Get in Touch With Your Inner Self
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Do you know yourself? I mean, do you REALLY know yourself?
Do you know your greatest talents? Your life’s purpose? Your passions? Your deepest beliefs?
It’s easy to get caught up in the rhythm of life and forget to seek the answers to these important questions. When I hear the excuse, “I’m too busy to think about those things right now,” I think to myself, “If you figure out the answers to these questions, maybe you’ll be busy completing tasks that truly matter in the grand scheme of things!”
Rather than choosing to ignore the questions listed above, why not seek out the answers to them consciously? Most people say, “I’ll just take life as it comes and let those answers come to me.” I also take life as it comes, however, ever since answering these questions, my life has more direction, purpose, and passion than ever before.
Is this something you might be interested in?
Identify Your Talents
Each one of us has our own unique set of talents. If developed consciously, these talents can become our greatest strengths and propel us to new levels of success in life. However, the most common mistake we human beings make is focusing on the development of our weaknesses, rather than on the development of our talents.
Why not become more of who you already are instead of more of who you aren’t? Recognize that each person has their own set of strengths and weaknesses. You can always compensate for your shortcomings by surrounding yourself with people whose strengths are your weaknesses.
When I say “talents”, I mean abilities that come naturally to you, i.e., special skills you were born with. It takes conscious action to develop these talents into strengths. Think of Tiger Woods. He wasn’t born with the ability to play golf as well as he does today. Since the age of 2, Tiger has been developing his natural gifts of eye-hand coordination and intuition into strengths he now uses to win unreal amounts of PGA tournaments.
He practices 14 hours a day, tirelessly hitting the same shots over and over again until he is satisfied with his level of performance. Tiger has developed his talents into powerful strengths. As a result, he is arguably the greatest golf player ever to have played the game.
Now ask yourself, “What am I capable of if I develop my talents into strengths?”
Let me give you a hint”¦ more than you ever thought you were capable of!
The first step you must take is to identify your talents. A great resource to help you with this is the book Strengthsfinder 2.0
- Relator
- Harmony
- Competition
- Input
- Intellection
To exhibit what I mean by “develop your talents into strengths,” here are a few examples that apply to me specifically.
This website is a tool designed to help me develop my input and relator talents into strengths. By sharing the knowledge I have acquired through my life experiences with you through these articles, I am deliberately honing these talents into strengths.
In order to develop my intellection talent, I have increased the time I give myself to be alone. I use this time to reflect and get in touch with my inner-self. This process is highly beneficial and energizing for me. The extra alone time has given me new clarity of perspective towards my true nature. I can only imagine the power of this strength when it’s fully developed.
Discover Your Purpose
Think of purpose as the bigger picture of your life. All of your beliefs, values, actions, and thoughts should fit underneath this purpose. Without a purpose, life has no direction. Without a purpose, it is impossible to recognize your true potential. Without a purpose you can’t experience the feeling of waking up each morning full of joy, excitement, and readiness to start your day.
Most humans choose to take life as it comes, and make the mistake of answering the question “What is my purpose?” as they go. Others choose an even worse option, and ignore the question entirely. This terrible choice will most definitely lead to a sub-optimal life. You may still earn a billion dollars over the course of your lifetime, but this doesn’t mean you’ve recognized your true potential. Perhaps you were destined to change the world in some profound way instead. True potential can never be recognized other than through the fulfillment of purpose. Moral of the story: don’t let yourself choose the mentality of “ignorance is bliss”. Choose to discover your purpose right away!
Every individual has a purpose that goes hand-in-hand with his/her interpretation of his/her reality. If this is the case, it means that you too have a purpose! Why lead your life for 50 years, only to realize you have been leading a life out of line with your purpose all along? If you are ready, you can discover your purpose now and spare yourself 50 years of directionless life (maybe even more!)
All it will take is a little bit of time and patience. Steve Pavlina, self-development guru, has posted an article on how to discover your life’s purpose in 20 minutes. Keep in mind this time requirement may not apply to everyone. The time requirement for each person varies, as we are all stubborn and rooted in our beliefs to various extents. The post can be found here.
Realize Your Passions
A life without passion is a dull one. This is a “duh, Rahul” statement, I know. However, it surprises me how many people commit their lives to work they are not passionate about. Each morning they wake up dreading the day ahead of them. Why lead this life?
