Well-being is Our Natural State – So There’s Nothing to Do, Yikes!

All human beings are looking for well being

Well, as life would have it, recenty I have been watching and listening to a lot of videos on Youtube by a spiritual teacher and mystic called Sadhguru.  One of the things I have heard him say often is that all human beings are looking for well being.  Regardless of the medium, the end result is well being.  That makes a lot of sense to me.  I often share that all human beings are looking for a positive feeling.

Think about it.  Whatever you are “doing” in life, you are essentially looking for a feeling of well being.  Well being for you could go by the name of happiness or peace or fun or pleasure.  That could look like having the ideal partner, having the latest gadget, practising yoga, going to meet your best friend for lunch, following a healthy eating plan and so on.  It all points to wanting to feel good.

Watch out!  Don’t chase it!

Well being is not a thing to chase though!  It’s actually our natural default setting.  It is not experienced because of “contaminated” thinking that we believe and so give meaning to it.

When a client recently told me she thought she was a failure because she spent so much time on the details of her work instead of just getting it out there, we talked about thought and thinking and how she was creating that feeling of failure.  Why would she want to feel like a failure?

Well obviously she doesn’t!  She wants to feel good about her life and her business.  She didn’t realize that she was giving meaning to the thinking that came along.  In fact, it felt like that was her default setting because she felt like a failure so often and really believed that her attention to detail was a failing.  It was even more believable because all her family and friends were telling her that she needed to stop being such a perfectionist and get on with getting her work out there.

When I pointed out that her attention to detail could be a strength, her face lit up.  She said nobody had ever said that to her before and the tone of the conversation completely changed.  We started to explore the possibilities and creativity and inspiration became the ingredients of the conversation versus failing and overwhelm that were present earlier on.

It wasn’t that I believed her story a.k.a. thinking about failing, it was that I knew that her state of mind was not conducive to seeing possibilities and potential.  Her well being was there, but she didn’t know it in that moment.   Plus I truly saw the gift she had and I knew it was part of her well being.  Wisdom nudged me to share that with her.  As soon as she heard me say it could be a strength, her state of mind changed and her vision expanded to seeing the potential and possibilities.

We are not nouns, we are verbs

The truth is that this is open to us at any moment in time.  Our state of mind can and does change continually.  You see we are not static.  We are in process.  We are not nouns, we are verbs.  Life is continually changing.  That’s the nature of life and that’s the nature of us as a human being, physically, mentally and emotionally.

The minute we remember this for ourselves, it opens us up to fresh thinking, to insight, to seeing something new for ourselves and we feel differently because we are thinking differently.