Live the Best Version of Your Life

Photo by Catherine McMahon

Life is there for the taking, yet most of us are so wrapped up in our thoughts about what we need to do now, today, at the weekend, next week – or mulling over what’s just happened, who said what to who and what they meant by it, that it’s passing us by. Amid the chaos, how can you learn to live the best version of your life?

Learning happens in cycles. First we start in complete ignorance, not knowing what we don’t know; just living our life, not giving a different version of it a single thought. This progresses to a state of awareness of what we didn’t know, in this context, you become aware that alternatives exist. Then we begin to actively and consciously learn....this being the rub, as nothing different will happen without you first engaging in the thought of it, and believing it can happen. Finally we become so practiced in our new learning that it happens unconsciously, you find that you are now busily living the new life you’ve created for yourself.

What if you came into this world having chosen to be here? Let’s say there’s a part of you – your essence, your spirit, your soul, whatever you want to call it, that is eternal. Its purpose is growth, expansion, evolution, more life. Your being here in this life, in physical form, is simply the tip of the iceberg. Each life adding to the collective consciousness of all life. Imagine that. Many have, many we categorise in the genre of science fiction have been explaining these concepts for many years, we go along to the movie or watch the DVD on our couch, or read the book and say “wow, imagine if that were true”. Teachers past and present have tried too, Budda, Jesus, many more.

Many now are put off by doctrines, too much detail, too many stories, what is real and what is not?  The teachers are exalted when it’s what they are teaching that matters. We have become a race run by ego, a self created version of ourselves, one that our mind concocts.

Our mind is such a powerful tool but it’s akin to the computer that thinks it’s human. It’s a self created version of itself. Think of an example in your life where you know you’ve got caught up in a ‘story’, where your mind has completely run away with itself. It happens constantly throughout our day.

Our self confidence, self worth even, has become based on how we compare ourselves with others. The computer is starting to think it’s the human. Stop. Yes it’s wonderful to have other people believe in you and to encourage you, but – please – listen to your own inner voice. Not the one your mind switches on, with all the fears and doubts, that will limit your life experience, but your inner knowing.

Ever get a ‘gut feel’? Ever feel inspired to read something, watch something? Ever think of someone and suddenly you get an email from them? We all know there is ‘something else’, an inner knowing that we all have. I heard a story today about Bronnie Ware, who worked with the dying in hospice care, she has written a book called “Top 5 regrets of the dying”. The most common regret was “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me”.

On this journey to discover who I was born to be, the very best version of me in this life, firstly there was the illusion that I was the person that my mind defined me as – the accumulation of nature and of ‘nurture’. I frame this because of course nurture is the exact opposite of what I now understand actually happens for the most part. Instead of nurturing the real you, parents, teachers, friends and family, often - albeit well meaning - add to the confusion.

In the attempt to indoctrinate us into our many cultures- the family, the home, the school, the club, the community and so on, the small child who enters the world full of joy and self worth, slowly adopts beliefs about themselves and the world around them that starts to completely obscure the raw energy beneath, the real person who came with a purpose and an inner guidance system, their intuition, that many are taught not to trust.

Believing myself to be someone I'm not, not knowing what I didn’t know, in 2006, I started to become acutely aware of what I didn’t know – my true self. I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life, I just knew it wasn’t the successful corporate career I was embroiled in. So began the second stage of learning.

9 years on, having deliberately gone on a journey of active learning, to discover who Shona Keachie really is; here I am. It has not been an easy 9 years, and much of it has been involved in the difficulties in trying to have children, swiftly followed by the difficulties and blessings of having them. Being a full time working mum in a fairly senior corporate role meant any time for myself, any headspace at all, was prized and precious.

I dedicated the little I could carve out to gaining the clarity I craved. At times it was like pulling myself up by my fingernails, inching forwards, but forwards I have come. As do we all. Once you become aware of the box you are in, the one your mind creates and keeps you in, you can’t but help notice it for what it is. Even the bad experiences, the ones that crowd your day, serve to point to what you don’t want.

Once you step outside of the box, there’s no way you will want to get back in. Those moments you experience when you take a good break, when you feel relaxed and in tune with yourself, and suddenly get really clear on things you want to achieve. This is your natural state of being.  

For many of us, we don’t have clarity on what a life being true to ourselves means. I know, I’ve lived my life wading through the treacle, with a vague sense of unease, unhappiness. I know, because as I’ve started to write about being who you are, many of you have responded and resonated with what I’ve written, but you just don’t know how to begin.

This article isn’t designed to cover all of that, it’s all there on my other posts to read at any time. In fact, this article marks the conclusion of one chapter and the start of another in my own learning cycle.

Here I am in the third stage of learning, sharing with you what I have come to know – that who I am, in essence, is a soul who loves – and I mean loves, thrives, feels exultant – to learn more about this life we are all living, to grow and then to teach.

Through teaching I learn more, and so the growth continues. If you meet me at a party, I’ll never be interested in small talk, I will want to get to know YOU, the real you. Because the real you will have something to teach the real me, and I crave that.

My friends know I’m the serious one, the deep one, it’s all good, I am. I am serious about being real, accepting and allowing that to happen. For each and every reader, I hope something in here that resonates with your inner knowing, I hope that you will wake up before you are at the end of this life regretting you weren’t true to yourself.

Go live the best version of your life, find out who you really are and what you, in your true essence, are really capable of. You will be amazed and we will stare in wonder at the glorious life you create for yourself.
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This article was originally published on LinkedIn.