“Most people are like sleepwalkers. We don’t live fully because we’re half asleep, acting automatically without thinking.” — Mitch Albom
Have you found your way in life? What are your long-term goals and dreams for your life, career, health, relationships, wealth and spirituality? Are you actively pursuing them? Or do you just keep them in a corner of your mind?
Sleepwalkers — These are people who live their lives in a state of unconsciousness. Being conscious does not mean being physically awake. Many people around us are physically awake, but live unconsciously. They are not fully aware of who they are, their role in life, or their goals.
Sleepwalkers look like anyone else, but they are just physical shells living their lives like robots. Have you ever met people who have no perspective on their lives? People who live day after day, never thinking about the future or what they really want? They are not even able to give their reason for living.
Every day, they are busy doing various activities like working, playing, partying, sleeping, but none of these have any connection with their desires. This is all they know about life.
These people are sleepwalkers.
Are you a sleepwalker? 8 points to check!
Do you know if you are a sleepwalker? Here are 8 signs to find out:
1. They have no overview
2. They do not live in alignment with their true purpose.
3. They live their lives on autopilot
Have you ever had the feeling that you were going in circles, doing actions that didn’t make sense? Sleepwalkers live their lives in an automatic mode, repeating the same activities every day, without consciously controlling them.
They play robot all week long, looking forward to Friday and weekends, when they recharge for another equally boring week. The cycle continues week after week, without end. They are too comfortably stuck in this cycle to want to change anything.
Occasional events occur that derail their daily routine, such as a transition at different stages of their lives, changing careers, losing a job, etc. They are too comfortable in this cycle to want to change anything. Often, something happens in mid-life: the midlife crisis. When this happens, they get a wake-up call.
They begin to realize that they are not really living their lives. At this point, some may take drastic steps in their lives to make up for lost time. Others prefer to return to their cages, trying to convince themselves that they are living the best life possible.
4. They are engaged in worthless activities
When sleepwalkers are not busy going around in circles, they fill their free time in life with random activities. This includes such trivial things as: playing games, partying, eating, watching TV, aimlessly wandering around on the internet, gossiping, complaining, and even addictions such as smoking/drinking/cyberaddiction.
This type of person is often unable to stop these behaviours until an external stimulus, such as sleeping or eating, is released. He or she is also unable to clearly express why he or she has engaged in this activity, other than “because it’s fun”, “I like it” or “I don’t have to do anything else”.
5. They live lazily avoiding their problems
This could be summed up as “Living from day to day” or “Seeing what life has in store for us”. They let themselves be carried by the wind and deal with what happens to them. They leave the controls of their lives to those around them. It is not in their nature to ask why or to question the way they manage their lives.
Sometimes they find themselves trapped and unhappy when they see where they are in their lives. This can happen when they compare their relationships or work with that of others. Even so, they remain passive about it because they don’t see a solution to it. If they are asked about their reactions, they say, “I want X, but [insert excuse]. They live under the false impression that they are making a temporary sacrifice for a better future.
They don’t like conflict and try to avoid problems or confrontation as much as possible. After some time of avoiding problems, unresolved concerns will accumulate to a breaking point where they can no longer ignore them. The automatic reaction of a sleepwalker is to continue to avoid them and drown the fish by engaging in entertainment, overeating, etc.
Unfortunately, this does not solve anything and the problem will emerge again in the future, in a different context. By analogy, it is the popular myth of ostriches “burying their heads in the sand”. Just because you refuse to acknowledge a problem, it doesn’t mean that it will disappear on its own.
6. They can’t find the time to do what they want to do.
Sleepwalkers — These are people who live their lives in a state of unconsciousness. Being conscious does not mean being physically awake. Many people around us are physically awake, but live unconsciously. They are not fully aware of who they are, their role in life, or their goals.
Sleepwalkers look like anyone else, but they are just physical shells living their lives like robots. Have you ever met people who have no perspective on their lives? People who live day after day, never thinking about the future or what they really want? They are not even able to give their reason for living.
7. They are unconscious of their thoughts and emotions.
8. They live in a lack of motivation or ambition.
Sleepwalkers around us
Every time I look around, I see sleepwalkers living their lives on autopilot. People spinning around in their cages fervently, in an endless loop of basic tasks. People busy earning money, hoping to live a better life. People who don’t know why they live. People who waste the time of their lives, and deny themselves what they really want.
Every day, it amazes me so much to see in these people all this wasted potential, just waiting to be revealed. There are times when I just want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them violently to wake them up!
At the same time, it makes me very happy when I see sleepwalkers coming out of their deep sleep.
Perhaps there has been a transition in their life, a sudden wake-up call, or a revelation, etc. I am very happy when I see sleepwalkers coming out of their deep sleep. Over the past two years, I have seen people I have been around, suddenly waking up from their robotic life and making a firm decision to get involved in what they really want.
When this happens, I feel a wave of admiration and enthusiasm in me. Because I know that no matter what they do from there on, everything will be fine for them.
Wake up from your dream!
You may have just discovered that you’ve been sleepwalking all your life. When you wake up from your dream, you may be shocked to find that your desired life has fled away while you were sleeping. You may be angry with yourself. Or you may be depressed. It’s perfectly understandable.
However, now that you’re awake, there’s an important choice to make: Are you going to continue to delude yourself and go back to sleep, pretending it never happened? Or are you going to courageously face reality, and start living the life you are destined to live?
It’s a bit the same thing when in Matrix, Morpheus offered Neo the choice between the red pill and the blue pill. The red pill reflects truth and reality. The blue pill reflects the dream, your sleepwalking life.
The red pill will set you free and allow you to live the best life possible. The blue pill represents the path of denial — the denial of who you really are, and what you are destined to do in this life.
Recognize that you have the power to change your situation and that you can start acting on it now. Through conscious choices, concrete actions, you can pave the way to the life you want. Every day in my life, I make choices and actions that bring me a little closer to my goals.
And you can do the same. No matter where you are in your life right now, no matter who you are, no matter how old you are. It’s never too late to be who you’re meant to be. You just have to act, right now. To take that first step.
It’s easy to go back to sleep, close this page and return to the life you knew so well. But is it really what you want? Is this how you want to live your life in this world? Are you really living the best possible life this way?
What do you do after you wake up?
If you decided to take the red pill and wake up from your dream, congratulations! Now your real life begins.
This path will not be without pitfalls. You will surely experience difficulties, it will be exhausting and sometimes you will even want to give up everything. But I guarantee you that the happiness and quality of life you will experience will be incomparable to the robotic life you were living in.
I guarantee that you will find this path an inner richness and a feeling of peace that is worth all the gold in the world. Much more than anything you have ever had in your life so far. I guarantee that you will begin to feel passion and abundance, that which you have longed for but could not obtain.
I will end this article with a quote from Socrates in the movie The Pacific Warrior: “Death is not sad. What is sad is that the majority of people don’t live at all.”
Originally published at https://www.inthelatest.com.