The answer is simple; we choose to give away the freedom and enjoyment of life to earn money and provide for ourselves and our families. I don’t blame people for the desire to provide for themselves and their family. We must fulfill our survival needs. However, we don’t have to lead boring, tedious lives to do so. Once you’ve defined your purpose, you must devise a way to earn income in line with this purpose. This can be accomplished through living your passions.
As described in my post “Choose Conscious Growth”, it is important to follow up on any passion “leads” you may have. It doesn’t matter how dumb or unproductive they may seem, follow up on them anyway. If you’ve been interested in palm reading or dreaming for a while, go find a book on the subjects in the library. If you’ve always wanted to learn golf; take the first step today and book a lesson with an instructor. The most important thing is to take action now. You never know, you may discover your life passion along the way!
Empower Your Beliefs
Empowering your beliefs is like it sounds, powerful! The more empowering your beliefs are, the more successful you will be able at handling the challenges life throws your way.
To illustrate the effect beliefs have on your life, let’s examine the example, “If you believe you aren’t capable of being great, then you never will be.”
The reason this statement is true is because our beliefs cause us to act a certain way. If you believe you aren’t capable of being great, you will lead a life of mediocrity and will shy away from the opportunities and challenges life presents you with. If, however, you believe you can and will be great, you will confront these same opportunities and challenges with a resolute, positive attitude, and will soar with success. Beliefs make all the difference.
To empower our beliefs, we must first identify our current beliefs, and then root out the ones which are hindering our success. This is not an easy task, for many of our beliefs are deeply rooted in who we are. This makes for a tough situation, because we then have to evaluate ourselves from an outside perspective to view our true beliefs. However, just like shoes make footprints in the snow, our actions are the footprints of our beliefs. If we follow these “footprints” back to their origin, we should be able to identify our true beliefs.
When looking at your actions you will realize, sure enough, there is a trail which you can trace back to the belief which caused the specific action. For example, I believe people I interact with should conduct themselves with first class behavior. My actions are in line with this, and when someone violates my belief, I walk away. Now, if I reverse this process and choose to look at my action first, I will see that I walked away from a person when they treated me with second class behavior. This action can then be traced back to the belief of “people should conduct themselves with first class behavior.” This process will take some work and some mental focus, but soon enough you will discover the beliefs hiding behind your actions.
Once you’ve discovered the specific beliefs which are hindering your success (caused by fear, negative experiences, and social programming) you will have the power to replace them with more empowering beliefs. Contrary to what you may think, we will not try and erase the beliefs from our minds. This will be counter-productive and won’t work anyway. When was the last time you were voluntarily able to completely erase something from your mind?
Instead, we are going to use the power of the mind to replace the limiting belief. We will direct our thoughts to the new belief we would like to adopt, and will continue to do so until it has replaced our previously limiting belief. For example, if your actions point out that you have no self-esteem or self-confidence, you can repeat in your mind over and over again the saying “I like myself”. Yes, I know it sounds stupid. But you’ll find, just as I did, these exercises have a dramatic effect on your mind. One last point: It is important to think these thoughts with consistency. Thinking this way for 5 minutes a day will not accomplish anything, because for the rest of the day we will be thinking like we used to be!
For more information on the power of thought, I recommend the books Think and Grow Rich
Tying it All Together
It is critical to recognize the answers to these questions will help build your self awareness. Self awareness is the most essential component of success. Without knowing our purpose, strengths, passions, and beliefs, we will severely under-perform in our life endeavors.
Once you know the answers to our self-awareness questions, you will feel the synergistic effect of the whole being greater than the parts. If you know your purpose, you will be able to find the passions which fit underneath it much more easily. If you understand your talents and hone them into your greatest assets, you will accomplish much more with much less effort. If you are able to empower your beliefs, you will be able to succeed beyond measure because you will have the right mindset to back all of your efforts.
Be patient, and allow yourself some time to find the answers to these questions. Simply raising your consciousness towards the questions will bring you the answers you are expecting much more quickly. When you discover your own unique answers, you will feel invigorated with new purpose and reason in life.
Photo by jurvetson
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Choose Conscious Growth
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I know what you’re thinking. “I’m growing every day, and I’m conscious of it. Five years ago I was only 5 feet tall.”
