Tag Archives: happiness

ELEVATE

Crushing the Global Psychological Epidemic: The Hero’s Journey from Child to Adult

Leave a comment

For a long time I have thought about this problem that affects every person in the developed world and only recently I am moving to explore that these new revelations are the cause for the greatest epidemic affecting the whole world. This global affliction of the developed world is our feeling of Worthlessness. This manifests in countless ways, destroying people’s lives through self loathing, a lack of self belief and suspicion of the world around, to name only a few. We then see this in destructive behaviours, such as drug abuse, infidelity, suicide, etc.  I originally thought this came from a lack of love but then I had to wonder where did that come from and I believe that I have stumbled upon the path to help lead us to the core of this problem. The Lack of Self.

The Sense of Self 

Without a sense of self, we have no firm ground to stand on, no strength of wisdom to drawn from in times of need. We look to others to fill the void of true identity in order that we can know who we are. Often when we find people we take that this feeling of “filling the void of self” as such an intense relief, we think we are in love. But this relief is short-lived, because the person who has filled us up falters due to the fact that they also are searching for self. They were not able to satisfy every whim that the self demanded in order to feel fully valued. We will later consider that this is because the self is continually looking outward for validation. This leaves the self feeling angry and despondent that this person left us feeling empty or invalidated. All people want is to be seen but how can we be when who we are, our core self, is vapor? And so this leads us to the question where has this epidemic started from? Well it all begins at the edge of childhood.

 Child vs Adult

In childhood, lives the child mind. This is true for boy and girl. Here curiosity and wonder live as we explore and learn, not only about the world but also, about our selves in the world. We are working to form who we are as we pummel and push ourselves through life in these formative years. Childhood requires external stimulation whereas adulthood can take from internal reflection. This is because adults have determined a sense of self. Without the sense of self the child mind is left with a deafening silence and looks to the outside to distract it from the silence in the form of tv, sex and drugs, to name a few. Through the external activities the child is free from the silence and the void of self. Whereas the adult self can go inside and reflect on the self. It can use the self as a source of strength and a spring of wisdom in order that it may truly attain the moment and recognize the truth of their happiness.

 

e5059aac538dc94f9b6da0351a593ec2

The Villains of Happiness

Epicurus, a 4th century BC Greek philosopher spoke of happiness as 3 things: community, freedom to pursue your passion, and space to reflect and grow the psyche. The media panders to the child in advertising using the first 2 elements so that we are able to be constantly stimulated and not need to reflect on the self. Reflection is not conducive to media stimulation and therefore our child audience is missing a great opportunity to explore the self. We never see advertising marketed to the child mind to stop and contemplate on self but rather to accrue more friends and do what they want to do (only the first two epicurean parameters of happiness) Additionally, a stigma has begun to form around the person that spends time by themselves. They are anti-social. They are introverts. They are depressed. Are they plotting to harm others?

The Hero’s Journey from Child to Adult

The transition of child to adult mind often requires the child to complete a hero’s journey that begins their move into their adult mind. It is when they die to the security of their self as the coddled dependent and rather they embrace their journey as the solo adult. It is at this point the person now begins to realize that they are the master of their lives and are willing to take sole responsibility for it, without resentment, but with unencumbered love. Through life we have countless opportunities to die to our old selves and embrace the new. In marriage. In parenthood. In our careers. We must constantly surrender our ego and let it die in order that we allow the ever maturing adult mind to shine through. The child needs to push to its limits, feel the fear, and then continue to strive onward. This takes courage because we face our biggest enemy – our scared child selves. The child self that is telling us to go back home and try to be safe. But we must push passed these limitations of the child.  We must let that self die. We must be willing to get burnt by the dragon in order to defeat it. And on the other side of our quest lies the treasure of learning and attaining our true sense of self. We see this over and over in the entrepreneur, the selfless mother, the devoted husband.

