Category Archives: RATIONAL THINKING

A VALUED LIFE, INSPIRATIONS, MASTERING THE DIFFICULT, PATHS TO HAPPINESS, RATIONAL THINKING, RENEWAL AND TRANSFORMATION

STUCK IN A RUT?

Feeling uninspired . . . stuck in a rut . . . that your life seems to be going nowhere?

If that resonates with you, chances are  a.) You don’t really know what you want, or b.) It’s not important enough for you to do anything about it.

Let’s tackle the first point: You must know what you really want.  If you don’t have a clue, then you are saying you don’t value anything. However, few of us would admit to that.  If you value your life at all then there must be a few things that are very important to you. Values are your highest needs for self-fulfillment – your hopes, aspirations and expectations. Take some time to think about them and make a list. If you become emotional about them, then you are on the right track.

On the second point: Decide if it’s important enough to take action.  What you most value or aspire to will never happen unless you take the initiative to make it happen. This is such common sense it’s amazing how many of us don’t recognize this. Life owes us nothing. We have to take ownership of it or it will turn out no better than what we put into it.  it’s really your choice: either live it to the fullest or waste it away.

So why is it so easy to get sidetracked to doing what is most important? Why do we so often find ourselves stuck in the ditch with no way to get back out of it?  There are many reasons but here are some key ones to reflect upon and consider changing in your life:

  1. YOU DON’T HAVE A PLAN:  Once you decide what is most important and where you want to go, you need a roadmap to follow. Living in the present is good, but only after deciding what you want your “future-presents” to look and feel like. Create a path to follow and stay on it.
  2. YOU’RE STILL WAITING FOR TOMORROW:  Again, there is no time like the present. This is when things happen. Procrastination kills the spirit and derails motivation. If you say you will do something when the timing is right then you will never do it. There are always excuses but the bottom line is they will never get resolved to your satisfaction. If you wait for the perfect timing, then you will always be waiting – never doing.
  3. YOU LIKE BEING IN THE COMFORT ZONE: Taking action means change. And if you don’t like change then you will never move forward. You might feel that what you are giving up is a loss, but that is where you have growth and positive self-renewal. It may seem difficult at first to give up your comfort zone but once you move forward you will not miss what you left behind.
  4. YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN YOURSELF:  This is self-sabotage at the extreme. If you don’t believe that you have the right or the worthiness to design and live your own life, then someone else will do it for you. In fact, if you don’t believe in yourself no one else will either. Negative self-talk is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Having no confidence leads to failure, but a positive self-belief will lead to success. Whatever you say to yourself creates that reality. You are free to choose either so choose wisely.
  5. YOU HAVE THE WRONG INFLUENCES: Look around and see who is impacting or affecting your life.  Are you hanging out with the wrong people? Are they pulling you down or draining your life energy?  If your circle of friends has low expectations, you will subconsciously adopt their attitudes and beliefs. You must find better role models or consider a mentor that you respect. Most successful persons will state that modeling themselves after someone they really admired made all the difference in their own life achievements.
  6. YOU MISTAKE “BUSYNESS” FOR PRODUCTIVITY:  The proverbial treadmill requires effort but goes nowhere. In today’s fast-paced world, we deceive ourselves by working longer and harder but often find it leads to more stress and little else. When we only respond to our daily urgencies, we seldom find we did what was most important. Ask yourself if you’re just going in circles or are you spending quality time supporting what you most value. This is also the key to life balance – move away from meaningless activities and move toward those that are more rewarding.
  7. YOU’RE NOT RESPECTING YOURSELF:  Are you spending countless hours in front of a TV or at a computer monitor surfing the web or playing video games?  Are you ignoring sleep, exercise and healthy eating habits? Are you mindlessly going through the same daily routines without any regard to improving yourself? If so, you are disrespecting your talents, your mind and your potential. At some point, you will look in the mirror and not even recognize who you are. Decide now if you want to reach old age and regret the missed opportunities you could have made for yourself.
  8. YOU HAVE NO PASSION:  At some point, you must ask yourself what you are passionate about.  And once you discover your passion, you will know your purpose. Dig deep to discover what stirs your soul. Life is not meant to be lived on the sidelines so acknowledge what really lights your fire and begin to live it.  While you may have buried your passions deep inside you, they are still there. You are free to bring them forth again.   

