I started my live meditation session on the Insight Timer platform with excitement and joy today. A few minutes into the session, while still meet and greet were going on, there were already 54 lovely people with me. We were warming up, ready to get to the session topic, when I received the feedback from participants that they ceased to see and hear me on their screen.

I did not know what to do. I tried ending the session and restarting it when the situation did not resolve after a few minutes. But I could not do it. I tried logging out and back in many times without success.

Old Ipek vs New Ipek

The old Ipek would be utterly frustrated, furious, mad, upset, and enraged. She would blame anything and anyone possible, including herself! Especially herself! She would ruin her whole day with that negative mindset.

Fortunately, the new and improved Ipek 2.0 is nothing like the old one.  

• She took a few deep breaths,
• She sent a few messages to her followers explaining the situation and letting them know that she would make up for this by repeating the same topic the following week. 
• Then, she chose to attend three other fellow teachers’ live sessions on Insight Timer that she didn’t have a chance to in the past as their sessions always conflicted with her live sessions. 
• She learned about three different topics during those sessions and made notes to explore them further. 
• And she enjoyed a longer-than-usual lunch break. 
• After which, she sat down to write this essay.

Do you see the difference between me then and me now?

When we let go of the need to control and change the things we don’t have the power to and accept what comes our way, our stress decreases significantly.

When we see everything happening FOR us and not TO us, it helps us see the pluses of that unexpected event and not only the minuses.  

If we want to be embraced by life, we better learn to embrace it as is. The way it shows up for us. Only then can we appreciate it the way it deserves to be appreciated.

Image by Ipek Williamson