If You Live Differently, Life Is Different

Inside Nat's Notebook - Real Reflections for Real Change

Have you ever noticed how the exact same life can feel completely different from one day to the next?

Monday morning can feel perfectly manageable one week and like a personal attack the next. The same house can feel cosy when you walk through the door one evening and irritatingly full of things that need doing on another. The same person can make you laugh until your belly hurts on Tuesday and somehow chew too loudly on Wednesday.

Nothing particularly dramatic has happened.

And yet your experience of it has changed. I find that fascinating. Because we spend an enormous amount of time thinking about what needs to change in our lives.

But how much of our experience of life comes from what happens, and how much comes from the way we meet what happens?

We Spend A Lot Of Time Trying To Change The Outside

It's quite natural when something doesn't feel right to look at what we could change. Maybe I'd be happier in a different job. Maybe we need to move. Maybe I need a holiday. Maybe I need more money, more time, a different routine, a new challenge or something exciting to look forward to.

And sometimes we absolutely do need to change things. There are jobs worth leaving, relationships that shouldn't continue, environments that don't suit us and circumstances that genuinely need to be different. This isn't an argument for accepting everything exactly as it is while trying to think ourselves happy. No, no, no, that won’t work!

But not every dissatisfaction can be solved by rearranging the outside. Because wherever we go, we take ourselves with us; have you noticed that?

You can move into the house you dreamed about and eventually stop looking at the view. You can get the job you desperately wanted and begin dreading Monday. You can arrive somewhere beautiful on holiday and spend half the afternoon thinking about something happening back home. You can finally reach the thing you've been working towards and find yourself mentally on to the next thing before you've even properly arrived.

The outside matters. But so does the person experiencing it.

The Same Life Can Feel Completely Different

Think about something as ordinary as walking somewhere familiar. You can walk the same road while mentally rehearsing tomorrow's meeting, barely noticing where you are. You can walk it after receiving wonderful news, and suddenly everything seems brighter. You can walk it while grieving and experience those exact same surroundings completely differently again.

Same road. Different experience. The road hasn't changed. The trees haven't rearranged themselves especially for you. The sky hasn't received an update about your circumstances.

YOU have arrived differently.

And I think that's easy to underestimate because we're so accustomed to thinking that our experience is simply a response to whatever life puts in front of us. Something happens; therefore I feel this way. Except being human isn't quite that straightforward, is it?

What happens matters, of course. But so do the attention, expectations, memories, thoughts, physical state and meaning we bring to what happens.

You know this already because you've lived it. You've had days when a tiny inconvenience has felt like the FINAL STRAW and other days when exactly the same thing would barely have registered. You've had conversations you've interpreted one way, only to discover later that the other person meant something completely different. You've woken after a good night's sleep and found something easier to deal with than it felt at eleven o'clock the night before when you were absolutely exhausted and thoroughly done with everybody, the world and the entire universe.

Circumstances matter. But you are in the experience too.

You Are Participating In Your Experience

I find that fascinating. We can spend so much time thinking about life as something happening to us that it's easy to overlook how actively involved we are in experiencing it.

We're not cameras recording events exactly as they happen. We notice some things and miss others. We interpret. Remember. Anticipate. Compare. Feel. Our bodies respond. Our minds make meaning. We bring yesterday with us and occasionally manage to bring next Thursday along too.

We're in it.

And that means two people can sit beside the same sea and have entirely different experiences. One is watching the horizon and listening to the waves. The other is physically on the beach but mentally halfway through an argument from yesterday and coming up with several excellent responses approximately twenty-four hours too late! Same sea. Very different afternoon. Neither person is doing anything wrong. Their experience isn't coming from the sea alone. We don't experience life only through what happens. We experience it through the way we meet what happens.

This Is Not Positive Thinking

I want to be really clear about this because what I'm talking about here isn't pretending that changing the way you meet life somehow changes everything that happens in it.

There are things in life that hurt. Grief hurts. Loss hurts. Illness changes things. Money worries are real. Relationships break down. People disappoint us. Bodies struggle. Terrible things happen, and no amount of looking at the sky differently is going to make those things OK.

Living differently doesn't mean pretending otherwise. I think it asks for something much more honest than that. It asks us to meet what is actually here and recognise that we are part of that experience too.

Sometimes what's here is joy. Sometimes it's fear. Sometimes it's exhaustion. Sometimes it's laughter. Sometimes it's boredom. Sometimes it's standing in the kitchen thinking, I have absolutely had enough of today. That's being alive too.

Being more available to life doesn't guarantee that what you find will always be comfortable. It means being more available to the whole thing.

If You Live Differently, Life Is Different

I don't mean sell everything, move to an island and start again. Although, admittedly, some of us have been known to take that route. I'm talking about something far less dramatic. What happens when you recognise that you're not simply travelling through a fixed experience called My Life; you're participating in it.

You bring your attention, your interpretation, your expectations, your history and your physical state. You bring your curiosity, your willingness to be astonished and your tendency to race ahead to whatever comes next. 

All of that meets whatever life happens to put in front of you. And sometimes changing something outside you will absolutely change your life. But sometimes the road is still the road. The house is still the house. Monday is still Monday. The difficult thing may still be difficult.

What changes is the way you arrive. And that matters far more than I think we sometimes realise. Because the extraordinary didn't disappear when you stopped noticing it. Your body didn't become less astonishing because you got used to living in it. The stars didn't lose their wonder because you've seen them before. The life you wanted didn't become less valuable because it became familiar. You got used to being here. And you can be here differently.

That's what I mean when I say: If you live differently, life is different.

Not because you've somehow made life perfect. Because you're actually here for more of it. Being alive is extraordinary.

#Rebel Moment

I'm not going to finish September by giving you another thing to do. Instead, I'll leave you with one question:

What would it mean for you to meet the life you already have a little differently?

Take that wherever you want to take it. Into Monday morning. Into your work. Into the conversation you're having. Into the walk you've done a hundred times. Into your home. Into the way you meet yourself.

Because whatever happens next, you're going to be there too.

Stay Blessed!

LoveLove

Nat x

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