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“With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
As humans we have a gift that some would say sets us above all the other creatures on our planet. We have the gift of thought, of reasoning, of understanding, of a highly developed brain - but some of us cease to develop when we struggle for petty comforts, and false security.
Because there is no time for thought in such a lifestyle, we lose sight of the truth. That the right to life is there for us to use not just to admire figuratively from a distance. That we can evolve beyond hatred, revenge and the desire for power, where the mind can be trained to cast off barriers between the flesh and the spirit to join together balanced in a harmonious whole.
I remember reading a paranormal story about a real documented event during the First World War, where a group of French soldiers see a strange light in the sky on the battlefield that causes them to drop their weapons and walk away from the fight. They were nearly shot for desertion until it was discovered that the same thing had happened to the German forces. Within 24 hours similar reports were coming from all over Europe.
No one was ever sure what happened in the sky on that dark November night, but 1,000 men did sense or see something - they caught sight of an unexplained truth. In any event, it is a matter of public record that for a while men could not kill each other. And in the end, if all the accounts are false, that is miracle enough.
Some are even worried that our attraction to violence will bring about the end of our civilisation as we know it. There are countless theories as to the end of our world, and one of the most popular ones has undoubtedly been the Long Countdown of the Maya. Although the National Geographic has published an article about the finding of an unprecedented Maya mural that contradicts the 2012 "Doomsday" myth, many still believe that on December the 21st in 2012 the world will end.
Excavations have shown that the Maya had a highly developed philosophy of the cosmos. They saw the cosmos as the true mother of things. Consequently, the Maya thought the cosmos is all around us, and within us. Every plant, every animal, every man is sheer Cosmos.
Within this context some have put a positive spin on the end of the world. It has prompted New Age philosophers to say:
December the 21st in 2012 will be the day on which this inner cosmos is reconnected to the divine outer cosmos. The Sun will mount its unique position to form a gateway between the Universe and the souls of every living creature on Earth. Our linear conception of time will crumble, and with it, fear and hatred will vanish. It will be purification at it's very best, when everyone is soaked in cosmic understanding and divine love.
So there it is: on December the 20th, you'll kick your dog, yell at your spouse and cheat on cards. But a day later, you'll be calmed down into a peaceful person with nothing but love and understanding to guide you in life. Even though it's mid-winter, it'll be summer of love for all humanity.
Sometimes it can seem we live in a world where the real and unreal live side by side, where substance is disguised as illusion and the only explanations are unexplainable. But to separate truth from fantasy we have to break through the web of experience and open our mind to things beyond our belief. We need to keep an open mind, because sometimes from a distance our eyes can still lie to us even though we know the truth. Sometimes our eyes see what we are meant to see, or only what we believe exists.
Some things can seem so unusual to our perception that perhaps even the words true and false seem inadequate. In some instances, may be we shouldn't say if something is true or not, but simply beyond our belief - because our dreams can turn to reality when we change our belief system.
It would be great if we could all be given an instruction manual for life when we're born, but that's not the way things are. What we can be certain of, however, is that narrow minds and ignorance breed fear, conformity, immorality. These are heavy burdens, great drainers of creative energy, and when we are drained of creative energy we do not create. Even when we procreate we do not create. Everything we do seems lifeless and dull.
Life is about discovery
We live in a vast amazing world where so many things happen that we don't know or understand, and throughout our life journey we constantly seek personal answers to timeless questions. For example, I love science; it cannot quantify everything but it opens up a wonderful universe of possibilities and probabilities to help us in our quest to get to the heart of the world around us.
I love to learn new things and to go on a walk of discovery through the mind; it makes every day feel like opening a new present of "What's going to happen today?" that I get to explore and discover. And when we share our stories of discoveries the potential is reborn for someone else to discover them anew.
I love learning because it makes me better. The better I get, the closer I get to my goals. The better love coach I become and the more people I can help. That is one of my greatest passions.
