Excerpts from the Spectrums of Being (Ease)

Consequences of Owning Your Gifts

As you embody your innate ease more deeply, you may notice that people around you have criticisms or feel triggered by your lack of struggle. People will project their own meaning onto the experience you have, determining that you’re lackadaisical, lazy, or simply unwilling to care about what you do — thus prompting you to return to the safety of significance and struggle (at least then they know you care).

Common Shadow Sides

Over-compensating

The Dude

• Noticing that caring about things puts your ease at risk, you ultimately become the Dude. Unflappable, uncaring, and detached from everything. You always feel a sense of ease, but it comes at a cost of not being particularly committed to anything. You have your freedom, but you are largely irrelevant. Life is easy, but insignificant. It’s not a bad ride but… is this all there is?

Under-compensating

The Struggle is Real (Overly Significant)

• Having learned and applied the lessons you were taught by those around you, you’ve trained away your ease. In situations that matter to you, your innate state of ease leaves you entirely and you become incredibly significant. THE STRUGGLE IS REAL, and you are committed to living it. Life doesn’t feel easy, it feels challenging, unless you let go of everything that matters, and you’re unwilling to do that. Why doesn’t there ever seem to be a happy medium?

Obvious Fixes for Shadows

1. While an easy life is not a bad thing, there’s also a voice in the back of your head screaming for some significance. Your attempts to “get serious” about something tend to swing the pendulum wildly to the other side, acting as the single focus point for all of the intensity you’ve been resisting. You’re left with a life of ease everywhere else, and a lightning rod for all of the significance you have nowhere else to direct. Is this really the best balance you can find?
2. Feeling a craving for a life that doesn’t feel so challenging and draining, you lean back in your chair, put your feet up on the table, and fold your arms behind your head. It’s time to just stop caring so much and let life be easy. In order to achieve this, you drop a number of projects, and stop worrying about everything so much. Unfortunately the baby goes out with the bathwater. While it’s nice to not feel the stress and struggle that is so familiar, you lose your sense of purpose and significance. Oh well, maybe it’s time for another White Russian.