Unfortunately, that’s not the kind of growth I’m talking about.
I’m talking about mental growth. Growth you actively choose when you decide to confront areas of fear and unfamiliarity in your life. Growth you choose when you decide to learn a new skill.
Each one of us has our own share of fear that holds us back in one way or another. Think about one area in your life that you can’t muster up the courage to confront. Perhaps it’s dating or public speaking. Maybe you have insecurity issues, and are unable to stand up to your co-workers, peers, or friends.
Regardless of your specific situation, the fear of getting up and facing the issue at hand is inhibiting your progress towards overall happiness and fulfillment in your life. Keep in mind, when I say fulfillment I mean in an overall sense of the word (financially, emotionally, physically, relational, spiritually).
Keep Life Moving
Feel like every day is just more of the same? You may be stuck on a plateau.
New skills are necessary to keep the growth process moving in our lives. If we stick with the same skill set for too long, we may reach a growth plateau. We will no longer be improving the quality of our lives. You must choose to step out of your comfort zone in search of new skills.
Spend time on inner reflection. You will notice there are many things in life you would love to do, but just haven’t found the time for yet. Make time to do these things, no matter how trivial they may seem. You may have to acquire new skills in order to complete the tasks in mind. If this is the case, you have a variety of options at your disposal. You can attend an informative seminar, read books on the topic, or make new friends who are skilled in your area of interest. Dive right in and completely immerse yourself.
Personal Experience
When I described my goals this summer to my friend Anil, he called it “The Summer of Rahul”. I’ve chosen to learn a number of new skills and perspectives this summer, and it’s been an exciting experience.
6 months ago I was having a discussion with one of my closest friends about self-defense. At the time, I didn’t feel like I could adequately protect myself or my loved ones if a situation ever arose, and I was confused about which path I should take to solve this problem. My friend, a member of the Marine Corps, suggested I learn martial arts.
Almost instantaneously I was turned off by the thought of the time commitment involved with learning a martial art. However, I chose to look past this initial apprehension, and focused on how great the journey could be instead.
At the beginning of summer, I enrolled at a local Kuk Sool Won school. This martial art has everything I’m looking for: grappling, self-defense techniques, joint-locking techniques, and much, much more. Basically, if I master all of the skills taught in Kuk Sool Won, I’ll be ready to contend in the UFC (okay, I’m pushing it). I’ve found something I can commit to for the rest of my life.
I spend a lot of time at Barnes and Noble reading books I find interesting. Books provide me with new perspectives on life. When I’m reading a great book, I have many “ah-ha!” moments. I appreciate these moments, because from that point onwards, my life is never the same. I look at things differently and lead my life in a different way. Here’s an example of one of those moments.
Last week I was reading the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad
A Few Suggestions to Get You Moving
All of us are busy with the burdens of daily life. We have work, school, and chores to take care of. We Americans lead a monotonous lifestyle. We wake up, go to work/school, come home, spend time with the family, go to sleep, and then repeat.
It’s easy to slip into this mindless routine, and forget the single most important truth about life. Life is about growth and enjoyment; it’s about experiencing and learning new things. If we are constantly doing the same work day in and day out, we will only have more of the same. We will not grow, we will not live life to the fullest, and we will not become healthy, well-rounded individuals.
How do you prevent this from happening?
- Choose to learn new skills and take on new challenges in life (a new sport, Toastmasters, martial arts, dancing, painting, singing, writing)
- Choose to step outside of your comfort zone and confront the unknown
- Choose to take time out of your busy day and read a book you find interesting (a book on real estate, cooking, spirituality, religion, communication, negotiation)
- Choose to attend an informative seminar and equip yourself with all of the knowledge you could possibly need on a particular subject (a seminar on women and dating, time management, public speaking, pottery, facing fear)
Once you finish reading this article, I want you to think of something you have always wanted to do, and go out and do it as soon as possible. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s small and insignificant. Taking action means progress. It means progress towards growth and fulfillment. Once you complete this task, choose something else you have always wanted to do, and repeat the process. This is a surefire formula for improving the quality of your life.
Although you may not realize it right away, you will soon be astonished by the amount you have developed through this process of conscious growth. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find your life passion along the way.
Photo by guldfisken
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