During the period I was unhappy with my life, I realised I was caught up in this situation or environment because of me. This isn't about blame, but if you've surrounded yourself with negative belief systems (whether this be negative people, negative situations, etc.) that it will get you into alignment with the unhappy state you're in. The way to change this is to creating a vision that inspires you.
You have to take time (even if it seems like a waste of time) to do the things you love everyday. Shifting your vibrations into a state of bliss and passion has a very powerful effect. The more that you can stay in that state, the more your environment will change.
You have to do something to make yourself feel good and be okay with that and not feel guilty about it - you're supposed to feel good and enjoy it. And work towards something that really inspires you - I can't stress that enough - following your passion is what it's all about. Take time everyday to honour your passions, and put time into them, and you will see that things will start to change for the better in your life.
When you align everything you do during the day with your passion, then every goal and every dream you have becomes a reality. Magical things begin to happen when you know the next level of your higher purpose and are in alignment with it - that there is no inner conflict about moving forward.
It has been said that when you follow your bliss, success (be it in whatever form you want - money, love, self-improvement) will follow. This is often true. However, you also need to be in complete resonance with your path and have a template to follow to market it in a way that resonates with your soul.
This is a type of magic that doesn't just magically fall into your lap (although as you progress it might seem to do so as things will get easier and easier for you) but it's a type of magic that needs you to act.
Your higher purpose will resonate with you completely, yet you may just have some fears about it. I hope that if you've been hesitating on taking the first step toward the real you, you can remove all of your roadblocks and fears to get busy living.
Taking the first step isn't always easy. Many people carry mental/emotional "wounds" from prior traumatic life events. Healing from these events requires support, and great mental and physical courage to take that first step to overcome them. It takes a complete transformation of your mindset during the devastating times in your life, to allow you to move on with your life by forgiving the people or situations who have hurt you in the past. If you don't do that then you will carry your problems with you. If you let hurt or traumas take hold, then it's an open door for the darkness of fear to come in and find you. You don't want to live a lifestyle of fear. You're better than that.
We live in a society where we're are bombarded with advice that it would be good for people or society to resort to mass medication for lifestyle issues. But pill-popping won't solve our underlying problems.
We can often find ourselves in situations that just don't make sense to us, because many people who claim to offer us solutions confuse us with jargon that blurs the meaning for the wider audience.
Love makes you aware
As I mentioned in my "Love Sets You Free" post, everyone has a view - good or bad. But what is important that you figure out your own view and reconfigure it for success. This is a simple but important rule for life itself. Figure things out and then sort them out - because the freedom to figure things out for yourself is the only real freedom you have. Or at least it's the one freedom that underpins all others.
But the answers don't come easily. To know how to sort your life out, you need to heal your mind. When you have a clear route to your mind, then you can listen out to your heart and trust your instincts on the choices you make that will attract or repel success (in all areas) to your life.
When we act on instinct, it is sometimes mistakenly thought we don't think first - for example children and kittens affect our emotions, most of us would not think to pass by a child in danger. It is instinctive, we say. And for women, the maternal instinct is sometimes the strongest instinct there is when it comes to protecting the young.
But the instinct I'm talking about is intuition - which is based on contemplation. It is the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason; some of us call it an inner voice that speaks to us from the seat of emotion we call the heart. This is another trait that traditionally women are said to have, but we all have an inner voice that speaks to us irrelevant of gender, if we know how to tune the mind to connect with it.
When we use our intuition, it is not that we don't think first, but that we don't make a decision just by the logic of reasoning. Because life can defy logic. Sometimes when we have to make a choice, it's best we don't think too much, but go with instincts that has probably acquired more relevant knowledge through our experiences. When we use intuitive reasoning to make our choices, we're using information which is locked in our subconscious and so we might not understand how or why it works - or where it comes from. But sometimes we just have to go with our gut feeling.
If we work at using our intuition consciously, by learning how to listen to our inner voice and link up to the subconscious, then this is a powerful partnership which can not only bring you success in life, but dramatically change your life in ways you can't begin to imagine.
