About Getting Clear

So once you figure out how to let Divine Intelligence guide you and stop saying I don’t know – or letting other’s ideas drive what you want –

What are some ways you can figure out what it is that you really want?

Smile test – get a counselor, a practitioner, Minister or friend to listen and ask good questions.
Every time you have an experience that brings you pleasure, big or small, take note of it.  You are probably far more proficient at those that you enjoy.  How can you STOP doing the things you don’t like – It’s a sign of maturity when you can stop trying to get better at your weaknesses and HIRE THEM.
WHAT DOES YOUR HEART WANT?  Can you pass the smile test.

What do you guts say when you think about it?  When you feel like you want to do something, don’t let your logical mind set in and take over. Just do it. This may be the direction you should follow. You’ve heard people say, “Follow your heart.” And even more importantly, “Follow what feels right.”  The still small voice that we read about in Scripture can be heard by listening to what feels good.
Relax and listen. Let go on a regular basis, so you can listen to your inner being. It doesn’t have to be a long amount of time, but do something that makes you feel good whether it is meditating, cleaning, gardening, walking. You will know what is right for you.

Get good at asking questions about, and understanding, what makes people feel good. The quality of our lives is based on the quality of our questions.   Keep asking How does doing this make me feel?
Keep asking the question –  What do you really want? What do you really want? What do you really want?

If you still feel stuck – ask yourself – If you did Know – always gets an answer
Sometimes it helps to ask – What Don’t you want

Stanislaw Leszczynski (1677-1766)  To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting

–    What don’t you want?
The opposite is what you do want? I love the quote from Wayne Dyer – don’t die with your music still in you.
Too many lives are being lived in quiet desperation waiting until – until they had saved a nest egg, until the children are out of school, until I retire, but “until” ever arrives.

Don’t go to sleep tonight without making a decision on WHAT YOU REALLY WANT IN LIFE MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE.

Sometimes it’s hard to get clear about what we really want because there are so many SHOULDS that it’s hard to distinguish what voice to listen to.

Do you know what you really want? You may have difficulty with this question because the answer is hidden deep within you buried beneath a sea of shoulds.
Most people make decisions about their life and work based on what is generally considered “right” and “good.” What they think they are supposed to do – living from the outside in: letting others people’s expectations rule your life. You do what you do because that’s what you have been told to do. It’s a good recipe for frustration and stress.

Here’s an example from my own life:
Midlife Transition – Reinvention Dr. Toni LaMotta

In the original Chicken Soup for the Soul, there is a story about Monty, who was the son of an itinerant horse trainer of little means. During his senior year he was assigned a writing project to describe what he wanted to be when he grew up. His seven-page essay minutely detailed the 200-acre ranch he wanted to own. It included a diagram of the ranch and a detailed floor plan of his 4,000 square foot home.
Despite the passion and effort Monty put into his paper, he received it back with a large “F” written on it and a note to see the teacher after class. The teacher told Monty that the reason he had given him that grade was because his paper was unrealistic. He went on to cite all of the reasons why, and told Monty that if he would rewrite the paper with a more realistic goal, he would reconsider the grade. After considering it for a week, the young man turned in the same paper with no changes, along with the remark, “You can keep the F and I’ll keep my dream.”

How many of us have had the courage to go against what someone else thought we should do in life?

The conclusion of the Monty’s true story has the teacher bringing 30 students for a summer campout at the 200-acre ranch of the now grown (and successful) Monty who lives in his 4,000 square foot dream home.
Ask yourself with EVERYTHING you do – does this make me HAPPY? Or am I doing it because I think someone else will be happy? It’s an important distinction
Recognize that to be happy, you must live the life that you truly want to live. It’s your life and you are the only one who can truly determine what is right for you. There is no tragedy in shooting for your dreams; the tragedy is in looking back on your life and saying “I wish I’d ?”.

The purpose of life is to be HAPPY. Do you agree? Perhaps intellectually – but I have found consistently that many of us seem to be thwarting our own happiness – maybe we secretly still have lingering beliefs that we are supposed to suffer in life or that we grow most by delays –

Or maybe we are afraid to be happy because we won’t fit in and have anything to talk about with everyone who is unhappy
or maybe we think we don’t deserve happiness or we don’t really believe it is possible, and what I have found to be most true is that — we don’t even know what would really make us happy.

My assumption today behind everything else I’m going to say is that The best thing we can do for ourselves, for others and for the world is to be happy Ponder that …
If there is any aspect of your life that you are not completely happy with, there is work to be done – No – not to CHANGE yourself or to set goals and Work on yourself – but to discover what makes you happy – what you REALLY want in life and then how to open yourself and actually accept having it. Does that sound good?

“Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction.” – Kenichi Ohmae

Joy and happiness are not the same thing. I had some challenges this week, and that distinction became really clear to me. Happiness, to most people, is defined as the elation that accompanies good fortune. When things are going well, when the sun is shining, when we get a raise or a new job, when we think we are in love, when we get to hop like a bunny, we FEEL HAPPY, and we confuse that with the Quality of Joy that I am writing about. It’s getting in touch with the stuff that’s already inside us. JOY is the evidence of God’s presence in the human experience. And God can never NOT be present! We have to learn to look for the evidence. It’s there, sometimes in spite of what is happening in the outer world.
Have you ever cried and felt joy at the same time? I sure know I have. Then you know what I mean. JOY is the awareness that ALL IS GOOD. Even in the midst of this – God is here. This too is God. This too is Good. We can never escape the presence of God. When we begin to see all of life as a perfect reflection of our thoughts and we come to see that life always brings us what we send out, then we cannot help but rejoice in the perfection because we notice that that is exactly what is happening all the time. There’s a great sense of relief and release. You are really in charge. What you send out comes back.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Catholic Priest and theologian, gives us the second quote: “Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.” I’ve heard it translated – joy is the ECHO of God’s life in us. I like that. I’d like to tell you a story.
A man and his son were taking a walk in the forest. Suddenly his son trips and, feeling a sharp pain, screams, “Ahhhh!” Surprised, he hears a voice coming from the mountain, “Ahhhhh!” Filled with curiosity, he screams, “Who are you? But the only answer he receives is “Who are you?” This makes him angry, so he screams, “You are a coward!” and the voice answers, “You are a coward!” He looks at his father, asking, “Dad, what is going on?” “Son”, the man replies,

“Pay attention!” Then the father screams, “I admire you! The voice answers, “I admire you!” The father shouts, “You are wonderful!” And the voice answers, “You are wonderful! The boy is surprised, but still can’t understand what is going on. Then the father explains, “People call this an ‘echo’ but truly it is ‘life’!”

Life always gives you back what you give out. Life is a mirror of your actions and beliefs. If you want more love, give more love. If you want more kindness, give more kindness. If you want understanding and respect, give understanding and respect. This rule of nature applies to every aspect of our lives. Life always gives us back what we give out. Your life is not a coincidence, but a mirror of your own doings.

Getting Clear On Your Passion

If you’re clear on your passions, then you’re just about ready to walk The Path.

But what if you’re NOT clear?

What if you’re one of the many people I meet who feels completely disconnected from their sense of Passion? What if when asked to describe your “ideal life” or “vision”, you don’t even know where to begin?

First, you need to know that this “disconnect” from your sense of passion is simply another form of resistance.

Many times, we stop putting attention on our passions early in life when our more traditional system of education and upbringing tends to put a child down a path on which the child has no real input.

If what you have learned about your passions are that they are “okay for a hobby but not a way to make a real living” or something similar, then it is no wonder that have disconnected yourself from your feelings of passion. It would be too painful to live with a sense of yearning to do something you believe you cannot do, so you create a story that you “don’t know what your passions are.”

I’m not saying that you do this intentionally, because I don’t believe you do. It’s simply a kind of emotional defense mechanism. If you believe that you don’t know your passions, then you don’t have to take responsibility for not living them. “If only I knew my passions”, you might say, “I could put this Law of Attraction stuff to work in my life and things could change.” But in saying that, you affirm to yourself that you DON’T know your passions, and that story becomes more and more real to you until you truly believe that you don’t have anything in your life that you’re passionate about.

Instead of feeling “bad”, you have chosen to feel “numb.”

Clearly, there is no real power in feeling numb. You can’t attract anything with numb, except more numb. And too many people are going through life numb to their sense of passion, robbing themselves and others of the gift that they are to the world.

This idea that you don’t know your passion, while it feels real right now, is an idea that you need to be willing to give up if you want to move into a fully satisfying life. We’re here to live our passions, so let’s not waste another minute not doing that!

Here are a few things to think about to help you tap into a lost sense of passion:

1. What do you daydream about? When your mind “goes off”, there’s a reason it goes where it goes. Many times our daydreams are our subconscious giving us a taste of what could be.

2. What would you do all day if you could do ANYTHING and money were not an issue for you at all? This is a very common question used to help people tap into their passions, because if you can truly generate the feeling of being freed up financially, you clear the way for yourself to think about what you’d TRULY like to do. But if you think about all this in terms of “will it make me money”, you are cheating yourself.

You must not judge your passions on your beliefs regarding their money-making potential. Walking The Path takes care of that as we’ll discuss more in Part 2, “The Journey.”

I’ll note that the answer to this question for many people is “Nothing! I would just do nothing all day.” And that is a totally fair answer, and I invite anyone with that response to do a lot of visualization around a day filled with doing nothing, and see how those visions naturally evolve. They’ll lead you to your passion…

3. What or who inspires you? If you can’t immediately access your own sense of Passion, or put a label on it, I invite you to think about what or who in the world inspires you…and why.

You can learn a lot about yourself by looking at how you interpret people and situations. If someone inspires you because of what they’re up to in the world, could that tell you more than a little something about what YOU might want to be up to in the world?

If you’re inspired by some kind of creative expression like art, music, film, or theater, what exactly about the experience is inspiring you? Just because you’re inspired by art, for example, doesn’t mean that you have a destiny as an artist, however.

Things that inspire us aren’t always the thing we’re supposed to be or do. However, anything that evokes inspiration in us, opens a portal to the essence of who we are.
Next time you feel inspired by anything or anyone, it may be an interesting exercise to ask yourself why you’re inspired. What part of yourself is being activated in this moment? What action – however large or small – do you feel called to take?

There are entire courses available to help you discover your sense of passion, but I believe that these few questions – if honestly answered – will give you very deep insight into what you’re about.

by Bob Doyle