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Stop trying to be perfect: You already are. Yes, each one of us is a work in progress, but that work is perfect in its state of evolution. When you are driven by perfection, you are unable to appreciate who you already are. Try instead to look at what is right about you.
Stop Trying to Impress Others: The people who want to be impressed (in the way I am talking about here) are not worth your time. The people who will judge you without knowing you or based on some criteria that are not even important to you are just not your people. The people who matter will think you are amazing. Pay more attention to them.
Stop Trying to Be Someone Else: If you are comparing yourself to someone who has different talents than you do or if you think that you should be doing things a different way than is natural for you, instead start to appreciate how you do things and what your talents are.
Find What You Love: When you let yourself be yourself, you will naturally be drawn to what you love. But, what you love also shows you something about who you are. If you don’t know what you love, experiment. If you like it, try doing it again and see if it grows into something.
Give Yourself Permission to Do What You Love: Once you find the things you love, do them a lot. The more that you do what you love, the happier and the more satisfied you will be with your life. If you know what you love but you are not doing it, get the support you need to give yourself permission to be happy.
Don’t Waste Time Doing Other Things: Why bother doing things that you do not enjoy? Yes, I understand life has some practicalities that need to be addressed, but once they have been attended to—are you still wasting time not doing what you love? If so, start a plan to cut out the things that are not in line with who you want to be or what you love, and then take action.
Slow Down: We can all get a bit ahead of ourselves. It is not about doing more or doing it faster, it is about really enjoying our life. We can’t do that if we are moving so fast that we don’t even know what is happening. Start by building some real breaks into your schedule.
Pay Attention to What Is Working (Most of the Time): Most of us would benefit from being a bit more positive. There is a place for looking at what is not working, but when we pay attention to what works, we often learn more about it and therefore can have more of it. We also feel better about what we are experiencing. If you see yourself getting negative, find one thing that is working.
Express Gratitude: Being grateful is one of the most effective ways to be happier. When in doubt, find something to appreciate. And don’t forget to apply it to yourself!
Learn to Fully Receive: The emphasis on doing that most of us have been enculturated into leaves us less skilled when it comes to receiving. But how can we have a full and rich life if we can’t receive it? The next time someone compliments you, take it in.
Ready for an even more fulfilling life? See my article here to learn about living in your truth >>> “7 Signs You Are Living Your Truth.”
One of the main issues that people face in their personal and spiritual development is in the cultivation of presence. Many people get so preoccupied with fixing what is wrong with themselves or healing the past that they forget the reason for doing all of this work: to learn how to be in love with their life each day.
Sometimes, we do not need to fix the past so much as we need to learn new ways of being with the present so that we can have more of what we want. In short, the solution isn’t in changing the past but in being more adept at each and every moment. We do this by learning to be more present.
Here are three steps to cultivating presence.
Slow Down: As soon as we slow ourselves down, we witness the chaos that drove us in each moment. This can be our chattering mind or our compulsive drive to keep busy. At first we are uncomfortable, but once we break through, we have access to a type of experience we did not have before. Slowing down creates an environment for cultivating presence.
Pay Attention: As we begin to pay attention to what is happening in the present moment—our distraction, how we are feeling, or something someone said—we begin to see what is really going on with us. Paying attention brings things into conscious awareness, which allows us to work with them.
Acknowledge Where You Are Giving Your Energy: We slow down so that we can create the space to pay attention. We pay attention so that we can see what we are giving our energy to that is detracting from what is now present. Then when we get caught up in something that we do not want to give our energy to, we can reapply our attention by acknowledging that we are doing so.
These three steps make us more aware. It is from this place of awareness that we can be more fully in the present moment and can choose how we want to proceed from this point—direct our energy or be more receptive. We learn what keeps us away from being with the present moment and we can make new choices about how we want to connect, create more joy, or take our next steps.
Cultivating presence can lead to more fulfillment – read more about this important topic here: >>> “10 Ways to Live More Fully.”
Wondering if you are living in your truth? Use these signs to help you see the way.
You are Happy. Not just happy because things are going your way, but really, deeply happy regardless of how things are going. When we are aligned with our inner truth, we feel happy.
You Feel Congruent. When you are living your truth, your insides and your outsides match. You feel you are with the right people doing the right things most of the time.
You Have Lots of Energy. An abundance of energy is the result of being in our truth. Even if facing a serious illness, people aligned with their truth have more energy and are more vivacious than those who might be facing something similar without such alignment.
You Feel Inspired. Being connected with your inner truth leaves you feeling inspired. When you are connected with your inner truth you feel creative and naturally want to contribute to the world around you.
You Feel Confident. There is nothing as good for your confidence as being connected to your truth. When you are connected to your truth, you trust in what is right for you, you know what you know and what you don’t, and you feel comfortable right where you are.
