Playing it safe, being half alive or rocking the boat, being fully alive - which is better?

It's about 6:30a here in SF and I've been up all night, after a long flight back from Chicago, an hour and a half trek from the airport, breaking in my new "perfect pushups" and energized...all because of the following revelations....

After leaving Chicago in a bit of a mentally paralyzing uncertain state about where I stand in my relationship primarily due to my doubts about myself, I was committed to finding some clarity with no clue how. Not only could I not see the metaphorical forest from the trees, but the fog was so think, I couldn't even see the trees. The minute our flight stabilizes, down came the meal tray and out came my laptop. I was ready to journal and reflect no matter how much typing I had to do.

One of the things Riddhi said really hit home to me, "in whatever a person does, if they don't give it 100%, then what's the point? might as well just give it up and go onto something you CAN commit 100% to", that among many things we talked about during our 4 hr drive to Midway stuck with me. As I started running typographic diarrhea of emotion (and pardon the analogy, y'know sometimes when you've been venting or been in a funk for a while there just comes a time you say "alright pal, enough is enough, just give it up and move on?" .. yeah, that's kind of the effect I was going for with that one), I suddenly heard the words of a coach and dear friend of mine saying,

"Parth, we're all just a bunch of conversations, a series of patterns that react based on triggers...someone flips the switch, pushes THAT button and boom we go, conversations come flooding in, the thing is that we've never been taught how to see which statements in our internal monologue are conversations and how to choose which ones to empower."

So true! It's like TV cords is permanently plugged in, the remote's broke, and the setting's on scan (the monkey mind constantly jumping), and we have no idea how to focus in on what's being said and critically look at it cuz we're just comforted by the noise of it. The overarching themes of those TV shows, or "contexts" behind-the-scenes dictate the story line and so the stories begin. Slowly letting this soak in, I find myself fired up by the prospect of writing my own themes for today and this weekend, allowing myself permission to be totally creative.

I recently came across the following article about a young woman whose sentiment on living life fully really resonated http://bit.ly/137Lbv. I can recall that during those moments I get self conscious about what others might think or how I might get perceived, immediately following comes a sense of "I could have, but didn't". During those moments stories like these are inspiring and motivating in bringing me back to creating my own themes/contexts for MY life and for those individuals and communities I want to touch and empower.

Well, game on! And I invite you to play with me. On this Friday, with the weekend fast approaching, what themes would you like to create? What lights YOU up? What gets YOU out of bed?

I've also learned from past teachers who have said that to keep things in existence, present, and clear, we need precise tools...I recently came across http://www.toodledo.com where you can manage life around contexts instead of mundane blah tasks. Some of my contexts include: Expanding My Community (scheduled correspondence to all friends), Expand my Knowledge (articles to read for class, inspiring stories to feed the soul, etc.) and Restoring My Power (lists of areas I'm behind in or have been withholding communication with people). The moment I feel like I'm dragging my feet, I take a moment to read these contexts and those tasks no longer look like things to do, but rather opportunities to build towards something that's important to me.

What will you create? Once you have it, share it with others, and have them share it with you. Lets get inspired together!