Attitude: It all starts with attitude, from there the seeds of prosperity or poverty of thought are planted. Life is a journey and it's important to remain humble to its lessons. Lest we gorget.
Be Your Own Fucking Hero:
Life’s too short and poses too many obstacles and possibilities to sit around wondering what-if. To wait around for someone else to pick up the slack. It’s imperative we find our own voice and rise to he occasion of life. I say this as much as a reminder for myself as a battle cry for those looking for motivation and inspiration.
I can give you things that have helped me along my journey. But ultimately you’ll have to discover what works for you. To forge your own path forward. As it should be.
The following is a condensed list of a few of those tips.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
-- Leo Tolstoy [September 9, 1828 - November 20, 1910]
1.) Know Thyself. No. Really know thyself.
This in itself can be broken down into a series of helpful steps.
It is perhaps the most difficult and the most rewarding for most people.
We often get caught up in the outward affect of ourselves and others without probing deeper into the meaning behind what we stand for, what lessons we’ve learned, what challenges we’ve faced and had to overcome and what the sum total of our life brings to bare on the question of ‘Who’ we truly are.
I’ve found it’s easiest - at least to identify - who we are at a core level by first defining who we are Not. In Ancient Greece this was known as apophatic learning or the apophatic process. Whereby you strip away what you can definitively know not to be true to finally arrive at a measure of certainty of what may be closest to the truth.
The 5 Monkeys: Bahaviorism, tradition and unconscious assimilation.
The following anecdote is based on a study conducted in 1967, a psychologist by the name of G. R. Stephenson performed the experiment, demonstrating both the effects of mob mentality and the blind appeal to tradition in societies.
The humorous clip at the end shows just how easy it is for our unconscious biases, patterns, preferences and customs to arise without our even being aware. Which is one of the reasons this information I'm sharing with you is so powerful. It's in identifying these tendencies and their reversal, we begin realizing that we may empower ourselves and one another. Providing the antidote.
With all of the strange and incongruent demands and suggestions, poor and ill-fitting advice and “wisdom” handed down to us; by society, our parents our peers and institutions, marketers, governments, schooling, et al. it’s no wonder we wind up with a mishmash of beliefs and ideas, most which aren’t our own and many that are plain wrong.
Once we have a better handle on who we are, we are better prepared to interface with the wider world and able to effect real change in it.
One step toward this; is to have a handful of people around you who can tell you honestly how they see you. Now it’s vitally important that these people are not only in touch with themselves, but have an interest in seeing you grow and be the best version of yourself you can be. If they’re more strongly motivated by their own ego or to prove something to you or teach you a lesson… anything where they don’t take this process seriously and realize the power to help or to harm in it, they aren’’t the person for the job. In fact I would say that the person best at the task may be the most hesitant to prescribe advice. If someone is rushing to give you their advice and/or tell you how you’re wrong About YOU.
RUN. (Ok, maybe not but don’t run toward them for advice either.)
On the other hand, if they treat the process and you with the respect that you both deserve and you feel comfortable asking them these difficult questions about your strengths and weaknesses, about your shortcomings and your unique abilities and Idiosyncrasies then this might be a good option for you.
For me, I've found it much easier to go inside and get to know myself by recalling and observing past experiences. Without judgement. Initially this is crucial. Simply to observe and acknowledge what is there. What it is you find is yours. The patterns that arise, some of them because of beliefs and agreements you’ve made with yourself and others at an unconscious level that may have been useful at one point or another as a coping mechanism, but they no longer serve you now. In which case, once you see them for what they are, you can remove them.
In This Process: Like an active meditation. . .
Look for the patterns that emerge, get to the root and allow yourself to learn from the past. Of course, it’s so simple right? But not necessarily easy. Particularly because of what it requires of us. To change to grow. Putting in the actual work. Or the "shadow work" as it’s often referred to. (More to come on that in a future post.) Then act on it. To make different choices. More importantly to know why. Think. Speak. Act. With intention. If it helps write these thoughts and memories down as they arise. Journalling can be a powerful way to look over a series of patterns and seemingly disparate points of information and thought which we can easily become lost in, to allow diamonds of insight to emerge.
It can be difficult, time consuming and taxing. Especially when it’s so much easier to sit back and label and judge others… it’s why so many of us fail to actually do it. But, put in the work. You won't regret it. Your future self may just thank you. For more on this, I highly recommend The 4 Agreements by; Don Miguel Ruiz
(I have the audio version and I revisit it often.)
Which goes into the next step.
Photo Credit: Sacha Chua; used with permission
2.) Meaning? Man’s Search For Meaning: Viktor Frankl discovered through his harrowing experience barely surving the brutality of nazi death camps that even under the harshest conditions he discovered the human body could survive if the human spirit was intact. If the person has a REASON to live. This may play out as distraction and daily games to keep the mind occupied, but all toward a goal. The goal of fulfilling that purpose and that promise. The promise to the self. The promise OF the self.
So we must commit and remain committed. Sometimes this means going All-In.
At any rate, it means having some skin in the game. When we have something to lose and something to gain, we risk, when we risk we unconsciously set our mind at work to succeed.
3.) Surround Yourself With The Right People:
Photo Credit: QuotesEverlasting, used with permission
This will help you with the previous and following steps.
