We are a DIY project. Notice I wrote YOU-SELF vs Your Self, because we are creating a project based on YOU and not on YOUR STUFF. YOUR Stuff would be what you carry around, the material and the emotional, that weighs a lot, and you can’t build a DIY project with that. It would be too complicated and would take you forever to assemble all the parts. Our do it you-self project is different; it is the luggage we took with us when we decided to become this person we are today. In my case Mary.
When we are born, we arrive in this planet with our very own personalized baggage. I like to say that this baggage is an invisible backpack we carry on our shoulders. This backpack is full of knowledge, surprises, and some mega bonus items. Simple, just three things. The surprises are the experiences of life itself. The mega bonus items are surprises(experiences) that accompany a harder lesson or task. These surprises of life all come perfectly matched with a particular knowledge. They are packed in our backpack like that, folded neatly and organized, obviously up there you had the consciousness to pack that way. Notice that I like to call experiences of life: surprises, I don’t call them problems because some aren’t bad, and I don’t call them experiences because that brings a heavy load for some, and boredom for others. I call them surprises for us to keep our curiosity strength high. Surprises sounds better, some are easy and pleasant, some are solvable right away, and some require strength, courage, wisdom, vision, and others can be overwhelming.
The surprises come matched with the perfect knowledge as I said. Sometimes we are great at solving the surprise(experience) and picking the perfect knowledge to match. Other times we are so caught up in the surprise that we can’t see the perfect match. This might happen because we overthink, use too much emotion, and when we look inside our backpack all we see is mess. What we need to remind ourselves is that every surprise has its perfect match, the perfect knowledge that enhances the quality of learning of that surprise, but we must want to go deep, we must want to search and put them together. This way LIFE becomes a DIY project and not an overwhelming task.
All of items in our backpack are individually packed for our size. By size I don’t mean small, medium, large or 2XL, that size is basically determined by your DNA and life habits. The size I mean is the size of our life and the purpose it contains. The size for each one of us is different, some will live until 90 let’s say, some will go sooner and some later. The backpack contains all that we need for that lifetime, in there are some set things we must do or go through, they could be karma cards, or they are stuff we must go through to learn, or to move on in our “YOU” ladder. The weight of the backpack throughout our life is determined at how skilled we become at matching the surprise with the appropriate knowledge. If we are not successful, our backpack becomes really heavy, because we are complicating our DIY, overthinking, making choices that are unhealthy physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, living with an unhealthy past or choosing to be victims of life. This last one is a biggy really makes the backpack weigh because since we are victims, we have to carry inside everyone that did things to us. When our backpack has so much inside it makes it impossible to find the right knowledge to match the surprises as they come, the backpack is a mess. Think of surprises(experiences) as being magical in a sense since they come with an appropriate knowledge of how to deal with them. If you look well in your present backpack, you will now be able to see that some of your surprises were hard, and you might not have found the right knowledge, it took you a while, and sometimes you didn’t find the knowledge at all. The backpack will produce a similar surprise for you to give you a chance to search again, remember it’s magical it knows exactly what you need. Our backpacks can be full of the good stuff too, the good surprises, like buying a home, graduating from college, finding the love of your life, finding the perfect job, winning a trip, getting a raise, meeting good friends and the list goes on. The normal everyday stuff is there also. When I meet someone, and they start talking I immediately sense what kind of backpack they carry. If they are solution focused, the backpack is light, decorated with sparkles and they seem to be able to perfectly carry their weight. Others the victims, the complainers, have hunched backs, their backpacks are gloomy, black, and soiled, and seem to go through life with every disaster following them, and they have to sit often and dwell on the heaviness of their backpack and what it contains.
Now let’s talk about the mega bonus. When the not so good surprises arrive, they might come packed with mega bonuses, the hard stuff. But believe me that in our backpack the perfect knowledge is there to help us see the mega bonus for what it is and match its knowledge. To me when I thought of my DIY in that way, the mega bonuses were easier to bare and I knew they had a meaning, a purpose and a knowledge. I will explain what this means exactly with my personal experience later.
Let’s go back to your backpack, that beautiful carryon you brought down, willingly might I add, with the 3 items. Surprises, Mega bonus, and knowledge.