Make today a new beginning. You don’t need to remain in the rut or feel resentful about how your life is going.  It’s all about the attitude you adopt and your willingness to make changes. Your only obstacle is your own mind. Think differently and you will begin to change your life.

A VALUED LIFE, INSPIRATIONS, MASTERING THE DIFFICULT, PATHS TO HAPPINESS, RATIONAL THINKING, RENEWAL AND TRANSFORMATION, THE GREAT BALANCING ACT, THE SIMPLER LIFE, UNIFYING PRINCIPLES

THE HIGHER LIFE – 25 PRINCIPLES

Live Higher 11x14 jpgLife mastery is not difficult once we believe in its possibility and also desire to achieve it. Following are my top 25 principles for living a higher life and I hope you find them to be a helpful guide:

  1. Worry Less – Laugh More

  2. Sit Less – Move More

  3. Analyze Less – Feel More

  4. Text Less – Talk More

  5. Work Less – Volunteer More

  6. Complicate Less – Simplify More

  7. Rest Less – Sleep More

  8. Conceal Less – Discover More

  9. Discriminate Less – Understand More

  10. Complain Less – Appreciate More

  11. Consume Less – Give More

  12. Waste Less – Save More

  13. Think Less – Act More

  14. Abuse Less – Support More

  15. Eat Less – Taste More

  16. Critique Less – Love More

  17. Follow Less – Lead More

  18. Amuse Less – Learn More

  19. Blame Less – Value More

  20. Control Less – Flow More

  21. Doubt Less -Trust More

  22. Hesitate Less – Risk More

  23. Watch Less – Read More

  24. Resist Less – Accept More

  25. Plead Less – Pray More

A VALUED LIFE, INSPIRATIONS, PATHS TO HAPPINESS, RATIONAL THINKING

DISCOVERING YOUR PASSION

Expressions-7 copyWhat are you passionate about?  Have you found it?  If not, quit thinking about it.  In fact, don’t even try to understand it.  Discovering your passion will not be revealed by logical analysis; it is only found through your heart – that moment when you feel totally lost in your own joy. Your passion becomes evident when you are most in tune with yourself,  when your heart pings with excitement and your inner voice is telling you it is okay to feel this way.

If you haven’t experienced this lately, you’re probably not listening to who you really are.  You are blocking your emotions by responding to outside influences or voices telling you how you should feel.  If you are forsaking your own opportunity for joy, you are conforming to these external expectations and not those that you created for yourself. Over time, you can literally forget what really makes you happy and what you are most passionate about.

So if you can’t remember when you last connected with your passion, it’s time to do some serious soul searching.  Life is meant to be lived passionately, not with a boring sameness day after day.  You should seek every opportunity to make your heart sing with the excitement of life itself. You only need to reflect upon and then recreate those moments when you were euphoric about something you did, felt, experienced or were engaged in.

You may need to return to your childhood to recall those moments. Or you can possibly remember a more recent situation where you felt totally absorbed in your own joy –  a hobby, book, movie, song or even a stimulating conversation.  It may have been something difficult where you felt the challenge of achievement. Perhaps it was assisting someone else that needed your help. It could be something that required your physical energy, creative spirit or even your quiet reflection observing a sunset.

If you listen to your heart, you will know what has stirred your passions in the past. And it’s your right to bring them back into your life again . . . whenever you choose and as often as you desire.  This is what a real life is all about.  Allow yourself  the freedom to enjoy it to the fullest.

 

 

 

A VALUED LIFE, INSPIRATIONS, LIFE'S SECOND ACT, PATHS TO HAPPINESS, RATIONAL THINKING

WHAT FUTURE IS CALLING YOU?

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERATake a moment and survey your horizon. What is it telling you?  Is your future full of hope and promise or is it foreboding and worrisome?  Are you feeling optimistic about the rest of your life or does it look like a minefield of obstacles still facing you?

