Too Many Choices?

Sankalpa: a statement of intent created in meditation. It focuses your mind and supports your in achieving your desires. These innovative meditations help you to recognize your most important desire - your life's purpose.

Over time I've learned that if you listen closely (and keep an open mind), you'll find guidance in unexpected places. Such was the case for me these past few days. My first full week back from my Vipassana retreat has been hectic. After emptying my mind, I returned to what seemed like chaos in comparison to my time in Massachusetts. My time on my meditation bench is seeing more monkey mind wandering/distraction than it did during the retreat. It's like the static of living, the ever-present white noise that is the soundtrack of life, is more apparent to me since my return.

Before leaving for my retreat, a number of wonderful opportunities presented themselves. My first reaction was to say yes to all of them. I noticed that I was experiencing some stress about saying yes to some of them, but I ignored the warning signals and planned to forge ahead. Until, that is, some unexpected signs popped up.

My dad is a man of few words. He doesn't say all that much, but when he talks he says some wonderfully insightful things. Just the other day we were having a phone conversation in which I was excitedly chattering on about one opportunity in particular. He listened intently and then gently pointed out that it seemed like this particular opportunity would be taking me further away from what I wanted rather than towards it. At the time, I glazed over what he said (I could feel my feathers ruffling), but his words hung around in the back of my mind.

The clincher came just yesterday evening when I was listening to a wonderful CD on my iPod -- Finding Your Life's Purpose: Illuminating Your Heart's Desire (Sankalpa). I only had time to listen to the first of 4 tracks, but that was enough. The brief lecture touched upon how we get distracted from our heart's desire by too many choices and spoke of how often we do things that take us further away from our deepest desires rather than towards them. These words coupled with my Dad's (who's quite the little sage in his own right) really got me thinking.

It's like my new meditation practice (1 hour in the morning and 1 hour in the evening) -- when I was at the retreat, there was nothing to pull my attention away from meditating. It was my priority. Now that I've returned to the "real world," there are many more distractions, which can blur the line between the necessary and the unnecessary. I could meditate, or I could: go for a hike, watch TV, listen to music, read email, talk on the phone with a friend, practice yoga, run an errand, read a book, etc. The presence of so many choices can fragment your attention and add to your misery rather than enhance your life. Hmmmm...I never quite looked at choices that way. Typically, I'm the kind of person that doesn't like to limit her choices. I'm a like-to-keep-my-options-open sort of gal.

Now I'm starting to see how some of these opportunities that have presented themselves, while wonderful, aren't right for me. Rather than say "yes," I've realized that it's better for me to say "no." Typically, the word "no" has a negative connotation. Yet, in this case, I'm saying "no" to being pulled off of my path. I'm saying "no" to distraction. As a result, I'm saying "yes" to my heart's desire. That feels pretty darned good. I'll have to work on my best toddler impression -- "No, no, no, NO!"

Just a small shift in perspective, and WHAM -- that little "N" word never sounded so good.

Namaste!