At the bottom of the world
Perhaps you haven’t seen the rock bottom yet. Perhaps your life is just ticking along but you know deep down things could be better. Perhaps you want your life to change completely. In any case, before taking the first step, check in with yourself to get a baseline line. You wouldn’t know how far you have come unless you have a place to look back at. So, write the answers to these questions as you work towards your better future:
- Are you selling yourself too short? how ?
- Are you in a relationship that drains your confidence?
- Do you always tell yourself you’ll never succeed?
- Have you accepted your status quo and told yourself not to expect any more from life?
Taking stock of your life
Take a good look at the people in your life. Consider how much quality there is in your relationships. You might have talked to people decades ago and still talk to them today. Or you might no longer talk to people because you feel the negative energy.
Take a good look at your job. If you weigh positives with the negatives, how does your job stack up? What’s your purpose? Is it meaningful? Do you feel like you’re progressing? Do you feel satisfied? What are your relationships at work? Do you like your boss? Are you making good money? Do you picture yourself to be someone different?
By taking a good look at your job and people you surround yourself with, you’re identifying the elements of your life that cause you pain and waste your time. Negatives attract positives from our lives. The sooner you identify them, the easier you can let go of.
Ego is your enemy
Your first step to self-awareness starts by identifying your ego. Understand that you are not your ego and there’s a quiet stillness with you that becomes apparent in moments like meditation. Start keeping a mental record of what triggers you. Think about the times your ego took over and how you could have stopped your ego. When you learn to recognize the ego before it comes, you are always in control of the situation, not your ego.
Write down three occasions when your ego fired up. What were the signs? How did you feel? Were you in control? What effect did it leave on you and other people? How did you feel afterwards? How it could have been different?
Short-term discomfort for long-term gain
Identify three things with short-term discomfort but long-term gain in your everyday life. This can be as simple as doing the dishes or going for a run. Any situation where you’ve felt uncomfortable but have just done it anyway, and it will have benefited you in the long term. What are your three-short term discomforts? When could you have experienced short-term discomfort? What would have happened if you go through the discomfort?
Breaking down the goal and creating a SMART goal
Think of your goal. What are the stages you need to break it down in order to make it happen? Create a timeline for each stage. Now make your goal SMART. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and carry a timeframe.
The purpose of visualization
Imagine you’ve got a million pounds. Picture it inside a bank vault, the cash piled up in a neat block of pristine fifty notes tightly wrapped in plastic. Now imagine the experiences and things you could do if you have a million pounds to pay with. Is it buying your dream house, favorite car or taking your loved ones on the trip of a lifetime? Maybe you want to give the money to a charity and make a difference.
Imagining the cash pile might have left you cold and lacked depth while imagining the experiences you could buy with a million pound gave you positive emotions. It’s that emotion you want when you’re visualizing. You’ve got to have that vibration that matches the desire. When you don’t have that, visualization is mostly pointless.
Life, the Universe and Everything
Take a moment to look back on your life choices. Write down people who have been instrumental in your success and happiness, when they came into your life and what led you to meet them. The more you start spotting these helpful leg-ups the universe provides us with, the easier it is to trust the magic. Don’t call it coincidence and brush it off. Use this to question why it happened and ask yourself how you can recreate. You can’t really connect the dots without looking backwards.
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