The fact is that your perception of the future will  most likely determine the outcome.  Having hope will project happiness . But if you approach it hopelessly you will find  happiness difficult to come by.  Dr. Richard P. Johnson refers to this as “the self-fulfilling prophecy principal.” If you have high expectations you will begin organizing and preparing yourself to make good things happen.  Conversely, if you dread what lies ahead you will not take any actions to change your future,  thus assuring the negative outcomes to follow.

Either set of self-beliefs will likely govern the results.  What you expect to happen probably will.  So spend some time thinking about the future and decide if it is calling you to be optimistic or pessimistic.  You have the freedom to choose between the two viewpoints.  You should choose wisely.

 

 

 

A VALUED LIFE, INSPIRATIONS, LIFE'S SECOND ACT, OUR QUEST FOR TIME, PATHS TO HAPPINESS, RATIONAL THINKING, RENEWAL AND TRANSFORMATION

HAVING NO REGRETS

I think most of us can recall FDR’s famous quote “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” But his less well known quote is “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.”

This resonates with me because coaching new retirees always involves hearing about their “doubts of today.” And sadly, these fears and uncertainties will often lead to their “regrets of tomorrow.” If, however,  they could overcome their present doubts they would likely find their future lives to be much more fulfilled.

Most of us would agree that at the end of our life we’d like to go back and re-do a few things that could have been changed – maybe spend less time at the office to make more time for ourselves and our families, taken our studies more seriously, made better career choices, etc.

And while these are important considerations, these are not the main reflections of those at the end of their lives. According to palliative expert Bonnie Ware, the top five regrets of the dying are:

1. I wish I’d lived a life true to myself,  not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish I had let myself be happier.

And I’d like to add that Nadine Stair on her 84th birthday said, “I wish I had waded in more mud puddles”.

Living with no regrets places the responsibility upon us, not just to decide what we want out of life but to then go and live it. Since we have a finite timetable for life, why not decide today what risks we are willing to take and then begin the process of taking them. Why not reframe our current fears and self-doubts into a more positive and optimistic outlook for the future.

So will we answer this question for ourselves, or will we let others answer it for us? Will we act out of fear or out of courage? If we decide to go for it, what will It be? What do we want the rest of our life to look and feel like?

Now would be a good time to answer these questions.  The choice is ours . . . to be able to look back one day at our life without any regrets at all!

A VALUED LIFE, MASTERING THE DIFFICULT, RATIONAL THINKING, RENEWAL AND TRANSFORMATION

CREATING A NEW REALITY

Expressions-11All of life transformation and self-renewal is embodied in the process of relieving the tension between the reality we have now and the reality we aspire to. For instance, if we are overweight, we feel the tension between our current self-image and a projected self-image. If we are not happy in our job or career, our anxiety tells us that something needs to be done about it. If we are feeling tired and physically unfit, we sense the need to exercise, sleep more and improve our diet.

In virtually every aspect of our lives, there is a perceived gap between where we are and where we want to be. This gap is a void we must fill to make life more significant and meaningful. If we let the gap widen, we feel more tension and frustration. By not attempting to close the gap, we are passively allowing life to happen to us. But by taking action to bridge the realities of what we have versus what we want, we are taking charge and making life happen.

This process of closing the gap brings our behavior in alignment with our purpose and our values. By knowing what we are here for and what is most important to us we gain clarity of our current reality. We can see exactly what is missing, what expectations are not being met, and we will become compelled to take action and redraft our future reality. We can then literally make our life what we want it to be!

A VALUED LIFE, INNER STRENGTH, PATHS TO HAPPINESS, RATIONAL THINKING, UNIFYING PRINCIPLES

ATTAINING INNER PEACE

Hugging the CoastOur objective should not be to eliminate all unhappiness but rather to balance it with increased opportunity for joy. Buddha may have reminded us, A hundred loves, a hundred losses. No loves, no losses, but are we prepared to abandon the potential for love because we fear the potential for loss?