The beauty of the backpack you have is, as time passes by and we become better at our DIY project, the backpack becomes lighter, we see life through a different lens, we observe people in a different way, and above all we make conscious choice of we want for our life. The idea behind this backpack we carry is to solve its mystery, build the DIY, and come closer to what our life purpose is, or for some of my spiritual humans who understand the lingo, our soul’s purpose. The reason for example that I chose to be Mary and you be you. The DIY completion also sees the light that shines in each one of us given to us by God, Allah, the universe, or whichever God you believe in. Turning on that light is the purpose of the backpack, because when we become observers, learners of life, and builders of our DYI, our light shines brightly and strong. This is the treasure of the backpack, for every DIY project we complete in it we get closer to our essence and then, life becomes magical. Our awareness turns on. As I said the backpack is ours, it’s personalized to us. It comes in the exact size we need for that lifetime. The size of it doesn’t matter what matters are the DIY projects, the surprises, the knowledge, and the mega bones. These will all turn on the divine inner light to its intended full capacity. That is the treasure our backpack contains, the ability to turn on our light. The treasure is not riches, a big house, gorgeous body or 24hr salon hair. The treasure is our life purpose, what we really came to do, our intention in this life. The reason we are here and the soul contract we did up there or wherever your heart believes. Every surprise whether good or bad can have the ability to ignite light. When we match the wrong knowledge to the surprise. Our backpack recreates that surprise again sometimes in the same way, sometimes in other ways. Why? Because life keeps giving us surprises until we find the perfect match of knowledge. Makes sense right? Have you ever had repeated surprises of life, and you wonder Why is this happening again? It’s happening again because you missed the message the instruction to match its appropriate knowledge. Matching the perfect knowledge is the “crème de la crème” badly understood they turn into curdled cream and a bad case of the runs. Believe me you will get that curdled cream many times until you understand that each surprise contains its correct knowledge. By now I believe its clear that the surprises are experiences of life and the knowledge that each contains is available to us. I have found that when I used the word life’s experiences, people start transforming into this weird humanoid being or look at me like a bad fish they ate. I eventually learned to change the word experience into surprises. Because everyday is a surprise from the moment we get up to the moment we go to bed. We don’t wake up knowing exactly what that day contains, we have ideas of what it will contain, we may plan the day, but what really happens is all a surprise. We drive to work or school, and someone cuts us off, that is a small surprise, we planned to go to work but we didn’t plan to be cut off. This is a simple way to understand our backpack. The surprise was someone cutting us off, if we reach in our backpack and look for the perfect knowledge to match that surprise we will find the instruction: let it go, wish him or her well, save your energy for bigger surprises, take care of your health by not letting your anger raise your cortisol levels and play havoc on your health, and have compassion, maybe some real bad surprise just happened and his/her backpack is a mess. But if we can’t find that knowledge because we were so busy cursing the person giving them all our time and attention, the right knowledge slips away, and eventually after many wrongly understood repeated cutoffs your health is at risk, you developed a habit of road rage, your stress is high, your prone to diabetes and heart attack.
