Why are we in a hurry?
Where are we running so fast?

I used to be a super busy person: doing, doing, doing, running, running everywhere., everytime, 24/7. Now, I’m looking back and asking myself: Why ?

At that time, I thought that I had to do it. That’s the way it is, being super busy to get all the items of my to do list done. I realised later that it was also flattering my ego: “I’m busy, I have so much to do and so many things are relying on me.” I was under constant pressure, running from one meeting to the other, from one event to the other, to eventually arrive home exhausted and having no energy. To have lunch with me you had to ask two months in advance. The constant same words came out of my mouth: “I don’t have time”.

Let’s be honest, there are few periods during a year where life or work is bringing up situations or emergencies which need an immediate response and where we have no choice.

I regularly review the last years and wonder: “What did i get out of 10 years of being pressured until exhaustion?” The honest answer is: “Nothing”. I only lost time and opportunites. By having a super full agenda, I didn’t leave room for spontaneity and novelties to enter my life. Above all, I do not even remember the 10th of all the meetings, events i ran to. I always felt to run after time.

Ironically, when you start to slow down you have more time.

I noticed it when I sold my car in 2018 and decided to not buy another one. I am now dependent on public transports with all the organisational skills and time it is demanding (and patience). I had to prioritise my endeavours, I couldn’t do as much I used to. I had to slow down.

One year later, i realised that I wasn’t feeling as pressured as before anymore and I ended up enjoying my recreation time much more. It became something I had chosen in detriment of someting else. I had more time for myself, doing things that matter.

The simple fact of selling my car, had an unexpected outcome, it made me reflect on my relationship with time and on the pressure I felt for so many years. I had to be honest with myself: I was the one pressuring me. Nobody asked it, nobody imposed it. At the end of the day, I was the one writing my to do lists. I did it because it seemed to be the way things go and have to be done.

We pretend that we don’t have time for anything because we are under a lot of obligations. But are those real? Some surely are, taking care of the basic needs of our families ourselves. Besides these, what is the extra pressure that we load on ourselves?

Where was I running too? I don’t know. The only thing I know now is that it wasn’t worth it. I lost time. Perhaps was I running away from something? Running to not see that I was in a path which wasn’t mine. Run away to forget? The results are the same: a huge waste of time and energy.

So, where are you running to? What are you running away from?

Let’s cultivate self-awareness and take responsibility for our choices. We need to take back and have an honest look into our lifes, assess what is important and what isn’t. How do we define our priorities?

Let’s face it, you cannot retrieve time and if we don’t take care of ourselves, nobody else will. We are worth it

With joy,
Marilène

Who controls your life?
Society, your family, you ?

It took me some time to realise that I wasn’t in control of my life, although I was a complete control freak. I planned everything. I ordered, separated professional life from personal. I gave myself an illusion of security, but actually I wasn’t in control at all.

99% of our decision-making process comes from our subconscious mind, 1% from our conscious mind. For example when we enter the movie theater and we are choosing the best seat, our subconscious mind has already chosen the place when we entered the room, before we are aware of it. The subconscious mind is like a huge database were all our past experiences, informations, memories and patterns are stored, basically everything we have learned since our birth (even before…).

Everytime I’m somewhere or with someone and someting catches my attention or triggers me, my subconscious mind looks up how I have dealt in the past with a similar situation and decides which actions or decisions have to be taken.

Thus, we react to our environment with what we have learned throughout our entire life, the patterns and belief systems we built up ourselves, we got from our family or from society. The function of our subconscious mind  is to keep us alive and uses the patterns which have “worked” before to do its job. It isn’t either good or bad. It only does its job.

Our subconscious mind is stronger than our conscious mind, because we haven’t a direct access to it.

That explains why, sometimes, when we make a decision to change path or try out something new, putting us out of our habits or confort zone, subconscious patterns will block us. For example, if my plan is to become self-employed, but my family caries the belief system that it is safer to be employee and get a fixed wage, I might have the capacities to be successful entrepreneur but my subconscious will put in place mechanisms to stop me from pursuing my projects, like fears etc.