Would there be any value in giving up our rights to search for a single sliver of happiness because we must first dig through a mountain of sadness to locate it? For that matter, would we not search for truth because it is hidden among deceit? Or would we not seek honor because we feel that it is surrounded by contempt? Or not seek courage because it is covered with cowardice? Or not seek morality because it is shrouded within an immoral society?

Happiness is ours to discover despite the deterrents that stand in our way; it is our human right to be elated despite a world that flagrantly flaunts its despairing side. Our purpose, therefore, is to strive toward a sense of internal peace within ourselves.

This does not mean that we will live in perfect contentment but rather we will be contented with ourselves. The difference is that the former implies an unrealistic, stress free state of consciousness while the latter implies that we are in conscious control of our state of gratification.

We will feel it is possible to rise above the vagaries of unhappiness that may surround us. We will resist the feeling of being dragged into a maelstrom of discontentment because we will see ourselves as the calm center of the storm. And our joy will abound through our sense of calm purpose being recognized and lived through our daily actions.  Inner peace then becomes our right and our choice.

A VALUED LIFE, INSPIRATIONS, OUR QUEST FOR TIME, PATHS TO HAPPINESS, RATIONAL THINKING, THE GREAT BALANCING ACT, THE SIMPLER LIFE

KEEP IT SIMPLE

No Cares jpgFor some baffling reason, we have gotten caught up in an insatiable need for more stuff – from clothes, cars, houses, electronic gadgets, toys, furniture and fixtures to new hairdos, pedicures and tummy tucks. We want to possess everything imaginable and never seem to be content anymore with the basics. According to comedian George Carlin, we even need to own stuff to put our stuff into. We like to take our stuff with us wherever we go, and when we get there we have to buy more stuff so we can take it home to be with other stuff!

Our fascination with stuff, however, is not the problem. It is the lifestyle that we must pursue to acquire, maintain and manage our stuff.  All of this stuff is the antithesis to a sane, balanced and purposeful life. While we tend to believe that our happiness emanates from our possessions it is, in fact, these same possessions that become the bane and curse to a joyful and meaningful life. According to Elaine St. James, Wise men and women in every major culture throughout history have found that the secret to happiness is not in getting more but in wanting less. Only when we make it our purpose to not make stuff the measure of our contentment, will we truly understand how simply beautiful (and beautifully simple) life can be lived.

A VALUED LIFE, INNER STRENGTH, MASTERING THE DIFFICULT, RATIONAL THINKING

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF

Purpose Image 1We need to trust and believe in ourselves. As our actions are dictated by our thoughts, we must diligently and relentlessly pursue a positive, can-do attitude. If we find ourselves accepting anything less, we are holding nobody back but ourselves. To sustain positive self-beliefs, we should only use affirmative, action statements in describing ourselves: I AM ENERGETIC! I AM POWERFUL! I AM A GENIUS! I AM SUCCESSFUL! I AM UNSTOPPABLE!  We should never let negative verbiage enter our self-vocabulary when we can just as easily use more assertive words to define who we are. It is a waste of time for us to not believe in ourselves. If we are not going for more in life, then we will always be going for less. For us to get what we want from life, we must first want it; then we must go for it. In fact, we should never say that we want something and not go for it.

A VALUED LIFE, INSPIRATIONS, OUR UNIQUE PURPOSE, RATIONAL THINKING, UNIFYING PRINCIPLES

AN ALARMING PREDICTION

Our world society is heading down a very dangerous path at an alarming speed. As a collective people, we are rapidly losing the essence of collective Purpose. If each of us live without Purpose, we all live without Purpose, suffering the consequences together.  Perhaps we are approaching the end of human history. If we are indeed a post-industrial, cyber-techno society where crass commercialism and personal gratification exceed our desire to love, share and live with greater Purpose, then we will receive what we have asked for: the finalization of our right to exist as a human race. This is a harsh indictment of ourselves and an unpleasant proposition to consider but the evidence of this possibility surrounds us.

We are now living in a world dominated by greed, instant gratification, and weak cultural values. We are losing our ability to live with moral consciousness and belief in our Purpose and our Higher Self. We work ourselves to exhaustion, then have little more to show for our efforts than mounting debts and consumer products that are obsolete the next year. We educate our children; then lament their inability to reason, much less read. We have removed the front porches on our homes where we used to converse, moving inside to play with our electronic toys.

