Sometimes all I can manage to do “well” in a day is get up, drink coffee, workout hard, shower & get dressed.... 

That’s about 1.5 hours out of a 16+ hour day. But it’s a freaking awesome 1.5 hours. 

Wanna know why? Because, yes, self-care. But also...

It feels so good and comforting (as compared to the remaining hours of chaotic, heartbreaking, joy-infused, mayhem in the micro & macrocosm), because my self will freaking LOVES to be in control. My egoic mind loves to decide and predict and execute tasks in a close-to-perfect order. Gives me the false (and very falsely reassuring) sense that I am in control.

But that’s the same part of me that suffers so as the rest of the day unfolds. As life, expressed in all its many, many forms, just plays out in its own way - not in my way. This is where the friction begins, where the resistance builds: in the place where life goes in a different direction than my mind had decided it should/would like. Where I feel not-in-control. Where there is difficulty and pain.

The spiritual teacher Adyashanti ays that enlightenment is simply complete cooperation with reality. Or, as my teacher, Pat says we are learning to “meet life on life’s terms.”

This relationship with life comes from a place of deep acceptance... which is, ultimately, seeing things AS THEY ARE and relating/responding/interacting from that place. 

What this means is that life doesn’t change because you want it to (or because you try to make it through force, wishing, suggesting, collapsing). Life continues be life - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

But YOU can change in your relationship to it. Meeting life (with whatever it’s offering up, moment by moment) means working with it, not against it. That’s where the freedom lies, in the space where resistance and the desire to control drops away.

This is my life-long practice which is at the core of every single thing in my life.

Can you notice what comes up for you when things are not going as you want or as you planned? Can you begin to see how your desire to control how things are unfolding actually creates more tension, more friction, more suffering? Dropping control doesn't mean giving up or collapsing - it means seeing what's happening, seeing the reality as it is and responding from there.