Entries Tagged 'Spiritual Growth' ↓

Are you at a critical point in your life, where you are at a crossroad? Wondering which decision to make, because the next step you take could very well determine the next phase of your life?

If you’re on the path of personal growth and development, you’ll eventually reach a point where you need to make a choice. It’s easier to read about personal growth concepts than it is to apply them, isn’t it?

Small Decisions

While we make many decisions in our daily life, the majority of them aren’t very critical. For example, making a choice about where to eat, what clothes to wear, where to go next, and so on. The impact that these decisions have don’t show up immediately.

However, the cumulative effect of such decisions eventually show up weeks, months, and sometimes years down the road of your life. It’s easy to dismiss the impact of such decisions because the results don’t show up immediately.

For example, if you’ve started on a healthier diet because you want to lose weight, and you tell yourself it’s “okay” to have that chocolate bar when you’re not supposed to. After all, it’s only “one chocolate bar”… it can’t do that much harm, right?

But take that act, and multiply it over the years, combined with other less than desirable lifestyle choices, and the effect is exponential. The hard part of handling small decisions is exactly because they are small, and we don’t see their effects immediately.

So how do would one break these little bad habits, other than having iron will and unrelenting discipline?

Big Decisions

On the other hand, big decisions are those that can cause our hearts to pump, hands to sweat, and our lips to dry. We know for sure they will affect our life path. Decisions like marriage, changing jobs, putting aside what we assume to be the safe path to follow our “life purpose”, which could run contrary to what our social circle believes to be the norm.

Which decision should we make? The one that allows us to continue puttering along in our safe lives, never venturing outside of what we’ve been told to be true and the norm? Or the one that causes our knees to shake, our voice to quaver, and fear that makes us paralyzed?

How do we know “for sure” that the choice we make will be the right one? We will never truly know, until one day we look back to see the path that we have walked. And with the right perspective, we will see that every choice that we have made has always prepared us for better things in life to come… only if we choose to see it.

But what does this have to do with “Taking the Upward Path”?

Eventually, every choice we make will take us either higher, or lower. There isn’t truly any “sideways” decision. The fact is, that any “no decision” choice will eventually lead to stagnation, and from stagnation, decay. You really only have two choices…

1. Take the Upward Path, or
2. Take the Downward Spiral

Either you choose to develop into a better person, fulfill your potential and destiny, or you will eventually fall back into the mire that seems to hold people in fear, doubt and uncertainty.

There is an inner guidance within all of us, only if we seek to acknowledge that it is possible for us to have it. We all want more love, more light, more laughter and joy in our lives. We all tend to lean towards that which is bright, alive, and makes our lives better.

It takes a while to learn how to listen to that guidance, that inner nudging. But by learning to trust that inner intuition, and always keeping the higher good in mind, the Higher Path becomes clearer. It doesn’t necessarily become easier, but it becomes clearer.

In making these choices, we may have to leave the things that we cherish behind us to make space for the new and better things to come. By leaving behind that which binds us, and holds us down, we are lightened of our burdens that we have become comfortable clinging on to.

With the Higher Path in mind, all we can really do is to take one step at a time.

Because our life is lived one breath at a time.

Being grateful in your life doesn’t mean you are to be grateful for the bad things that happen.

How can anyone be grateful that something bad happened and their life has become worse?

The right understanding of being grateful is required to activate that power for creating possibility and abundance in your life.

There is a Living Consciousness and Power that is IN all things and that IS all things.

When you know how to be grateful, you are drawn nearer to the Creative Power and the Creative Power draws nearer to you. And as you move closer to the Universal Source, you are bathed in the power of Creation and Abundance that is Life. And the more you are immersed in this creative energy, the more you begin to attract the good things that you desire into your life.

How Does Being Grateful Bring You Closer To Creative Living Power?

When you give a precious gift to someone you care about and they accept it with true gratitude and joy, how do you feel? Do you want to take it back and give them something bad? Or instead, you feel a sense of joy which makes you want to give even more and better gifts?

The joy and gratitude in their eyes makes you feel good and lights that inner spark within you with a corresponding joy and happiness that they appreciate your gift. And the more they are appreciative of what you have given, the more you want to give to them even better things.

Gratitude connects you to the Living Divine Power that is the Source of Everything.

But when you give a gift and the person responds by looking down on it, chucking it carelessly away into a corner and even curses you for it, what do you feel? Would you want to joyfully give another gift to that person?

That emotion of disdain, disrespect and anger stops you from wanting to give them even better things.

In the same way, when an experience or lesson of life is sent your way to prepare you for the next step, and you disdain it, spit on it in anger, or complain about it, you have missed the pearl inside the oyster. You have thrown away the gift of life and the treasure within that will develop you and help you grow.

You would have stopped the flow of even better things into your life.

When the Student is Ready, the Teacher will Appear.

Nothing in life happens by chance. There is a gift in every moment, every experience and every person. When we are ready, we see the lesson. When we aren’t, we miss it. The lessons and gifts are always there. It is us who are not ready, or willing, to see them.

When you are grateful to Life for everything that you have, it draws Creative Consciousness nearer to you and opens the channel for increasing abundance and blessings into your life.

Being Grateful For Something Bad

The question is, how do you be grateful for something bad happening in your life?

