{"id":47106,"date":"2022-06-15T09:48:15","date_gmt":"2022-06-15T09:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/?p=47106"},"modified":"2022-06-15T09:48:19","modified_gmt":"2022-06-15T09:48:19","slug":"loving-what-you-do-no-matter-what-it-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/2022\/06\/15\/loving-what-you-do-no-matter-what-it-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Loving what you do, no matter what it is."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There are quite a few things I don\u2019t really like to do.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now there used to be way, way more, actually, so stuff has certainly changed for the better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, still.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was just thinking about all these activities and chores I don\u2019t really appreciate and feel like I’m wasting my time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I was reflecting on why we don\u2019t seem to be able to enjoy more stuff, purely as a practical thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would make sense: if you have to do them anyway, why not feel good about it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wouldn\u2019t it be awesome to just like everything, so we don\u2019t feel bad or bored while being engaged with it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Guess it doesn\u2019t really work like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the last few years, I\u2019ve seen the randomness of what we like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How I can totally hate things you love doing, for instance, and vice versa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And how what we like is often not really about what we like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what I mean by that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a good mood, most things are at least okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a shitty mood, though, we dislike almost anything, and even the smallest activity can feel like shoveling a mountain of shit with a teaspoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is there something we can do about that, or change, to make things more pleasurable and agreeable?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, this is what I\u2019ve learned: it\u2019s very hard to deliberately love everything, to change your preferences mechanically and by force, and to suddenly deeply enjoy stuff that you\u2019ve never enjoyed before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it\u2019s a lot of work too!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luckily for us, there\u2019s a way out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead of trying to like a specific activity intentionally (by listing all its benefits, telling yourself that there are many other things that are way worse, that it will eventually be finished, or that you should just be grateful for being alive in the first place), you can learn to feel good for no reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if you learn to just feel good, on a daily basis, as an unconditional, natural state of being (it actually IS a natural state of being), it doesn\u2019t really matter what you do anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You flip the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you realize that activities don\u2019t inherently come with specific emotions and feelings, that they don’t CAUSE your emotions and feelings, things start to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You see that there\u2019s no real connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That things and activities and chores don\u2019t create the feelings we experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You start to notice that whatever you feel about what you\u2019re doing, is merely the effect of your imagination, a learned, mental response with physical effects, some random experience you\u2019ve unconsciously attached to the thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now the thing seems to influence your emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, you can try to undo all those unconscious connections, but it takes a looooong time, you will never be able to catch them all, and there\u2019s a quicker way to become free from these cycles of misunderstanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning to be fine, period, as an authentic way of living, as your natural state, takes care of everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just think about this: if you\u2019re in love (which is a good feeling for most people), there\u2019s hardly anything you hate to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since your heart is filled with joy and positivity and maybe even butterflies, you pump that good stuff straight into the most boring things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You make activities fun because you bring fun to the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because you feel like fun, EVERYTHING feels like fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you realize that this is how it really works, you\u2019ll start to see more and more that (almost) everything can be done with attention and joy and curiosity, if that\u2019s how you show up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not an overnight thing by the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It starts with a bit of recognition and some awareness, and the willingness to play with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But once you get going, it\u2019s the gift that keeps on giving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the world becomes filled with things you like to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo by @scott_umstattd, for Unsplash)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are quite a few things I don\u2019t really like to do. Now there used to be way, way more, actually, so stuff has certainly changed for the better. But, still. I was just thinking about all these activities and chores I don\u2019t really appreciate and feel like I’m wasting my time. And I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47107,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[97,117,100,116,113,107,103,112],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47106"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47106"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47108,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47106\/revisions\/47108"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}