If you want to grow as a person you have to surround yourself with those people who also want to grow. With people who value at least some of the things you value and are compatible - not only with who you are now but - with who you want to be.
“If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that” ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Otherwise, they’ll attempt to keep you where they are–As they see you and within a box.
Remove the box. There is no box. Also remove the box in your own thinking. But get yourself aligned to… your self. Your purpose. These few steps alone will unlock an infinite amount of potential in themselves.
Another helpful step for me was learning The Trivium.
The Trivium is a means of collecting, organizing and analyzing information, processing it and coming to a rational, logical conclusion based on the evidence at hand. In short a system for accurate critical thinking. It’s a wonderful process. It’s primarily touted as a means to analyze and decipher logical arguments. But, I’ve found it’s just as useful to analyze one's own self. Of course in doing so and when you come to a place where you’ve accepted and removed much of your own BS it becomes much easier to spot the same BS from other people.
I may do another post on the trivium in the future. In the meantime the following provides a good overview and is an excellent resource on how it works and why.
4.) Find a Mentor:
As an extension of surrounding yourself with the right people, having someone in your life that has been through many of the same challenges and struggles as you, someone who understands the road ahead of you, who respects you and what you’re trying to accomplish and can see things about you and your path that may be opaque or obscured to you, is a key component of success. In anything. It also helps them. As teaching someone else helps to remind us of those very things we've learned and allows us to relate to, thus solidifying our own purpose and how we will achieve it by relating to another on their journey. Win-win.
I always try to setup the win-win. Or better yet win-win-win, in relationships, in business, in everything I do.
If everyone benefits and comes away with value, everyone wins.
This helps everyone to grow toward their greatest self. To achieve what we want without taking from another or being taken from. It’s part of my own core-philosophy and it was in part instilled and distilled by my mentor, through reminders and positive influence and looking out for my best interest and our mutual interest. As I’ve done the same for him and given as much of myself as I have been able to support his cause and to help him on his journey. A good mentor opens a two-way dialogue that is exponentially beneficial. You may even find this person becomes like family.
5.) Gratitude: Be grateful for what you have and the process.
"I am grateful for what I am & have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite — only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. I am ready to try this for the next 1000 years, & exhaust it. How sweet to think of! My extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it — for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment."
• Letter to Harrison Gray Otis Blake (6&7 December 1856), as published in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau (1958), p. 444
This in turn opens up the possibility for more. Whether through some grand act of the universe (a 'la The Sectret/Law Of Attraction) of the distribution of resources to those acting along this course of appreciation and gratitude, particularly those who act in accord with and showing respect to and reverence for themselves and others as part and parcel of said gratitude; Or whether it’s simply our unconscious mind cleaning out the clutter and negativity to allow it to remain open to exciting new possibilities… (Personally I’d posit that it’s both.) Either way it’s a way through the pain, difficulty and suffering that is life. Be grateful for what you have now and you may find yourself with more tomorrow.
Curse your plight and you're more likely to wind up with more of the same or worse.
6.) Know the endgame
Which is another way of saying: know what you want.
- What Do You Really Want???
The absence of the above being one of the primary reasons most lottery winners wind up depressed, dead, unhappy or in ruins in within as little as a years time, post-winnings concerns the following.
(Remember: money is the result. The symbol for achieving. It's also a means of exchange for that which we want. Placing our sense of fulfillment in money is to give away our own power for free.)
Now if you don’t know yourself, you don’t know what you want you haven’t crystallized what your purpose is and you’re surrounded by all of the wrong people, with a head filled with wrong ideas and beliefs and agreements that don’t serve you… do you really think obtaining a wealth of resources toward those aims is going to help a person? Or like the Titanic will the top-heavy ship of the self now steer itself straight toward utter demise with increased speed and accuracy?
In the case of the lottery winner because they didn’t go through the transformation that would bring them the riches they received naturally. (A key difference between riches and wealth.) So they suffer this great windfall. Rather than realizing it's positive result. Again, going back to alignment.
Think about it.
7.) Do what you can with what you have now.
Rather than setting out to change the world, it’s much more important for one to have accurately adjusted and aligned themselves. Any amount of positive change in the world has come from this very root in the first place. Think about it.
Day to day this may vary. Without losing your overall goal based on your purpose and the greatest meaning you’ve found in your life; Your smaller goals and tasks shouldn’t subtract from the overall achievement of this end.
It can be an uncomfortable proposition to look deeply at the things in which we call our selves. Only to realize we either don’t truly know our selves, our motivations and desires and deep yearnings, or that we are shrugging off those very things for the security or comfort of something else.
This is often our greatest trap and pitfall. As it’s tempting, but does it lead one to fulfillment?
Don't be afraid to push yourself. Really push yourself.
Without risk there is no reward.
As a wiser person than myself once told me, all the best things happen outside one's own comfort zone.
So step outside your comfort zone and keep pushing, keep doing, learn to love the process. Hint: this comes naturally as a byproduct the more you know, love and care for yourself. You'll also want to do more to help others, as your cup runeth over.
Always, learn, always grow, always seek to better understand and don’t be afraid to approach things with the ‘beginners mind.’ As the proverb goes: the longest journey begins with a single step.
Thanks for reading. If you gained insight, motivation or inspiration from this, please vote it UP and follow me at @adamthor For more great content like this.