Imagine a day where you get to do and say what you think about.

Imagine a day when you don’t want to pick up the phone.

And you don’t.

Imagine breaking every unspoken rule your life is made of.

Oh my goodness.

Did you feel that?

All the thousand unspoken rules that govern every day of our lives just walked in this room to say hi to you.

They are so unspoken, so integrated in our words, that we end up living a life inside an invisible string of hypnotic requests that come from the people around us.

We are indeed hypnotized.

I hope you know this.

This happens so quietly.

Oh so, so quietly.

Come on be honest, haven’t you picked up the phone knowing it is a friend who you don’t want to talk to?

That is a hypnotic command we have been conditioned to respond to because it is the ‘right’ thing to do.

You end up picking up the phone speaking to this person, and resenting every moment of it.

The list that makes my life and your life a hypnotic state is so long that it would take a year of blogs to fully disclose it.

Instead I want you to imagine a life full of what you DO want.

How would that look?

Imagine you stop worrying about what other people will think when you don’t invite them to dinner, or you don’t say ‘me too’ when they share their favorite movie.

Something happened to me in the last few weeks, and my goodness, I started not responding to emails that demanded my attention, saying no to introductions to various people, stopped every single noise inside my head that sounded like this:

Christina you must write back, you must say yes, you must agree, you must nod, you must connect.

YOU MUST.

All of that, is noise.

So much of it, that we end up not even living a life.

Just responding to a hypnotic state.

The truth is…our life could end today. TODAY.

Imagine if this is the end, today. Just like that. And all you were about to do today was please other people.

This happens to all of us because in our hypnotic state of living, we still romanticize life.

Pretending it has a nice introductory beginning and a riveting beautiful ending.

But the truth is, the beginning we don’t remember and the end we never see.

We die in the midst of running errands and pleasing other people.

One day we will just not be here. And if that doesn’t motivate us I really don’t know what will. (Click to Tweet!)

Your homework for today is: to not pick up the phone when the person on the line is someone you simply don’t wish to speak to.

This is simple but yet profound.

Yet life changing in so many visible ways.

With life,

Christina

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Christina

Christina

Christina Rasmussen is an author, speaker and social entrepreneur who believes that grief is an evolutionary experience required for launching a life of adventure and creative accomplishment.

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3 Comments

  • Beverly says:

    Wonderful! Yes it is time to quiet down all that noise and Live! I am joining you ! <3

  • Leann Qualle says:

    That is why I’m glad I have Caller ID…….I can chose who I want to talk too. I would hate to miss something special (like a dinner invite!) by not answering the phone. It’s Friday night, who knows who may call….got my hair done today….ready to go….just ring phone!!!

  • ahhhh – so powerful – and this is such an important article Christina. It’s about granting ourselves permission and then giving it to others too.

    I pulled the plug on a project this week – cost me a few thousand dollars, but it was the right thing to do. It felt great.

    Thanks for continuing to give permission to people who need it.

    xx Denise DT

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