Find Joy By Understanding That Life Is An Experience

In this talk you will become aware of the effects of creating and participating in beauty. You will become more conscious of the actual experience that is life, and find value in experiences instead of material possessions.

Transcript

What you're doing right now is consuming life advice.

You're not running through a field with your family.

You're not playing sports with friends or working on a project or having a massage or cooking a delicious healthy meal.

You're not experiencing life.

You're consuming this information.

I'm not saying consuming information is wrong,

But I am saying it is wise to make sure that you are experiencing life first and foremost.

But before you do so,

Consume today's session.

So today we're talking about how to become more conscious around the actual experience that is life.

We will learn about the effects of seeing and embracing grace and beauty.

Our goal is to become more conscious of the actual potential of experiences that life offers to you.

And we will understand the value of these experiences compared to looking at screens and materialistic belongings.

Roy Bennett said,

Be thankful for everything that happens in your life.

It's all an experience.

Let's try to understand and embrace this mindset.

First of all,

Let us try and find out why it is important to focus on experiences over other things.

It is important because the sum of your experiences in life is what defines you.

It's your experiences that shape who you are.

It's your experiences that define your personality.

This is why it's worth it to bring consciousness to your experiences.

Now,

What do I actually mean by experiencing your life?

My definition of experiencing is to do something that is active,

Where you create and not absorb,

And where the outcome is not centered solely around your persona.

It is basically the exact opposite of what you're doing right now,

Which is absorbing information passively only for yourself.

Of course,

Absorbing information is absolutely not a bad thing to do in general.

Absorbing information and developing yourself is a great thing to do,

But it should never be at the center of your life,

Outweighing experiencing life.

The biggest reason for that is that you cannot really develop by merely absorbing information.

You can understand information,

Accept information,

And agree with information,

But it will only develop through experiences.

So,

The goal for anything non-experiential in your life is to inspire you to have experiences that serve you.

That is why I also highly recommend you to take your time with this course.

You need to make time to create the right experiences in order to fully grow.

Next,

I would like to invite you to look at potential experiences with the question of what first,

And only afterwards with the question of how.

When your critical mind asks how too early,

Then it will often try and protect you from the unknown.

This can demotivate you and take away your courage to try out a new experience.

Trying out new experiences is necessary for you in order to develop,

So I highly recommend choosing what first before the how comes in.

Also,

In regards to this point,

I want to mention that the less you know about an experience,

The more fulfilling it can be.

Try not to pre-live experiences in your head.

Next,

I would like to look at having an active attitude,

Because for a lot of people,

Experiencing life might seem like something that can also start happening from a passive attitude.

You might think,

I will experience whatever is coming my way.

I don't need to create experiences for them to happen.

This is fundamentally not true.

Even when passive,

You're still the one deciding where to be when.

You're still the creator of your life.

You might think you're letting life come to you,

But you still choose your experiences,

Only in a less conscious way.

The problem with that is that you will not choose the same high-quality experiences that you would choose when having an active attitude.

So I highly recommend being as active and conscious as possible when choosing experiences.

Now let us look at a positive and open mindset in regards to experiences.

A positive and open mindset is necessary to invite and allow beautiful experiences to happen.

For example,

When you're at a dinner party and even though you're tired and not really in the mood,

You consciously decide to have an open and positive mindset.

Instead of dragging boring conversations,

You will then invite beauty and grace into your connections,

And you will get to know people on a meaningful level.

Creating an open mind is available to anyone,

And you can often change your experiences for the better by having this positive mindset.

Next,

I would like to talk about repetitive experiences in your life.

An experience that happened over and over again is not necessarily a boring experience that does not serve you.

Quite the opposite.

Drinking your morning drink,

Making your breakfast,

Doing your evening stretches,

Going to your weekly catch-up with your friend,

All of these are the most repetitive experiences you can have,

But they are also some of the most important experiences,

And they can be very joyful too.

Do not underestimate the beauty of repetitive experiences.

Now,

Repetitive experiences that do not serve you anymore are very hard to detect and get rid of because they are often an automatic habit.

So I would like to invite you to become more conscious of your repeating experiences.

I want you to analyze which ones still serve you and which ones don't anymore.

What are the healthy,

Habitual experiences that are still serving you?

If a repetitive experience does not serve you anymore,

What's the reason for you not to have changed it so far?

Are you too comfortable or too scared?

Bring consciousness to your experiences,

Especially the repetitive ones.

This brings me to my next point,

Which is to regularly bring new experiences into your life.

It is important to bring new experiences into your life because you constantly change.

You are changing and thus you need new experiences to stimulate your new needs and your curious mind.

Of course,

You should not pressure yourself to constantly redesign your own life,

But be very aware of making new experiences on a regular basis.

Ask yourself,

What do I want to experience?

And be courageous and experience it.

Now I would like to share with you how to create experiences in a fun and light way.

First of all,

Consider planning experiences with other people.

Experiences are often a whole lot easier to achieve and to enjoy when partnering up.

Who do you want to build a farm with?

Who do you want to learn how to roast coffee with?

Who do you want to hike with?

Who do you want to play chess with?

Of course,

Nothing speaks against having experiences by yourself,

But do become conscious of the power of sharing experiences.

Now let's talk about quantity versus quality.

I would recommend having fewer experiences but higher quality ones.

By creating fewer experiences,

You are automatically less distracted because you choose the ones really worth your time.

Some people like to clutter themselves with experiences when in reality they just distract themselves.

To take your time and truly experience means you are automatically leaving out other experiences.

It is worth it to be selective.

Lastly,

I want to talk again about why making experiences is more important than accumulating materialistic possessions.

Both can make you happy and bring joy,

But experiences have some huge advantages.

The biggest advantage is that it cannot be taken away from you anymore.

The experiences you have are in your memory forever and they advance and still do advance your personal growth.

The next important point I want to make is that possessions lose their power after a while.

Think back to when you bought yourself something you always wanted.

A week later it was half as important and a year later it didn't matter anymore.

A life focused on material possession means you constantly need to buy newer and better possessions.

A life focused on experiences means that there are joyful moments created continuously.

The last point I want to make is that possessions are usually compared and experiences are usually shared.

Creating a life filled with experiences instead of possessions means that your basic mindset is built around sharing rather than comparing.

This will allow you to fulfill deeper needs like connecting to yourself,

Your friends and to God or nature.

Life is an experience,

So use these tools to make it the best experience possible.