Monday’s Meditation: On Desiring What You Have
When I first started my business, I dreamed of the day when my schedule would be full of clients to serve. In a calendar of blank pages stretching into oblivion (or, you know, the following January), the entry of a client session was a victory. In a week, the single day with pencil marks was my crowning achievement and my motivation. It looked the way I so desperately wished every day would look: ripe with purpose.
The more clients I took on, the more work I did, the more those other days started filling up with writing, too. But being in demand was, back then, a novelty. Having a steady stream of clients hadn’t been proven long enough for me to feel confident in the fact that it would continue. A slow week, with its hauntingly blank days, would panic me. Over the phone, I scheduled consultations with new clients and flipped the pages of my blank calendar in embarrassed amusement. Sure, I could likely make that day work, I would say, not a single other commitment in sight.
Hundreds of edited spaces, thousands–probably hundreds of thousands–of donated items, months upon months upon years upon years of truly exhausting labor, my calendar has never been more full than it is now. Week after week, the days are crowded with pencil entries. I flip forward and backwards from the current date, and find my hours accounted for. There has been and will be clients who need me from now on. Clients request time with me and I turn the pages of my calendar back and forth, trying earnestly to figure out how to fit them in.
Sometimes we work so hard to accomplish what we desire that when we receive those gifts, we forget how hard we labored for them. We forget that we’ve gotten everything we wanted.
I know for a fact that I have been and still am guilty of this.
But not with my business. When the pace accelerates to a sprint, I remind myself that my wish has manifested and is continuing to manifest. I stay present to the fact that what I asked for has been given to me. I marvel at how I am now in possession of a reality that was once my dream.
And when I think about it, I can’t help but to believe that staying connected to that truth is the single most transformative thought that daily re-energizes me. Remembering that I used to wish for what I now have ensures that I regard it as a blessing, rather than a labor.
Of course there is a need for continual reassessment. For example, it would hardly serve you to stay in a toxic marriage, career path or even a hobby solely because it used to light you up. That would be what we call around these parts “clutter.”
But if what you once desired is what you desire still, then staying connected to your good fortune is critical to living a life of gratitude and joy rather than resentment and annoyance.
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