Of course, I am exaggerating this concept, but I want to get the point of the backpack. Every surprise that comes our way small, big, or mega has the right knowledge. If we see it as such, we won’t get caught on life doing things to us. The DIY project of our backpack becomes a wonderful, curious journey with the right destination no matter how hard it might be to get there. Some of these surprises are no brainers we easily find the right knowledge, for example, we argued with our spouse, companion, child and they did or said some pretty harsh things, but during all that you are listening to what they are saying and understanding what they are saying and respecting what they are saying, and you respond with you are right, I am sorry. You chose the right knowledge for that surprise, you chose to see all they were saying from a place of empathy, compassion, and love. Bingo!!! You solved that surprise. Congrats. Move on to the next one please. But, what if a surprise comes with a mega bonus item? Let’s say a 12-year-old girl moves out of her country with her family, faces all things new and her father gets cancer, and two years later dies. She had to adapt to a strange country, various schools, her siblings fighting, her mom preoccupation with her dad, his death, grief, and the split of what was known as family. The backpack came with that surprise in mega form. But this girl investigated her backpack and looked for the perfect knowledge. Mind you at first, she thought the instructions were in Japanese, different country, death, family separated, torn apart, all alone to dive into grief. Grief of loss of all she had and knew as a family. She reached into the backpack and sitting on the bed of her new home, a boarding school, said this is my house now, this school, I must adapt. She could have said this is too much for me, begged her mom to come get her, turn to drugs, not study. But instead, she decided that giving her mom less trouble was the right way, she focused on making friends, being an honor student, being part of student councils and focusing on life to make her mom proud. The surprise was Mega, lots of loss. But the perfect knowledge was to learn that life gave her that mega bonus, for her to learn resilience and prepare her for her life journey, eventually a series of adaptations. For her to learn compassion (for her mom) and which in the future became a gift she had for others. The letters that she wrote to her mom where all about how happy she was, how she was an honor student, there was no complaining. She moved on, she didn’t become a of victim of life, she decided to understand life. Even though her dad was the person she adored and loved, he was her Popeye as she called him, big and strong. Her backpack had a Mega bonus, but the weight was lighter cause she checked off under the list of DYI , DONE. Mega bonus with the knowledge to accept things that are out of our control, accept as they are and move on. That girl was me. My mom, on the other hand, chose her knowledge from her backpack and what to do with this young girl. Her instinct of protection, under the circumstances led her to make the perfect match, leave her in a boarding school and save her from the drama of life. Because even though later she regretted leaving her youngest daughter in school alone, that knowledge that mom chose helped that girl for the rest of her life.
What about divorce as an example or a boyfriend/girlfriend break up. A surprise comes along showing you that that person is not what you wanted. The divorce or break up is inevitable, what is the knowledge that will match that surprise? Is it to forever talk bad about that situation, forever remember that person, forever cling to the fact you were dealt the wrong cards, forever tell everyone what a horrible person they were? Or will you say that chapter is over, at one point I chose him/her, I loved them, but things didn’t work out. You took responsibility for your choices you grabbed the perfect knowledge and you moved on.
I hope by now you are thinking of your backpack, is it heavy, is it decorated beautifully, or is dirty and messy? I try hard to decorate my backpack, I try hard not to hold grudges or resentments not to weigh it down, I try to understand that the difficult people in my life carry their own backpack, and maybe theirs is really heavy and full of mess. My backpack is important to me, my DIY project is mine alone, that in itself is precious, and I only have one shot at being this Mary. The version I make of her is my DO it You- Self. That’s why and how The Space in Life came to be. We all need a “space” in our day, in our life to understand our backpack and all it contains. We all need to read, to talk, to listen, to learn, to observe, to reflect about what life is. Some people are not interested in learning the reason you are you and the reason for your backpack, life goes by and they constantly feel lost, anxious, worried and have the feeling that something is missing or something is about to happen, they live in the past or in the future. Some people, on the other hand are very ready. They listen, they read, they observe, they digest, they learn, they accept, they talk, they suck in all that life gives me, all the surprises, all the mega bonuses, all the knowledge and they move one from one surprise to other in a flow motion. I am one of those, I am part of that group.
A Space In Life was created to help you make a space in your life to learn all about how to handle your backpack, how to make it shiny, how to observe surprises that have mega bonuses and find the perfect knowledge that comes with it, and how to love and appreciate regular surprises. I want to create the fine print in the instruction book to become more legible, more easily readable, less boring, less tiresome so you don’t miss anything and want to skip over them and put “I agree” just because you want the fine print to be over soon. A Space In Life is here to give you the legible fine print of your backpack. Take what you need. Discard what you don’t. I want to create a SPACE for you! We all need a “Space” that is only ours. We all have those “spaces” throughout our day. The space we make to have a shower, to eat a meal, to call a friend. The “Space” I want to gift you is different. It is a “space “to pause, breathe, read, learn, reflect, become aware, be curious and take away whatever serves you. Making space for our backpack understanding is essential to be our best version and to ignite our path and our purpose.
A Space In Life is all the 30+ years of my learning of what makes us be blessed HUMANS. My intention is to teach you through positive psychology interventions, spiritual awareness, energy awareness, self-compassion, self-care, mindfulness, meditation, and coaching and solve your backpack clues. I hope you enjoy this space created just for you. Be curious. Because if we are curious, we learn. The moment we stop being curious we lose the ability to learn. I hope you will accompany me often here in A Space In Life.
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