Now, what I'm going to tell you next today is the part of the "you" factor where you become more successful than you thought possible in your life. I have mentioned this "you" factor before - where you are the most important factor in your life.
But this "you" factor isn't about being selfish. Most people who fail have an ego issue. We need to be aware that it's our thoughts and actions that attract the situations into our lives, and our ego can be a block to that awareness - and can even be a block to positive thoughts and actions. Love is the biggest incentive to overcoming our ego, but true love doesn't do this at the expense of our self-awareness.
I have talked about the importance of being aware in my "Align Your Life with Love" post, and you will read in many material to do with spiritual awakening that we need to be more consciously aware, and be more in the moment. For example, one of the aims of enjoying better sex with a trusting partner in tantric sex is that partners become more consciously aware of the sexual energy they are cultivating between them to create a harmonious oneness as they make love. Plus, great sex is one of the greatest ways to take a happy pill!
Thus to be the navigator of your life, you need to lose your ego, and become more self-aware - aware that you are the creator of your life story.
If there is one thing you could do right now to facilitate change in your life, it's to find your passion, that thing that lights you up and spend time every day doing that. It's almost like a meditative process to spend time in your state of bliss.
This is a state where all the negative stuff falls away and you're present and aware in the moment. It is during such times when inspiration will come, and you can take action on it without questioning it and without analysing it. You can just trust the universe is giving you something that is in resonance and in alignment with that state of passion you're feeling when you're doing the things you enjoy.
If you want your life to be filled with more of that feeling, do it more, honour it, and your intuition will tell you where to go in alignment with the universe.
You have to reprogram your belief system for this to work. Do my 90 day mind healing programme to release resistance and get rid of negative emotions, and these things will fall away once you get into alignment with you who are meant to be on this planet. If you're not clear what your passion is, take some time to get clear. What is it you really enjoy? What lights you up? Spend a little bit more time each day doing that and just watch what happens.
Live a life of passion. Discover your passion and create a lifestyle around that passion. Live in the moment, and live for the moment. Don't worry about the past, or the uncertainty of the future, ground yourself in the certainty of the moment. That's all there is.
Add passion to your life
I've mentioned before that you need to find your bliss and live a life of passion in my "Get on Track with Love" post, because the answer to changing our life lies in achieving a state of bliss.
I was lucky. Early in my teenage years I knew what I wanted my life to look like, and I went about designing it from that day. If you didn't get started early on lifestyle design, the best you can do is start now.
You can't change your genetics, but you can change your attitude, your persistence, your environment, the people you listen to and hang around with, and the things you do. You can change, so if you want to, just get started by adding some passion to your daily routine.
I am passionate about working hard, because I believe that hard work validates us, even though we can programme our brain to make us achieve success with what seems like no effort at all. But for others, they don't want the hard work. When I first read Tim Ferriss' book, The 4-Hour Workweek, I was pretty sucked in. Who wouldn't want to work for only 4 hours a week? As it turns out, I wouldn't.
I derive a lot of meaning and pleasure from working hard. For me, creating something and sharing it with others makes me feel good. It is what I like to do. But that's just me. And that's the point.
Designing your life means designing your life. Comments, questions and criticisms from others, while helpful, are largely irrelevant. They can only guide. The only thing that matters is how you want your life to go.
I would say you need to know where to focus and be clear as to what it is you really want to map out your life.
I've found that working out your driving forces in your life is the best way to start re-programming your mind for success. I provided an exercise in a previous post that helps identify these forces, as well as helping you to take advantage of the same forces to get real enjoyment out of the things you know are good for you (but you might not necessarily like to do).
I've talked a lot about defining our goals, and the idea of having concrete, achievable goals is deeply ingrained in our culture. I know I lived with goals for many years, and in fact a big part of my writing is about how to set and achieve goals - but this won't be right for everyone.
All people are different. Sometimes your plan is to have no plan; that's why my mind healing programme works so well, you tailor it to your individual needs, because success will mean mean different things to all of us.
