Sometimes you win while sleeping (usually after sacrificing lots of sleep)

I awoke to a flight attendant tapping my shoulder and urging me to pull down my tray table. Odd, don’t they usually wake you up so you can do the opposite?

Groggily, I pulled down the tray in a dreamy, Charlie pre-golden ticket state to reveal a (not gold but) yellow sticker proclaiming,

“Congrats! You found the lucky seat, you lucky so-and-so! You’re like a leprechaun born with a rabbit’s foot finding a heads-up penny underneath a horseshoe in a field of 4-leaf clovers. #spiritluckyseat”

Still in a fog, I only nodded as I was handed a voucher for 5,000 free miles on Spirit and my seat number was announced for the whole plane to hear.

Waking up more fully, I vaguely remembered announcements about Carlos, miles, “everyone pull down your tray to see if you have a sticker” and other things while I had slept, crammed in the middle seat between two men, sleeping uncomfortably face pressed into the seat in front of me. But, having pulled an all-nighter last night, and nearly an all-nighter the night before in order to get work done before heading to Dragoncon – aka,  a weekend fraught with all-nighter tendencies, I had determined sleep was the more important priority than comfort, or figuring out what Spirit Airlines was up to.

I think that is partly why I won.

Yeah, yeah, you skeptics. I know, it’s “stochasticity”, “randomosity”, “independent variables” etc etc. It should have made no difference that I chose to sleep. And yet, some part of me, cosmically, falls on the woo-woo side and I do think we are all interconnected with the universe in some unseen way. Be it “frequencies” or “motives” or even the fact then when you are in the right attitude you act in a very minutely specific way that others can pick up on, whatever it is, it’s real. I really do think that, had I been awake for that contest, had I given myself any space to “desire” the winning, I would not have won.

I have found, in many instances in my life, I can want something so desperately, and will not get it. But, when I give up the attachment to the outcome, when I let go of the living in fear and instead choose to live in “inspiration”, the thing I wanted, the rewards, they come and they come BIG. (maybe one day I’ll tell the story of my husband? 🙂 )

As humans we seem wired to compete and wired to desire. It’s odd that when we turn those off, we tend to do a lot better. When I feel the desire to win a contest, I lose. When I feel loose about the outcome (or in this case, the free miles) I tend to win.

But there’s another part to this. You may be reading and thinking I’m suggesting we need do nothing but eliminate desire, even desire for the good things like purpose and growth. That is not true – in those arenas, we have to be willing to lay it all on the line.

If you’ve followed me for any length of time you might have noticed a marked difference between how many videos, blogs, and posts I’ve made in the past, and how many I’m making now. Somewhere, the “inspired” switch got flipped and I am committed to the thing, EVEN if it means losing one of my most favorite of other things, sleep. Because one day, I aspire to wake up in the morning richer than I was before I went to sleep (*cough* Financial Freedom!). But wishing for this, or simply “letting go” of the wish will not get me there. It might get me to be content in the now, which, not a bad thing! But letting go because “It could never happen” is not letting go, and would not lead to happiness but would be giving in to fear. After many days and weeks of personal reflection, I do believe that it is our state of mind, not simply our observable actions that make the difference.

If I were squandering sleep in a state of fear, perhaps afraid of the dark, or afraid of losing the weekend, my time would not be efficient. I would get nowhere in this model. Yet, in this case, the sleep I’m choosing to forgo is in the spirit of inspiration and for the sake of the greater picture. When we lust after something, it is usually from a place of fear. But when we CHASE something, something in which our actions regarding it we can control, and we do it from a place of inspiration? That’s when the magic happens.

This is one of the things that keeps me inspired. And one of the things I’ve been musing on today.

Do you share the same dream? What keeps you inspired?

Also, where should I go with my free miles?

Katie

UPDATE: DO NOT TRUST SPIRIT; 5,000 MILES IS NOT EVEN ENOUGH TO FLY FROM DETROIT TO FLINT. SO INSTEAD THEY SUGGEST YOU GET MAGAZINES. WHICH THEN NEVER END UP GETTING SENT TO YOU.

At least I felt special in the moment. O.o