Spring cleaning your life

We've officially entered a new spring, even if the London weather still doesn't help us believe it (sigh!). We naturally suddenly feel the desire to open the windows, let in more air and light and let go of the heaviness and slower rhythms associated with winter. Physiologically and biologically our body responds to nature, it awakens, asking us for more expansion and light. It is completely natural to feel the desire to move things, clean up, eliminate redundant objects and circulate more vital energy around our homes and bodies. The so-called spring clean.

So I suggest you extend this concept to your thoughts and emotions as well. I'm sure there are aspects of your life that still aren't working the way you want. Situations of frustration, ill-concealed endurance, open tension or simply great tiredness. Things that you have dragged on for years without changing, decisions continually postponed, relationships stranded. So try asking yourself: Why do I keep accepting my unhappiness? Why do I keep suppressing my preferences and aspirations? Whatever answer you find, choose to change that answer.

I guarantee there is another possibility. It exists for everyone. It is completely incorrect to believe only some human beings can and others cannot. Of course, the premises, tools and situations change, but every human being can and does continuously exercise his or her choices, consciously or not. There is no dead-end situation. As Viktor Frankl leads us to understand in his wonderful book Man's Search for Meaning, everything can be taken away from you except one thing: “the freedom to choose your attitude in every circumstance”, and when you reconnect with this freedom you find your power again. Becoming a victim of choices that you don't agree with can and does happen very often but feeling like a victim is a personal and individual choice. Usually, those who refuse to accept this feeling manage to get out of the role-playing game that led them to become someone else’s victim.

So why don't you try it too? Why don't you allow yourself to do a deep clean in this wonderful spring 2023, let go of everything that doesn't honour you, that doesn't respect you, that is not fully aligned with your feelings, your intuitions and aspirations?

This is an act of courage, but also and above all an act of honesty. You didn't come here to live a life of dissatisfaction, discomfort and even suffering. Your potential, your personal talents, your characteristics, are unique resources and cannot be replicated in the same way by any other human being on this planet. If you don't interpret them to the best of your abilities, they will be wasted forever. Whether you like it or not, you have assumed a basic responsibility, that of contributing to the evolution of the human experience on this planet, through every choice you are making. Even the choice to remain still and stagnant in your malaise. No one will make you feel guilty about this, but since the choice is ultimately yours alone, why not let the sun and spring into your home and into your life too?

(pic credits - Unsplash Sergey Shmidt)