You don’t.

You’re not grateful that something bad happened in your life. You are grateful for the good that comes out of the bad.

• You can be grateful for something that has made you stronger.
• You can be grateful for something that you have learnt about yourself that you didn’t know before, that puts you in a better position to create something good in your life.
• You can be grateful how whatever “bad” that happened opened your eyes to see your current situation isn’t what you want. It has awakened you to realize what you really do want.
• You can be grateful for being “awakened” and born into the realization that you have always had everything you needed to create a better life for yourself.

How Does Gratitude Create Possibility and Happiness?

When you are grateful, you are focused on the good things in your life. You see the good things in your life that have always been there.

As you focus on the good things in your life, your mind is infused with good pictures and your soul is bathed in good feelings. And as within, so it is on the outside. You will begin to create better things in your life, and you will begin to attract better experiences into your life because you have created those very ideas in your mind.

When you are grateful:

• You focus on the positive and good things, which create mental images of good things, which create the energy and attraction for good things into your life.
• You feel good, and vibrate with positive energy.
• Your mind is cleared of doubt, confusion, worry, anger and all the negative emotions that cloud your thinking and your judgment. You clear up your mind, and in turn, clear up your inner being.

As you become grateful for the people, abilities and things that you already have, you start to realize the possibilities available to you if you tap into these existing resources. And you always have the resources you need at this point in time.

You have the resources to move forward to the next step, and when you reach the next step, you will have the resources to take the next step, and the next and so on. In fact most of the time, the greatest resources that you have are within you.

They can be your talents, your courage to break out into a new direction, or your ability to pick yourself up when you are down. It can also be your simple ability to recognize what you already have around you that can help you achieve what it is that you want.

When you are grateful, you focus on the good things in your life, which starts the cycle and creation of better things. It only requires you to make that choice to see the other side of the coin to begin the flow of abundance and joy.

When you are Grateful, Who are you grateful to?

When you are grateful, you are grateful to Life that it has brought you lessons and gifts for your growth. And because Life brings you gifts through people and experiences, you become grateful for the flow of people and experiences in your life.

And as you grow in your awareness of the flow of life around you, you start being grateful that you have the inner resources to work with what you have to create what you want. And as you become kinder to yourself, and aligned with your true nature of creative power, you become more grateful that Life has given you everything you’ll ever need to grow to the next stage.

And when you realize this, you begin to realize that truly all things work for your growth, and you start to see how everything in your life is brought to you so that you can move into the abundance that is your natural birthright.

What Are You Grateful For?

You are grateful for two things:

1. The gifts and experiences that you already have in your life. (Your Present Life)
2. The gifts and experiences that you will receive in your life. (Your Desired Life)

Exercise To Practice Gratitude:

Look around you and at your life. What are the things that would make your life worse if you didn’t have them?

Be grateful for them.

What are the things that can make your life better because you have them?

Be grateful for them.

Write them down into your “Gratitude List“. You can start by writing at the top of the page “I am so happy and grateful that I…(have, am or do)…”

For example:

I am so happy and grateful that:

1. I have the ability to write and share what I have learnt with others.
2. I have a computer to create this blog with.
3. I have the ability to walk around.
4. I have food to eat when I am hungry.
5. I have a place to rest comfortably and securely at night.
6. I have the ability to learn new knowledge and skills.
7. I have written an article about the power of gratitude so that if you benefit from it, you might recommend it to others to read.
8. I have ….
9. I am able to ….
10. And so on

The more you write this list, the more you realize that there are truly many things in your life that you can be grateful for.

Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in your life. Good and bad are simply two sides of the same coin of your life. You have the ability to be thankful and grateful, and you have the ability to be angry and bitter. The choice has always been yours, to create more abundance and joy into your life, or the opposite.

When You Are Grateful

When you are grateful and create a place of joy and gratitude within, you are already experiencing what it means to be happy. It is something that people would pay handsomely for, but the truth is no matter how much money they can pay, they cannot buy true joy, because it exists within.

And as you practice gratitude, not only will you be happy, but you start to attract the good things that you desire in your life towards you.

“When you know that what you want comes from the invisible supply, and you focus on creating from abundance, material things will come to you”

Gratitude creates possibility because when you are focused on what is already good and what you want in your life, you are constantly creating the mental pictures of what is good and what you want. And as you focus on the resources you already have, you start seeing the possibilities of how what you already have can bring you closer to what you want.

And the more constant and steady your mental picture is, the more sure and steady you will create what it is that you want. It is impossible to focus on the negative when you are grateful, and it is what keeps you connected to the Creative Source of Thought that is Abundance.

Be Grateful You Have The Ability To Read This Article.

If you really want to start being in control of your life and deliberately creating what you want, then it’s a good idea to start developing your self-awareness.

What Are The Benefits of Developing Your Self-Awareness?

While there are numerous benefits to developing your self-awareness, the main one is when you are aware of your thoughts, emotions and actions, it serves as the foundation for your ability to develop yourself and create what you want in your life.

What’s So Important About Being Aware of Your Thoughts, Emotions and Actions?