Click here to rewire your mindset for success!
For instance, some experts believe the best goal is no goal. But even if your view on goal setting is slightly different, the bottom line on how you should live your life is the same, whether you choose to set goals or not. It's about being aware enough to add passion to your life. As one reader who wrote in to tell me, explains:
The problem with goals for me was that in the past, I'd set a goal or three for the year, and then sub-goals for each month. Then I'd figure out what action steps to take each week and each day, and try to focus my day on those steps.
Unfortunately, it never, ever works out this neatly. You all know this. You know you need to work on an action step, and you try to keep the end goal in mind to motivate yourself. But this action step might be something you dread, and so you procrastinate. You do other work, or you check email or Facebook, or you goof off.
And so your weekly goals and monthly goals get pushed back or side-tracked, and you get discouraged because you have no discipline. And goals are too hard to achieve. So now what? Well, you review your goals and reset them. You create a new set of sub-goals and action plans. You know where you're going, because you have goals!
Of course, you don't actually end up getting there. Sometimes you achieve the goal and then you feel amazing. But most of the time you don't achieve them and you blame it on yourself.
These days, I live without goals, for the most part. It's absolutely liberating, and contrary to what you might have been taught, it absolutely doesn't mean you stop achieving things. It means you stop letting yourself be limited by goals.
Consider this common belief: "You'll never get anywhere unless you know where you're going." This seems like common sense, and yet it's obviously not true if you stop to think about it. Conduct a simple experiment: go outside and walk in a random direction, and feel free to change directions randomly. After 20 minutes, an hour... you'll be somewhere! It's just that you didn't know you were going to end up there.
And there's the rub: you have to open your mind to going places you never expected to go. If you live without goals, you'll explore new territory. You'll learn some unexpected things. You'll end up in surprising places. That's the beauty of this philosophy, but it's also a difficult transition.
Today, I live mostly without goals. Now and then I start coming up with a goal, but I'm letting them go. Living without goals hasn't ever been an actual goal of mine... it's just something I'm learning that I enjoy more, that is incredibly freeing, that works with the lifestyle of following my passion that I've developed.
In the end, I usually end up achieving more than if I had goals, because I'm always doing something I'm excited about. But whether I achieve or not isn't the point at all: all that matters is that I'm doing what I love, always.
There's no limit, because I'm free. I end up in places that are wonderful, surprising, great. I just didn't know I would get there when I started."
To be frank, this reader reminds me of my twin flame, he doesn't set himself goals, either. I need the structure of milestones that mark my life, so I have points of reference - but being aware means acknowledging that everyone is different, and will find their own path to their vision. In fact, just following your passion is a goal in itself. Even if you set yourself no other goals, that one will give your life the direction it needs.
Here's the secret: if a system doesn't work for you, the problem isn't you, it's the system! And for some people, goals can be a system are set up for failure if they are perceived as limiting.
When you set yourself a goal, even when you do things exactly right, it's not ideal. Here's why: you are extremely limited in your actions. When you don't feel like doing something, you have to force yourself to do it. Your path is chosen, so you don't have room to explore new territory. You have to follow the plan, even when you're passionate about something else.
This is why I feel identifying your driving forces is so important, as using them will help make achieving your goals more flexible. However, my twin flame would say that although some goal systems are more flexible, nothing is as flexible as having no goals.
So what does a life without goals look like? In practice, it's very different than one with goals.
How it works for my twin flame is this: You don't set a goal for the year, nor for the month, nor for the week or day. You don't obsess about tracking, or actionable steps. You don't even need a to-do list, though it doesn't hurt to write down reminders if you like.
What do you do, then? Lay around on the couch all day, sleeping and watching TV and eating junk food? No, you simply do. You find something you're passionate about, and do it. Just because you don't have goals doesn't mean you do nothing – you can create, you can produce, you can follow your passion. My twin flame follows his passion, he just doesn't follow it with goals.