Life is Informative. When you are connected to your truth, life is not a series of challenges to get past but rather a series of events to help you unfold even more. Being in your truth helps you see the informative nature of all things.
You Can Be Generous. When you are in your truth, you naturally have overflow. Being in your truth means not being in all the things that block your truth. As a result, you have an abundance of resources that you can be generous with.
Ready to sink more into living your truth? See my blog post >>> “Uncovering Your Souls True Voice.”
One of the most direct ways to create a better life and a better world is to cultivate compassion. Compassion directed inward connects us with our truth and leaves us loving ourselves. Compassion directed outward decreases disagreements and misunderstandings.
When we judge and condemn aspects of ourselves (and aspects of others), we can find ourselves in inner discomfort or creating discomfort in those around us. When we are able to bring compassion into each situation, we deepen our love of ourselves and have a more positive effect on the world.
Compassion is the ability to understand the experience of another person or even an aspect of ourselves. Our compassion sees the other and acknowledges the experience as real and valid. It does not judge or look for who is to blame, but simply honors what is. A compassionate response sees beyond the story lines and the polarities to the deeper truth of the matter.
Many of our problems (both interior and exterior) can be solved by offering compassion. When we offer compassion to ourselves, we honor our experience and acknowledge our truth.
Compassion toward ourselves stops us from getting caught in the trap of self-criticism and the potential self-negating actions that follow. This does not mean we do not hold ourselves accountable—just that we offer understanding and care with our accountability. Compassion toward others offers them the same gifts.
Compassion is so powerful because it offers the following:
Compassion acknowledges. A compassionate approach is one that sees another where he or she is, how he or she feels, without the need to overlay wisdom, platitudes, or judgments.
Compassion honors. Compassion comes with deep respect for another’s truth, regardless of what that truth is. A compassionate person does not need to prove that an alternative way of being or viewing things is important or necessary.
Compassion does not blame. Compassion does not need to point fingers or assess responsibility. A compassionate person can see all sides of the situation and understand that all have a place and a right to exist.
Compassion is most often cultivated through being misunderstood or mistreated ourselves. This pain has the potential to wake us up to a deeper reality. After we have stood on more than one side of a disagreement, it is more challenging to maintain the “someone is right/someone is wrong” perspective.
We can actively cultivate our own compassion by choosing to see all sides of issues as they arise. We are not so much waiting for life to crack us open but rather using each moment to expand our own awareness. We put ourselves in another person’s shoes as a moment-to-moment practice of our life.
This gift of compassion makes way for our growth as well as the growth of those around us and works to heal the challenges we face rather than contributing to them, all of which aids in the creation of an environment ripe for self-love and offering healing to the world.
Being self-compassionate is also a key to living your truth. Read more at >>> “Uncovering Your Souls True Voice.”
Making a positive impact in the world starts with our everyday actions and with a deep sense of caring for our own lives. Here are 10 simple and profound steps you can take today.
1. Be kind and generous: In every moment of every day it is possible to change someone’s life. Sometimes, it is as simple as just being kind. Whenever you have an opportunity to go the extra mile for someone – take it.
2. Be clear about what does and does not work for you: People cannot work with you if they do not know what you are all about. If you are always compromising yourself, you will not be as effective. Be honest and direct about what you are willing to take part in.
3. Be your full self: Holding back because you think that is what others want is not helpful to anyone. You would not be who you are if it was not needed. Expressing yourself authentically may cause waves at first, but in the end it will surround you with the people and circumstances that truly reflect your inner experience.
4. Let others be their full selves: The same goes for anyone else. If you think others need to be different, you are wrong. Let people be who they really are. If you don’t like it, figure out how to work with it. One of the most generous and healthy things we can do is just let others be themselves.
5. Say thank you: People love to be appreciated. Let them know when you are grateful. When you do, you are more likely to keep receiving these positive things.
6. Look for ways to give back: Don’t lose track of making a contribution. No matter where you find yourself in your life, you can give back in a way that helps others.
7. Tip well and tip often: If you have money — and some might argue that this is true even if you don’t have money — make sure to support the people who Support the things you believe in: Purchase what you want to support. Spend your time doing what you want to support. Talk about the things you want to support. You get the picture?
8. Care for your health: It is hard to be our best selves when we are under the weather or treating our bodies badly. When we are not taking care of our physical self it spills over to the rest of our life and then to the others around us. Conversely, when you care for your body you not only are inspiring example to others, you will have more energy to give back.
9. Really listen: Most people are not listened to enough. Pay attention to them and let them know they are important. When you really listen to others you increase your connection and consequently your appreciation of others.
