You have to go pure.

I was recently talking to a dear friend who is at a different stage than I am- she’s very established in her career, a few years away from retirement, and her kids are just finishing college. In my mind, I have always imagined that that time in my life will be smaller.  And by smaller I mean that there will be significantly more of a time margin with very little effort required by me in creating that situation.  And, yet, what I know to be true for my friend is that her life is just as busy, just as vibrant as it was 20 years ago, except for in the ways that she has made the conscious choice for it not to be.  She has gloriously and powerfully found different ways to joyfully use her talents and skills in ways that resonated with her power and purpose and made her feel like she was paying rent for living on this planet, and she has followed those guidelines in creating her life each day.  The little bit of time margin, the sweet bit of breathing room that she has, didn’t happen to her .  She made it happen because she weeded out the stuff in her life that just didn’t out anything back into her energy bank.

You see, it doesn’t necessarily just get easier because of times or seasons in life.  You can’t just wait the busy-ness out and hope it goes away on its own, the whirlwind nature of your pace doesn’t slow down on its own volition.  You have to make something happen to it.

What I realized as I talked to my friend is that time and balance only get easier because you decide that you must make it so.  I don’t think life’s naturally just a cakewalk or that our idealistic vision of balance is really all that sustainable over time. I think what happens is that you create a situation where you have less resistance and so much more flow.  But to have less resistance and more flow, you have to go pure.

What, exactly, do I mean by going pure?  I don’t mean unprocessed- although you might find that less processed food in your life really makes your body happy and, ahem, allows for more flow.  I don’t mean that you have to go innocent; feel free to be as naughty- aw, get your head out the gutter- as you’d like.  What I mean by pure is that you have to go utterly and totally true for you.  You have to say no when something just isn’t a fit- even if you are fully capable of doing what you are being asked- and you have to only say yes or create that which makes your heart sing.  Go as pure as you can possibly go and a lot less if your life will feel like demands, like work, like inconveniences.  I know that as soon as I start to resent something for its difficult-ness that it is no longer pure for me.  Once something starts to feel like a crazy amount of work not because of the work itself but because of the resistance in me, I’ve got to bow out.  And, sometimes, it is not whole things that create the resistance but the details about a particular thing.  If that’s the case, I figure out if and when the details can be tweaked to create a more pure situation and work to make that happen, if it is indeed possible.  If it’s not, I go pure.

It’s not always easy, and I haven’t achieved a 100% pure life yet.  I don’t even know if 100% pure is even possible as there will always be dishes to wash, laundry to do, and other chores to attend.  But I know that going more pure is always possible and that by listening to myself, I create more flow in my life. And when I am in flow, I can give the world my best work. And, at the end of the day, that’s what I most want- to give the word my best gifts, unfiltered, and to receive the unfiltered gifts of every other person.  Do that and we heal the world.

How are you going pure in your life?