Radical Shift
How can you break out from a set of circumstances that don’t encourage growth & transformation?
You are trying to transform yourself in some significant way while immersed in your familiar environment. You find yourself in set of circumstances that don’t support the transformation you seek or even make it difficult. (ex: You might be trying to wake up early and adopt a meditation practice while living with roommates that stay up late and make fun of meditation.) How do you generate a transformation that is hard in itself if on top of that your environment lures you to stay the same?
Invitation
Contemplate a radical shift in your life, either temporary for the duration of your learning process or permanent.
Examples: End a relationship that is draining your energy. Move to a different house, to another town or to the countryside. Go backpacking for an extended period. Drop out of school/university or take a sabbatical or join a new learning community. Quit a job and/or get job. Become a minimalist by selling or donating all of your belongings except for 100 objects. Start the full practice of a spiritual tradition and make that the center of your life. Find a new group of friends.
These are just examples. Contemplate your life right now and imagine some wild changes that you could make. Don’t limit your range of ideas to the ones that seem feasible. Play with all the crazy ideas that come up. Let these “what if?”s capture your imagination for a while. Only then, start asking what is that radical shift that you need and can make right now or soon enough. Go ahead with the change if breaking away from your current day to day lifestyle would energize not just your learning objective but your whole life.