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- The common thread among them: They have discovered that in this world, there is no real doing without first being.
- This is the lesson I hope you take away from this chapter: Your life is not static. Every decision, setback, or triumph is an opportunity to identify the seeds of truth that make you the wondrous human being that you are. I’m not talking just about what you do for a living. When you pay attention to what feeds your energy, you move in the direction of the life for which you were intended. Trust that the Universe has a bigger, wider, deeper dream for you than you could ever imagine for yourself.
- As you begin to identify the seeds of knowing along your own path, the first question to ask yourself is, What do I believe? Do you believe that you are worthy of happiness, success, abundance, fulfillment, peace, joy, and love? What I know for sure is you become what you believe.
- First we have to believe that we do have a purpose. Every individual has a purpose. And when we begin to think that way, we will appreciate the sacredness of life. And not be destructive to any aspect of it. We’ll respect people better. Too often people think purpose is that one thing for which I was born. But what happens if you achieve that at age twenty-seven? You have no reason to live beyond that. Purpose is dynamic. Purpose continues to be applied throughout your life. Because your gifts, your talents, and your abilities that are given to you by God remain consistent throughout your life. But how you apply that changes as you live life from one level to another and you go through stages of life.
- If we can get the clutter out of our mind, if we can get the guilt out of our mind, if we can get the shame out of our mind, if we can get the worry out of our mind, if we can get the busyness out of our mind, then all of a sudden we’re going to have ideas which are seeds. And the seed of an idea gets planted firmly in your mind when you believe in yourself and you believe in your potential.
- Focus on the gifts. Don’t focus on the weaknesses, because there are other people who will complement your weaknesses, and you will complement theirs. You recognize the gift when you’re expressing yourself in that unique way, giving out your gifts, and you lose track of time.
- As author and spiritual trailblazer Gary Zukav so brilliantly taught me, when you align your personality with your purpose, no one can touch you.
- We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
- Being defined by my courage. I wanted to be that person who, no matter what happened, just got back up and kept going.
- When you are not using your life, your time, your energy, for your highest and best use, and something in the back of the brain is going, Ding, ding, ding, ding!—you’re missing it. You’re missing your life, your purpose, your passion, your excitement, your enthusiasm. I want to shake you, and rattle you, and stir you up to understand that every moment is a gift. Every second is a gift. Every thought is a gift. Every idea is a gift. Every opportunity is a gift. Everybody you meet is a gift. You are gifted with opportunities to begin to maximize what you’ve got.
- Wow this speaks to me this is exactly what i'm doing, pushing aside and ignoring every idea i have to make things (videos talking of myself, ceramic art, painting, the jewelry clay) because of laziness and because i'm too stuck in the routines i've self imposed on myself. I too have the urge to shake myself to make me snap out of this hypnosis and self controlling
- Yes, I was exhausted. And for me, my exhausted self is my worst self. I’m short-tempered. I’m anxious. I get controlling about stupid things. Things need to happen my way when I’m really, really tired.
- Is this me? Is this what i have?
- We are so intuitive that for most people, it’s the source of their greatest suffering. Instead of people looking at me, hearing my story and thinking, Oh that’s inspiring, I want people to be “inspired” to take action themselves.
- Ooh this is a nice concept
- Oftentimes I would think, Oh, well, I’m just waiting on God to tell me where He wants me to go. Like, God, tell me. Tell me what it is You want me to do. And I’ve come to a very clear understanding now. It’s not that God’s not talking to me. It’s that for so long, I just haven’t been listening. I’ve been allowing so much of the noise to cloud this conversation I’m supposed to be having. I’ve been so distracted while He’s been sending messages this whole time.
- The ultimate care of the soul is being identified with the life that wants to live through you. So at any point, your life may give a hint that you should be moving on—maybe to a different job or even a different marriage. And if you hold back on that and say, “No, that would disrupt me,” you would be deciding to say no to life. I think that’s where the soul gets wounded most. Your individuality comes from your soul. Not from your head.
- Your individuality comes from your soul. Not from your head.
- When you don’t know what to do, do nothing and the answer will come.
- my mantra
- “The more important an activity is to your soul’s evolution, the more resistance you will feel to it.”
- “The more important an activity is to your soul’s evolution, the more resistance you will feel to it.” He explained that no matter the dream, the shadow of resistance is inevitable. It’s like the yin and yang—you can’t have the dream without the shadow. So, the more importance I placed on the Harvard speech, the stronger the resistance.
- Steven’s theory was a totally new way of looking at fear: For every dream, there is automatically going to be resistance. But your sheer will and desire can be stronger than the shadow. You get to decide. You get to declare, I want this, and confront the fear head-on.