10. Focus: Know what you want to create and how you can help others. Then do it. Most everything else is a waste of time.
Want more ways to make your life and the world around you change for the better? Write me directly at admin@projectspace.in and we can set up a time to talk about what next steps are right for you!
Well at this point I have been around. I have been part of the therapeutic community, part of the business coaching community, part of the academic community, women’s communities and spiritual communities.
No matter where I go, I notice that there is a group of people who are thinking out of the box and wanting more for their lives, their work, and the world. Whatever group they are part of, they do not “drink the KoolAid”. They are thoughtful, considerate, creative and unwilling to settle for just a small part of what they want.
These are my people. If you relate to the above, I want to tell you that it is great to be on this journey with you.
You know that there are a lot of people out there who do not care whether what they do has a positive or a negative impact on the world around them, they really just care about making money. But, if you are reading this, you are not one of them.
My work has always been for people who are looking for the essential information that they need to grow their business, but a business that adds richness to their life in more ways than just monetarily. A business that adds some value to the world.
If you boil it all down:
Purposeful Profit = Lifestyle + Impact
Lifestyle is the way you want to live. It covers how you spend your time AND your money. It determines how much of either of those you want to have. How you feel as you go about your day. What and who you are surrounded by.
Impact is the way you want to interact with the world around you. The ways you would like to make the world a better place by having lived. When you create your business, you want to create a profitable business, otherwise there would be little reason to create a business at all. However it is just as important as you move through live to think about the PURPOSE behind your life and your business.
Because if you are driven by a sense of purpose nothing else is going to leave you feeling more fulfilled than achieving that purpose. And all the money in the world will not make up for that.
Want to learn more about this? My Power Purpose Profit eBook is a workbook that will guide you through turning your desire for impact into a business and lifestyle that you can start LIVING instead of just dreaming about. Purchase it here.
My upcoming book is called Apathy is Noxious: The power of giving a damn. I really like the way it is shaping up. The book is a step on the path to getting what I believe is the most important message: Care More.
After thinking a lot about it, I realized that if I could change one thing in the world. It would be to get people to care more. I believe that harnessing our power to care is life changing, world changing, and downright transformational on every level.
It might sound trite but think about it for a second. How often have you said to yourself “I think that if I just cared more that would solve this problem?”
How often have you thought, if that person or group just cared more then this problem would be solved?
Kind of interesting right? Most of us have found ourselves lamenting the lack of care that we see in another group of people. Maybe even sometimes getting upset because how much we care about something is getting in our way: We care about a person and they hurt us. We care about a cause and we see it fail our ideals. We care about an aspect of our life and we loose it.
Then it turns into blame. It must be someone besides us that is messing this all up, right?
What if I were to tell you, no?
What if I were to tell you that if you really cared about yourself and others that it would blow the doors off what you have been up to now calling your life.
The truth is that there is a place inside of you that is so full of love for you and for everything around you that when you tap into it you will no longer be caring because you are expecting an outcome. You will care because it is who you are.
When you look at an aspect of your life, you will know that it is not like that because you don’t have the right amount of money or because you couldn’t get the love of someone you were interested in but because you did not care enough to do what it takes to make it something different.
And that is something most people do not want to hear.
Because it means that they are both the problem and the solution.
So, look at your life, look at your relationships and your work. Are they the way that you want them to be? Ask yourself am I caring as much about myself as this other person, idea, or thing? And, am I caring as much about this person, idea, or thing, as I am caring about myself?
Is there a way that I can care more? What would I do if I was willing do care more?
Ask and act on these questions and, trust me, your life will change.
1. Be kind and generous: In every moment of every day it is possible to change someone’s life. Sometimes, it is as simple as just being kind.
2. Be clear about what does and does not work for you: People cannot work with you if they do not know what you are all about. If you are always compromising yourself, you will not be as effective.
3. Be your full self: Holding back because you think that is what others want is not helpful to anyone. You would not be who you are if it was not needed.
4. Let others be their full selves: The same goes for anyone else. If you think others need to be different, you are wrong. Let people be who they really are. If you don’t like it, figure out how to work with it.
5. Say thank you: People love to be appreciated. Let them know when you are grateful.
6. Look for ways to give back: Don’t lose track of making a contribution. No matter where you find yourself in your life, you can give back in a way that helps others.
7. Tip well and tip often: If you have money — and some might argue that this is true even if you don’t have money — make sure to support the people who are making minimum wage. They are working hard.
8. Support the things you believe in: Purchase what you want to support. Spend your time doing what you want to support. Talk about the things you want to support. You get the picture?
9. Really listen: Most people are not listened to enough. Pay attention to them and let them know they are important.
10. Focus: Know what you want to create and how you can help others. Then do it. Most everything else is a waste of time.