I have to quote here awesome Anita Moorjani! Some of you might know her as an author of book “Dying to be me” (which has become my personal guidebook; I always find my answer there!)
“You know how I often talk about “allowing” our lives to unfold on their own, rather than “chasing and pursuing”? Chasing and pursuing is what most of us seem conditioned to do, and one of the questions I get asked often is, “If we ‘allow our lives to unfold’ on their own, does that mean we don’t do anything? That we just sit and wait for life to happen to us?”
To me, allowing does not mean just sitting and waiting and doing nothing. We still take action, but the action comes from following our heart, and from allowing things to unfold. It comes from a different place.
To me, allowing means listening to my intuition. The way I do this is by asking myself, “Am I doing this out of love or fear? Am I doing this because I want to do this?” In other words, am I taking these actions because I love myself, it’s fun, it brings me joy and is pleasurable? Or am I taking these actions because I fear the consequences of not doing so? (—-)
One of the biggest lessons I learned as I lay dying from cancer was that my life, up to that point, was made up of a series of choices and decisions that led me to that moment, the moment that I thought was the end of my life. And in that moment, I realized I had made just about every major decision and choice in my life from a place of fear, not from a place of love or joy or from a sense of fun. Just about everything I had done, I had done out of fear of the consequences. As one example, the choice of jobs I pursued was made out of fear of not getting ahead in my career, or not having enough money to pay the mortgage. Most of my job choices were not about what I really loved to do. Very often, even the clothes I chose to wear were chosen more because I feared not being accepted in the social circles I was associated with rather than what brought me pleasure or comfort.
The scary thing is, I didn’t even realize I was doing this—making my choices out of fear instead of love—and that’s because everyone else around me was doing the same thing! In other words, I was doing this unconsciously, and I think that’s how most of us are conditioned to think and believe if we want to fit into our societies and cultures.
For example, if someone within my social circle was in a bad relationship, it was more likely they would stay in it for fear of the stigma of being single or fear of what breaking a relationship would bring them in our society, rather than to honor who they were by taking a stand or moving on and creating a space for someone who respected them to come into their life.
It was also common to see people living in expensive homes they couldn’t afford, but were too afraid to downsize and face public humiliation. Instead, they would choose to work long hours in dead-end jobs they hated, just to pay for those expensive homes, homes they hardly had the time to enjoy being in.
During my adult life, I found it harder and harder to find people who were truly happy. Including myself! Everyone seemed to be chasing and pursuing more, but nobody knew how to truly be happy. And the worst part was that this was considered “normal”! This was considered “life”!
Death, however, taught me that life doesn’t happen to me, it happens through me. We are not victims of life’s circumstances, and a messed-up, stressed-out life is usually the result of trying to live up to other’s expectations of us. We try to fill everyone’s expectations except our own. I lived a life of trying to meet other people’s expectations of who they thought I should be, and who I thought I needed to be to fit in.
So if I were to find myself in that situation now, I would ask myself the following questions: “Whose life am I living? Who am I trying to please? Who am I trying to be? Did I create this out of being me, or out of trying to meet everyone else’s expectations”? If it’s the latter, then that means it’s time to start loving and valuing myself so that I can allow myself to BE who I am, and express my authenticity. Being authentic doesn’t mean I won’t attract any problems. But when I am authentic, the problems that I attract are my own and I will instinctively know how to deal with them by following my heart, by allowing myself to be who I am and allowing my life to unfold before me. The life I create in this way is then truly my own life. And this is what I mean when I say that I “Allow my life to unfold instead of chasing and pursuing life.”
– Anita Moorjani “The State of Allowing”
Celestial reasoning 