The Adult life

How do we find the courage to push passed these limits? We push past our limitations to take responsibility for what we are not responsible for. We pick a dream that is bigger than our life. A dream that takes more than one lifetime to complete. When you find those dreams, you grab onto them and you ride them down the rabbit hole to wherever they may lead you because once on this journey you know you will have travelled a life well lived. So be brave. Embrace your responsibility. Believe in yourself. Take help from your friends. Follow your dreams. And look inward to learn about who you REALLY are. When we take the time to live these simple rules we begin to open ourselves to the wisdom that exists within our adult self and we will begin to truly know ourselves as whole and worthy people. We will begin to accept and love ourselves. And the epidemic that has left us defeated and deflated will be replaced by a global community of conscientious adults that live and learn from love, for themselves, from others and from the gifts of the world around.

 

ELEVATE

Why your Dreams Need a ‘Why’ to Come True

Leave a comment

It can be difficult to find the joys in life. We are told all you have to do is follow your joy and life will work out. But what if you don’t know what your joy is? Well I will tell you right now what your joy is and where you can find it. Your joy is the ‘why’ you are doing something. If you thought it can be hard finding your joy, you are right! It is hard to find the joy because the ‘why’ you are doing something is not an easily definable goal but it is truly the most important thing to define. The ‘why’ provides you with motivation in achieving what you are doing. Why are you doing what you are doing? Why are you trying to create this dream? ‘Why’ is where the energy of your dreams reside and it is when you have truly found your reasons and embraced them that you will begin to move forward powerfully and unflinchingly towards the creation of your dream.

The ‘what’ is simply the definable goals that have definable limits and values associated with them. We have so many ‘what’s’ in our lives and spend so much time defining them. All these ‘what’s’ though are associated with the external world, all the things that we want, whereas the why is more associated with our inner world, the motivation that drives us towards realizing our dreams in our external reality. The ‘why’ even exists deep in a place in our brain that doesn’t have complete access to our conscious mind. Instead it has to be translated by the cortex, the conscious part of our brain, in order that we can verbalize and understand ourselves what our ‘why’ is. This part of our brain though is heavily connected to our emotions and reward centers which give us the power to follow our dreams. Our ‘why’ is our success fuel and without the ‘why’ we are tapping a very limited energy resource. So we have to spend extra attention and energy in defining our ‘why’, in sitting and being with ourselves. Why am I doing this? Why do I care?

The ‘why’ is then similar in nature to our values. If the ‘what’ is the goal at the end of a journey, the ‘why’ is what drives how you travel along the journey itself. Therefore, as a practice you could imagine how you want people to remember you. People don’t normally speak of the goals (the ‘what’) that we hit but instead how we went about living our life and what was driving us. These elements are key to you understanding why you do things and why you will do things. When you have worked out some of these values you will gain a greater insight into some of these deeper aspects of what is driving you.

However even still sometimes it is difficult to find our ‘why’, even with such practices because people want to know their ‘what’ first. There are many people in this world and all our unique. So for those people who want to know the ‘what’ first I would say this: Follow your joy. What do you do in your week that you look forward to? What do you dream about that you think would be the best thing ever? What thing, when you think about it, makes you feel excited and bursting with happiness? When you have worked out what that thing is, then the next step is the hard one… Take a step towards it. Sometimes that step may feel too big. Too overwhelming. Well then, take a smaller step. Work out what the step is before that step and if that is still daunting, half the step again and work out the biggest step that you are willing to take, but take that step. When you commit to your joy you are committing to your ‘why’.

The good thing about moving toward your joy is that you are never locked in to it. Just because you took a step towards something doesn’t mean that you can’t change your direction. It doesn’t mean that you can’t take a step to the left or do a complete 180 degrees. But you need somewhere to step toward. You need to create that beacon of light, something that draws you to and lights your path. The closer you get the more you feel the warmth from the light. And the more you feel the warmth, the more tactile and real your ‘why’ will become until you will be able to hold onto it and give it a name. From that point on you will be running through every obstacle with the armor of purpose and meaning. For when you have your hands firmly wrapped around these concept of purpose and meaning, when you know the reasons why you are doing something, you can wield it’s awesome power through the darkest moments and create a life worth living in every moment.

