Someone gave me a framed poster some 20 years ago. I have hated it that long… Today it became useful.
Some of the inspirational quotes we read are not inspirational at all, until we get to a place that they are useful. Inspiration as a momentary good feeling is useless, or even harmful. In the comparison, the mind’s habitual activity, we always come out smelling bad.
Unless you can really use it to get yourself a new attitude, a new direction to move in, they are good on the surface, but destructive on the inside.
Why? Because it makes you feel even less apt, even less valuable, courageous, worthy, smart, confident, etc. than you were when you first looked at the quote.
This poster reads: “Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal”
Now, stop for a moment, close your eyes, and experience yourself, your emotions, your mind, reacting to the saying.
Did you do it? If you didn’t, do it now, just for 10 seconds… please.
If you are a normal human being, there was a sharp pain in chest: the pain of being a fraud, feeling like a fake, the impostor syndrome.
You see obstacles, don’t you? You lose sight of your goals because of them, don’t you? And you have been, and you will, till you die.
Most of you stopped having goals altogether… and the impostor syndrome comes from that.
Many of you give lip service to goals… and you feel like a windbag… nothing of substance inside. Deep inside you know you won’t do it.
This is how I was relating to this poster, and buried it in my storage room as deep as I could. Who needs a reminder to know that I am less than I could be, that I am sub-standard… and will never amount to much?!
…and this is the life that is caused by the happiness trap, the positive thinking trap, the trap of the happiness conspiracy we all live in.
A student of mine sent me a donation this morning to measure her vibration. Even though she hasn’t participated for the past year (at least) her vibration was still respectably high.
She writes: i’m surprised actually. i thought it was going to be way lower and i just wanted to know how deep i’ve gone. I’ve been doing it knowingly again, looking for the bottom. The distinction: hitting bottom is referenced here. The bottom is how low i can go. I’m just starting to see that there is no bottom and it won’t end until I die. You were right about that i have a very high pain tolerance. I’m wondering if there’s a way to use that for my advantage.
Actually this email sent me to the storage room in search of that darn poster.
After 20 years I see what’s wrong with the poster, and I know how to make it right, and how to help people getting on track and staying on track with their lives.
There are three components to living a meaningful, fulfilling life
- Finding your values, finding what’s meaningful to you, and live in integrity with your values. I will say more about values later in this article, and in other articles
- Give room, accept, and allow the feelings and the thoughts that arise in life, whatever feelings and whatever thoughts they may be… good or bad or indifferent.
This is going to be the topic of Brilliance at Will Level 5… it is based on exercises from the Happiness Trap and my own experience.
When you give room from the “obstacles”, your view of the value that guides you is onobstructed.
The obstructions can be distractions, greed, or the demands of day to day living, in addition to the feelings, and the thoughts and judgments… anything really that is in the way. - Consider that things don’t mean what they seem to mean… until YOU assign a meaning they mean nothing!
- Create and fulfill on small steps that are in harmony with your values. You can call them goals, just make sure they are doable, either because you know a lot of the steps that it will take to accomplish them, or because they are small enough.
Values vs. goals
Values are like a direction, a horizon. You can never attain it, you can never get there. No arriving. There is always more west to go…
Integrity is a good example: you can never have integrity fully, because it is a value… when you make a promise, your integrity is out.
So the only thing is available for people is course correction: putting integrity back in.
A value is a pregnancy that does not end in birth.
Goals are like birth… many don’t even need you to be pregnant, lol… just kidding. Goals are specific, and real, like getting a promotion, like getting through the day, like stop eating chocolate: you can cross them off the list. If they come back again, they will need to be put back on the list and accomplish again. Like a new planned birth.
Enlightenment, or getting to a vibrational frequency is a good example, especially because society teaches that there is such thing, and that it’s permanent.
Nothing is permanent, especially results aren’t. They are just milestones on the way to values or nothing… depending on where the goals came from.
Here are some values for you to ponder:
You have a hierarchy of values: some values are more important to you than others.
Your most important values are actually invisible to you… they are from the bottom of the iceberg of your being.
But the question is: who do I want to be, how do I want to live, what is important for me to give? to get to the authentic values… minus the most important ones.
We find your most important values in the Itch coaching calls… the ones that you are stingy about. The opposite of which you dish out…
And I teach how to live by your values in Level 2 of the Brilliance at Will course.
If you find that your relationship to values is on the receiving end: you want others and the environment to give them to you, you may want to do the Itch webinar and some other coaching program: you will be disappointed for the rest of your life if you don’t manage to change your mind about it.
I am so glad you listened.
Brilliant and so so SO glad this was addressed.