Can you stop from changing in ways you can’t control?
Life can be relentless. We go through one day sometimes experiencing the full gamut of human emotion. Even if we don’t externalize it, we make multiple decisions everyday about what we experience. We react and make decisions about what we see, what we hear, what we do, what we don’t do, what we say, what we don’t say, about other people’s behaviour - essentially everything that we experience through our senses - and we compartmentalize everything because there is no time and because it is just easier to slot things into their proper place rather than have to question your judgement at every turn.
I know for a fact that the last 3 years - in particular - have changed me, some in ways I like and others in ways I don’t like. I can describe any number of days where I have felt overwhelmed with my own reaction to circumstances and behaviour. As a result, I have become more guarded, more careful, less open, less free, more reactive, more judgemental, more awkward, less human.
But there has also been an equally strong and countering force that keeps wanting to pull me back into alignment, questioning my judgement at every turn and forcing me to look at my own behaviour and reaction.
And in a world - and a career now - which relies so much on the maintaining the magic of facade, it is EVEN MORE IMPORTANT that I question my judgement at every turn.
At the end of the day, you have to take ownership, no matter how tempting and easy it is to blame someone else. It is your life and if you do not take ownership of it, someone else will and you will have given up the one thing that is truly yours.
It is exhausting. But essential. As is gentleness and forgiveness as I work through it.
And the question that matters the most is whether I want to slowly become someone who doesn’t take ownership of my own behaviour, my own words, actions and the impact that I invariably have on the world?
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My name is Eu Jin. I embarked on a career as a professional actor after 20 years in the corporate world. I am a big advocate of personal growth in the performing arts. I dedicate time and energy in performing arts education, specifically in the arena of practical approaches to inner health because I believe that this lays the groundwork for a sustainable career as an artiste.
If you would like to engage in a conversation about a healthy inner life practice, please leave me a message on the "Contact" page of my website and a way to contact you. Thank you.