Living In the Here and Now

He was standing on a street corner dressed in a colorful, flowing robe. To everyone who walked by he’d offered a leaflet and a smile.

I ran into him just as the light turned red so we stood next to one another for a few minutes. I felt awkward. He just smiled at me.

Where you are. Is where you should be, right now!

It came out of nowhere. I was gonna ask Are you talkin to me? But, just
like that he turned towards the next passer-by and was gone.

I was expecting a live long and prosper, or maybe to embrace life and it’s beauty.

Instead I get told that where I was is exactly where I should be. The right
now part really threw me for a loop. I’m standing on a street corner in downtown San Diego. That’s where I am supposed to be? It made no sense.

It went against everything I’d ever been taught.

• You were to keep looking ahead, always striving for more.

• You shed your faults, and your negative feelings and replaced them with bigger and better things. A bigger and better you. Someone who was capable of scaling great heights!
• The “Next Big Opportunity.”

Lose weight, gain weight. Work out. Run hard.

Build your business, six figures next year, seven the year after! The sky is
the limit.

Ain’t that what the gurus and goal setting mahatmas encourage us to do? Aren’t we supposed to be like all them-there other folks?

Aren’t we?

Can I get an Amen?

I wanted to run after him and tell him that he couldn’t lay something like
that on me and head off into the sunset. I needed more. It wasn’t fair.

Where you are. Is where you should be, right now!

What the hell does that mean?

It was 1995 so there was no smart phone. No GPS. This is where I was supposed to be at that moment in time? Now what?

It wasn’t till I injured my back in 2011 that I began to understand. I was in
excruciating pain. My active lifestyle came to a grinding halt. My life
became a parade with me sitting on the curb and waving while everyone else marched by.Wait for me, wait for me, I’d yell. Six months earlier at the age of 57 I ran in my first 5K race. Now I had a hard time navigating my way into the shower.

When I tried to hop out of my chair, I’d get no farther than few feet and I’d have to sit down. I was doing a lot of live training for people at the time and when I’d set the room up for the event, I would strategically place chairs along the perimeter of the room so that after 30 seconds or so I could sit down.

Hey, it beat the snot out of falling down!

Loving presence arises when we can say, “This Belongs.” -Tara Brach

When it finally sunk in here is what I realized:

• There is no fatal flaw inside of me. I wasn’t being punished for something I did or didn’t do. I’ll clean it up for ya but it dawned on me that “stuff happens.”
• I was where I was supposed to be and no matter how hard I rejected that notion it didn’t change anything other than to make me really angry and frustrated.
• Not only accept my current situation but embrace it. I may never move with the agility of who I once was.
• I am learning to say “this belongs.”

I’d kept devising strategies and goals and meditations and all sorts of stuff to heal me. One doctor told me there was “nothing wrong with me.” I should simply lose weight and exercise. Uhm, okay. I needed help walking up the incline to get to his office. I should do what? But hey, he’s a doctor. He knows.

No he didn’t. It only made things worse.

I spent over three thousand dollars trying to “get better” until I realized I’d never admitted to myself the “here and now” was having an injured lower back.

Hurting my back wasn’t just injury. It was a message for me to slow my roll. Take a pause and heal.

Notice that there are absolutely no qualifications, exams or dog and pony
shows required. It doesn’t matter what I look like or don’t look like. My
income is irrelevant and so is my ideal client list.

We arrive on this planet with a bag loaded with gifts and talents. It’s a custom order that is designed just for me (and you!) No one can use those gifts exactly the way you can use them.

You know what? We try to. We break into someone else’s stash and take a few things that we know in our heart we can do better than they can do. Until we can’t. We say it’s not fair.

How come you get to…… and I don’t?

It’s all part of our conditioning, I imagine. Part of the bigger, better, faster
and sleeker mentality that hits us hard in the face every morning when we get up. It’s the What have you done for me lately trance.

Color me as guilty the next person.

Then I got this email. From The Universe of all people!

So very much can happen, John, in a lifetime or even on a single day of a lifetime. Yet I can assure you that whatever has or will happen in yours, no matter what chasms you cross, heights you scale or how many people you love or are loved by, when all is said and done and you take that final look over your shoulder. what will humble you the most will be, that you got to be John Jurkiewicz . Of all people! ~~~ The Universe

I can’t tell you how I felt when I read it. Awe struck comes close.

I get to be me.

And you get to be you.

All of us, in the here and now at this moment in time.

I invite you to experience it with me.

Namaste

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May I have your attention please!

If you’ve followed me for any amount of time you may notice I am not conventional in the slightest. It’s me being me as best I can be. (I’m sure you’ve noticed as well that I fracture the English language and all its rules and regs with out mercy.) I am a life, business and mindset coach whoendeavors to combine all three experiences in helping you create the very best opportunities in your life.

To that end, next weeks blog will be titled Are You Uncomfortable Setting Goals for Yourself? Don’t worry. We’re not going to do a deep dive on what happened to you when you were five. I’m going to share some strategies to help you cope with your reluctance to set goals. It will have nothing to do with SMART goals. (Actually I ridicule them a bit. I felt bad about it for a bit. I got over it.)

One more thing: Follow and subscribe. Please! (Sounds needy, doesn’t it?)

John@NewCareerCreations.com