What Do You Need to Live Your Better Life?
“Life is truly what you make it. The purpose and meaning of your life are the purpose and meaning you give it.”
A 27-year study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that one thing led to people living longer - living and working with a sense of purpose and meaning! This is interwoven with happiness, fulfillment, and maximum productivity at work. This sense of purpose and meaning leads to far greater engagement, motivation, productivity, and retention both in life and work. You must as: Why? What are you yet to do in life? Who are you and how you should integrate it with what you do? This will inspire a rebirth, recommitment, and a stretch aligning with your aspirations. Your purpose is the reason you get up every morning. It guides your decisions, behavior, and direction, shapes your goals, and creates meaning in all life areas. Living your true purpose and meaning is elusive? Why?
(1). Your Body: How you feel physically and emotionally at any given moment will ultimately determine your actions. Sadness, frustration, headaches, etc. will have its associated behavior, actions, and negative results. What you allow to influence your life, i.e., relationships (intimate, family, friends), self (nurturing and development), and work/world/mission (culture, work) are the filters in which all choices and decisions are made. Are you allowing negativity through your filters to keep you from what you want? Your negative filter and your belief in it like, there are no good men, will keep you from good men. Before you decide to react to an experience, you unconsciously sort out how you are going to react considering past experiences, i.e., rejection. Being aware of how you filter experiences and allow triggers to set the meaning you give will determine your actions and results. Know them and shift to your advantage.
(2). Your Meaning:Understand: 1) Your driving force and motive is your human need for certainty, variety/uncertainty, connection/love, growth, or contribution. Wanting more money, to care for those less fortunate, a better relationship, etc. are only vehicles to meet your human need for connection/love (better relationship), certainty/growth (more money), contribution (care for those less fortunate). You can have all the money in the world and still be unhappy because your focused need is certainty and should be connection/love or contribution. Understand your “primary” needs and move towards them. 2) The guiding force and meaning you have around your identity, your primary internal question, desires and fears, rules that must be followed, global and situational beliefs determine your behaviors, actions, and results. For example, the primary question I always ask is “will I be accepted.” In the past, the meaning I gave this kept me from pursuing opportunity out of fear of rejection. My human need was certainty and significance in relationships. I thought I needed certainty, but it was connection/love and contribution. 3) You have a choice that fuels where you live every day. Will you choose empowering or disempowering emotions? Your choice will determine your result. Are you getting the results you want?
(3). Your Consciousness: Clare W. Graves, former Professor Emeritus of Psychology, described the eight levels of consciousness and how we must move through them changing to reach higher levels. Pain or wanting more will force you to move to the next level. However, being aware before you must move up the next level will help minimize the impact of the change. The eight levels of consciousness are:
• Awakened Soul: Driven by holistically connecting to all things meeting their human need for connection and contribution.
• Integrated Flex/Flow: Driven by systems alignment, values, group, and competency over power meeting their need for connection and contribution.
• Socially Conscious: Driven by consensus, caring, and community meeting their need for connection and contribution.
• Striver-Driver/Achiever: Driven by success, status, believing a hierarchy rule meeting their need for significance, certainty, and growth.
• Order and The Absolute: Driven by an authoritative code of conduct and enforcement meeting their need for significance and certainty.
• Power of God: Driven by power, being impulsive, and egocentric with no submission meeting their need for significance and certainty.
• Tribal Order: Driven by safety through rites and rituals, i.e., tribes, gangs meeting their need for certainty.
• Survival/Instinct Driven: Driven by the need for safety, food, and water meeting their need for certainty.
Which consciousness level do you live consistently? When stressed, at which level do you drop? What is the next level needed? What about your relationships? Now is the time to learn and act on new strategies that allow you to be more open to live life!
“The level of consciousness you choose to tune into any moment of any given day will
determine the quality of your experience in the world.” Debbie Ford.
Written By: Gladys Agwai
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