When Do We Get To Live It?
The art of basking in the life you have
We are creators by nature. We create businesses and homes and lives and relationships, and we’re constnatly tinkering and improving and growing. We create ourselves, and it’s a continual evolution as we expand and explore throughout our lives.
We talk a lot about goal setting, time-segmenting, focus, and drive. But what happens when the goal is achieved? Is it ever achieved, or do we just push the goal posts further and keep on going?
We are always busy building the lives we want. It feels like a good time to pause and ask ourselves, when do we get to live them? When do we pause in the constant creating to bask in the creation?
This is a crucial part of the equation. We’re building these lives because we want to live them. But then we forget to do the living part.
But we can change that right this moment, and we can begin develop new habits to keep us from forgetting again.
How to live it now
1. Take stock of how far we’ve already come. Instead of noticing the mountain we’re currently climbing, we can pause to look back at where we began. Look at all the obstacles in our path that we surmounted. And here we are. Look at all we have learned, how much we have grown, all that tried to stop us. And yet, here we are. Take time to notice that. We should make it a part of our daily routine to notice how far we’ve come.
2. Take time off. As entrepreneurs, we forget what weekends are. We can work anytime, so we do work all the time. As employees, we continue working during off hours on our own chores, tasks, and projects, and we consider weekends the time to catch up on all those.
I’m officially giving us all permission to spend an entire day not doing a damn thing other than feeding ourselves, and that’s only if we can’t convince someone else to do that, too.
Entrepreneurs are lucky, because that day can be any day of the week, and we can take a day off after every four workdays, or after every three if we want. I base it on how I feel.
But it’s what we do on those days off that truly matters. We need to spend some time basking in what we have already created. In the home we’ve made for ourselves, in our favorite cozy nook within that home, or our favorite spot outside if a lawn or garden are parts part of our creation. We can bask in our very favorite parts of our lives.
We can nourish ourselves with food grown locally, or food we’ve grown ourselves. I do this all the time, and emphasize it especially on days off. Filling our insides with the energy of our creations, simulatneously fills us with appreciation for what we have made.
When we take time to enjoy the very favorite parts of our creation, our very favorite manifestations, we empower the force that will bring us more. Swim in the pool, or soak in the hot tub, or drive the car, or work the garden, or watch the big TV, or lie in the lover’s arms, or eat the chocolate cake.
3. Ponder and journal about the life we have made—we can feel ownership of every good thing in them. (Every bad thing, too, but that’s another topic.) Everything in our home, our home itself, everything in every closet, every plate in the cupboard, every utensil and appliance big or small, everything around us is our own manifestation. We’ve done it all. And not just the stuff, but who we are, how we carry ourselves, the identity we’ve built from scratch since the day we were born. Who we are and how we live are manifestations that we can tweak, improve, and evolve continually, throughout our lives.
An Exercise
Each week, choose one specific thing about your life that you love. Make it something you have not always had in your life.
Kick off the week by basking in this thing throughout an entire day off. And then, for the rest of that entire week, keep it active in your mind daily. It can be an object, like my favorite frying pan. It can be a person, like my most excellent spouse. It can be a condition, like my freedom and autonomy. It can be a feeling, like peace or security. It can be chocolate, or a pet, or a hobby. Anything I love that I haven’t always had.
Notice and honor this thing or condition each day, even if it’s only for five minutes. And maybe once or twice during that week, spend more time, and focus fully, all senses engaged, no distractions.
When you journal each night, make a note of how this element was present with you that day, with a biger entry on the big basking day, which you might want to repeat at the end of the week.
Then the following week, choose a different element of your life to honor.
Every time you bask in this thing, remind yourselves of the following:
I did this. This exists here in my life because of me.
I deserve this. I am the goddess incarnate. The life force in me is a beam from Source. I am divine.
It is though my divinity that I am able to create, simply by aligning with what I wish to experience.
Basking 101
It occurs to me that I should define what I mean when I say to bask in something. For me, that means to fully immerse myself in it, engaging all my senses and being fully present and focused on this one thing. I think my favorite form of basking is in warmer weather, when I sit in a cozy chair beside the pond and watch the fish. It’s very easy to get fully immersed out there. I can feel the sunshine, the summer breeze, and the kiss of cold water on my face when one of the koi leaps up to catch a mosquito. I can smell the grass, and the flowers, and the water. I can taste the air and my decaf. I can hear the birds, the bugs, the breeze, the frogs, and so much more. I can see the deep green pines against a topaz sky. But I focus on the fish, swimming lazily, slowly. They’re hypnotic.
But basking doesn’t have to be still! You can best bask in a new bike by riding it, and when I bask in music I do it by dancing to it and singing along.
To bask is to immerse fully in the thing, excluding everything else for a little while.
This is true appreciation
To appreciate something means to increase its value. When you bask in what you love, you are truly appreciating it. You’re exploring its value to you, taking advantage of its presence in your life, fully engaging with all of its nooks and crannies, making use of it. All of this is true appreciation, and all of this increases the value to you of that which you are appreciating.
The Bonus
When you “appreciate” something, you also raise your vibration to a higher and higher level. That vibration or wavelength is the signal you are emitting, and it attracts like energy to it.
When we bask in the things we love, more things we’ll love show up. They just blip into our lives, often seeming as if they were always there, and we just couldn’t see them. It’s like a shift in the light reveals them.
Spending more time living the lives we’ve created is the fastest way to increasing our feelings of happiness and well-being. And this practice also helps us manifest the next big wonderful experience or element, wish or dream, into our lives.
In other words, celebrating the dreams that have already come true is the best way to help other our dreams come true.
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