When it comes to liveliness, it is first of all about sensing that you are alive. Yet, it happens easily that a daily routine sneaks and causes the life to be monotonous, predictable, boring, ordinary and sometimes even painful. It becomes painful when you become aware of the fact that the way you are living right now is actually not the way you prefer. Recently a man answered the question about how his relationship is going with “normal!” and added that he was actually not happy with it. The term normal has almost become a synonym for boring or not alive.
Some people think that liveliness is connected to experiencing more and more crazy things and sports. They feel only alive when experiencing a certain adrenaline kick. Others connect liveliness to doing a lot, working a lot, having a lot of appointments, meeting a lot of friends and packing as much as possible into a day. Yet, most of them realize after a certain time that this might work for a short moment, but does in the end not lead permanently to more liveliness. The opposite is often the case. People have more and more doubts, become restless or even depressive or get other illnesses.
Some people also confuse the so called Low Drama with liveliness. Low Drama is based on a persecutor-victim-rescuer dynamic. If you have for example a dispute with your partner it might feel very much alive in the first moment. You feel anger, sadness, fear or even joy. However, take into consideration that it involves the irresponsible form of feelings. It is mostly the case that you have rather less energy after such drama situations and that an insipid flavor sticks around. Therefore become aware that Low Drama is Low Drama. Low Drama is not life and has nothing to do with liveliness. The only thing that happens in Low Drama is that you get older and get grey hair.
So how do you bring more liveliness into your life? In order to answer this question it is necessary that you first of all answer another, probably more dangerous question:
Which excuses do you have to not be alive?
You might say: „I don’t have excuses, I simply wish for more liveliness.“ The thing however is this: When you wish for more liveliness in your live then you use excuses unconsciously that have so far hindered you to be alive. These excuses can be manifold. Here are some examples:
- My job is so demanding and doesn’t allow more liveliness.
- It is not possible in my current relationship.
- My partner/my surroundings would have to change so that I can be more alive.
- If I reached my goal xy then I could be alive.
- I have so many engagements.
- I don’t know how to bring more liveliness into my life.
- I wish I would be more alive, but it is not that easy. I am stuck.
- If I had only experienced a different childhood, then I could probably be more alive.
- Etc.
Your Excuse-Experiment
There are numerous excuses for not having so much liveliness in your life right now. Take a moment now to be radically honest and write down all your individual excuses for not being alive. Let your body write before you think while you keep asking yourself the following question: What hinders you to be alive? Write down all small and big reasons and excuses.
When having excuses preventing you from being alive, then you focus unconsciously on finding evidence for theses excuses. And no matter which kind of excuse you have you will always find evidence. Excuses are nothing else than stories in which we live thinking they are true.
What is your benefit of not being alive?
When you bring up excuses for not being alive, you take on a victim role. Then you wait for example for the others to change so that you feel better. When living in excuses you give your power away to the excuse, to the reason. Then you are making yourself small and are short of liveliness.
The interesting question is, what your benefit was so far to not be alive. You might say “What do you mean with benefit? I want more liveliness. I don’t have a benefit.” However, you might want to take into consideration this: The big benefit of not being alive is that you can leave things as they are. Everything can stay the same and you don’t have to change. That is really comfortable. You know how things go and how you can deal with them. Probably you even get attention from others when whining and complaining that you want more liveliness, but it is not possible. And please don’t get it wrong. There is nothing wrong about having excuses and staying in the known. It just produces certain results.
Behind all the excuses that you use to not bring more liveliness into your life, lies oftentimes a certain feeling: fear! Fear of change, fear of not knowing what will happen and how others will react, when you start unfolding your liveliness. What is the fear behind this fear? Well, probably it is the fear of no longer being accepted, of no longer being part of a group. This fear is often based on an old perspective regarding liveliness. Let us therefore take a look at an old and a corresponding new perspective.
