This morning, I sat down to write in my journal. I started by writing
September 2nd 2024 – Monday
“Labels”, I thought.
The year is a label. The month is a label. The date is a label. The day is a label.
We see the label and give it a certain significance.
Oh, it’s Monday – Monday signifies the beginning – the beginning of the week, the beginning of the month, of the season. Then Monday holds a potential but it can also hold pressure – pressure to start all those things I’ve been off – pressure for my life to change, pressure to……..
But really it has no name, today. It has no date. It is within no month, no year. It is just NOW.
The power isn’t within Monday.
The power is within me.
I get to choose. I get to decide. I get to give value to a label.
I get to remove the label.
When I decide to do nothing, when I decide to not do the things that had previously planned to do, I get to give that a label…or not.
If I label myself ‘procrastinator’, or ‘lazy’, or ‘good-for-nothing’ or anything that means something similar or anything that means something different, “I” gave it that label. I chose that label. Even if it was influenced by labels I had heard of in the past. Even if it was what I had learned from others, even if I don’t realise I am doing it, even if I do realise I am doing. Nevertheless, “I” chose that label.
It isn’t real. It isn’t truth, fixed, determined, written in stone, what others think, what others determine.
It isn’t fact.
It is a label given by me.
Mondays label seems like a fact because 99% of the world seems to agree it is fact. But it doesn’t make it true. Or real. It’s just agreed upon. Way less people in the world agree or even know or care about the labels I give myself.
Changing ‘Monday’ to something else isn’t impossible. Because ‘Monday’ isn’t true. Just like changing the time from GMT to BST at a given point. It is not impossible. Just enough people decide and then just enough people agree and then follow the rules.
So equally we could change Monday. We could add a day to the week if we wanted. Because it is all made up. It isn’t real. But enough people have agreed to the labels.
So. Who am I? What am I?
I get to choose. It’s not fact. It’s not real. Some labels are useful. And for communication, labels are useful. But they are not real, or true, or fact.
How do I feel? What do I think about myself? What feels like it is buried inside of myself? What I am holding on to? What am I keeping inside?
To answer these questions I can get caught up in the labels, identify with the labels, label myself with other things based on the labels I give things/memories/feelings…
What is crazy, is, I make a choice about all that. I choose. I choose. I choose.
This is not to deny any feelings, energies, memories, ideas…. but how I label it and how I then feel because of the label I give it…well, labels compounding labels – compounding feelings.
It’s crazy to realise it’s all a choice.
An uncomfortable feeling emerges. I call it sad. Or depressed, or miserable, or melancholic. I label it. Then I delve in to memories that match the feeling, or circumstances that justify the feeling to be there – under the guise of working out where it came from or why it has arisen. I then give it another label: ‘negative’. Then I give myself a label: ‘not a good person’, because I am experiencing it. Then I notice thoughts, and label myself a certain way because of the thoughts I observe: good/bad, negative/positive; and anything in between.
It’s like a massive flow chart of labels, facts, ideas, compounding one after the other: all based on a CHOICE, rather than a FACT. On an initial thought, feeling, energy, that has been given a label, and then because of that label, given a meaning, all wrapped up with a universal agreement.
At any time I can opt out.
I don’t have to agree that today is actually Monday. It doesn’t mean I walk around all day trying to convince everyone I meet, posting on social media or writing blogs or making videos, shouting out that it’s not Monday.
No. I can still see Monday written on my computer, my phone. I can still look up schedules for buses and work out what time the next one goes. I can still live in the matrix that says today is Monday without holding it as a fixed belief or a fact, or a given. I can choose to act like it is useful. Then I get to decide how much I want to agree to ALL the labels.
Ok Monday is a useful label when I want to catch the bus, or agree a meeting. But Monday is not useful as a label if I think it holds some kind of importance that is bigger than me. If it becomes like a God that I have to then serve or obey. Let the label serve me, rather than me serve it!
When I let go of labels, slowly question them, let go of all that isn’t serving me so I don’t mindlessly serve it, when I do this, slowly and gradually, life becomes so so simple.
And that can be a scary thing…
Well, what is left if I don’t have those problems? Those feelings? Those memories? Those thoughts? If all those label and ideas are completely fabricated, made up, and I can choose which things I want to hold on to, then what’s left?
Can I be ok with ‘nothingness’?
Can I be ok with not labelling these things and not identifying with labels?
It means I am left ion an empty state of just ‘beingness’.
Where there are no problems.
What am I without the problems?
What am I without my goals?
What am I without my path? My growth? My ambition, desires?
Good question, isn’t it?
If you receive these questions and have ‘yeah, but’ arise, ask yourself:
What am I without my ‘yeah, but’?
Where are the labels in my ‘yeah, but’?
Everything can be distilled down to something far more simpler, far less complicated, far more real, far more useful.
And that distilled energy is so powerful so amazing, so pure.
If you want help to sift through your labels and declutter your energy field, book in for a (pay as you feel – minimum £33) 1:1 online call. Let’s have a conversation and see what myths we can bust, what labels we can let go of and create some powerful energy! Click here to book a session now
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