You Watch, I Drive!

No Limits | The Freedom Blog™

Travels in Istanbul - "You Watch, I Drive!"

Written by Steven Griggs | stevengriggs.com

“You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control anyway.”

Steve Maraboli

"Sometimes surrender means giving up trying to understand and becoming comfortable with not knowing."

Anonymous

I'd finally arrived in Istanbul late at night. My sister had arranged for a driver to pick me up at the airport.

My sister has lived in Istanbul for 5 months and does not have a car. Generally to get to Istanbul from the outlying suburb she lives in requires a long walk to the subway, a long ride to the docks, a ferry ride across the Bosporus to Kadakoy and then a tram ride to go anywhere else in the city.

So for my first jaunt in Istanbul late at night I thought it would be better to hire a driver. Very little signage is in English, very few people speak it and she lives very far away from the airport.

She said my driver spoke English and at first he did. But after the greeting and a few short sentences that was it.

At first everything seemed fine but then he started stopping at every cross street and looking around at the different buildings. After the 5th or 6th time he stopped at a crossroad I asked if he had the number of my sister's Turkish friend to call for better directions. At first he ignored me, but after the second time I mentioned it he turned to me and said "You watch, I drive".

I immediately got it and said nothing more. But it made me think, and I realized I was holding on too tight to knowing. I was trying to control the outcome by trying to influence the driver.

Yes it was important to get to my destination, but I knew I would eventually get there.  It just might take longer, and maybe I would get a chance to "watch" a little more.

But it really struck home as I realized I was not staying within my control zone, meaning within my own mind and body.

I continued to watch myself over the next few days.  I noticed that I was continually trying to "control" my progress on the various transportation legs by visualizing the next the steps I would be taking, trying to anticipate what was next.

Where would I stand to avoid the crush of the crowd onto the ferry, what cabin would I get on in the subway, etc.

I had to remind myself that it didn't matter where I stood in the line, it didn't matter what the crowd was doing, none of it really mattered. All that mattered was that I was in Turkey getting ready to visit some of the most fascinating historical sites in the world. Some of the places I'd always dreamed of visiting.

So right then I decided - I am here, I am living a dream and I will just sit back and watch from here on out.

www.stevengriggs.com

Your Exterior vs Your Interior

No Limits | The Freedom Blog™

Your Exterior vs Your Interior

Written by Steven Griggs | stevengriggs.com

“One’s own self is well hidden from one’s own self; of all mines of treasure, one’s own is the last to be dug up.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

Carl Jung

When talking about our exterior life vs our interior life there really isn't any versus, because our outer life and our inner life are one and the same. One begets the other.

They may seem separate but they are not. We create our exterior life by what we believe and visualize in our interior life. The only difference is that sometimes there is a delay from when we begin imagining our desired life to when it actually starts showing up.

Actually not all things take a long time to show up, in fact many times things can show up almost immediately... 

But I am talking about the basic circumstances of our life. How and where we find ourselves.

The issue we face is that sometimes we get it turned around and think our outer world, our exterior, is the real world and our interior world is just a world of daydreams and wishes.

But it is not.

Another problem for a lot of us is that we become sidetracked and blocked by the obstacles, the problems that crop up. We begin to wonder: “Why is it so hard, why is this happening?” “I didn't want this, this isn't what I was moving towards”. We see these as negative because they contradict what we say we “want”.

The truth is that this is happening because our interior dialogue is not totally clear and in alignment. Somewhere in our interior world we are getting blocked because we aren't really clear about our intentions. A limiting belief is clogging up the machinery. We are getting what we say we don't want because we aren't totally clear on what we do want. 

But when negative things are happening it gives us the opportunity to look into our self and seek out the source of this seeming contradiction. To take an interior inventory and find out where those beliefs are coming from.

What am I really believing?

We may see situations as “bad” or “negative” because they may be difficult or painful to move through. 

But the truth may be that this is part of the process, a step that is required for us to move forward, towards our new paradigm.

In other words the path we take isn't always in a straight line, in fact it probably never is but we keep moving forward.

When we come to a crossroads, we turn left or we turn right but there is no wrong turn.

Each step of the way gets us a little clearer, a little better at seeing the truth, and a little further along on our journey.

I personally don’t believe our interior and exterior worlds will ever be in complete alignment because as we grow our needs change and our exterior will need to be adjusted to reflect the new vision from the interior.

And so it goes….

www.stevengriggs.com