ELEVATE

The Science of Gratitude and the Creation of Dreams

9 Comments


In getting clear on what our dream life looks like I would like to offer a suggestion on how to best create an emotional and mental space that will most certainly get you there. I say this because so often we talk about what we want and what we are going to have. We spend a lot of time and energy thinking and working hard to get to this dream place. We may even be really excited by the possibility of it but there is something that we always miss out on that has our efforts and energy get lost in the winds of time. And that is… it is so important to ensure that you are grateful for what you have NOW. 

By only being passionate and grateful for what you are getting in the future, you are not grounding yourself in the present. It is in the present moment from which we create our futures. It is the solid ground from which things grow. The material world only exists in this moment. Really think about it: What solid thing exists in the future? Nothing! It is only a possibility. What exists in the past? Nothing! It is only a memory. Even if that moment was only one second ago, you think back on say your plant one second ago, and that memory is only an electrical impulse in your brain, not a material thing. Nothing material exists in the moment outside of the present moment and so we cannot grow things from any other moment, but this moment. The only moment is now. So when you are intending on things in the future, do it from a place where you are firmly grounded in the moment of now.

Over the last hundred years scientific studies have confirmed that there is only the moment of now. Einstein said, “…for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.”  Dr. Richard Feynman, one of the most famous quantum theorists, then went onto describe that the probability of an event is determined by summing together all the possible histories preceding that event. This means that the direction of our journey through time is simply a path in space heavily influenced by our preceding actions, which makes one outcome more probable than the more fantastic journeys time might have otherwise taken us on. Therefore in conjunction with advancing theories over the decades it has been shown that each and every moment is a completely new Universe, with infinite new possibilities in its own right and it is our consciousness (thoughts and feelings) that helps bind time into what appears a simple cohesive journey. 

Why have I gone into this? Because I want you to realize that in every moment you have the ability to create your own reality. That fresh possibility exists in every moment and that moment is only now. So the way that you can direct the most probable outcome is through the sum of the histories of the event in which you are trying to create. By being grateful now for what you have and being grateful for what you WILL have, you help create the most probable sum of the event because you are trying to create an event which makes you very grateful. 

The first thing to know about guiding ourselves to our dreams is based on another quick moment of science. As shown by the Institute of HeartMath, feelings generate particular frequency patterns in our hearts and positive feelings of gratitude generate a very even sinusoidal wave, while negative emotions usually elicit quite erratic patterns. Our heart is the largest generator and emitter of frequencies in our bodies. If every moment is now (even the future) and we are trying to create a moment outside of now for the future then by harmonizing our frequencies of the moment of now with a future moment of now we are helping to couple and connect the moments of now and best create the resonant reality of our choosing. By feeling gratitude intensely we are further creating a stronger signal which will better reach and harmonize with what we are trying to create.

The second element of creation is to be committed. The more gratitude you add to your life and the future event, the greater the probability will be and the more chance you will have of reaching your dream. Every time you give thanks for both now and the future, you add another moment to the history of events that will lead to a greater summation of the probability of that event. So choose what you want now and give thanks for it and remember to give thanks always and often for what you have, because without being grateful for who you are and what you have you are negating your own creative powers and thus leaving you and the connected Universe impotent.

It doesn’t matter if you are surrounded by negativity; remember that every moment is a fresh moment of possibility, in which you can begin to change the direction of your life. You can have lost your job, lost your partner, been diagnosed with an illness, but if you choose what you want and start giving, and truly feeling thanks for what you have received and what you want to receive, you will surely have it. You can give thanks for your family and friends that surround and support you. You can feel love and gratitude for your partner and children. You can think of all that has been given to you and that has kept you alive to this moment. You can be grateful about your health. You can think about your dreams and passions. You can smile about all the things you have accomplished in life. Write them down and keep a list. If only a few every night of what you are grateful about in your day. Give thanks. Feel it and Commit to it and your dream life is surely waiting in the next moment.