And in practice, it can be a wonderful thing: you wake up and do what you're passionate about. And some days I take a leaf out of his book. For me, that's usually blogging, but it can be writing a new chapter to a current novel or an ebook, or my next book or creating a course to help others or connecting with incredible people or spending time with my loved ones.
People who can feel pressured by focusing on achieving something, can feel liberated by focusing on just the doing. I'm more of a person that enjoys feeling a sense of achievement, and I am goal-orientated, because I find I have a habit of goofing off without goals. But everyone is different, and sometimes using a different route to get to where you want to go can be exciting.
Design your lifestyle to suit you
If designing your life is an important priority for you, then the first step is to make sure that your goals, priorities and ideals for that life are in fact yours.
Most of us start out life playing defence. That means we spend most of our time living up to other's expectations of us. Living like that doesn't leave a lot of room for "lifestyle design" because frankly, you outsource that function to someone else - to everyone else actually.
Given the history of those scenarios, one of its weaknesses is that we sometimes fall back into "dealing with what life dishes out" to us instead of actively creating our future.
This is irresponsible; and believe me I know because I was like that once. I know that sounds weak, but it's the truth. I reveal things like this on my blog, because it provides instant accountability for me. By telling a few hundred thousand people, I'm inspired to become a better version of myself. It may seem weird, but it works for me.
And if you're going to go to the trouble of designing your life the way you want it, then make sure you are clear about what you actually want. This means cutting yourself off from the negative influence of what others might think about your decisions. You have squash your need to "keep up with the Joneses" or anyone else, for that matter.
The biggest reason is that there's a good chance the average person just isn't interested in living life in the way that will make you happy. So to look to them for anything is not helpful.
And so we go in search of people who do exhibit various levels of mastery in their lives. And that's when things can get even worse.
It's easy to look around at the lives of others and just accept that what they want for their life has anything to do with what you should want for yours. It's easy to be enamoured by someone's dedication to an ideal and think that you should exhibit that kind of dedication. It's easy to be impressed by the material wealth of someone and think you should have that too.
This is living life from the outside in, if you ask me. And I think that is a mistake. It serves as nothing except a good reminder of what not to do.
Yes, we need mentors in our lives. Yes, we need guidance. Yes, we need inspiring role models. But we need inspiration to live our own lives, not live our lives following others.
My twin flame's daddy gave him some great advice on how to stand as a giant among men. He was of the firm belief that the only really responsible way to live life is to have the guts to live it exactly as you want.
Don't want to make a million dollars? That's your choice. Don't want to work 80 hours a week to be "successful?" Again, it's up to you.
Want to wake up and spend 6 hours a day playing with your children while they're young enough to still want to be seen with you? Go ahead.
To the average person, living your life with such blatant "disregard" for others might be interpreted as an extreme example of selfishness. But to the average person, talking about the weather and what they had for dinner last night is interesting. To me, having the guts and the clarity to live life as you see fit makes you a giant among men, or among women as the case may be.
The point is that your unique value as a human being deserves a unique expression in the world. And to do that, you need to live with what a blatant disregard for the negative thoughts and opinions of others if you're going to be a good steward of your gifts.
As I sit here writing this, I can hear the soft breathing of my sleeping loved ones around the house. Dawn is on the horizon of another beautiful day. This is how I want to live my life. I sit here and think, write and sell things. As the years go by, my vision for exactly how that's supposed to look for me improves. My clarity improves. My focus improves too.
I won't lie. When we follow our own vision, there will be certain days that the fact that some people think you're nuts will get to you. But on our best days, we simply don't care.
The hardest thing about "lifestyle design" isn't actually the doing of it. It's the pre-work that comes before the doing that can be challenging. To get the right design for you, you have to be honest with yourself and respect yourself. What you want is valid. Period.
Understand that your decisions are your decisions. Understand that your path is your path. And know that your purpose is to spend your days walking that path as you see fit, no matter where it takes you.
As long as you add passion and love to your life, that, to me, is a life well lived.
Yours in love,
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