In order to create the life you really want and
to be happy with your choices you need to think first and foremost about who
you want to be. Do you want to be kind or generous? Loving or passionate?
I call these your being values and living according to these values is a large
part of your life’s purpose.
Knowing and living according to your being values has a twofold benefit. Firstly
by making a commitment to demonstrate your being values on a daily basis you
have a very clear code of ethics and standards to live by; this makes it easier
for you respond positively to the ups and downs of daily living. Secondly,
by choosing to act on these values you break the pattern of reacting, and
this is how you change old beliefs and create new beliefs about yourself.
Let me give you an example of how this works. If a person cuts you off just
as you are about to drive into a parking spot, think about how you want to
act. If you reacted you might be tempted to make a rude gesture, give them
a black look, scream abuse, mutter to yourself or complain about their rudeness
to whomever is in the car with you, you could let another person’s actions
spoil your day. Or, you can act like the person you choose to be and look
upon this incident as an opportunity for you to demonstrate who you want to
be, that could be kind and generous. You may feel irritated at first for a
short while, but you will have turned a potentially negative experience into
something positive and over time as you make new choices in this way you’ll
feel so good about yourself. Try a similar experiment and see how powerful
you feel as a result of choosing how you want to act.
Remember, when you react you give your power away. When you choose to act
like the person that you want to be you not only feel good about yourself,
you reinforce your chosen belief and you change your perception of the world,
and the world in turn changes its perception of you. Everyday you make choices,
you can choose to act like a victim who has no control over what happens to
her, or you can choose to be powerful, strong, positive, inspirational or
kind. You can choose to adopt a value that suits any situation you’re in.
Now when you stop and think about it and observe what’s happening around you,
you’ll notice that most people are reacting all of the time. Imagine some
of these scenarios and see if you can relate to any of them:
It’s a weekday morning, you have to get to work and get the kids off to school.
Your children all have jobs to do but instead of doing them and getting ready
for school they watch TV. Fed up you start yelling or you feel stressed before
your day really begins.
You’re stuck in traffic and you know you’re going to be late. You sit in your
car and fume and arrive at your destination feeling stressed. Or, your
boss blames you for something that’s not your fault and you feel unappreciated
and angry. You tell everyone close to you about this event and it spoils your
day.
As you experience moments like these you often don’t even realise what you’re
doing, but now you do.
It takes time and some effort to change a habit, however you can do it if
you choose to. Just by taking this one simple step of acting like the person
you choose to be can dramatically transform your life, even if it was good
to begin with.
I recommend you choose only three being values because you want to easily
be able to remember them. I once asked a client what his values were and he
extracted a piece of paper from his wallet and read off around twelve values
to me. This made me realise that if you have to consult a piece of paper,
then it’s unlikely you will be living those values on a daily basis. You need
to know your values intimately because there will be many times when you will
have to make a snap decision as to how you wish to respond.
When you’ve chosen your three most important being values write out a code
of honour that you commit to live by. This will give you have a very clear
standard of behaviour to base future choices and actions upon. You might wonder
why you would bother, it’s a lot of work and it is. However, it’s something
that you only have to do once. All of your life you have responded to tribal
conditioning and have therefore simply reacted for much of your life. Now
it’s your turn to consciously choose the standards you wish to live by and
you need to be very clear about what those are. If for instance you choose
to be honest, understand how honest you want to be. Are you prepared to say
what you think to everyone even if it means hurting their feelings? Are you
prepared to pay all the taxes you legitimately owe? What is your definition
of honesty?
At one time I had a built-in cupboard installed in my home. On installation
the fitter discovered that one of the doors was the wrong size and took it
back, promising the right door would be delivered two days later. That same
promise was made and broken five times over a period of two weeks, causing
me a lot of inconvenience. There were times when I felt tempted to be extremely
rude, then I would ask myself if this is how a kind, loving, generous person
would act. These traits are the being values that I had chosen for my life’s
purpose. After a promise was made and broken for the sixth time, I decided
to be powerful, and I acted like a powerful person.
