What is your WHY?
You know how children are always so curious and always keep asking “why” to understand the world around them. I think when we mature, asking the why question remains just as important but more in the sense of understanding the world inside of us. What is your why power? Why is it that you want to study this degree? Move to that city? Buy that new thing? I believe that when you do not have a strong why for what you do we tend to be more sensitive for influences of someone else’s why. When you start to question the reason why you are doing the things you are doing in your life, you might notice that some of them are only because of what others might expect from you or what the media and society perpetuates as something that you must be doing. Asking yourself the why more regularly, makes us understand and set our values. This will make us happy and reassured when making life decisions.
One workshop was an Introduction to Mindfulness at the Erasmus University in light of Well Being Week. And the second one on the picture was in collaboration with Extraordinary Life in which I designed, facilitated a workshop, and guided a meditation on our WHY in life and how not living from our own authentic why could sometimes be the reason for a sense of anxiety or stress.
The participants first had to write down the answers to three questions. First one was; what they think society expects from them. Secondly, what they expect from themselves. Finally, what in life gives them the feeling of excitement. Afterwards, I guided a visualisation meditation for all three scenarios and the participants were invited to observe how each of these situations made them feel, what thoughts came up, and how their bodies reacted to this.
The insight that many of the students had was how their body reacted to simply the visualisations of the expectations of society and themselves. Many felt frustrations, anger or even sadness. Where they felt joy and happiness in the final visualisation. This short exercise shows two things. First, how our bodies react to simply the thoughts we have. This is a beautiful example of the statement I often make that our bodies do not know the difference between what we are telling it and reality. A visualisation and thus worrying about something in your mind which hasn’t happened yet can already give you the same response as going through that something.
Second, how the expectations that people have or feel can influence their mind state. And how important it is to check in with yourself before you make decisions in your life. To actually sit and feel if what you are going to do aligns with what you truly want and feels good.
This workshop gave the participants insight on how the different expectations from society and themselves gave them feelings of frustration and or sadness whereas the things in life that gave them excitement, also gave them bodily reactions such as a smile coming up and butterflies in their stomach.
It just shows again how important it is to check in with yourself every now and then by focussing your attention inwards. I believe that doing this exercise of visualising the things you want to decide, noticing how your mind and body react to that, and then making a decision will make you feel much better.
But then again, that is my opinion and experience!
Try it out and let me know!