We are destroying our environment for profit and then complain that our fish have died, our beaches are gone and our parks are overcrowded. We embrace technology like a religion, then lose our jobs to the same machines that we created. We advance our scientific knowledge of ourselves while watching our inner cities decay. We sit mindlessly in front of true confession reality shows rather than read books or create art. We use video games to babysit our children, then complain that they won’t communicate with us. We spend more money on prisons than universities; then wonder why our crime rates escalate.

We have become a people of paradoxes, a people without Purpose. It is indisputable that our problems have not been solved through advances in technology, science, medicine or government. We still pursue inner peace and happiness, pursuits that still evade us despite our progress in human engineering. Nothing has really changed with all the changes made to our Selves and the world in which we live.

The reason is simple: We have forgotten how to love, give, share, or live for higher causes than ourselves. We simply do not have a Purpose that extends beyond our own needs for comfort and personal satisfaction. We are not willing to give up ourselves for something that is infinitely more important than our gratification for the moment. Our children are becoming our greatest victims, and the world they inherit may not be the world we intended or wished for them. We are wasting our Purpose and our cultural values for our expedient desires of today. We are running out of time.  But we have still time to change this.

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MANAGING A WORRY

When we choose not to take action against events that create stress in our life, we will have adopted a self-belief of powerlessness. This inaction on our part leads to anxiety, a mental state of worrying about an event, even to the point that we no longer know what we are worrying about. This worrying or feeling anxious literally shuts down our sense of control and responsibility over the perceived event. When this occurs, we really have only one solution: We must turn the worry into a problem! Once we have reframed the worry into a problem, then we have something tangible to deal with.

By re-identifying our worry as a rational and specific problem, we can literally launch an attack against it. This modifies our original self-belief of powerlessness to one of control and responsibility. Thus, we will fix the source of our worry through developing a proactive plan of action. We will feel in control again, most likely eliminating or diminishing the worry  to manageable proportions. At the very least, we will have turned our negative psychic energy into a purposeful attitude of control, which, in turn, bolsters our commitment and inner strength to overcome the problem.

A VALUED LIFE, INNER STRENGTH, OUR UNIQUE PURPOSE, RATIONAL THINKING

LISTEN ONLY TO YOURSELF

Realizing our true potential involves self-knowledge, self-acceptance and self-guidance. As we gain greater awareness of ourselves and take positive, purposeful action we begin to validate our potential. This validation of our potential creates a success-reality for us that in turn will carry us toward higher achievements. The key is to convince our Selves of this possibility. Our failure to do this is usually because we are not convinced enough. We simply don’t believe that we can do it! Essentially, we fail to produce positive results due to the self-sabotage taking place in our sub-conscious minds. There are powerful mind-triggers that hold us back just as their equally powerful mind-triggers that tell us to go for it! We listen to our negative sub-consciousness because of imbedded commands that have been programmed into us, i.e. little voices that we have heard for many years from parents, teachers, spouses, bosses and even our best friends. We don’t receive nearly as much positive reinforcement from others as we get reasons why it can’t be done: We are told that we need more experience! We have never done it before! We don’t have enough education! We can’t afford it! We have to take care of this or that problem first! We should be content with who we are! We need to take care of other responsibilities! For some bizarre reason, people just don’t like to encourage us to succeed. But the far greater problem is that we tend to listen to them. And believe them!  If we listen only to our Self  we will eventually begin to believe what we are hearing.

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SELF-ACTUALIZATION

If we take life’s events at face value, assume that they are our destiny and agonize over their presence, then we will have succumbed to a future that we no longer control. If, however, we adopt the attitude that life’s events are merely occurrences, that they deserve no more importance than what we ascribe to them, then we can become the master and life becomes our servant. Thus, self-realization is not just the identification of our most inner needs and expectations but rather their reflection in the way we feel about ourselves and in how we choose to approach life. Essentially, our Self becomes actualized through our thoughts, our self-beliefs and our actions, all of which are based upon a passionate Purpose-driven attitude.

