A New Way to Look at Life

Lying awake in the early hours

I lay awake in the early hours of this morning wondering if my own experience was just a tiny reflection of a world that, in many respects, is showing disconcerting signs of growing instability.

The COVID pandemic caused unprecedented turmoil. The fallout from that is still affecting the lives of many ordinary people, if not in their physical health, then in their mental and/or financial well-being.

Layering in angst

The latest developments in the Middle East simply serve to layer angst and uncertainty on top of the many troubles we have been confronting of late.

Here, I’m thinking about natural disasters of seemingly growing intensity, the devastating Ukraine war, heightened tensions in the Far East and abnormal unpredictability in the politics of the world’s most powerful nation.

Coffee clears my thinking

I lay in bed reflecting on all of the ‘chaos’ around us, and the huge levels of personal anxiety this induces in many who feel powerless in the face of it.

“This can’t be right,” I thought, as I decided to seek solace in a cup of my favourite beverage.

Back in bed with caffeine-induced clarity of thought, I reminded myself of the key principle on which life coaching is based.

We have the power

We have the power and ability to create the lives we desire.

We just need to switch focus away from the chaotic and unforgiving external world and inward, towards the amazing, all-knowing, inner being that we each possess.

According to the mainstream news, it would seem that we are all headed for ‘hell in a handbasket’ and there’s precious little we can do about it, other than accept our fate and live life as best we can.

Perhaps there are powerful vested interests that stand to benefit from ordinary people falling for and adopting this chaos-induced, ‘coping’ approach to life and its negativity?

Mmm … That’s the stuff of a separate article!

A different perspective

Anyway, as with anything in life, there is a different perspective to be had on this.

Fortunately, there is a new way to look at life.

The subatomic world of waves

As a bit of an aside, we’ve traditionally been taught that we – and all matter – are made up of molecules, which, in turn, are comprised of atoms.

Relatively recent scientific research has shown that it doesn’t stop there. Atoms are made up of subatomic particles including electrons, quarks and the evasive ‘Higgs boson’, sometimes called the ‘God particle’.

When you delve into the fascinating subatomic world, particles curiously start to behave like energy waves. Scientists talk about wave-particle duality, meaning that every elementary particle exhibits the properties of, not only particles, but also energy waves!

Let’s put the little ‘scientific aside’ aside for a moment. 🙂

Here’s the point I am making:

One big vibrational system

Life is one big vibrational system; a system in which positive and negative coexist.

The positive cannot exist without the corresponding negative, as the overall system must remain in perfect balance.

With negative there is always positive. With dark there is always light.

Sublime balance

And at the core of this great vibrational dance between positivity and negativity, exists a state of sublime balance.

Relate this to your personal experience of life and you may appreciate that this derives from both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ situations and events. You cannot have one without the other.

Our emotions are our responses to our circumstances and experiences. And these too are both positive and negative.

Just as life cannot be made up solely of positive experiences, we cannot have only positive emotions. (If we did, how would we know that they were positive?)

So, the challenge comes in redefining what we understand or perceive by the terms ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ when we refer to the various experiences in our lives.

Instead of labelling everything as either good (we enjoy the experience) or bad (we don’t enjoy the experience) we need to view both types of experience as opposite yet complementary.

In other words, pleasurable experiences and growth cannot come about without challenging experiences that may be relatively ‘painful’ in nature.

Mental embrace

By mentally embracing the fact that both polarities must coexist, we can channel our creativity into seeking out and experiencing the beautiful state of perfect balance that exists at the heart of this bipolar system.

Life, when we are able to perceive of and experience it as a harmonious balance between positive and negative, is truly special.

That state of balance is pure, unconditional LOVE.