Are you living in survival or creation? Find out! E92
May 2, 2023
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Week after week I create a new blog to help fellow humans to see another perspective on life. My mission is to do everything I can and share everything I know and experience myself to help open their eyes to another way of living. I want every soul that I somehow have the privilege to speak to with my content and program to wake up from being a victim in their lives to becoming the creator of their lives.
Through this blog, you will realize if you are living your life in survival or in creation. It’s all about balance and let me tell you, you want to know if you spend most of your day in survival versus creation and I will tell you why. And if you realize that you do spend too much of your life in survival, I will share with you my top 5 tools for you to move from surviving to thriving.
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So how do you know if you are living in survival versus living in creation? If you take a second now to reflect, I am sure you can give me an example where you knew you were in a state of survival. A situation where you were deeply stressed, in panic and all of your systems were focused on surviving this moment. Can you think of one? Great.
Reflect next on an example where you knew you were in a state of creation. You were completely in the flow, in a zone of fully enjoying your life, experiencing the beauty of the moment. Does something come to your mind? Fantastic.
That was already a brief introduction to what it means to live in survival or live in creation. But let’s make it very clear for you today so you can assess every time you move into awareness if you are in survival or in creation.
What it means to live in survival versus creation
Living in survival means you are living in stress. And living in stress means you are knocked out of balance. When you are stressed the fight and flight part of the nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system is activated.
Living in Creation means you are in balance. When you are balanced the restoration and recovery part of your nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated.
When we are in survival we don’t perform well. And the reason is that we are out of balance. Our brain is not firing coherently, our nervous system is not aligned, and our resources aka our energy is being used for some perceived threat or danger instead of being used to tackle work, come up with a solution to a problem or have a great idea. All of that is not possible when we are living in survival. We don’t communicate well, and we cannot be creative or listen to our intuition, because it’s not a time to create. It’s a time to run, hide or fight.
When we are in creation we have access to our intuition, to our inner guidance, to our higher self, because we are physically, mentally and spiritually in balance. When we are living in creation mode the body can restore itself. In this state of being, we can use creativity and imagination, we can see solutions to problems that we cannot see when we are in survival.
70% of our time is spent in survival – by default
Now that you know more about these 2 states, let me share with you that we are living 70% of our waking time in survival by default. That’s just how we are wired and created for the purpose of survival. This is due to the survival system that helped us tremendously hundreds and thousands of years ago. For example, to run away from a lion. But now the lion might just be your co-worker. So the system is still in us but we are using it unknowingly for the wrong reasons.
So assume that you are a totally normal person that is generally well balanced in all areas of your life, then still more than half of your thoughts are negative – just because of our survival system. When I asked people at the beginning of my training program, they would say that they are rather in survival 90-95% of the time.
And I can attest to that. Before I accepted that I was burned out, looking back at my old self, I can confirm that I was in survival mode for most of my day. And I know as well that this had a huge impact on my performance at work. I can see it now looking back at it – of course, I did not realize when I was stuck in the middle of survival mode.
Typical thoughts when you are in survival versus creation
And maybe that is you right now. You might just not realize that you are constantly in survival mode as this has become your new normal. So how can I help you find out where you spend most of your day in, in survival or creation?
If you have not already been able to make that assessment from the descriptions that I just gave you, I want to provide you with another opportunity to assess yourself. I will give you a few examples of typical things people say when they are in either of those states of being. That’s always a good indicator for my students to identify in which mode they spend most of their day.
Typical things people say when they are living in survival:
“Hopefully today no additional issues show up.”
And you say or think something like that when your goal is to avoid having a terrible day. It’s when having a great day isn’t even an option or hardly ever happens to you anymore. Makes sense?
“This is too risky. I cannot make a mistake. I have to win this.”
These are all things you say from a state of survival. Everything matters way too much but in an unhealthy way.
“I am juggling all of these problems. Hopefully, none of these plates that I keep spinning are falling down.”
This is when you are in constant reaction. You are so stressed that you cannot be proactive but just reactive. You keep bouncing from one reaction to another never being able to slow down and see the bigger picture.
“I am tired. I feel exhausted. When will I be able to relax?”
If you catch yourself using these phrases daily or even several times per day then you are stressed. You might even have disrupted sleep, you are exhausted sometimes in the morning, and you have no energy to do much in your free time. You try to use your willpower to relax but you never fully recover and feel refreshed the next day.
“If I want to get it done well, I better do it myself.”
If you have these kinds of thoughts, you are taking too much on your plate and stressing your systems. You overload yourself with responsibilities and tasks and shy away from delegation. A clear message that you are in survival and cannot see another solution.
“I have no time. Maybe later. I would love to do that but when I have more time.”
Typical message I hear from people who love to work with me and learn how to change living constantly in survival – but they don’t see that they are in this self-fulfilling prophecy. And if not now when? There is no other time than now. Your life is going to look exactly the same or worse in 3 months than it does at this moment. How can it be any different if you don’t change something on your inside that would move you out of survival mode? Do you see that?
So I hope these examples helped you get a better picture of what it means to live in survival. So let’s look at living in creation.
Typical things people say when they are living in creation:
“I have all the time in the world. Now is the right time.”