Your thoughts, emotions and actions are the driving force behind everything that happens in your life. Your thoughts about something cause you to experience emotions. If you think that something is good, you experience good feelings. If you think that something is bad, you experience bad feelings. And the way you feel about something inadvertently affects the way you act towards something, causing results to happen in your life.

Your Thoughts - When you are aware that you are thinking of something that is moving you further away from where you want to be, it puts you in a position to deliberately change what you are thinking to something that moves you closer.

Your Emotions - When you are feeling down, and you realize that you are feeling down, you can change your emotional state by changing your thoughts from what is making you feel bad, to something that makes you feel better.

Your Actions - When you are taking actions that are bringing you further away from what you want, and you realize what you are doing, you are in a better position to choose a different course of action to bring you closer to where you want.

If you are NOT aware of your self, and who you are “being”, then it can seem like the destiny of your life is out of your hands. It might seem like you are caught in the trap of having no control over the outcome of your life. You feel like just another “dot” in the teeming mass of humanity, living one day to the next, wishing you could have a different life but with no idea that you really could have it!

If YOU are not in charge of what you’re thinking, feeling or doing, then who is?

What Is Self-Awareness Anyway?

Self awareness is a state of being where you are aware of your current thoughts, emotions and actions as they happen in real-time. You are aware of what you are thinking, you are aware of what you are feeling and you are aware of what you are doing.

Most people aren’t able to exist in a continual state of self-awareness 24 hours a day. Neither would you want to. If you’re working in a job which in which you have to perform duties that require high levels of concentration and expertise, it’s far better to be fully present when doing your job than being aware of you doing your job. Doing a job well usually requires a person to be in the state of “flow” where everything comes naturally.

The purpose of being self-aware is so that when you are moving away from what you really want, you can cause a change to move closer to what you want.

How Do You Develop Your Self Awareness?

A Thought is a Thing

To develop your self-awareness, it requires you to be able to examine your thoughts, emotions and actions as a third party. It requires you to separate yourself from the entity that plays out the thoughts, experiences the emotions and does the actions. It means that you have to realize that truly, a thought is a thing.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
William Shakespeare

If you’re asking the question of “If I’m not my thoughts, then Who Am I?“, the simplest and shortest answer right here and now is that you’re the Creator of your thoughts, you’re the Soul, the Individual Consciousness behind the everyday activities and events that are being played out on the stage of what you call your life.

Not only are you an actor on the stage of life, you are also the director of your play. You have the ability to choose what kind of life you live, and you have the inherent power to create the very life you want.

But I digress…

A way to develop your self-awareness is to review your thoughts, or have them reflected to you. For example:

1. Somebody telling you that your actions are causing certain results in your life, causing you to check your thoughts, emotions and actions to see if that’s what you really want in your life.
2. Review your own thoughts, emotions and actions in a personal and private manner through the process of journaling.

The first method usually requires you to have someone you trust to tell you the truth, no matter how painful or damaging to your ego it might be. It’s usually a painful process, but it does help for some people. Look at Alcoholic Anonymous as an example.

The only problem is, if the person you’re getting advice or “reflection” from isn’t a good source, then the advice you get might just screw you up even further. It’s like a drug addict telling you it’s ok to take 1 shot of heroin instead of 20, because 20 will kill you, while 1 will only make you high?!

The second method is far more private, and versatile. Keeping a journal allows you to record your inner thoughts and emotions over a period of time. If undesirable events are happening over and over again in your life, you’re able to better identify what thoughts, actions and emotions are causing it. When you do, it gives you a chance to get out of the cycle of repeated behavior.

On the side of the coin, if desirable events are happening over and over again, you can identify the causes and continue creating those events again and again. It gives you the opportunity to be aware of what you’re doing “right”, and build on it.

What Worked For Me

What worked for me in developing my self-awareness was the process of journaling. In my journal, I would record my thoughts, emotions and events that played out during my day. It started more as an outlet for my thoughts, joys, frustrations, imagination, excitement, accomplishments, setbacks and other things that happened in my life. It was a place that I could just say whatever I wanted without holding anything back.

Over a period of time, when I went back to read my thoughts, I started to ask myself what caused me to think, feel and do things the way I did then. Without the emotions, events and deadlines swirling around me, I was able to examine my thoughts from a different perspective with more objectivity.

As I started reviewing my journal, I began to become more conscious and aware of the thoughts, emotions and actions as they happened in real-time. And when I recognized thoughts that were similar as those I had experienced previously, I could more or less anticipate the results of what would happen.

It’s easier to recognize something when you’ve seen it before somewhere.

I became more aware of myself. Hence the term “self-awareness”. Over time, the process of keeping a journal developed into a way for me to examine my thoughts, develop ideas further, look for areas of where I have grown and for areas of where I would like to grow.

Personally, I’ve found the process of journaling pretty useful in aiding my development.

