thing for so long we are bored to tears, or when playing it safe rules our decisions, that’s when these feelings of disconnect can creep in – and they should once in a while. I see it as a good thing.

When you aren’t living your life in resonance with your own gifts, natural and learned talents, ideas, strengths, and perception of meaning, you are more likely to turn to external sources of pleasure or distraction to fill that gap, the hole in your soul.  But none of this will fill you up. Only your true nature can do that. Your own song is within each and every one of you, without exception, and it is unique to each person.

The hopefully  temporary disconnect is a good thing because our higher awareness is giving us a strong message to redirect our attention. Chances are good that we’re playing along with the family-think, often unconscious, and worse, that we’re playing it too small. By now most people are familiar with the stunning words of Marianne Williamson that I interpret as it’s not the fear that you’re inadequate but that you’re playing too small; it is the fear of the brilliance of your own light that keeps you there. She writes- “We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”*

This too happens to each of us as we go through life.  Growth in years ought to arouse growth in how we want to live it. Growth means change is required.  Carl Jung wrote that the one thing you can count on is change.  I love that; and people thought it was death and taxes.

So ask yourself, “am I singing my own song today?” and then ask yourself that next month and the month after. Don’t ever stop asking if you are in tune with your true nature, your authentic self. When you realize that you aren’t,  find your way to the current you as fast as you can. There’s no need to waste a single minute more wondering if this means you should change something… it does!  This is your life and it’s flying by.  That’s why I love coaching women mid-life and later who find themselves in this disconnected place.  I watch them flourish when they are motivated and not stuck in fear, frozen in time.

“It takes courage…to endure the sharp pains of self discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.”*

* Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”

 photo courtesy of Bjorn Simon