There is never an urgency or feeling of lack of time. And when things come to you, you see it as the right time as being part of the flow of life.
“I work on what brings me joy and is in my genius zone.”
People that are well-practised in living in creation will focus on staying in the zone. You are in the zone when you feel joy in what you do or a sense of doing your best. And that brings with it as well saying No to tasks or projects that are not in alignment with your talents or passions and delegating effectively if you have the possibility. And the funny thing is that these people find opportunities to delegate that they would never consider or see when they would be stuck in survival.
“I manage my energy levels well and they let me live the life of my dreams.”
When you practiced living more in creation you have a good sense of managing your energy. You chose tasks at the right time, you chose tasks that even give you more energy, and you complete tasks that take a lot of energy at the right time. All in all, you are aligned with the flow of life and your flow of energy. Yes, you feel tired at the end of a full day. But that is natural and that’s how you want to feel before going to sleep. But it’s not exhaustion that comes at times when you can still do things that can bring you more joy like hobbies, spending time with your kids or reading a good book.
“I don’t see problems – I just see opportunities to learn and grow.”
I know, I know. By now you might tell me that this sounds all too good to be true. And sure, do I sometimes classify something as a problem, yes. But then I instantly catch myself and change my perspective to: What is this telling me? What am I learning from this? What is a solution that I am not seeing yet? That’s how you move from the animal instinct of fight or flight into a restorative mode where insights and solutions show up seamlessly and easily.
I hope these descriptions of typical survival and creation thoughts helped you to understand better where you spend most of your day: surviving or thriving.
The stress response is necessary for us – but only short term
And just to clarify. There is nothing wrong with our fight-or-flight nervous system. It cares about our survival and it’s an important part of being human. But we are not built to live in constant stress. We are built to have short-term stress responses when we need to and then move back into balance and restoration.
But a lot of people these days don’t know anymore how to turn off that stress response and living in stress becomes their new normal. And sadly that takes a toll not just on your day-to-day state of being and performance but over time on your health. We all know by now that stress or a stress-filled lifestyle is what brings about most of our diseases.
So what can we do to move out of survival and spend more time in creation? Here are my top 5 tools that help me to live my life much more in creation and move instantly out of survival.
My Top 5 Tools to Move from Survival to Creation
One of my favourite sayings is a Zen proverb that goes something like this: “If you don’t have time to meditate for an hour every day, you should meditate for two hours.
Tool 1: Meditation
Regular meditation practice means you are training yourself out of survival and into creation. And the more you train the better you get at it. Like with anything else in life. Meditation has helped me to distance myself from this overly chatting mind and to learn to quieten it when it’s just not useful. I have many blogs around the topic of meditation if you want to learn more.
Tool 2: Breathing
Our breath is something we always have with us. We can’t forget it at home. Moving your focus on your breath and breathing for a couple of minutes consciously, moves you automatically from the fight and flight nervous system into the restore and recover nervous system. It only takes a couple of minutes.
Tool 3: Pattern disrupters like tapping, verbal phrases, and reminders to check in with yourself
Disrupting a spiral of thoughts or a stressful feeling in your body is a win and a sign that you are weakening the program that got triggered in the first place. There are many different ways to disrupt patterns and programs that keep being triggered for the purpose of dismantling them once and for all.
Tool 4: Journaling as the observer of yourself
This kind of Journaling is not just about your day or what’s going on in your life but moving into the observer role in your life and writing from that perspective. It is very powerful to move into a third person and write about what you observe about the person you are observing. We are always much better at giving advice to others than to ourselves. So writing from this observer role is invaluable in seeing things that you normally would not be able to see. I promise you that. Give it a go.
Tool 5: Having a Vision
Last but not least it is important to have a vision in your life. If you are not working towards a vision in your life, then life itself takes over and you feel like you are just a bystander and that everything is happening to you. Our purpose in life is to experience, expand and grow. And that means you want to have a vision for your life, something you move towards. Otherwise, you will feel like you are constantly on a boat in choppy waters, being thrown around by chance and fate.
Pick one Tool and implement it for 30 days
I am asking you now to pick just one of these things and try it out for 30 days, just once per day: Meditation, Breathing, Pattern disrupter, Journaling as the observer of your life or creating a vision. You will see a huge improvement in comparison to where you are now. And then because you experience the proof that this works and makes you feel better, you will not want this to end. Why would you want to end the sensation of feeling better? So then try out some other tools of the ones that I just shared with you.
Learn it all in one weekend and get 3 months of support in changing
All of these tools are tools that I teach in the ENERGY ACADEMY. Why not learn it all in one weekend and be set up for life? I learned some of these things over the course of a year and it already helped me to turn into a version of myself that will never burn out or be stuck in survival ever again.
I would have loved to have that come into my life. But there was a different path meant for me. If you are someone that always wants the best for the people in your life and that includes yourself, then this is your message to sign up for this program and accelerate the changes in your life that you so desire.
Two easy ways to show your appreciation!
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So whether you choose to donate, leave a rating and review, or both, know that you’re an integral part of my vision. You are helping everyone who struggles with burnout or high-stress levels to experience how awesome their life can be. So, thank you for your support!
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