It is often said that youth is wasted on the young. That young people have no perspective, no awareness and no understanding of how good they have it and of how much possibility is in front of them each day. But really how could they? Life is a learn as you go process. We often don't know until we are forced to know through our challenges and they way we choose to learn from them. It is the nature of the maturation process.
However, what if youth of today could get a bit more perspective early on? What if life's great secrets could be taught in early childhood or at least from the minute one starts middle school or high school? We can only hope that in time more information about self-awareness and how our mental attitudes and beliefs affect our life will be taught in schools. Many less individuals would suffer throughout life due to a misunderstanding regarding who they are that ends up turning into deeply misunderstood choices and actions.
However, there is no time like the present. Below are five powerful key understandings that when remembered and implemented can significantly help one live a more fulfilling, peaceful and creatively successful life. These are the subtle yet critically important attitudes of mind, soul and spirit that are intimately responsible for how life unfolds for each person. For those graduating and heading out into the real world, this could be what makes for a dramatically different experience of life.
1. Learn to trust life
Every circumstance and challenge has valuable information in it for you. Being open to to this perspective with your challneges is what allows you to gain the critical information you need from it. There is an exact reason the job or the relationship did not work out. The key is to stop resisting what has happened. Trusting that life knows exactly "how" to help you get to what you imagine or dream of for yourself, is a big step in embracing the creative process and in reducing the time it takes to create your dreams.
2. Demonstrate the energy of gratitude and kindness each day
The texture of the energy you put out is directly related to the type of energy you experience back in from your world. Life is truly a mirror of your thoughts and feelings. By learning to step into a state of more gratitude for all you do have as opposed to what you don't have can immediately turn things in your favor as life starts to support this state of grace. Combine this with being kind to people as much as possible, and you are cultivating a new energy and way that life will help serve you back in kind.
3. Protect and hold sacred the way you see and believe in yourself
This cannot be underestimated. The only true approval you ever need in this lifetime is your own. It does not matter what anyone in your life has ever said about you or told you. It does not matter what your parents, your teachers or religious leaders said. And it does not matter what your friends, your boss or co-workers ever said. Everyone distributes opinion and criticism based on their own perspective, beliefs and fears. It is not about you. It has never been about who you really are. You matter. You are worthy of it all. Remember this always.
4. Be eternally optimistic
Every moment offers you a new opportunity to turn it all around. No matter what has happened each day represents a clean slate and brand new possibilities for you. Remember this when things do not go your way. A persistent optimistic attitude is incredibly powerful as it relates to navigating the twists and turns of life and the persistent negativism of others. Optimism carries with it the energy that helps you to see the new door that opens when another one in your life closes. Optimism is your bridge to a new creative experience. If you can conceive of your dream, believe in it and work hard and long enough towards it, life may shock you with the amazing results.
5. Embrace the power of self-definition, self-appreciation and self-love
The power to define who you are is your greatest power. You are not your past. You are who you decide to be right now. When you realize this and define who you are in this moment with the greatest amount of appreciation, respect and self-love, nothing can stop you in the quest for all you desire for your life. Any limit in this idea is what will limit you along your journey. How you experience your life is based on what you feel worthy of receiving, nothing more and nothing less. As it relates to every good break and positive opportunity that comes your way, how you define yourself will be the determining factor of it all.
While there are many other factors that lead to the way life unfolds, the critical ideas offered above are the cornerstone for how every thought and feeling gets charged in the mind and what leads to so many of the amazing and perfectly timed coincidences that determine each individual experience of life. Getting in touch with these ideas and living them each day is a powerful and graceful way to live and increases the odds of living a beautiful, peaceful and fulfilled life exponentially.
More about this power can be found in my new book, Time In A Bottle: Mastering The Experience of Life.