I rang the manager and very politely told him that I was going to stay on
the phone until we found a way to get my door to me that day. I was very pleasant
but said, ‘I am prepared to work with you on this, but I won’t accept being
fobbed off any longer. What can I do for you so that you can get my door to
me today?’ The man was so taken with my approach that we ended up laughing
about the matter, although he also knew that I was adamant. Eventually the
manager guaranteed that I would get my door that day however, by late afternoon
it still hadn’t arrived. So I rang the manager again and he promised to deliver
the door himself. He drove to my home after work which is a long way from
where he lives and he didn’t arrive until 8pm, however, he did keep his promise.
I don’t believe he would have done this if I had been abusive.
I demonstrated to myself that I can have what I want without comprising who
I am to obtain it. I can still go back to that company at any time without
any feelings of embarrassment that I would have felt if I had ‘lost it’.
Your problems can be your greatest opportunities
What always amazes me is that once you become aware and make a conscious choice
as to who you want to be, life will always present you with an opportunity to
demonstrate this aspect of who you are. Perhaps those opportunities are always
present and we just never noticed them because we saw them as problems.
Most of us would choose a life that is problem free. A problem free life doesn’t
exist no matter how successful or well balanced you are. Just remember that
problems always present us with an opportunity to demonstrate who we want to
be, and in overcoming these obstacles we change our core beliefs and many of
the niggling, recurring issues we all experience from time to time either go
away, or they don’t bother us any more.
There were many times when I was really annoyed with myself for giving up a
successful financial planning business. Finding myself in limbo after all my
successes was one of the most awful phases I’ve been through. For a short while,
I forgot I was powerful and acted like a victim (we all have a victim within
us). I talked to everyone about my troubles and felt depressed and angry, but
being a victim is not a very fulfilling role. It’s true that you usually gain
some attention in the short term but behaving like a victim doesn’t change anything,
and it doesn’t make you feel any better about yourself. The problems that I
experienced were just another opportunity for me to change some beliefs that
had prevented me from creating the life I really wanted. The added bonus was
that in helping myself, I am now able to help others.
Whenever we give we also need to receive in order to create a healthy balance
in our lives. Therefore it is important to understand what our emotional, material,
physical and spiritual needs are. I call these our having values and they are
what we need in our lives in order to be happy. In other words, they are what
we value.
If there is one area where most people fall down it is this one. When you don’t take the time to fulfil your own needs on a daily basis you spend your life reacting. Let’s say you would like to have more time for yourself just to read, relax or do nothing but you spend so much time looking after others there is never any time available. If you do this regularly it is only natural that you will end up feeling resentful, a low energy feeling that takes you away from what you want. Then as a way of compensating for what is missing, even though you may not be consciously aware of it, you comfort yourself by eating, drinking, overspending or indulging in low energy behaviour, which takes you even further away from what you want. This cycle occurs when you don’t take the time to fill your own needs.
By meeting your need to give and receive you create balance. This balance is rarely fifty-fifty. There are times in life when it is appropriate to give more and times when you need to receive more, but there is rarely a time when it is appropriate to ignore your needs altogether.
It is never too late to take responsibility for your life. Your needs form an important part of your identity, they are what make you unique. The primary cause of unhappiness is unmet needs and the only person responsible for meeting your needs is you. Of course it is hard to meet your own needs if you don’t know what they are. I find that many people don’t know themselves very well at all. This lack of knowledge about your needs is often what precipitates mid-life crises.
What you want is a feeling
When we pursue a goal we pursue a feeling. When I wrote my first book I felt good about myself and enjoyed the recognition I received. Achieving those feelings were my real goal. I could have written a hit song, built a skyscraper, or won a major sporting event and have achieved the same feeling. Someone who was once illiterate may get the same feeling from learning to read. If on the other hand my book was published and no-one bought it, then that feeling would have been short-lived and the joy of writing a book would be diminished.
Sometimes it takes a while to achieve a goal. That does not mean that you will never get it. Sometimes you get what you want in a different way.
The tribe doesn’t really believe that we can have everything we want and often members of the tribe encourage us to put up with things the way they are. We don’t have to. I was in a store one day when I heard the shop assistant, a woman about fifty, say, ‘I can’t wait to get old, then I can join some clubs and go out and have some fun.’ What a waste of a lifetime!
If your life is not all that you want it to be, choose again.
There are many different
ways to fulfil a need.