I am a recovered super-Type A personality!
For as long as I can remember, I was extremely driven and very ambitious. I always exploring and implementing new ideas. And, I was a workaholic. I used to be relentless in the pursuit of the next business opportunity, the next promotion, and learning new skills to enable me to make more money. I’d celebrate a job promotion for barely a day or two before pushing for the next one and the next one. Although making money was the obvious end-goal, it was the challenge of a new task, additional responsibilities, new ideas and projects, and so on, that drove me through most of my life and into my forties.
Now, I’m kinder and gentler – to myself, lol.
Lest you think I’ve given up on life, it’s not that. I’m just motivated by a different goal these days — a goal that’s no longer sitting on the materialistic end of the success spectrum.
My transformation came about after I faced a period of time during which professional and personal challenges abounded. No matter how hard I tried, things just didn’t seem to be working. Giving up is not in me, so I doubled-down and tried harder. And things got worse, instead of getting better.
A spiritual mentor encouraged me to slow down – meditate, write a journal, and try to connect with the universe.
Slow down? “What is that?”, I asked. Type-A personalities don’t slow down!
The first thing he told me to do was stop labeling myself as a Type-A. The second thing he told me to do was to quit thinking. And the third thing he told me to do was to be quiet.
Me, stop talking and thinking? The extroverted, outgoing, “dynamic” personality that I was?
And I was a techie – an extremely left-brained individual — analytical, logical, detail-and fact-oriented. The whole “connecting to the universe” thing – that was never happening!
But I’ve also always been a problem-solver. And my life was a problem, then. So even as my type-A personality balked at the “crazy” suggestions, I set out to problem-solve my life.
I shut down my marketing company, reduced my social circle, lessened my outings, and stamped down new ideas that kept crowding my mind. I stepped away from life as I knew it.
The connecting to the universe didn’t happen easily because I was skeptical, and the universe knew it too, lol.
It was more difficult than learning to program a query, cook a perfect dish, run a mile in 12 minutes……you get the idea. It was difficult as heck!
But giving up is not in me. So, I learned to shut myself off in a room to learn the art of silence. It was even more difficult to stop thinking, but the art of deep breathing helped me gain control over my thoughts.
I focused inward. I learned to let go of my thoughts and expectations. I forced myself to forget “how things should be” and allow things to unravel as they did. And I started writing a journal in which I poured my heart out. In essence, I was allowing the universe to guide me.
Soon I began to enjoy sitting in silence (isolation) for hours at a time.
Eventually I was able to count my breaths to a hundred without allowing a thought to invade. [As long as I was counting the breaths, the thoughts couldn’t get through.]
I felt calmer. I felt happier. I felt grounded.
This whole “letting the universe guide me” was actually working!
I’m still a work in progress because I’m still a bit too emotional for my own good and not as detached from my loved ones and life, as I should be. But I’ve come a long way and the journey is not ending anytime soon.
Mental peace and inner joy are not elusive.
Believe me, I’ve got both!
P.S. Reach out to me if you’d like to learn more.