We must recognize that we are not simply a Self, some amorphous thing that sits on a shelf in a dark corner of the room, complete in its own essence. Our Self is a living, breathing, learning, acting, doing, thinking human being. Our Self moves through life, facing continuous stimulation that requires continuous responses. It survives and prospers by coming out of the dark, out of its basic shell, and then charging into the brightness of each day, participating with great Purpose and Vision. The choice we must make is whether to let our Self turn into a Shawish-type tired, selfish clod with grievances that the world is not making us happy, or a Self  that passionately realizes what it is, what it wants and what it is going to do. Taking the higher road ultimately leads us to our Higher Self, where we never have to regret the choices that we made – because they were the choices we meant to make.

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THE WINNING ATTITUDE

Discovering our true Self comes not only from answering the hard questions about who we think we are, but rather by molding the self-image of who we want to be. Self-imagining is a powerful tool for determining our feelings about success and what we want our lives to actually look and feel like. It is well documented that if we hold ourselves in low esteem, this self-concept will generally lead to a series of life-long failures, whereas an attitude of supreme self-confidence and self-worth will generally lead to greater life success and happiness. Whether we choose to feel inferior or superior is a matter of personal choice.

This is not to imply that we can just flip a few switches and then radiate supreme confidence, but we can with practiced effort over time develop a mental picture of ourselves as achieving, purposeful individuals. As we carry a higher sense of self-confidence around with us and act as if we are unstoppable, we will find that our string of small victories will build upon themselves, creating even more momentum for success. When Dwight Eisenhower was asked how he would feel if his invasion forces had been turned back in Normandy, he said, I don’t know. I never let that thought enter my mind. We, as well, can develop mental pictures of ourselves as always winning, gaining, enjoying, succeeding, and those powerful suggestions will more often than not produce those exact results.

Conversely, we can take a self-defeated attitude. That self-suggestion will lead to failure, in itself, as that is exactly what we will have imagined for ourselves. Again, the choice is ours: We can either feel that we have a strong Purpose and a passionate life force within us, or we can feel that we are merely victims and our lives serve little meaning or Purpose. Either set of feelings will determine the results we are seeking.

MASTERING THE DIFFICULT, RATIONAL THINKING, THE GREAT BALANCING ACT, THE SIMPLER LIFE

REMOVE YOUR PSYCHO-BABBLE

We can easily recall those many instances where we felt an overload in our lives. We felt helpless trying to manage all of our self-created obligations as well as those that were imposed on us by outside forces. Over time, we became exhausted and our psychic energy was depleted. Left unattended, we will eventually experience anxiety in its mildest form to a total burnout or a nervous breakdown in its most extreme form. Our risk increases as we lose sight of ourselves, our Purpose, our Values and our Mission. We would be allowing life to manage us rather than our taking control, thus, reordering our life and our mental beliefs around those things that we can effectively manage.

The lament of modern society is that too many of us falsely believe that we must run harder and faster just to keep up. The proverbial treadmill is the greatest threat to our sense of Self as it takes us away from what is really most important to us. The mind has been scientifically proven to be capable of processing only so much information at any one point in time. There is a limit to our consciousness, and when we push that limit we are effectively shutting down our brains with an overload of psychic garbage. Our goal should be to filter this psychobabble out, before it gets a foothold in our minds. We must always recognize it for what it is: useless, non-urgent, non-productive data that crowds out the meaningful information that will bring more satisfaction to our lives.

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OVERCOMING LIFE’S UNFAIRNESS

Who said life has to be fair, kind and nice to us? Life can be difficult, and the sooner we recognize and accept this fact, the easier our life will become. In fact, just acknowledging this statement somehow makes life’s burdens easier for us to bear. As humans we crave perfection of ourselves, of others and of the world in which we live. We wish not to see death, famine or disease. We even wish that we would never run out of gas, get fat or have our children talk back to us. But this is not the way life works. The entire universe is very much out of our control. Living with these constant imperfections frustrates us. However, once we accept the premise that life is difficult, that life’s events are not always going to be in our control, then we can relax, learn to accept instead of resist and get on with the creative, intelligent management of our lives. To overcome the burden of having to constantly deal with the unfairness of life, we must first, accept this unfairness and second, rationalize how we are going to deal with it. We cannot let life’s unfairness defeat us. Rather, we need to conquer these unfair situations by designing our own set of responses to them. Life’s events may largely be out of our control, but we do have control over ourselves.

