We’d been speaking for maybe 15 minutes and the clarification he sought came in just 4 words, quietly spoken; “I don’t want to”.
He was silent for a long moment. We both felt that truth as totally real for him.
Those realisations are pure gold. They are so valuable because they reveal a hidden truth. They are the unmasking of our secret inner workings. Imagine standing in the dark, peeling the tape off a window and peering into a lighted interior. It’s like that; a profound insight into a new world of possibilities.
Sometimes life is defined by grand gestures, life-changing flourishes that send you off into the wide blue yonder and into a totally new experience of life. But mostly, it’s a small, quiet feeling that is so easy to miss.
But what do those small nudges feel and sound like? How do we pay attention and not miss them?
They are a feeling, a voice or shift in your energy. They are usually small and quiet, although not always so. It could be that ‘your heart sinks’ when you see someone’s name pop up on your mobile or inbox. You might even say to yourself (or out loud) “Oh great …”. Or someone asks you to do something and you feel your energy drop, your shoulders too.
Or the opposite.
You look in your calendar and see a person’s name or an event or a date and you feel that lift – “Oh, excellent!”. You feel buoyed-up and excited, happy – looking forward to it immediately. There’s a bounce in your step and a lightness in your heart. The day feels brighter somehow.
Usually, the good things are easy to notice and the no-so-good ones easy to ignore.
Mostly, nothing terrible happens when you ignore these pointers. But – over time – you may discover yourself in a place that is suddenly so startlingly not right, that you ask yourself “How on Earth did I end up here?”. And the answer is simple – one day at a time, by not noticing the small feelings that regularly cropped up along the way.
So all is lost? No. But a different way of living and being is necessary. I call this different way a Life by Design. It‘s just gathering evidence. Here’s how it works.
Something lights you up – you notice: you tell yourself “ooo, I love this”. And you aim to do more things like that. Or something pulls you down. You notice that too and observe “ah, not keen this one” and you aim to have fewer experiences like that in future.
Hardly revolutionary, I know. But this is how I built my life by design. I live on the coast, with the woman of my dreams, living a life of freedom and fun and doing work I love with people I enjoy spending time with. Is it perfect? Not yet, I simply keep adjusting and stretching as I evolve and notice what works for me and what doesn’t.
The man I was speaking with just took a huge step along that new pathway: he knows the right way for him, right now. That clarity, that certainty, creates such energy. And he is harnessing that energy immediately to take action.
Sometimes that action will be small – like deciding to not attend that event. Sometimes it’s bigger – like deciding that it’s time to change job or career. But the accumulation of all those steps take you into a new future, one that you choose moment by moment. Your Life by Design.
I honestly cannot wait to find out what’s happened for him this week.
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I never know when will be the eureka moment for you, so I’ll always have something like this here: if you feel this is your time to do things differently, get in touch. Do it now though, right now. DM me, text me, email me. Be really last century and CALL me! Do it now, because it is so, so easy for that little nudge to be swept away in the day and lost again. If you felt it, act on it. Right now.