{"id":131178,"date":"2024-01-17T09:27:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-17T14:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/?p=131178"},"modified":"2024-04-03T11:44:42","modified_gmt":"2024-04-03T15:44:42","slug":"cultivating-stokedness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/17\/cultivating-stokedness\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultivating Stokedness"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">By <a href=\"http:\/\/leobabauta.com\">Leo Babauta<\/a><\/h4>\n<p>How many days do you wake up excited for life, stoked to be alive and take on the day\u2019s challenges?<\/p>\n<p>If your answer is \u201coften,\u201d then congratulations! That\u2019s an amazing way to live life \u2014 but you\u2019re in the minority.<\/p>\n<p>Most people are unenthusiastic about their lives, not looking forward to what the day has in store. That\u2019s not a bad thing \u2014 if that\u2019s how you\u2019re feeling, it\u2019s just how you\u2019re feeling. There isn\u2019t a \u201cright\u201d way to be.<\/p>\n<p>That said, if you\u2019d like to be more stoked about life, then there are ways to cultivate that. We\u2019ll explore some of those ways in this post.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Living a Life of Stokedness<\/h3>\n<p>What would it be like if you felt more excited by life each day? Or by what you were taking on at work, in your relationships, in your workouts?<\/p>\n<p>Life is incredible, and we are immensely privileged to be alive in this miraculous world. We don\u2019t always appreciate it \u2014 and that\u2019s OK, to not always be grateful or excited \u2014 but there is the possibility of feeling more awe and wonder in our days.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s say you wake up and you have a bunch of work to do (in addition to other things going on in your life). You could feel a sense of burden, overwhelm, and anxiety about all of it \u2026 or you could feel really excited by the meaningful things you\u2019re taking on. It\u2019s not that one approach is right and the other is wrong, but they are entirely different approaches and experiences. We have a choice.<\/p>\n<p>What if you took on each thing with a sense of wonder, and an open heart? What if each act of your day were an expression of your love?<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What Gets in the Way<\/h3>\n<p>All of that sounds good, but there are things that get in the way of living life this way:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A default of not being enthusiastic about life. This comes from years of having our enthusiasm dampened, from feeling disappointment over and over, from learning to be jaded.<\/li>\n<li>A sense of pointlessness that comes when we feel like we\u2019ve failed at things over and over, or that people have let us down over and over.<\/li>\n<li>Built-up pain from things that have hurt us, to the point where little things can agitate the wounds in our hearts, easily causing frustration, anger, explosions of outrage.<\/li>\n<li>Built-up fear from things that have gone wrong, leading to a general sense of anxiety and overwhelm, and worrying about everything.<\/li>\n<li>Built-up resentment and anger from injustices and offenses, large and small.<\/li>\n<li>Built-up self-judgment from all the things we think we\u2019re doing wrong, failing at, etc.<\/li>\n<li>Built-up sadness from many losses, both large and small, so that the world and people around us can easily trigger sadness.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This isn\u2019t a comprehensive list, but I hope you can get a sense of what gets in the way of our enthusiasm and stokedness about life. Our hearts are closed more than open.<\/p>\n<p>There is nothing wrong with any of this \u2014 it\u2019s a natural consequence of life! We build up conditioning from lots of things that happen to us, from grief and loss to hurt and anger and fear. It builds up, and we lose the open-heartedness with the world.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Releasing the Blockers<\/h3>\n<p>If all of the above represents blockers in our hearts, then wouldn\u2019t it be freeing to be able to release these blockers?<\/p>\n<p>The process to release the built-up blockers is simple but not necessarily easy:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>When the world triggers a conditioned blocker (anger, resentment, fear, sadness, hurt, overwhelm, anxiety, jealousy, grief, etc.) \u2026 notice that it\u2019s there, and decide to release it.<\/li>\n<li>Sit still for a few minutes, and let yourself feel whatever you feel. Relax, and allow the feeling as fully as you can. Surrender to it, allow it to just be an experience of energy in the moment.<\/li>\n<li>Know that you\u2019ll be OK. It\u2019s just energy, and if you relax instead of resisting the energy, it will just pass through you. That said \u2026 only do it if the intensity is a 7 out of 10 or lower. You don\u2019t need to work with a 10\/10 intensity, unless you have a therapist working with you.<\/li>\n<li>After it passes, give yourself some gratitude and love. You have released some of your blockage.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It might take a number of these kinds of releasing sessions to actually release a blocker, but the more you\u2019re able to surrender and feel it, letting it pass through you, the less it will remain in you. You\u2019ll be freed.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to Cultivate Stokedness<\/h3>\n<p>If you commit to practicing with the releasing practice above, you will be much more open-hearted toward life. You will naturally be more and more enthusiastic.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, you could actively cultivate a stokedness toward your life:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Try to find moments to appreciate the wonder of life. It could be out on a daily walk, or a quiet moment in the morning, or when you\u2019re eating a blueberry. Set reminders so you can make this a regular practice.<\/li>\n<li>Find something to get excited about. Recently I bought myself a running watch and have not shut up about it for weeks. What have you been excited about lately? Let yourself get caught up.<\/li>\n<li>Get curious about people. What could you discover that\u2019s interesting about the person in front of you? What makes them tick? What is the light beneath their shadow?<\/li>\n<li>When you\u2019re taking on a work task, could you connect with why it matters to you? Could you find something meaningful and awesome about it? If you do this regularly, you\u2019ll find a new enthusiasm about whatever you take on.<\/li>\n<li>If you\u2019re going to do a workout, instead of doing it because you should, could you find something fun about it?<\/li>\n<li>Let yourself approach things with a childlike sense of curiosity and wonder and play, as often as you can.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In general, see if you can purposely open your heart and let love move you. And see what such an open-hearted life could be like.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/zenhabits.net\/stoked\/\">Cultivating Stokedness<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/zenhabits.net\">zen habits<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Leo Babauta How many days do you wake up excited for life, stoked to be alive and take on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176,192],"tags":[179,193],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131179,"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131178\/revisions\/131179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yorbestlife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}