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WHAT IS THE VALUE OF MY LIFE?

When we think about the value of our life, we should think about all of our Values, both quantitatively and qualitatively. If we have any Values at all (and few of us would admit that we don’t), then we can measure the meaningfulness of our life by our specific expression of these Values. It would be ludicrous for us to claim that our life has no value and also claim to have certain wants and aspirations. If we desire anything at all, then our life has value.

The problem with those who feel that life has no value is their failure to realize what is really important to them. When we focus on what we do have, cherish or expect in life, we will immediately begin to recognize the value these things bring to our life. If we wallow in self-pity about our meaningless life, we are actually saying that we are too blind or stubborn to see what is right in front of us.

Thus, our inability to see the value of our life is due to our incorrectly focusing on what we don’t have rather than focusing on what we do have. Assuredly, problems will occur in our life that distracts us from what is most important. Events like a serious illness, a broken relationship or financial troubles will tend to command our attention and focus our thoughts in the negative areas of our life. But while these events may require a definite measure of our attention, they certainly don’t mean that the rest of our life went down the drain with them.

We have no right to say that our life has no value simply because we are getting a divorce, losing our job or even getting a terminal illness. While something of value may have been painfully lost, we must still focus on those redeeming Values that we do have.  We must recognize the full perspective of a valuable life, not concentrating only on the negative at the expense of the positive. Regardless of our setbacks, our life has tremendous value . . . as long as we accept and stay focused on the Values that belong to us and still cherish.

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BALANCING IT ALL

Our problem is in how we see the problem. We tend to compartmentalize ourselves into separate lives. We have our work life, our family life, our financial life, our social life, etc. We try to take one hat off and put another hat on as the day progresses. This segmentation of our lives into different boxes of activity creates tremendous pressure on us to shift our roles continuously. We become much like that old Ed Sullivan act where the harried performer is balancing multiple plates on long poles. As each begins to fall, he has to run frantically back and forth to keep all of them spinning at the same time.

Doing too many separate things at once keeps us in constant agitation and turmoil.  We do a poor job in each role because we are trying to do all the roles at the same time, with each role requiring a different and often conflicting allotment of ourselves and of our time. The solution is to perceive the entire landscape, as a single body of choice, not little bites of activity all occurring at the same time. We need to act as if all of our roles are one and the same, that we are only spinning one large plate at the top of one pole. Gandhi once observed, One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole.

This is the essence of balanced Purpose. Instead of thinking either/or, we must think of one and the same. As we view and interact with multiple and competing events, we should not treat them as being distinct and separate parts, but rather as a single part woven into the whole of our lives. An ancient Sufi teacher once said, You think because you understand one you must understand two, because one and one makes two. But you must also understand and. This holistic concept means we cannot see the individual parts of a picture without first seeing the whole picture.

A VALUED LIFE, INNER STRENGTH, MASTERING THE DIFFICULT, OUR QUEST FOR TIME, RATIONAL THINKING, THE GREAT BALANCING ACT

TAKING CONTROL

How can we do it all? The burden of modern civilization is that we are bombarded with choices, over laden with expectations, confounded by change and stymied by time. Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock has arrived and given us Imminent Shock. We are now faced with a world that is coming at us with blinding speed. We will often find it difficult to keep the balance within ourselves when our external world seems so chaotic and perpetually out-of-balance. But therein rests the secret: Keeping the balance within ourselves while everything around us appears to be out of control.

By focusing within, we gain clarity of Purpose. As turbulent as the outside world appears on the surface, we have the capacity to internally remain calm and balanced. Our Purpose, assisted by our Values, become our gyroscope and steadies us even as our landscape is continually moving.  By remaining attentive to what is most important to us, we can sort through the clutter in our lives and focus only upon that which really matters.

