What are you leaving out?
What feels separate, set aside?
What do you “have to make time for”?
What “should” you be doing?
How do you live in the “real world”?
The corporate world – when it bothers to pay attention – speaks of “life/work balance.” As if life and work were two separate and opposing forces. They are not. Just the phrase is a problem. We do it with many things: “sacred and mundane”. “Magical life and real life.” We speak in these binaries as though magical life cannot be real, or as though work is not a healthy part of life.
We are tearing ourselves apart for no reason.
What sort of life would you like to lead?
What sort of life would remind you that every part of life is important, magical, and sacred?
What things can you let go?
For me, my life includes rest, reading, exercise, clients, writing, students, activism, good food, work, music, sitting under trees, bicycling, sex, friends, spiritual practice…Every day includes a healthy measure of most, and every week includes the remainder. All the parts of my self need to be fed. All the parts of myself need reminders that they are important facets of the whole. Exercise is just as important as spiritual practice is just as important as meeting with spiritual direction clients. I spend different amounts of time on each of these, but they all weave into the whole.
It took me a long time and some reframing to get here. I still work a lot, but there is a more useful sense of flow among all the aspects of my life, less of a sense of separation.
What feels important to you? What would feel healthy and nourishing to include? What would it feel liberating to let go of?
What sort of life do you lead and what life are you hoping to craft?
Stop thinking of life balance and start pondering life integration.
Manifestation will follow.
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If you can use a sounding board or some guidance around navigating your own integration, I have just adjusted my spiritual direction rates to open up more spaces for those struggling in our current economic times.
Addendum: I also write about manifesting desire in Make Magic of Your Life. Some people are finding it helpful.