Today has been a good day and as always I am grateful for that. I feel like a juggler with many varied things I’m working on, but I am glad to say that most of them are good. I have moments like this–the one I’m in right now–when I can scarcely articulate how good life is. If someone were to look at my bank balance, my wardrobe, my home, and other external indicators of my level of “success” I suppose they might conclude that I am living on the edge, somewhere between barely “making it” and being about to turn a corner toward being wildly successful. At my age and level of education one could think that I should be further along, and trust me I’ve had moments when I look at some of the decisions I’ve made in my life and thought about how different my life would be if I would have turned left instead of right or taken one particular path instead of the one I started down. Regardless of all of that, I am grateful to be exactly where I am at 9:01 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Monday, 11th of February, 2013.
This morning I spent time writing in my journal about what I want in my life in terms of my livelihood and significant relationships. As a life coach I’ve frequently invited clients to define for themselves what they want their lives to be rather than spend time and energy describing what they don’t want. For many of us it’s much easier to describe in great detail the type of work we hate doing or wouldn’t want to do, all the places we don’t want to live, the kind of person we don’t want to be in relationship with. When I say to someone, “Okay, that’s all interesting, but what is it you do want?” they frequently can’t answer me. There’s a career exploration book titled, “I Don’t Know What I Want, But I Know It’s Not This.” Great title, but it points out one of the challenges in helping people determine what the type of work they’re drawn to, that they’re most compatible with. We don’t know what we want in part because we’re so rarely asked the question; we are not given permission to actually want something let alone believe we might actually be able to ask for and get it. So, like many of my clients, it took me a long while before I could begin to define what I wanted.
What I wrote in my journal this morning was a refinement of thoughts and ideas I’ve been working on for a while now. About a year ago I spent some time really thinking about the qualities I wanted in my next job/workplace. When I think back on it now, I now find myself working in an environment that has some of the same elements I described as desirable. Some of the things I described have come to pass and I find myself guardedly optimistic that things will continue to move in a positive direction. My hope is that as I get clearer about what I want in other areas of my life and begin to take intentional steps in the direction I want to go, that doors will open and stars will align in ways that will bring me closer to what I’m looking for in those areas as well.
The other day I wrote about contentment and my desire to be content. I am realizing that contentment rests in the present moment. Tonight I am sitting here typing away on my evening blog and feeling an amazing sense of contentment. I am not desperately clutching onto it lest it slip away, and I am also not lamenting the idea that I might not feel content when I wake up in the morning. I might be cranky and discontented tomorrow or even 20 minutes from now. But in this moment now at 9:42 p.m. on Monday, February 11, 2013, I am completely content. And for that I am grateful.
