What makes someone beautiful is that they appreciate the beauty in other people without any jealousy or mimicry. A beautiful person can look at you and they actually see you, accept you, and recognize the beauty and the divine in you, which is what makes them beautiful. Their ability to be alive in that moment and appreciate what they’re seeing and sensing makes them beautiful.
That’s a big thing for me, but I think there’s a general categorization that’s even higher than that for a lot of people when they think about beauty.
They Are Genuine
A person who is authentically themselves. It means that the person is true to themselves, that their unique spirit is on display for the world because they aren’t mimicking the world. They aren’t trying to be somebody else or acting like this other person over here, they’re just them. It’s like an aliveness in the moment you can sense from it.
I believe that one of the great marks of personal power and spiritual power is the ability to apologize and to forgive.
People have been thinking about apology and forgiveness in the wrong ways for so long.
Apologize
When we apologize we don’t have to give away our power.
It’s coming from a place of real power that allows us to apologize, because when we’re coming from a place of real, raw, emotional, and spiritual power, we can apologize because there’s no ego attached to it.
Life blooms when we take responsibility for our full human experience. To be personally responsible and self-reliant means we have to get our sh*t together and decide to have command over these five areas:
1. Our Aim
What is our goal, our direction, our purpose? What is it that we are moving toward and organizing our lives to achieve and contribute? These are questions of the motivated and purposeful human.
2. Our Attention
Are the things we continually focus on bringing us joy, success, connection, growth? Or are we being distracted by a bunch of garbage and gossip in life?
Our purpose is rarely just “found” randomly one day; rather it is self-defined. The universe has given us a few hints about what that purpose might be:
1. Aliveness
Since we are all clearly alive, then perhaps a hint to our purpose might involve being fully alive.
We have to ask: What am I doing to make myself feel alive?
Decide to have it. Make it an intention. You don’t need to achieve anything more, you simply need to decide to feel and generate confidence on a more consistent and conscious basis.
2. Integrity
Live with integrity for who you are and what you believe. When you are being fully alive and authentic and true to yourself, you feel confident.
3. Competency
Get more competent. Go gather more knowledge, skill, and abilities in the areas that you are passionate about and need to perform well in. More competence = more confidence.
I believe we have three great enemies that prevent us from advancing our lives, from actualizing our potential, from living our dreams.
1. The first great enemy of our lives is Doubt
We’re doubtful because the germ of fear spread in our body because somebody planted it there one time or we cultivated it with our own thoughts.
At some point, maturity and consciousness says, if doubt has been plaguing you let’s have a look at it, and let’s realize how you banish it. Every single thing that we know from spirituality, from philosophy, from the great writers and great texts from human culture has all revealed one thing: Where there is doubt, grant me faith.
The cost of distraction is immense and most people aren’t distracted because they’re dumb or lazy, it’s because they are frankly focused on the wrong things, on things that are not moving the needle further.
If you’re constantly checking into other people’s agendas, you’re checking out of your life’s purpose.
So let’s find a way today to make a decision for yourself to say, “You know what, I’m not going to be so distracted anymore. I’m going to be more purposeful about my days and activities, not just so I can be successful or achieve, but so I can feel again. So I can feel that sense of aliveness, progress and fulfillment in life.”
Most of us are suffering from something. We’re suffering something in a relationship somewhere. Some of us are suffering physically. Some of us are suffering emotionally. There’s a lot of suffering in the world and people often ask me, “How do you deal with it?”
I call it my war and peace model. My war and peace model is if you have a challenge or a problem, including suffering in your life, you have to go to war at it and you have to have peace about it.
They try one thing to solve it and that’s why they fail. Major challenges, major frustrations, and major problems in our lives, demand multiple areas of attack. [continue reading…]