Developing Your Self-Awareness Through Journaling

If you want to develop your self-awareness, you might want to start keeping a journal or diary of some sorts. A place where you can record patterns in your life, and become aware of them. The purpose of keeping your journal is to:

• Record your thoughts, emotions or actions that you took, and what happened as a result
• Examine how you came to certain conclusions
• Develop ideas further
• Identify areas of knowledge or skill you want to improve
• Explore how certain ideas might change the way you view life, and subsequently how your actions might change
• Many other areas that are only limited by your imagination

And if you want to keep it private, you could do so in a couple of ways:

1. Lock away your written journal
• Keep a paper journal/diary and lock it in your drawer
2. Use a software program like Microsoft Word and save it somewhere on your computer.
• You can make it safe by using the security function, where a password is required to open the file
3. Use a specialized journaling software like The Journal, which is what I use now after trying all the previous methods.
• There are various add-on functions, but I pretty much use only the basic version which cost me a one time payment of $39.95.

What To Expect

In the process of journaling, you’ll be recording both happy and sad events, things on both side of the emotional spectrum from good and bad. If you have more happy events than sad, then you’re probably closer to where you want to be. If you have more sad or negative events in your life, then it simply means that you have a little more room for growth in your life.

You might be disconcerted, upset or angry with yourself when reviewing your negative journal entries about doing the things that you did. That’s the normal reaction of what most people might feel when reviewing areas in which they have room for improvement.

That’s OK, because it’s your Emotional Guidance System (EGS) that’s telling you what you’re reviewing is NOT what you really want in your life.

When you feel GOOD about something, it’s your EGS indicating that what you’re experiencing is something that you DO want in your life.

However, when it comes to your Emotional Guidance System, you have to be aware of the difference between your inner feelings and your physical experience. Just because your body feels good from taking drugs doesn’t mean you really feel good inside. That’s where your level of conscious awareness comes in to help you differentiate between what your inner being is telling you, and what your physical body is telling you.

The most important thing to realize is that you’re keeping a journal so that you can grow and develop yourself. If you knew THEN what you know NOW, you wouldn’t have done the things that you did, right? So while you might still feel upset, realize that you’re becoming better and starting the process of growth and change in your life.

And 5 years from now, you’ll look back and be amazed at how much you’ve grown and changed over the years.

The ability to memorize and regurgitate can be taught and learnt, but the ability to understand comes only to those who seek the truth behind what they learn.

Do you get it?

It’s a simple question that consists of only six words:

“What is the meaning of life?”

Yet it is the one question that mankind has sought the answer to for centuries. Philosophers have done their best to answer it. Great thinkers from time immemorial have sought the answer. Almost everyone will have asked this question in some form or other in the course of their life on earth, yet none have found one answer that satisfies all.

Is this then such an important, crucial question that needs to be answered, if there is no one definite answer?

Why do we even ask this question in the first place? Wouldn’t our lives be better off if we just continued doing what we were doing, and living the way we are living?

The time and energy spent in trying to answer this question in our own lives might be put to better use in doing something worthwhile.

Wait a minute…. our time and energy might be put to better use in doing something worthwhile?

Isn’t that the reason behind why we want to know the meaning of life? So that our lives can be worthwhile and meaningful?

Answering the Timeless Question

How does one even go about answering this question in the first place? And if we find an answer, how do we know it’s the right answer?

Let’s look at what we are trying to accomplish by answering this question. What we are really looking for is to feel that we are doing what we are supposed to be doing. That we exist for a purpose.

We search for the answer to this question because we desire to know that our lives have been spent doing something worthwhile, and that at the end of our lives, we didn’t just live a futile existence that meant nothing.

The only way that I know how to validate the answer that comes to me is by the way I feel about the answer. If it doesn’t resonate with me, then no matter how true the answer is for someone else, it isn’t true for me.

No matter how intellectually “right” it may seem, if the answer doesn’t touch or resonate with my inner being, then it doesn’t make sense to accept that answer. Because if I were to follow that answer, it would lead me down a path that doesn’t resonate with my soul, and at the end of the journey, I would have lived a life that made good intellectual sense but not good emotionally and spiritual sense.

My life would have been right on the outside, but it would have been empty on the inside.

If I were to decide on an answer about the meaning of life, it would have to resonate both intellectually as well as emotionally/spiritually. It would have to be one with me, and I would have to be one with it.

Answering the Question

When we ask what the meaning of life is, we have to understand the context from which we will be answering the question. The question about meaning and purpose of life are tightly intertwined. When we understand and know our purpose, fulfilling that purpose gives our life meaning.

Without purpose, life would be a random, meaningless meandering from one place to another. By the time we reach the end of our journey, we’d have done very little worth remembering in our life.

And that’s we’re really trying to accomplish when we seek the meaning of life. We want to know if we are worth something, that we matter and make a difference in our short time on earth. Whether the difference had been positive, or negative, we want to know if our life matters.

To answer the question about the meaning of life, the biggest picture or context that we can look at is life itself.

How does life work? How does nature work? What’s happening in the bigger scheme of life?

Nature herself is growing, evolving and adapting all the time. Nothing rests. There is movement in the day, there is movement in the night. From one angle, we could say that nature is about survival of the fittest. From another angle, we could also say that nature is about evolution, growth and adapting to change.

Everything in nature is beautifully made for a purpose. Everything exists in a balanced ecosystem. When that ecosystem is unbalanced, nature finds balance by adapting through destruction and re-creation. There is always growth, there is always the movement towards achieving balance and there is a cycle of life and death. A cycle of creation into destruction back into re-creation once more.

