The Yoga Sutras: Constant Practice
Consistency Is Key
Joy is your birthright! Why are you putting it on hold?
Better question:
Are you even aware you are preventing yourself from experiencing joy?
To get to a place of joy you need to train the mind.
Learning how to stop the mind from turning requires CONSTANT practice.
Listen, it can feel overwhelming to let go of your attachments. If you're a constant daydreamer you’re in a way creating a false reality making it difficult to break away from.
The Essential Yoga Sutras states, “In a general sense, ‘constant practice’ here means the willingness to work very hard to reach our perfect destiny, far beyond the mistakes our mind now makes. Quite simply, we will never be able to complete all the hard work needed to reach our destiny if we don’t have a very strong motivation for doing so.”
Distractions lead us on a path further away from joy because they pull us away from the present.
Being present and staying focused is the key to joy.
And it’s SO fucking hard.
Correct perceptions, mistaken perceptions, imagination, sleep, memories, and more all pull us away from that joy, that bliss.
We always say we want to be happy but happiness is an emotion that is forever fleeting.
What we really mean is to say we want to be joyful.
To live full of joy is to live in gratitude and contentment for the present moment …without getting distracted.
It is to live in the truth that there is nothing in the world that you could be given that would make your life better.
Yes, we all want more! The brain was evolutionarily designed to want more for survival!
But that doesn’t mean you don’t have enough already, right this very second.
We use the constant practice to keep the mind at a place where you can stay in that appreciative joy instead of falling prey to the lies that we tell ourselves about how to suffer.
Here’s how I keep myself present and closer to joy:
✨ Practice mindfulness
✨ Frequently change my routine
✨ Avoid a hard schedule
✨ Gratitude
✨ Taking time to stop and smile
Notice your distractions.
Notice your joy.
Make adjustments as necessary.
Namaste, friends.
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