Many things will compete for our attention, but only the key priorities that are congruent with our Purpose and our Values need to be our concern, i.e. only those things that are important need to be managed and controlled. By recognizing this, we can set our own pace. And we can then control ourselves rather than allowing our external world to be in control of us.

A VALUED LIFE, MASTERING THE DIFFICULT, RATIONAL THINKING, RENEWAL AND TRANSFORMATION

WELCOMING CHANGE

Our personal growth is the process of transforming with change. As we receive Wake Up Calls at several points in our lives, we will see that our challenge will be to convert to new ways of thinking. Having a strong Purpose to propel us forward will smooth the bumps and ease the pain of the process.

So why do we dread these awakenings? Is it because we prefer our comfort zone, the life that conforms to our existing habits and allows us to take the path of least resistance? No doubt, it is difficult to let go of what we are comfortable with, but it is this process of letting go that allows us to experience and enjoy new parts of ourselves.

Without letting go, we remain in the rut. It is said that the only difference between a rut and a grave is the dimensions. And if we do not look above the edges of the rut, we will only see the walls of the grave that imprison us.

Therefore, managing change is the act of transforming by choice. This requires active decision making on our part, where we’re always seeking new solutions to our life. But if we welcome change the solutions will quickly follow.

A VALUED LIFE, PATHS TO HAPPINESS, RATIONAL THINKING, THE GREAT BALANCING ACT, THE SIMPLER LIFE, UNIFYING PRINCIPLES

WHAT IS THE SIMPLE LIFE?

A simple life is where we are simply living! It is nothing more and nothing less. When we are in touch with just the simple process of living, relishing in the uncomplicated pleasures that are abundantly available to us, we will find the inner peace that we are seeking.

A simple life focuses on what we do have rather than being critical of what we don’t have. It finds less joy in material possessions and greater joy in natural wonders, hearty laughter, warm embraces, stimulating conversations and long walks in the woods. It values ideas over things, peaceful meditation over argumentative debates, reading over television, quiet solitude over pushy crowds and lasting trends over temporary fads.

The simple life favors giving more than receiving. It is to live humbly with pride, rather than ostentatiously without virtue. A simple life knows what is most important, content with the quiet conviction of lasting principals.

A VALUED LIFE, OUR QUEST FOR TIME, PATHS TO HAPPINESS, RATIONAL THINKING, THE SIMPLER LIFE

TOO MUCH STUFF

Chill OutOur fascination with stuff is not the problem. It is the lifestyle that we must pursue to acquire, maintain and manage our stuff.  All of this stuff is the antithesis to a sane, balanced and purposeful life. While we tend to believe that our happiness emanates from our possessions it is, in fact, these same possessions that become the bane and curse to a joyful and meaningful life.

According to Elaine St. James, Wise men and women in every major culture throughout history have found that the secret to happiness is not in getting more but in wanting less.

Only when we make it our Purpose to not make stuff the measure of our contentment, will we truly understand how simply beautiful (and beautifully simple) life can be lived.

Thinking and living simply is not a character flaw, a weakness of drive and ambition; rather, it is vigorous, inspiring, courageous and reflective of our conviction of Purpose. Life and happiness is not made from stuff; it is a state of mind, made from the interwoven fabric of purposeful attitudes and the belief that life, in itself and by itself, is sufficient and plentiful. Our most meaningful rewards in life will always be the simplest ones.

OUR UNIQUE PURPOSE, RATIONAL THINKING

TOUGH QUESTIONS

From time to time, we should hit the pause button in our lives, look deep within and answer these tough questions:

Have I ever relied upon my Purpose as the basis for anything that I have done in life?

Have I ever put my Purpose to work in planning the life I will lead?

If asked to state my unique Purpose in life, could I respond with anything more than a blank and perplexed stare?

Can I recall when I last made an informed choice or decision based on the knowledge of my specific Purpose?  

Do I know for what Purpose I will choose to do anything different in the future than what I have done in the past?