Finding this out some years ago, scattered my whole reality. I asked myself: am I really in control of my life? Are the decisions I have been making until now reflecting my true nature?

In 2017, I came across the Human Design System, which is a map of ourselves, showing our biggest assets, how we are meant to interact with our environment. The Human Design System states that we are conditioned by our environment. People around us influence us with their way of functioning and beliefs which drive us away from ourselves. We are all unique and we have to “unlearn” everything we have learned to find ourselves back. Human Design taught me how I should make decisions to live out my uniqueness.

In 2019, I came across ThetaHealing®, which is a meditation technique helping to find our limiting belief systems and change them.

Both techniques helped me take new steps towards myself and feel more intune with life and take healthy decisions.

Are you ready to step into your own power and to let go what doesn’t serve you anymore?

Nobody said it would be easy. Change is challenging, some days I want to smash everything away. Nonetheless, pursuing this journey towards myself, brought and increased a sense of inner peace in my life, which is priceless.

With Joy,
Marilène
www.omjoie.lu

 

Your task is not to foresee the future, but to enable it.
Antoine de St-Exupéry

We often hear people tell us that we need to have perspectives, to see life from another angle or perspective.

These expressions took on a completely different meaning when I understood that having new perspectives means to be open to all the possibilities that exist around us at every moment. It’s not forcing ourselves to look for meanings of what we’re experiencing, or to actively look for another possibility.

It is to know that at every moment we have a multitude of possibilities open to us. However, we are very often entangled, locked up in our modes of functioning and habits that make us take automatic choices that we repeat tirelessly without realizing it.

You have certainly already had the experience of being in your car and to tell you today I am taking a different path. Then lost in your thoughts, you catch yourself taking the same path you usually take.

This is why to be open to other perspectives, we must first let go of our automatisms to let other things happen to us. Be open to the many choices that can happen. Because with every decision we make, with every step we take, new possibilities are waiting on our path.

How many times after a new event arises, we are already projecting ourselves into the future and creating scenarios at all costs. We limit our field of possibilities.

Enabling the future begins at every moment:

• Instead of projecting ourselves, welcoming
• Taking a different route than usual to get from A to B
• Changing shops, supermarkets or lunch places

These small changes are already opening the doors for new things to enter into our lifes.

At any moment anything can happen and anything can change. The unknown is not dangerous. It is also full of opportunities. We are trained to see the worst everywhere, to be afraid of the future, a future that must be foreseen and controlled.

So let’s stay open to allow the future to surprise us.

With Joy,
Marilène

A year ago, I was embarking on a new journey. I didn’t know where it would take me. A sabbatical leave around the world. The first 3 months were planned with Bangkok as a starting point, then Laos, Cambodia and Bali. And in my head a lot of other destinations: Mexico, Peru, California, Canada, etc…

The most important lesson on this trip was the recognition that I no longer needed to travel. It just fell onto me, one day.

I made my first solo trip 10 years earlier to Burkina Faso in 2008. For the next 10 years I travelled to many different countries for work or privately. I was quenching a thirst to discover the world that was actually driven by a thirst to meet and discover myself. And here I am one fine day in Asia saying to myself: “I don’t need to travel anymore”.

I came back with the certainty that wherever I go, wherever I live, I will always be the same person. Inner peace and happiness are not linked to a place but only to oneself. A year later it is still not easy to put the right words on this feeling. It is an evidence inside me, a fact, which does not need words. Besides, every time people who haven’t seen me since beginning of 2019, ask me which beautiful countries I plan to visit, I ask myself: “Why are they asking me this question? “I have forgotten all the beautiful destinations I had planned.

I came back in April 2019 and since then I haven’t travelled anymore. I started a whole new adventure: the creation of OM JOIE. A journey to another horizon.

With Joy,
Marilène