LIVELINESS – OLD PERSPECTIVE |
LIVELINESS – NEW PERSPECTIVE |
Naive |
Powerful |
Silly |
Humorous |
Too much for others |
Is your rocket fuel |
Not reasonable |
Light |
Does not fit into society |
Human |
Unprofessional |
Creative |
Not normal |
Is the cherry on the cake |
Too wild |
Full of joy of life |
Only children are allowed to be (a little bit) alive. |
Freedom |
You are crazy |
Is authentic |
Makes others envious |
Inspires |
Is not allowed |
Opens up new possibilities |
What is your perspective on liveliness?
Take a minute to check what your perspective on liveliness is. What have you learned about liveliness? What have you heard often or what has been indoctrinated into your cells in the past?
Children, who are very alive, are for example given the drug Ritalin to make them normal again. Being alive seems to be not okay. Have you ever observed how many people put their hand in front of their mouth in situations where they have the impulse to laugh full out? In modern society we are really well trained to suppress liveliness.
Suppressed feelings are closely connected to suppressed liveliness. We have installed a numbness bar to not feel what the missing liveliness actually does to us. If you took a closer look at the aspects of your life that are not alive and you would actually feel it in your body, then you would probably have to bear the consequences, make decision, change things in your life or let go of things. This could be painful. In order to not feel this pain, we are experts in keeping our numbness bar high.
To not feel you can e. g.
- Drink alcohol
- Smoke
- Take other drugs
- Work excessively
- Do sports excessively
- Be constantly exhausted
- Get sick
- Go shopping
- Have constant background noise (e. g. radio)
- Watch TV
- Continuously look at your Smartphone
- Social Media
- Surfing the Internet
- Play computer games
- Eat a lot of sweets or other unhealthy food
- Etc.
To bring more liveliness into your life, it is necessary that you start feeling your feelings consciously and use them consciously and responsibly as inner navigation system. You don’t feel anger, sadness, joy and fear in vain. It is not a design error of the universe. Your feelings lead you to your liveliness. In contrast to Low Drama it is now about a conscious and responsible form of feelings. With regard to fear this would mean that you use it – when you feel it – as a hint to try new things, be awake, attentive and present, be creative and innovative, make plans, enter unknown territory and be courageous, instead of allowing the fear to paralyze you or considering it a weakness or a bad advisor.
Bringing more liveliness into your life is comparable to shifting from being a planet to being a star. Planets are rather dead. They absorb energy. For your life this means that you follow, copy, imitate, consume, be not alive, leave everything the same, obey and behave adaptive.
When you start feeling consciously and connect again to your liveliness, you become a star. The characteristic of stars is that they give more energy and radiate. For your life this would mean that you create new things, radiate, are inspired and alive, make the next step and go forward.
When you start feeling consciously and connect again to your liveliness then you
- Ask for what you want
- Make boundaries
- Don’t accept certain things anymore
- Clean out your life (also see the article from January 2019 „With how much luggage do you travel through life“)
- Take your liveliness into your hands
- Become the source of liveliness
- Get your power back
- Take a stand for yourself and for your liveliness
- And much more.
Your Liveliness-Experiment
To close this article I would like to invite you to the following liveliness experiment. Take time to write down what makes you alive: What inspires you? What fills your hear with joy? What are you longing for? When do you feel alive?
Then start to do what makes you alive by doing it at least twice a week.
The thing is this: Everything that you wrote down is already available as vivid possibility in the Universe. Sometimes the Universe tests you, whether you are really ready to be alive. Then for example opportunities or situations for more liveliness occur and the Universe checks whether you are willing to go through that door or rather let yourself be blocked by the old view of fear (paralyzing, weak) and the excuses and stories that you believe.
Nobody else can bring more liveliness into your life, but you. Are you ready to stop with the excuses and take your liveliness into your own hands?
Vivid greetings,
Nicola
P. S. Movie recommendation for this topic: Surrogates (with Bruce Willis)