- The true meaning of courage is to be afraid—and then, with your knees knocking and your heart racing, take the leap anyway.
- We only have twenty-four hours in a day. So you have a choice to walk with wise people and stack up more wisdom. Or you can become a companion of fools and your life will unravel.
- What happens is we’ve gone into the mind and said, I’m not okay. How does everything need to be for me to be okay? And then we devote ourselves to trying to create the situation that we think will make us be okay. And when things start changing and don’t match that model, then we get scared, because it looks like it’s not going to work. Fear is a thing.
- You’re going to try to control situations so you don’t ever feel the fear, and it all starts to bother you. Eventually you’ll forget your whole purpose and you’ll just be scared. You just get scared.
- Me
- You are not your circumstances. You are your possibilities.
- So, if you’re going to an audition, if you’re going into an interview for a job, blast them with love. Because if you have the thought, Oh my God, I need this job, I really need it, and I hope they’ll like me, all of that actually limits your capacity to shine in the ways that might promote their wanting you to work for their company. So if you instead think, The only thing going on here is I’m going to bless that person. And they’re here to bless me. I don’t know if I’m supposed to get that job. My only agenda is that God’s will be done, it will all unfold perfectly.
- But I remember these grown-ups coming to me and saying, “Do you want to be a movie star when you grow up? Do you want to be a dancer? Do you want to be a professional dancer when you grow up? What do you want to be?” And I would say, “Happy.” And they would look at me really weird. “No. We said what do you want to be?” And I said, “I want to be happy.” That’s really all I wanted. Talk about an intention. That’s a better intention than a white picket fence.
- I once asked LeBron what could possibly cause an MVP like him to lose his rhythm on the court. His response: “I get off my game when I start playing for others rather than playing for myself.” Yes! This is a universal truth. We fall off course the minute our intention shifts from following our heart to responding to what we think others believe. All of a sudden, life feels complicated. That’s because you’ve altered your efforts in the hope of impressing someone else. The goal is to get back to living for yourself
- If you’re doing your best, if you’re giving it your all, if you’re pursuing your dreams, if you’re growing, then you’ve got to believe your time is coming. And in the meantime, when we’re content, we’re honoring God. If you don’t get happy where you are, you probably won’t get to where you want to be.
- One of my favorite lessons from Joel Osteen is, “What follows ‘I am’ is what we’re inviting into our life.” Meaning when you use phrases like,“I am exhausted,” or, “I am overwhelmed,” you are inviting exactly that kind of energy into your life. The moment I shifted my perspective from I am struggling to I am honored, my climb was transformed from an arduous trek into a still challenging but now stimulating adventure, and my entire outlook changed. Ever since that time, whenever I’ve encountered a disruption, rather than allowing it to rattle me, I ask myself one of the most meaningful and productive questions there is: What is this here to teach me?
- First of all, if you look at your own life, you may find that what look like obstacles to where you want to go, where you want to be, what you want to achieve, seem to arise almost continuously in the form of difficult people or difficult situations.
- For a marriage to be successful, you’ve got to have someone who wants you to grow into who you really are. And if you don’t have that, I have seen people become smaller after marriage.
- We always talk about marriage as a creative act. You’re creating something new in the world. For many people, that becomes heavy. It becomes, Well, let’s just try to stay together. Duty. Obligation. As opposed to, We get to make something with this life.
- How long do we hold on to this old idea? I was going to do this job or I was going to go to this school or I was going to be married to this person. And it doesn’t serve us anymore. I once wrote a letter to my younger self and told the younger me, It’s okay to rewrite my story from time to time. And not only okay, but necessary. Sometimes you have to see things through, even though they don’t cause you joy. But sometimes you need to say, You know what? I’m not going to surrender my joy. I’m not going to be this thing anymore. That story is no longer true. I’m going to be this other thing. This other way.
- So i don't have to have the same old friends for my whole life. I know this, i accept it but somehow it still lingers inside me. But that part is over and i saw it through so why is it still fight-or-flight whenever i see them on the street and guilt and dreams about them??
- The idea of getting older is daunting and intimidating and not that fun, really. But recently I shifted to I have the privilege of getting older, and I really like that because it’s easy to spin off into the negative, as opposed to Aren’t we lucky? That we’re here, that we get to get older.
