In a lecture with a marketing manager from Spotify many years ago, the topic was how one’s usage of Spotify was seen as the start of a relationship. Just as you wouldn’t ask someone to marry you on the first date, they wouldn’t then ask a new user to become a monthly paid user upon downloading the app.

One step at a time. First, you go on a few dates together, and slowly things become more serious. Eventually, you get to talk about moving in together, and, later on, kids.

Relationships are two-way streets (at least healthy relationships). It doesn’t matter what one wants if it goes against what the other one wants. Or, as a teenage ex-boyfriend of mine used to tell me -a.k.a. my very first lesson in consent, “what one person does not want, two people don’t get to do.”

Kind of obvious, and yet a hard lesson in practice. Otherwise, why would we so often experience episodes of frustration, anger, and anxiety in life?

We hit our heads on the wall all the time. We leave relationships all the time for wanting different things. The thing is, it is kind of hard to break up with life. When we struggle with life, there’s only two options: keep on struggling, on putting our act together.

We forget that the universe is a living organism, just like us. Except, much bigger, and we are a part of it. We forget to listen, and, as a result, we don’t pay attention.

Don’t get me wrong we are all powerful — but we are not the emperor/empress of the world.

Things often don’t go our way, and when our emotional intelligence is not very high, we get frustrated, and our relationship with life suffers. Which means, we suffer.

“When life pushes you to the edge, you have two options: fear the fall, or enjoy the view.” Connor Chalfant

And just like that, we carry a dysfunctional relationship with life. In our struggles and frustrations, we go on living, in a loveless relationship with ourselves. Life becomes a schedule, things to do and appointments, with some entertainment and leisure moments here and there so we can cope with it all.

Because we’ve lost our innate love for life and our belief in ourselves, life is only full of love when we fall in love with someone or something else.

“Sometimes the greatest thing to come out of all your hard work isn’t what you get for it, but what you become for it.” Steve Maraboli

Where is your lust for life?

To live a turned-on life. That has been my focus in recent years: to remove as many limiting beliefs from me as possible and increase how much life energy I can circulate within my being. This supports me to be a healthy creator of my life.

It’s an empowerment that comes partly because of an ability to listen and pay attention to my partner in infinity: life.

As I see it, this is how we can all create a more vibrant, fulfilling life.

This doesn’t mean allowing life to dictate and just going with the flow of whatever. It means being an active being in a healthy relationship — not passive, and not dictating. Changing roles with ease. Laughing at the absurdity. Dancing.

Our attitude towards life is directly related to our mental models. If we have an attitude of “poor me”, “it is me against the world” and keep justifying our lack of joy and action, then surely we stay stuck, for we have given our power away, and disconnected ourselves from something much bigger.

“The real geniuses are the people who love life.” Marty Rubin

Another thing that impacts our reality is how much life energy force we carry within us. We can link this to ‘excitement’, or ‘enthusiasm’. But it is much more.

Energetically speaking, we can work on practices for the purification of our channels and activation of the same. This is something I focus much in my work with clients as a spiritual guide.

Lust for life. It is not something we can only think about: it is something we feel in our bones. Gladly, we can nurture it — through the quality of our thoughts, our ability to listen to ourselves, and engaging in practices that support more life to flow through us.

“I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.” Arthur Rubinstein

It’s a two-way street: the magic of life shows up when we show up for it. As for improving any relationship goes, the way to improve our lives is to improve our relationship with life and with ourselves.

To be better listeners of what life is telling us. To not get angry at it, to not get frustrated at it and be a drama queen, but listen and engage with it with more understanding and love.

And so we work with life – and not against life. To not surrender by being a passive agent, but to know what one wants and work together with life, make it more visual and clear, and make it come true.

Realize no one has complete control, but there is co-creation, by acting on what we have, what we receive, and what we listen to.

As the cliche says, life is a dance. There is nothing more alive and moving than pure life itself. You cannot dance when you are all passive, nor when you try to call all the shots. But when you understand and embody that the life around you is you, everything shifts.

