“WHEN MAN MOVES AWAY FROM NATURE HIS HEART BECOMES HARD”
Lakota
In my last blog I wrote about the inability of many people who, while being out in nature, can’t seem to let go of the need to be connected to their headsets and cell phones. As I said this inability to be quiet and still and to detach from the music and noise of our daily lives does not serve us well.
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As a long time business owner and family man I lived in the chaos of busy everyday life. Like most of you there were always schedules, meetings, events, family issues and all the other stuff that happens in life.
I spent a lot of my time on the emotional edge, feeling somewhat lacking in control and anxious about life’s events and what’s going to happen next. It was exhausting to say the least. After a while I realized that I didn’t want to continue to live that way. But what needed to be done.
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I still had to run a business and earn a living, at that time I had to take care of a home and family and those obligations were not going to change anytime soon.
I began to understand that if I wanted to live in a different place the changes were going to have to be internal…in how I viewed and reacted to the daily challenges so that I didn’t have to get so emotionally tangled up.
The first step for me was to recognize the detrimental affects that living in the chaos, a lot of which I was creating, was having on me and those around me. The next step and I feel the most important was to make a decision to change.
I had always been in love with nature and realized as I was reviewing my life that when I was in it I was at total peace with the world. I saw that even in times of pain and great stress in my life I found refuge in the outdoors. It didn’t matter if it was a sunny beach or out hiking in a severe winter storm, being in nature seemed to put it all in perspective.
I begin to realize that I have little or no control over many of the things that I was allowing to disturb me. When in nature even when in the storms and rough weather I began to see that there was an order to all that was happening around me and that it was going to run its own course with or without my input.
After making the decision to make changes in my life and realizing how powerful the connection was to nature and its energy I knew that I had to make the time to be in the outdoors as much as possible. I know what your going to say….”how the hell can I take time to be in nature when there’s all this stuff in my life??”
Well as I looked at all the “stuff” that I thought would keep me from spending time connecting with the natural world I clearly saw that there were things I was doing or how I was spending my time that could be eliminated or changed to allow me to slooooww waaaaay down. Just this realization brought a new measure of calm and when added to the fact I could now schedule a run, bike ride or just a walk in the woods was the beginning of permanent changes in my life.
As I said a good portion of the chaos I had in my life I was creating. I finally realized I was not in charge of the world; I did not have to supervise everyone else’s life nor was I responsible for their happiness, unhappiness on anything else. Most of the time my clients didn’t need the quote that day or the sample the next day.
I will admit that at first learning to respond instead of react, saying no, putting me first when appropriate was very uncomfortable as I was always, to a greater or lesser extent, a pleaser.
But I will tell you that the results of being in and embracing nature in my daily life has allowed me freedom in so many ways. I have learned to be still inside and to keep the chaos outside. When I’m still inside I see and feel things in a totally different way then before. I can participate in life in a calm reasonable way instead of reacting.
If you want to have stillness in your life, first know that you CAN. Then make a decision to change…be clear about what you want and don’t want in your life and write it down, keep it handy and read it everyday until you feel the changes taking place.
Make a decision each day a to spend at least a few minutes in nature….a 10 minute walk after dinner at night is a good start
It was important for me to understand that I have a choice in how I live my life; after all it is my life. No matter the obstacles that are real or imagined we can make decisions and changes and learn to be still………it is a glorious place.
Namaste,