- What follows “I am” is what we’re inviting into our life. You say “I am tired.” “I am frustrated.” “I am lonely.” Well, now you’ve invited more of that in. So the principle is to turn it around and invite what you want into your life. There’s a balance to it. I don’t think you’re denying the facts. You’re just not magnifying the negative. Rather, start saying, “I am a masterpiece. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I am strong. I am talented.” I think that is speaking to the core of what God’s put in each one of us. He has equipped us. He’s empowered us. We have what we need to fulfill our destiny. But we have to bring it out. And you can’t bring it out being against yourself.
- People may not remember what you did or what you said, but they always remember how you made them feel.
- When you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need, it frees up oceans of energy that was caught up in that chase to now turn and pay attention to what you already have. When you actually pay attention to, nourish, love, and share what you already have, it expands. It’s the opposite of what we think. And when people know that, it frees them from this chase of more, more, more, more, more. A shorter way to say all that is, What you appreciate, appreciates.
- What you appreciate, appreciates.
- Sarah Ban Breathnach. I’ve said for years that Sarah’s best-selling book Simple Abundance
- What I learned from Sarah and so many others is that the way people handle money reflects the way they see themselves. Many times when people win the lottery and experience a windfall, they don’t see themselves as worthy of their newfound riches. They wind up spending on possessions to create an idea of self-worth. When you’ve become blinded by the status symbols, it’s easy to lose sight of the unique gifts only you can offer the world.
- Once you release your grasp, then you give up your resistance, and then that which is for you will come to you. OPRAH: Aha. That’s the aha moment. Because when you want it, want it, want it, it doesn’t show up. MICHAEL: Yes. Your message to the Universe at that moment is, I want it I want it I want it I want it, which is translating into, I don’t have it I don’t have it I don’t have it, so you can’t receive it. OPRAH: So you end up blocking your own blessing in that way. MICHAEL: Totally.
- Everybody thinks, Well, if I just had 30 percent more, everything would be fine. But 30 percent ago, it wasn’t fine. So 30 percent more won’t really do it. Because when you get there, you want 30 percent more. We’re just completely addicted in a society that values money above all else. And it’s hurtful. It wounds us. OPRAH: So in order to break that scarcity myth, that belief that there’s not enough, you say we need to live in the place of sufficiency. LYNNE: Yes. Sufficiency is a place of wholeness and completeness and deep understanding of who we are. And it’s almost impossible to get to enough-ness or sufficiencies in a world that exalts what I call the “myth of scarcity”—which is a mind-set, an unconscious, unexamined set of assumptions of “not enough.” There’s not enough time. There’s not enough money. There’s not enough love. There are not enough vacations. There’s not enough sex. There’s not enough this. There’s not enough that. And every meeting, every conversation, every lunch, every dinner, every everything is about what we don’t have enough of. It’s the siren song of a consumer culture. It’s not just about money. It dribbles over into every aspect of life. OPRAH: Everything. LYNNE: Yes. It’s not just there is not enough, it’s not enough. We’re not enough. I’m not enough. And that deficit relationship with ourselves is the source of so much of our suffering. It comes from this unconscious, unexamined mind-set I call “scarcity,” which has made up these myths. There is not enough to go around. And someone somewhere is always going to be left out. OPRAH: And if you believe that, and buy into that, then that’s exactly what you will create.
- PAUL: Right. Because they think that money will give them the control that will conquer their fear.
- I keep thinking i want to travel to various places and i could go because i have some money saved and i could earn more, but i keep thinking 'when/if i win the lottery i will go everywhere' but maybe if i did win the lottery i wouldn't go anyway because the real reason i'm not going now isn't money, it's fear. My fear.
- The Universe doesn’t look in terms of good, bad, better, worse, success, or failure. It looks in terms of limitation and opportunity. The more the loving parts of your personality are the ones you’re cultivating, the more opportunity you have. The more fear is controlling you, the more limitation you have.
- Because what is failure? We can’t possibly know what failure is. We cannot. OPRAH: Some people think they do. GARY: Most people think they do. But that’s because they’re judging how they feel their lives should be and what they need to be. A success. Who is to say what’s a success or what’s a failure? Do your best. Trust. Relax. Enjoy yourself.
- Nourish what makes you feel confident, connected, contented. Opportunity will rise to meet you.
- As he took his last breath, he whispered, “Oh Mom, it is all so simple. It’s so simple, Mom.” He then closed his eyes and died. I got chills when I heard that. I realized then, just as it resonates with me now: We allow life to get so complicated—when it’s really so very simple. From that day forward I resolved to continually ask myself, How am I making things more difficult than they need to be? Your answer to that same question is the next step in your path. It’s that simple. Imagine what lies just around the bend. Can you see it? I can.
- How am I making things more difficult than they need to be?
dec 31 2019 ∞
jan 2 2020 +
jan 2 2020 +