Living Wih Ease

I think a lot about transitions. What it feels like to feel secure in a place, job or relationship. When I will feel that moment of lightness and freedom. Like the first time you balence in a handstand, it seems so hard to get there and suddenly with bone stacked on bone you find a place between work and ease.

This concept of ease appeals to me because I am the type of person who makes things much harder than they need to be. My default reaction to most situations is to over-logisticalize, over-analyze and overreact. I have a tendency to approach situations with an intensity well beyond necessary.  I believe this is a defense mechanism I created for myself when I was a child. Treating every interaction and experience as a deeply personal one helped me feel important and included. Now I know this is generally unnecessary and overall quite tiring.

One of my biggest goals of the year is to live with more ease. The idea for me to embody this easful living lifestyle is to cut out the crap and excess. I've become more concious of when I speak up and when I chose to stay silent. I approach eating well and exercise as something I enjoy rather than do as a form of punishment or restriction.

A perfect example of this easful living plan is my decision to stop training for a half marathon. I signed up to run the San Francisco half marathon in July but after two months of training I started having major pain in my hip that would crop up 20 minutes into my run and never let up. I genuinely enjoyed my longer runs and felt great except for my throbbing hip. After about a month more of training I decided I had to stop the long training runs. I part of me was disappointed to fall short of my goal to run the race but I knew it was the choice that would embody the most ease for me. Now I go for two or three short sprints a week and do a yoga podcast several times a week all totally pain free.

Living a more easeful life does not come easy but it I can already tell how rewarding it is. I focus less on hopeing to know what it will feel like to feel secure and instead enjoy process of getting there. I plan to explore this concept more as I also focus on savoring July.

What do you think about my idea of including more ease in your life?