So it goes the same in human society. There is life, and death, and then new life is born again. There is a constant process of change and growth, as humanity seeks ever higher levels of living. Each new invention by humanity leads to the next invention. And the next invention leads to the next one, and so on. While there is growth and evolution, there is also always a movement towards finding balance in life.

When we realize that we are part of life, and that life is a part of us, and that because we are a part of life, we have the traits and characteristics of life.

We have an innate desire to be better. We desire to improve and to experience more life. The desire to experience more life can be in the mind, it can be in the body, or it can be in the soul. No one wants to be left behind when the train leaves the station, but in the pursuit of the train, we also seek balance in our lives. And when we have experienced as much as we can experience in the physical world, we desire to understand more about the life beyond the physical.

So How Do We Find Meaning?

We find meaning when we find joy and purpose in what we do. When we know what we do contributes in a meaningful way to the bigger picture of life, we can see how what we do has a purpose.

To find meaning in life, is to find your purpose in life. To find your purpose in life, is to understand where you fit in life. To find where you fit in life, is to understand what your talents, abilities, gifts and strengths are. To find where you can best use your gifts is to find where you have joy in the expression of your gifts. And when you have found joy in the expression of your gifts, you come back to the beginning of the circle where you started.

Where you find Joy, is where you find Meaning.

“When You Know Who You Are, the Power and Potential that You Have, and Have Practiced Your Ability to Express that Power, You Will Dare to Expect to Receive What It Is That You Desire in Life.”

Darbright

If there is one “Secret” to self-improvement and getting the things you want in life, I’d have to boil it down to one thing and one thing only.

Conscious Awareness.

I initially had an interesting time breaking down the definition of “Conscious Awareness” into the basic components. When I first came across the term “conscious awareness”, I accepted it for what it was until I asked myself, “Why ‘Conscious’ and ‘Awareness’?”.

Is there a difference between the two?

In a word, yes. In more than a word, consciousness and awareness are linked, and interdependent. However, what they do imply are two different things.

Consciousness

The way I understand it is that Conscious in the simplest term means “awake”. When we are conscious, we are “awake” and know something is happening around us. You may not know exactly what is happening, but you ARE conscious that something IS happening.

The path to attracting what we desire into our lives and personal enlightenment begins with the state of being conscious. Not conscious in the physical sense of moving around in your body, but being awakened in your mind that there is more to you than just your physical body.

An example that I could use would be someone just waking up from a coma.

Imagine this man (or woman), who’s been in a coma for all his life, and has just woken up. He’s starting to stir, and starts mumbling something that no one really understands. He’s becoming “conscious”, he’s awakening from that coma of which he’s been in for all his life.

Is he aware of what’s happening around him? At this point in time, not really. Is he conscious? Yes. But is he really aware of what’s happening and going on around him? Not really.

The first step to becoming conscious is to realize that you do have control over your mind, and that you are more than just a physical body walking around this planet. You have untapped power and potential that you could harness, if you were only to realize and start developing it.

Awareness

So what’s the difference between being conscious and aware?

From my current understanding, consciousness and awareness are linked, but they imply different things.

To be aware requires that a state of consciousness has to be present first. Without consciousness, awareness isn’t possible.

A person might react to external stimuli, but they may not be aware they are “reacting” towards external stimuli. They have no conscious control over deciding on “how” to respond to an external stimuli, but instead react from previous social and mental programming.

I can understand that this might seem a bit “deep” for some people, while for others, it will already be “obvious”, but that’s because of your exposure and existing awareness of such knowledge.

A good example to help understand the difference between reacting and responding would be driving and having someone cut into your lane in front of you. The typical reaction would be to get angry, say some really unsavory words, sound the car horn in anger, flash your headlights, etc etc. That’s a reaction.

Responding would be being aware of the emotion of anger, yet choosing the actions that follow from the moment of that incident. Instead of losing control and reacting from anger, you could still be angry but choose a different course of action, like shifting your awareness from being angry to that of continuing to drive safely.

You could still toot your horn, flash your headlights, but it would only be because you choose to, not because you were reacting from the emotion of anger.

However, regardless of whatever is said, this is a basic step towards being in control of your life situation. When a person is consciously aware, then a state of being able to “deliberately” create the situations and circumstances to attract what you want in life is possible.

The Big Question

There’s a big question to be answered by you, by me, by all of us.

Are You Consciously Aware?

When I first learnt about conscious awareness, I felt that “Yeah, I am” (And of course, I later learnt that while I knew the concept of being consciously aware, I was only starting to become conscious. Talk about ego. *LoL*). However, as I continued my studies and journey, I realized that I was still “reacting” to certain external stimuli, and not “responding”.

It’s not easy to get to this state, and I’m still discovering certain beliefs and reactions that have been programmed into my subconscious. However, once I’m aware that I’m reacting, I’m then in a position to ‘reprogram’ myself to react differently the next time something similar happens. The thing that next has to be defined is the “how” I want to respond.

And that’s what people who create their reality, and attract what they want in their life do, isn’t it?

It seems as if they are able to say the right thing, take the right action, “be” the right person to attract favorable circumstances into their lives. It’s because they are consciously aware of themselves and what’s happening around them, and inside them. They live life from the inside out, expressing who they are and coming across as real and authentic because that’s who they are being.

