Post written by Celinne Da Costa
120+ hours of meditation. 72 hours fasting. 10 days of being completely cut off from communication with the external world…
Just completed my Vipassana course, and it was one of the most challenging experiences I’ve had.
At first, I thought there’s no way I’m eating 1 bowl of rice, meditating for 10+ hours a day, and doing cryotherapy twice daily. Sounds like torture.
In some ways it was, but so worthwhile, because the next level you ALWAYS resides beyond your comfort zone.
I had many breakthroughs, the main one being this:
In every moment of every day, we are being presented with an opportunity and a choice:
An opportunity to choose better, and the actual choice itself.
Every moment that our attention is being pulled away or distracted by something that is not of our higher purpose is an opportunity to choose to focus on where we want to invest our awareness, our highest form of currency.
The choice is the act of presence itself. Being here, now, and aware.
Do this repeatedly and you WILL master your mind.
Society has trained us to have an easily distracted monkey mind, jumping from distraction to distraction and keeping our heart’s mission always a step too far. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
We have a choice to bring ourselves back to awareness because the other option is to remain unconscious in our conditioning, imprisoned by our old stories and habit patterns that keep us locked into and repeating undesirable circumstances.
No amount of strategies will fix this. Only YOU will. And that looks like facing the reality of your story: the good, the bad, the shameful, and choosing to move beyond it and rewrite the parts you don’t like.
Every time you’re triggered, caught up in your monkey mind, feeling lost, or don’t have what you want is an opportunity to come back to conscious awareness and shine light on what’s in darkness.
Start seeing all that’s challenging as an opportunity rather than a crutch and life transforms — your story becomes much easier to rewrite.
Love,
Celinne Da Costa is an author, speaker, and Brand Story coach helping high-achieving entrepreneurs not only tell, but become the greatest story they’ve ever told so they can create soul-aligned influence, income, and impact. Her work has been featured in top-tier media like Forbes, Business Insider, and TEDx.