“The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” Oprah Winfrey

It’s not much different from riding a horse: we ride the horse, but we trust the horse knows what it is doing. This interplay of having power and surrendering to life’s power and ultimately becoming one is what makes it adventurous, exciting, and fun. It is what elevates life to new heights.

All in all, it requires us to stop being scared of life, and of taking risks. Show the horse who is riding — but by all means, release the bridle, and enjoy the ride. Trust me, the horse is dying to go galloping with us, and we are the only ones stopping it.

It is an invitation to become lovers of life.

Happy to be alive, ready for adventure time. We get to enjoy the magic of not having control over everything and become an explorer- if we want. In other words, we can appreciate what at first might look like chaos for some.

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.” Friedrich Nietzsche

In this seemingly chaotic dance that scares so many, there is no absolute right and wrong. Every situation is a different situation that requires its own discernment of what the next step of the dance shall be. You choose where to turn.

This ‘no right and wrong’ that is outrageous for people who are a bit too self-righteous has been one of the greatest spiritual lessons for me. Things change. We need different things in different moments to grow. A single day can make all the difference. Growth in terms of conscious expansion requires adaptability, flexibility, and malleability.

Lightness in every step. Grace. All skills of great dancers.

Let’s face it: our constant need to put and keep order in our lives is an effort to master the chaos we all carry within. And because life doesn’t always respect our preferred order and conceived plans, we get upset.

Life is chaos, we are life, we are chaos, but wait! Nothing of this is chaos, really. It is an order we cannot rationally comprehend, here to teach us to trust, to constantly love life, and co-create more life and release control.

Life wants to live, to grow, and to create even more. These are all things life wants for each and every one of us. Life feeds on life, and you are pure life itself.

See things from different angles, step into the unknown, and play with possibilities never seen before. Grasp a greater picture and the beauty of it all in awe. Keep loving even when all around you is hatred. Can you stay on the side of life?

Loving “Chaos”

Rigid minds expecting linear progression and clear futures are great for creating safe comfort zones. Part of the magic of a loving relationship is the unexpected kiss, the out-of-this-world creative date, and the surprise note.

In life, this comes from the understanding that the human mind is full of limitations and there is a much bigger picture that we cannot fully grasp today. Many tend to call this bigger picture “chaos”, but it is from there that all those sweet notes from life come.

“Coming out of your comfort zone is tough in the beginning, chaotic in the middle, and awesome in the end…because in the end, it shows you a whole new world.” Manoj Arora

Nothing is stable. Things fall apart and then we put the pieces together so they will once again break down and we put them together again.

Having fun putting the pieces together again in a new way is part of the process of being in love with life. You get to create better, more expansive, and more joyful, every time as you keep expanding in your own life.

And guess what? This breaking and putting together is actually stable. For whatever reason, we confuse stability with rigidity and control, as if things cannot move. More than anything, scared souls looking for total security neglect reality. This is an attitude that transforms life into troublesome, instead of joyful.

A certain degree of disorder is totally natural and stable. Stability comes from harmony between order and disorder, where we are prepared and long for being disrupted and even transformed, so we can keep growing.

Anything else means fear of change and longing for death. Life is stable through destruction and transformations. Life keeps growing, through killing and reorganizing what no longer serves.

“Discord on one level is harmony on another.” Alan Watts

Can we relax and let go of our ways? Can we drop our self-righteousness? Can we trust that there is something much greater on its way – and allow it to come through? Can we laugh at the absurdity of all? Can we see the beauty, regardless of what is happening? Can we keep in love with life, with ourselves, and with all around us?

“Chaos is what we’ve lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.” Terence McKenna

This world is a playing field to discover our own magic, and become who we truly are by unbecoming who we think we are — that is, letting go of social conditioning, fears, and mental models we have accepted to be true. We can shape society and touch all around us by redefining our relationship with ourselves and with our lives.

What frustrations, hatred, and indifferences can you let go of, and what unknown territories within you can you embrace, to become more of the pure spark of life that resides within you?