I've Been Thinking...

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about leaving. I don’t mean leaving on vacation (although I am looking forward to my annual August break). I’ve actually been thinking more deeply and broadly about the different ways we all leave a piece of ourselves behind each and every day. 

We leave jobs or careers that no longer bring us joy. We leave relationships that don’t work for us anymore. We leave religious or political affiliations that no longer stand for what we believe. This week, under President Biden’s direction, the U.S. announced plans to leave Afghanistan. Former President Bush said it was a mistake, but Biden said it was the right move. Meanwhile, Texas legislators dramatically up and left the state capitol while the legislature was in session to protest voting rights suppression.

On the journey to self-actualization and becoming your highest self, there may come a point where you stop and wonder, “How do I know when I’ve found myself?”

It’s easy to get stuck in this way of thinking – the idea that your spiritual journey has an endpoint. That you aren’t your true, authentic self until one day, everything changes and you finally “arrive.” Instead, what you’ll most likely discover is that you will find yourself over and over again along the way. Finding yourself is more of a gradual unfolding or an organic blossoming than reaching a destination. 

There are these moments though, where you’ll discover a little bit more about yourself. Where you know more about life or you have more self compassion. Where you see yourself and your life through a new lens. And each of these is another point on the evolution of your blossoming. 

As you grow and transform, new parts of you are revealed. 

Life is nothing but a series of choices, and if you make good choices, your life will improve. That’s a brief, rational statement that everyone lives by, since the opposite—improving your life by making bad choices—isn’t much of a plan. Making good choices should bring the good things in life—but what if it doesn’t?

This is actually one of the most profound questions posed over the centuries. The obstacles to achieving a good life turn out to be powerful. They include

• Catastrophic accidents
• Serious disease
• Destructive mass events: war, famine, plague
• Forces of nature: climate change, earthquakes, storms, fire, floods
• Economic failures and reversals
• Political upheaval
• Prejudice and intolerance
• Psychological problems like anxiety and depression
• Old wounds, traumas, and humiliations from the past

It isn’t this world that threatens or disturbs us. We are dominated by our own thoughts and feelings. We are taken over by our own reactions. This is painful for us because our original nature, our True Self, longs to be free and unencumbered by self-limiting, self-defeating, compulsive thoughts and feelings.

The problem is, at our present level, we believe that another person or event is causing our unhappy feelings. We want power over them in the hope that it will give us power over our punishing feelings. Can you see that this approach to self-command is doomed from its ill-conceived beginning?

So where do we look for the power we need to be happy?

Ask any highly successful person how they maintain their motivation and focus to achieve their ambitious goals, and chances are their answer will be, “daily affirmations!”

I have met countless successful business people, Olympic and professional athletes, NY Times bestselling authors, and visionary changemakers who all use daily positive affirmations to stay energized and focused on their goals, no matter what’s happening in the world around them. They have all told me that their daily affirmations practice has had a game-changing impact on their lives.

Today I’d like to teach you how daily affirmations for success actually work and show you how to write affirmations that will make it so much easier for you to achieve your life goals.

I’ll also answer common questions such as:

“What is a daily affirmation?”
“Are morning affirmations better than evening affirmations?”
“How to write affirmations that work?”

… and so much more!

Once we grasp the essence of another, we have an obligation to honor and carry what we know to be true about that being with us and into the world, while they live and when they die. Honoring and carrying the essence of another is the deepest kind of love, the deepest kind of friendship. This is how the sea loves the shore and how the sun loves all it shines on. While we perish and vanish from the Earth, our love never dies. It illumines the next world.