How to escape from the job that you hate.

Do you dream of breaking out of the mundane task driven cycle of life? The key is so simple it sounds unreal.

Every day was the same.

Wakeup. Go to work. Sit all day long in the same office, looking at the same faces. By 5pm I am desperate to escape. I change out of my work shoes and pull on my coat. It's already dark outside and there's a loud patter of rain on the windows but I barely notice. Because my mind is lost...

...in a fast train of...

...jumbled thoughts.

God my shoulders are stiff. What a rotten day! Maybe I'll eat out, as a treat, I sure earned it. Then again, the electricity bill is due and I just bought that Donna Karen dress and that really stretched my budget – no more splurges! Until I pay off my credit card. But it was a damn awful day and I'm too tired to cook. I hate this job! All the time and effort I put into it and what have I got to show for it?! I can barely afford a fancy dress and I've got to come in tomorrow and do it all over again. Right – I’m off!

Rushing to get out of the office. Getting pushed around in the crowd of workers, all desperate to get out. Crammed into elevators. Racing along pavements, Squeezed into subway cars. That was life, caught in the rush. And nobody even knows where we’re going.

So. What changed?

One day, I woke up.

Did you follow my erratic stream of thoughts above...did they seem familiar? Is your mind like a rat in a maze? Or a monkey playing games? Does your mind just never stop? That was me, always thinking thinking thinking.

And then one I thought: why am I thinking all this stuff?!

In that moment I was the Buddha under his Bodhi tree. In that moment I was Neo in the Matrix. In that moment I was every human who has ever stopped. And woken the hell up. And realized. That we are not what we think.

In that moment, everything changed.

We are more than we think.

Trapped in our mind we are...

...blinkered unwitting competitors on the race-track to more-more-more and we’re driven, primarily, by the advertising images that bombard us every day of things we want and desire.

There are more desires in the bottomless pit of human craving than there are atoms in the universe (of which there are quite a few!) and trying to fulfill each and every one is simply impossible.

The trouble is, we all seem to believe that we need to satisfy these pesky persistent desires in order to be happy – but the second you resolve one, another arrives almost instantaneously to take its place.

So. What do we do?

We wake up and realize that the only way out is in. We turn off the computers and the phones, we stop the zombied scrolling of our social network feeds that serve only to further convince us of how much more we need to do, be and have.

We pause.

Breathe gently.

Rest in our body.

And we start paying attention to the special little moments.

Moments like that steaming mug of coffee in the morning, when our eyes and mind are still puffy; the soft golden glow on the trees while the sun is gently rising; a spontaneous heart-warming connection with a fellow commuter on the bus; the rhythmic patter of rain on the windows; the chance to sit still for a moment and just breathe...

In our frantic age, with everything instant, from our food to our internet and the constant distraction of phones or tablets, it is imperative that we find a way to rein in the madness before we lose ourselves completely.

But it's so deceptively easy we don't realize that the path out of the mundane boring everyday life is to simply...

...pay attention to the magic...

...that our busy, restless minds are missing.