By Brandon Alter:
At heart, I'm a weirdo and a goofball who just wants to have fun. But I can be prone to taking my spiritual practice, and just my life in general, too seriously. Yes, we need discipline. And yes, we need to do our work. But that doesn't mean we have to be rigid about the things that matter the most to us.
While life can be serious, I find it's best to always try to lighten up. And I am constantly inspired by people who can bring levity and laughter to trauma and tension. Often our demons and our darkness want us to keep things serious, so we are forced to wrestle them—they have more power when we are heady and mentally inflexible. But we can play with our demons and darkness; we can finger paint with them, we can get naked and dance in high heels in the moonlight with them (yes, I have done ALL of these). When we stop taking life so seriously, we open up the space for magic, for breath, for freedom.
It's easy to be light when everything is going well, but when things get tough, when your world crashes down around you, that’s when you need to throw your hands up in the air and laugh. That’s precisely when we need to stop being so heavy. So lighten up today!
Sing too loud in your car, blow kisses at strangers, put on a lacy bodysuit and pose with a giant fan—the more playful you can be in your life, the more expansive your life becomes!