3 Strategies To Get Your Life On The Right Track
How do you want to drive your train?
You’re the engineer driving your train smoothly rolling along a steel track. You hear the familiar rhythmic clickety-clack coming from beneath you. Your train pulls a long line of cargo cars. The cargo in each of the cars is a different belief or opinion and thought.
Along the track are various points where your train can shift and veer off in another direction.
Your train also has the capability to release the cars that seem to be slowing the train down, too heavy to be pulled along easily. They don’t belong to your train, they’re just attached to it.
Those two possibilities are only available to you, the engineer. However, to act on them requires you to look inside at the instrument panel rather than just outside at the track ahead.
You might require some instruction on how to use the instrument panel as well as charting your route. Otherwise, your train will just follow along the track aimlessly, forever being a victim to the forces on the outside and end up at a station where you don’t want to be.
“Health is not just the absence of disease but a wholeness that involves physical, mental and spiritual well-being.” -Sadhguru
This year has pulled out all the stops. We’re being pulled along on a track that keeps leading to more chaos.
To get your life back on track requires three main areas to focus on.
1. Physical Well Being
One important strategy is to keep your body healthy through nutrition, hydration, and movement which you enjoy.
The quality of the food and drink you put in your body lets it know how well you honour your body. Your body does more for you than you realize at any point in a day. When was the last time you felt grateful to your body for all it does.
If you eat junk food, highly processed and nutrient deficient food, you could be informing your body that it’s not worthy of better quality nutrition. Ask yourself if you feel worthy of high quality in your life.
If you water your body with sugary or toxic drinks frequently, you’re growing inflammation and toxicity in your body. Ask yourself if your thoughts are angry or toxic.
Just let curiosity guide you. It’s an exploration.
Movement doesn’t have to require daily strenuous exercise or the type of movement you dread. It can be walking, biking, daily stretching, running, yoga, sports, etc. There are so many ways you can move your body the way it was intended to operate.
Mindfully, consider what your choices have been and what they could be instead.
Write them down if that makes it clearer. Begin a journal or diary to keep track of this journey.
“A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.” -Hippocrates
2. Spiritual Well Being
To recognize your connection to a higher power is what grounds you and gives you purpose for being you. Begin with your breath.
Being mindfully connected to your breath has a myriad of healthful benefits.
- Reduces anxiety
- Helps to recover from stressful burnout
- Provides some pain relief
- Promotes positive thoughts
- Lowers blood pressure and heart rate
- Improves diabetic symptoms
- Reduces depression
Being mindful makes it easier to savour the pleasures in life as they occur. You become fully engaged in activities, and create a greater capacity to deal with challenging events.
Through mindfulness you’ll find it easier to pay attention and notice the thoughts you think, the beliefs you have, and the reactions in your body that go with them. Then you can question whether they’re still relevant and true for you.
By focusing on each present moment as it occurs, many people find they’re less likely to get caught up in worries about the future (anxiety) or regrets and overthinking the past (depression).
People are less preoccupied with concerns about success and pride, and are better able to form deep connections with others.
In the same way, being in presence with another or with nature offers a level of authenticity and an honour for Life itself that isn’t apparent in “normal” day to day busyness.
Connecting to the divine essence of all of Life is a grounding and humbling practice that can be done through meditation or just sitting and mindfully being present with that essence.
The physical and mental health it brings is all worth it.
“The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and the acceptance of love.” -Marianne Williamson
3. Cognitive Well Being
Keeping your mental focus sharp keeps you curious about life. Ask questions and learn more.
Your brain requires new and challenging experiences in order to remain sharp and focused. Challenging your brain doesn’t have to be rocket science. Merely changing the way you normally do things can make a huge shift in your brain.
For example, look at how you fold your arms. Is it left over right or right over left? Whichever way you normally do it, switch it around. It will feel uncomfortable, not quite right, and that’s okay. Or try writing with your non dominant hand for a short period. Again, it will not feel right and make your writing look terrible. Switch around how you put your pants on, brush your teeth with your non dominant hand.
Be creative with it.
This interrupts the neural pathways in your brain which have been so well established. Because of repetition, your body knows the pattern without you even having to be aware, or be mindful, about the action.
When you do these things slightly differently, you’re creating new neural pathways the more you repeat them. This actually changes your brain to be able to learn new things more easily.
Start a new hobby or learn a new skill. When you do, remember repetition is what creates the new pathways to more solidly learn the information.
This can help you accept and move through changing times with more ease.
Along with mindfulness it also opens you up to seeing new ways of thinking and new possibilities you didn’t see before.
“You cannot see a new way out of a challenge if you are looking at it every day from the same level of mind, emotions, thoughts and feelings of the past.” -Dr. Joe Dispenza
Main Strategy For Getting On The Right Track
Just like the train engineer, the first thing to do is to look inside. You have a wealth of wisdom tailor made for you within yourself.
The reason most of us are either unaware of this or untrusting of it, is because our world, our collective train, has taught us to keep our eyes focused outwards. We’re taught things happen to us and that we’re not worthy or wise enough to know what’s best for ourselves.
Better to take direction from those who “know better” we’re told, for example; parents, teachers, professionals, politicians, etc.
There’s certainly a time and place for advice and discussion or information gathering. However, once information is gathered, going within to examine your own instrument panel will always reveal what the right course of action is, or which track is right for you.
When we’re very young our subconscious is recording our version of the experiences we have outside ourselves. They are the programs we run on later, as we grow up.
They inevitably involve messages of love and fear. The issue comes with the fearful, survival messages which cut us off from knowing our connection to our divine source.
If our children are shown empowering programs, messages of love, joy, purpose, honour, integrity, etc., they will become the most consciously empowered generation building our world to the benefit of all.
“I used to be in survival mode, and it gave me cancer. So I refuse to go into that mode anymore.” -Anita Moorjani
All of these strategies can put your train on the right track for your journey. They can smoothly veer you off the survival track that keeps you in fear without feeling grounded or connected and on track to living your life on purpose with gratitude and joy.
Seeking guidance and support while beginning this portion of your journey is encouraged. No one’s train needs to be left alone on a track.
