If your life could speak, what would it tell you?

My body shop mechanic once told me:

Your car is always speaking to you, but you have to listen.

He was absolutely right. Although his advice would have been a lot more helpful earlier that day when my engine was catching on fire while going eighty on the highway.

Guess we all live and learn. That’s what you get for doing car karaoke without paying attention to the check engine light.

But my mechanic’s advice also has broad applications beyond the automotive world. There are many things that are also always speaking to us.

Like our bodies. Or our life in general.

The challenge is, too many of us wait for sickness, loss, injury or accident to make certain decisions for us. We have no desire to quit doing something thing, so that thing up and quits us. We have no intention on stopping our way of thinking and acting, so our life stops for us. It tells us our own needs. Calculating what the true cost of things really are.

High achievers struggle with this. Our focus and ambition to our performances and creations can take a back seat to our personal needs. After all, if we slow down and relax, we’ll be seen as a slacker.

Even if we are the only ones who see that, that’s not okay. Besides, why bother healing that pesky chest cold we’ve had for the past three weeks when we can just power through and outlast the damn thing?

It’s so adorable when we talk to ourselves like that. Trying to be all big and strong and tough. Telling the story that we can gain power in a world that is moving too fast by learning to move faster.

But as the mustachioed television doctor used to joke with his guests, how’s that working out for ya?

Not well. Almost always not well.

The sustainability of life doesn’t work that way. We tell ourselves that if only our situation would change, then we could finally slow down and take better care of ourselves.

But then never comes. Just when we get there, there disappears. There’s always something.

The choice has to come from within. We have to slow down and honor our body’s need for balance. It might be for ten seconds before walking into our next meeting, ten hours getting much needed sleep before a big day, or ten weeks on sabbatical so we can come back to center refreshed and renewed.

That all counts.

Next time you get upset because you’ve been slightly inconvenienced, perhaps your life is asking you to slow down. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
If you slowed down and really tasted the hell out of it, would you realize it’s been here all along?