Although a key aspect of self-improvement is Conscious Awareness, I’d have to say that gaining conscious awareness is more of the foundation on which personal development and improvement is built. It’s only the beginning to the amazing journey of living an incredible life.

When one becomes consciously aware, you realize that truly anything in life is possible. It becomes a case of expanding your awareness, developing your mind by building the right thoughts through ‘right’ education, and training yourself to follow through on your decisions.

Anything is possible, even creating the situation and circumstances of attracting wealth in all its aspects into your life.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments on this.

In the pursuit of having more in life, do you really want wealth, or do you really want more riches? What’s the difference, you ask?

How we normally define wealth or riches is by the amount of tangible, material possessions that we have.

For example, by the amount of cash you have in your bank account, the kind of car you drive, the type of house you live in, even the neighborhood of your residence. Sometimes, you can even be defined by which school your children go to.

By definition of the majority, someone with all these material possessions would be defined as rich and wealthy. But are they really the one and the same?

Total Wealth

It may merely be semantics, but understanding the essence is of greater importance than the words used. Being rich is defined by your outer possessions. Yet being wealthy includes not only your material possessions, but your complete state of being.

Being wealthy includes not only the material possessions of house, car, money and others, but also by the state of your physical health, the relationships you have in your life, the emotional, mental and inner states of your being. In other words, wealth refers to having everything in your life that makes you happy, thankful, and complete.

There are people who are rich, but have spent their youth and health in pursuit of money. There are people who have great relationships, but not the money to make the lives of their loved ones better. There are people who are healthy, but are constantly in emotional and mental turmoil by the state of their finances and relationships.

True wealth includes all these things:

• Physical, tangible wealth in the form of money and material possessions
• Food for the mind, to develop and nurture your intellect and consciousness
• Love Both For and From others for the nourishment of the soul

Yet, in order to have all these things, the one defining element required in our society is having the use of money and things.

Without money, you cannot pay for your house and food on the table. Without money, you cannot have access to items, places and events that expand your mind and consciousness. Without money, you are not in the position to express your love and gratitude in practical terms to the people you love.

Living A Complete Life

In essence, a truly complete and wealthy life in today’s society would include all the elements of:

• Life for the Body
• Life for the Soul
• Life for the Intellect

And this is where having the knowledge and ability to acquire wealth is so important. Without it, we cannot really live a complete and growing life.

If you seek to pursue the path of inner growth and peace, the physical body still requires food and shelter. If you seek the path of dedicating your life for the good of others, with the use of money and things you can amplify your power to do greater good. And if you seek to develop your intellect, of course, you still need to pay for food on the table and the roof over your head.

Unless you intend to live in the wild, sleep under the stars, and survive in nature without access to civilization, you would require the use of money.

Finding your life purpose is about finding who you really are. Not the person that you are being now, but the person that you are going to be. The person that is the “Highest, Grandest Vision” of who you really are.

Now what does that mean?

Have you ever been helped by someone who’s mediocre, takes pleasure in pulling others down into misery, and generally makes life lousy for other people? I’m taking a shot in the dark, but my best guess is that you probably haven’t. And if you haven’t, you’ll understand why I say that you’re actually fulfilling your purpose when you make the best possible use of your talents, gifts and abilities as you know how right now.

By being the best “you”, you are helping to fulfill what you were placed here on earth to do.

Being mediocre never really helped anybody, especially yourself. Unless you’re the sort of person who takes joy in the misery of others, which is highly unlikely since you’re reading this post about finding your life purpose, and looking at personal development articles. On the other hand, we could be in a state that we’re not even aware of!

In the process of discovering yourself, you’ll realize that each and everyone of us has characteristics that make us unique. You’ll also realize that you do have talents and abilities, and combined with experience, education and your skills, you develop your strengths.

Strengths can be and are developed over time. Even though you may not have a personal strength that you desire to have right now, if you gain the experience, education and have the desire, you can develop your skills and knowledge to a point where it becomes a strength for you.

For example, let’s take someone who has no knowledge of how to use computers and create a blog on the internet. Well, tell me who gets born knowing how to write and create websites on the internet? Obviously, no one, right?

If you have the ability to read, and the ability to comprehend, you already have the necessary ingredients to start something. That doesn’t mean you are able to immediately build a blog or website, but you do have the raw ingredients necessary.

With your ability to read and comprehend, you can start to get the proper “education” on how to build a website. With the education, you also gain the “experience” in trying to put a website together, and in the process learn the ins and outs of the cyberspace world. As you practice your knowledge and use of software, writing articles, etc, you develop your “skill” in building a website.

Over a period of time, trial and error, you build your expertise and skill in building websites on the internet. Knowing how to build a website then becomes one of your strengths. But you see how all this started with your simple ability to read and comprehend?

This process is something that we all go through in all aspects of developing skill and expertise. It can apply to building a business on the internet, it can also apply to building a business in the brick and mortar world. While it’s seemingly obvious that this is what happens, having a conscious understanding of it helps to bring patience to the process of developing expertise in any area.

Of course, the development of a strength is made easier when you are developing a natural gift or ability, like singing or running or having a “green thumb”, for example. Having the latent capacity to be good at something makes developing your strengths easier, but isn’t necessarily a prerequisite to build your strength.

