What I was experiencing was not necessarily a lack of self confidence, or a fear of the unknown, or anything like that. I just think that for a solid month or so I felt like I had “arrived” and had accomplished all of the things that I had wanted to accomplish up until that point. The problem was that whatever this sense of accomplishment was, I rationally did not posses it but instead felt it on a subconscious level. I guess a better way to put it was that all of the sudden I had lost my “drive” and whereas one month prior I was waking up at 5:45am, running 5 miles a day, going to class for eight hours straight, and then catching up with work for my job after class, I was now having a hard time just waking up for work at 8:30am.

What was weird was how hard for me it was to find enjoyment in all of the things that I used to love. Exercising felt oddly pointless to me, all of my music sounded the same, and even working the two jobs that I loved (my job here at Pianobreaks, and my job with a production company) seemed oddly burdensome.

The post The Power Of Creation first appeared on Pianobreaks.com.

Giving Yourself Permission

No one but yourself, can ever know what’s best for you. Even if it seems like you don’t know what’s best sometimes after making a mistake, when you can rely on your own intuition rather than having to keep asking for permission and advice from people, your light shines.

My psychologist used to say that one of the biggest recurring themes in his practice was that life is about giving yourself permission. Giving yourself permission to what?

Permission to. Permission to be yourself. Permission to take the job. Permission to succeed in life. Permission to live as a free human being.

Permission to be happy.

Examples from my own life:

I ask for permission from people to follow my heart, dreams, or intuition in very subtle ways. What I’m doing is asking for permission from someone else so that I can get the courage to follow what my gut is already telling me to do. It is incredibly stupid, I will admit, because in my gut the decision has already been made so I usually know what I’m going to end up doing, regardless of the advice I get in the end. It’s a waste of time to even ask, not only of the time it takes to ask, but in the time I spend pursuing those paths that others believe would be better for me.

Asking people for their opinions on things, rather than just acting, hands the power to direct my life over to people who don’t have my best interests at heart. Not usually, and not really.

Strangers or friends or experts have little real basis to tell you what you should do for your life. No matter how much experience they’ve had, human beings’ paths are too varied and unique to fall for the predictions of other people. There are some that can make predictions on your life and be right, but that is no way to live to believe that other people are more authoritative on your life than yourself. Even if they are right some of the time, it’s still worth being wrong that time so that you will habitually learn to trust yourself in more scary situations where you won’t be dependent on someone else’s ability to make your own decisions in the place of you. I’m sure you already know that dependency on anyone or anything to make you happy is a big no-no.

We betray ourselves by asking for permission from other people to give us the OK to do what we want, just do it. Betray is a strong word for strong reason, because if you don’t trust in or believe in yourself, you kill the way you’re supposed to be naturally as a human being who is capable of making his or her own decisions by listening to their intuition and feeling their way through the situation, given the facts.

You are not a slave! You are a master!

The post The Greatest Freedom in Life Part 1 first appeared on Pianobreaks.com.