Here are 5 things I have found to be true during my 20+ years of self-development and study of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), Theta Healing, Reiki, Psychology, and Performance Coaching to name but a few.
Image by Christine Engelhardt
1 Life Is A Journey
We start our lives as newborn babies looking at the world with excitement and awe. Everything is unknown and day by day we begin to evolve our minds by understanding how to navigate our surroundings and the living creatures that inhabit this planet.
This will be a continuous adventure until the day we die because life is a journey to a destination named death. Sorry to sound morbid here but this is our reality. We don’t know what comes after death as no one has returned. This isn’t to be feared, it is just part of nature and the transitory path that we call ‘life’. You are here to grow and blossom, to evolve and thrive, to expand and absorb all there is to offer here. It is an incredible journey, one of mystery and magnificence.
Life is a gift to embrace and develop your creative abilities, as you are part of the magnificence. Each day you get to wake up and create something new. Enjoy your journey and fill it with many connections, experiences, wonder, and creativity and keep pushing the boundaries of your soul. Then when it is time to leave, you can rest in knowing you gave it your all.
2 You Can’t Change Others Only Yourself
This is a tricky one to explain, as men and women are very diverse and complex creatures. We see the world through our own unique lens. This lens is developed through our individual life experiences. How we were raised and how we’ve chosen to engage with life is how we now express ourselves in this world.
This is also why we can’t change the perception someone has developed over the course of their lifetime and they can’t change ours. Change is a personal choice, you’ve got to be ready for it and willing. If you are not, then ain’t nothing gonna change. No pushing or forcing will change another’s point of view and rightly so, we’ve all been given free will and we have a right to express it. Now, if this harms another man or woman, then there will be repercussions but my focus here is on the general idiosyncrasies of an individual.
So, if the people around you won’t change then the holy grail is to change yourself. You are the one person you do have control over, so grab the reins and move in the direction of your best self. In doing so you’ll find that either the people around you will adapt to this new you or they’ll fade away and new people will either be drawn to you or you’ll be drawn to new people. Remember don’t try to change those around you just work on developing yourself.
3 Pain Is Your Biggest Healer
It sounds like an oxymoron but the pain I am describing here is emotional pain, not physical pain although in some cases physical pain can shift us to heal our bodies if say diet or exhaustion has caused it to crash. This type of pain can be enough for some of us to think, I need to eat better and carve out time to rest.
Emotional pain can allow us to evolve if we view it as a messenger. Pain isn’t meant to be here for the long term, it is here to give us a window of time to grieve a loss or upset and then to learn, move through and grow from it. Don’t stay trapped in pain, heed its lessons and then break through stronger, wiser, and ultimately lighter having dropped all those heavy burdens wrapped up inside your pain.
Don’t let pain destroy you, let it enlighten you.
4 Happiness Comes From Within
You’ve probably heard the saying, ‘Happiness is an inside job.’ This is so true. We can blame a lot of things outside of ourselves for causing unhappiness but ultimately it’s how we are choosing to view any given moment. For example, say you were feeling sad because you had no money and you were focused on everything lacking in your life. Then someone comes along and says ‘Hey, I just won the lottery and I’m gifting you a million pounds/dollars.’ In that very moment wouldn’t your state of being go up from 1 to 10 on a scale of sadness to happiness? You’d be jumping for joy, as your thoughts of lack would have changed in that very instant. It wasn’t the money that changed your sadness to happiness, it was all in your mind, your perception.
Happiness comes from the meanings we place upon things in our environment. I mean if you had a million pounds and found yourself freezing, wouldn’t you burn that money to survive? Money is just paper after all, but it’s how we have given it value that has changed this reality.
The same is true for everything in our lives, we decide how we choose to perceive and feel about these things. You have the power to be happy right now and the happier you decide to feel, the more improvements you’ll make in your life. Like attracts like, so choose happiness and say, ‘Cancel, Cancel, Cancel’ to all the negative thought patterns in your mind.
5 Radical Responsibility Is Empowering
The blame game is like the game, ‘Pass the Parcel’. Passing one problem onto another instead of choosing to take full responsibility for everything that happens in our lives. Nothing can be resolved if we choose to operate in this way. It just goes round and round until someone owns it and changes it.
We as a society have become so dependent on our governments that today it is normal to blame politicians and whoever else for what is going wrong in our world. Our public servants are liars and enforcing agendas that many are unhappy with, but until we stand up and start taking radical responsibility for our communities then they will continue to lead us instead of serve us. Government officials have switched roles over centuries because humanity has given up responsibility and now we have this global problem to fix. That is why the most empowering thing you can do today, is take radical responsibility for your own life.
How does this look? Start by looking at all the areas you have given up responsibility to others. Look at how you buy food, you usually go get it at the supermarket. You could grow your own food and if you already do this then great. Look at another area in your life. I am not saying you can change all of this overnight and this is a radical concept to grasp. However, when you start to see consciously where you have given up responsibility you can start choosing what you might want to take control of and what you are willing to let be, at least for now. 😉
When you can stand on your own two feet fully in this world it’s an empowering place to be. I still have my own work to do here but each time I grab hold of the areas I have let slide, I am empowered.
I hope this empowers you too.
As always thanks for reading.
Have a beautiful day!