In fact, if you have been alive for some time and not in a state of coma since birth, you would very likely have developed some strengths already.

As you start to uncover your gifts and develop your strengths, you’ll find that there are naturally some areas that you are drawn towards. These are your interests and passions, that when you combine together with your strengths, make it easier for you to express your life purpose.

Your Strengths and Weaknesses

As you start to uncover your strengths and weaknesses, you’ll also start to understand what you can naturally do to express the creation of your purpose. You don’t see an elephant trying to fly, do you? Or an eagle trying to swim? They do what comes to them naturally, because that’s who they are. They are just “being”.

The difference with human beings is that we are endowed with consciousness and intelligence. We tend to foul things up when too much intelligence is involved, because we can question and poke holes into almost everything with our mind, and in the end make our own lives miserable.

Our Mind Is A Tool that Creates our Experience

I’m not saying you should be dumb and stop thinking, but just realize that the mind can be equally destructive as it can be constructive.

So How Do I Define What A Strength Is?

A strength consists of 4 components:
1. Your natural talent & abilities
2. The education you had
3. Your experiences in life, either working or otherwise
4. Your skills

Natural talent and abilities are something that you tend to do so naturally you don’t realize that you’re good at it. It happens to everybody all the time, when they are able to do something so well that when someone else who tries to do the same screws things up, they don’t “understand” why other people just can’t do something so simple!

Your education helps to build your strength, because it gives you additional background and knowledge that others might not have. With proper and deliberate practice, you can build a competency based on your education simply because everyone else doesn’t know what you know!

Your experiences in life contribute in the building and development of your strengths. Experiences give you a real life participation to understand the actual events and requirements to make something happen. It’s easy to say “build an internet business”, but it’s another thing to actually do it. The detailed work and implementation involved comes with experience.

Skills are something that we aren’t born with. Skills are abilities that you hone and polish over time, continually and deliberately refining your ability to execute till you do it unconsciously with a high degree of competency. Like Tiger Woods, who practices almost from morning to night to hone his skills in golf, or Michael Jordan who would spend time building and developing his basic basketball skills to high degrees of competency.

When you are able to combine these 4 components together, that’s where you get your strengths.

Emotional Resonance

When you can combine the understanding of your context, together with your strengths, and feel strongly about it, you’ve found your purpose. It’s something that you choose based on your understanding of your life. It’s not something written in the sky, but something you feel joy and bliss in pursuing and expressing.

Some exercises to help find your Strengths and Purpose:

These are some exercises you can use to find your Strengths and your Purpose.

Exercise No. 1: Finding Your Strengths

For a period of 2 weeks to a month, every day I would write down what I thought my strengths and talents are. I would take note of what I did naturally, and what I enjoyed doing. Things that I felt that I was either already good at, or that I could become good at with some practice and education.

During the process, you’ll experience several “aha!” moments about what your strengths are, and you’ll find that you tend to write certain things over and over again, indicating to you that you already “know” your strengths, just that you weren’t consciously aware of them.

Exercise No. 2: Crafting Your Purpose

I found this exercise that I used to craft my purpose. It isn’t fool-proof, but it’ll help you gain a better understanding of what your mental model of life is by the type of “life purpose” you come up with.

What I did was, based on my understanding of life and nature, I wrote on a piece of paper (you can use your favorite word processor like Word, notepad, etc) and kept writing variations of my purpose.

Start at the top with “My Purpose in Life is…” and then write what comes to your mind below. You can write as many variations, or different purposes as you can think of.

As for me, I wrote until I came up with something that I felt served a higher purpose which included the good of myself and everyone involved. I continued writing until I felt an emotional response within myself to the idea/purpose that I wrote. And once I felt that, I knew that I was near the point of hitting what I felt my life purpose was.

Summary

With the combination of these two, I got a better picture of what my purpose was. To be honest, I still had to continue shaping and refining my purpose over the following weeks as I got to understand myself and the events that occurred around me better.

Eventually, I reached a purpose statement for my life that included everything I desired, gave me meaning and direction, used my strengths, benefited myself as well as others.

If you haven’t already found your purpose, you might want to test out the exercises I mentioned for yourself.

Before you can actually start finding your Purpose in Life, it would help to understand what “Purpose” really is.

Otherwise, you may not even recognize it when you find it!

What does “Purpose” mean, exactly?

To understand and define your life purpose, it helps to understand the context in which you are working in. Using different frames of reference to derive your Life Purpose would result in you coming up with unique results.

What do I mean? First of all, let’s understand what context means.

A context is defined as:

“The circumstances in which an event occurs; a setting.”

And what does “purpose” mean?

“The object toward which one strives or for which something exists; an aim or a goal“

For example, a student’s purpose is defined by his or her context, which is to study and get good grades. A policeman’s purpose is to maintain law and order in society. A fireman’s purpose is to extinguish fires and help out the public. A teacher’s purpose is to educate and “teach” his or her students.

The issue with finding purpose is related to what your current role in life is, and understanding who you are. If you identify yourself with your role as an employee, by default the purpose of the company becomes your purpose. The same thing goes for identifying yourself as a parent, because then your purpose naturally becomes the purpose of a parent, which is to nurture, nourish, educate and best prepare your child for life.

The problem comes when your temporary role as an employee or parent changes, and the purpose that you have identified yourself with no longer exists. You lose your “purpose” in life. (That may be a reason why some mothers feel lost and depressed when their children grow up and move on in life?)

Understanding that many roles in human society are temporary, defining my life purpose became a search for something that would stand the test of time and change. I wanted something that would be constant as I moved throughout the various stages of my life. Perhaps it has something to do with my idea of a life purpose being my purpose for life. (no pun intended )

The Context of Life

One of the clues that helped me to define my life purpose was to look at nature. If I were to have a life purpose, then obviously my purpose had to relate to something bigger than myself. The very idea of a life purpose implies that I was born for a reason, and came to earth to do “something”.

Taking a hint from nature, you can see that life is constantly evolving and growing. Nature doesn’t stop. It just grows and evolves over time to adapt to changing conditions.

However, having the purpose of continual growth and evolution is so general. It’s hard to make it practical in every day life. How does one continue to grow and develop? What does one grow and develop into? The idea of continual growth and development is a good purpose to have, so how does one incorporate something so general into your Life Purpose?

This is where the concept of having two levels of Life Purpose comes in useful:

1. The Higher Life Purpose
2. The Self-Chosen Life Purpose

The Higher Life Purpose

The Higher Life Purpose refers to the higher levels of human purpose. It refers to the part of your Purpose of Life which remains constant and unchanging throughout your lifetime. For me, it included the following:

▪ Growth, Development, Evolution

With the understanding of nature, it only makes sense that personal growth and development would be a core purpose for me. The moment one stays stagnant, it’s already a step backwards. The world is moving and evolving all the time, and continually developing myself to the fullest extent of my potential allows me to continue improving and moving on to higher stages of life.

▪ Mutual Benefit (Benefit for everyone involved)

Understanding that we don’t exist independently of other people, creating value and helping others would be part of my Higher Life Purpose as well. The form of value creation would then be determined by my Self-Chosen Life Purpose.

Whatever value that I create has to benefit both others and myself. It doesn’t make sense for me to create something that benefits me at the expense of others, because it would create a negative feedback that would eventually affect whatever I created for myself. At the same time, it doesn’t make sense for me to create something that benefited others at my expense. I wouldn’t be around very long if this happened! With this understanding, whatever I did would have to be beneficial to BOTH others as well as myself.

(This understanding of my Higher Life Purpose was part of the reason why I started this Blog site “Personal Development With A Purpose”. )

▪ Making the Best Use of My Potential

Each of us is born with unique gifts and talents. Just because one doesn’t know what that unique gift or talent is doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It could just be lying below the surface of your consciousness, and with a little self reflection you might just find out what it is.

I realized that when I did something, and did it well, I usually found satisfaction and pleasure. If part of having a Life Purpose was to have meaning and joy in life, then making the best use of my talents, abilities and potential would also have to form part of my Life Purpose.

Natural talents and abilities can be used across more than one vocation. Using natural athleticism for example, a person could be involved in tennis, or basketball, or soccer, etc. Such gifts can be expressed through different forms, although the essence remains the same. The actual expression of your individual gifts and talents are determined by your Self-Chosen Life Purpose.

The Self-Chosen Life Purpose

The various aspects of Higher Life Purpose are generally quite vague, and quite impractical to implement. Not that they are useless, but they have to be relevant to existing in our society and world today.

As far as I know, there isn’t a God given, ordained life purpose for me. If there is, I’ve yet to hear directly from a booming voice in heaven saying,

“Darbright, Your Life Purpose Is… (To be filled in with my divinely ordained life purpose).”

If I do hear a booming voice however, I might just fall off my chair…! However, if you believe in the existence of Free Will, being able to choose your Life Purpose does make sense.

Choosing my life direction and purpose then came to a synergy between my personal characteristics (strengths, talents, abilities, passions, interests, etc) and creating something of value that could benefit both myself and everybody else involved.

This is where knowing your Self comes in useful. It’s about finding a fit between your talents and providing something of value in this world.

If your talent is musical, you may find joy expressing yourself through singing, composing, playing an instrument or something that utilizes your talent. If your talent is in teaching and education, then perhaps you may choose a life purpose in teaching. If your talent is in maintaining order and discipline, then perhaps you may choose expressing yourself as a Law Enforcement Officer?

There really is no “right” or “wrong” answer here. Ultimately, when there is a fit between you and your chosen purpose, you’d find a sense of fulfillment and joy.

Summary

By separating my Life Purpose into two categories, I have a Higher Life Purpose that stays constant throughout my life, and a Self-Chosen Life Purpose that is adaptable to changes in human society and conditions.

My Higher Life Purpose would then be the driver behind my decisions for my Self-Chosen Life Purpose, because it would be my purpose for my lifetime.

When you choose your Life Purpose, it might help to understand what aspects are going to stay with you throughout your life, and what aspects would change as you go through the different life stages.

One thing for sure, modern day society is constantly changing and the Self-Chosen Purpose you have may become obsolete. But when you have your Higher Life Purpose, and a good knowledge of yourself, creating another Self-Chosen Purpose then becomes a matter of what you choose to do, and how you choose to express yourself in this world.