Dear Reader,
I usually read in parallel from several books. Some share a direction regarding their content and some don’t. The books’ ideas manage to connect themselves in my mind, inspiring me to share some ideas with you. I hope that sharing some tools and open questions can provide you with some useful food for thoughts that spark your mind’s inner work towards self-exploration. Please see below some insights that these books spread.
Note: No self-help book will ever replace your work. My greatest insight from all these books is that the most effective tool is practice. Like coaching, the book can be your coach and only you can actually do the individual practice that allows you to perform as a professional in front of your audience, whoever it is.
Since, a new year and decade have started, I invite you to take a closer look at what you wish your goals will make you feel. Yes, feel, because having feelings means living, as somebody thought me last year. When I started to work on my emotional analysis, I discovered an interesting tool:
- The Desire Map, by Danielle LaPorte. This is more than a book, it is a tool that gives you some homework, remember my note from above. Her main idea is that you can first get clear on how you wish to feel and based on the identification with those feelings, you can create your life goals, embedding your soul into those goals.
Clarity about your true desires is so liberating because you get to stop proving yourself to everyone (including yourself). Just think about that for a minute. No more proving. […] When you’re clear on how you want to feel, you can be open to what life wants to give you. And life usually has something even better in store for you than what you’ve imagined. Stay anchored to the desired feeling, and open to the form in which it manifests (LaPorte).
For example, I realized while writing you these rows that what I am doing here, writing, and more importantly, sharing my inner beliefs with you, gives me a desired feeling of being whole, of being part of a community, of joy and satisfaction for contributing to a greater purpose of mind development. On this note, I will point out one more book in this post, namely:
- A new Earth, by Eckhart Tolle. This book brought to my attention not only the personal and deep though patterns that a person has, but also their connection to the collective consciousness that shares the same patterns of beliefs, joys and suffering thoughts. Tolle opened my eyes to be more careful with my mind and what I feed it. An example could be the fairy tales endings that little girls grow up with, thereby developing a powerful sense that they will have it all, as it might even be a woman’s right to happiness, family, career, and the personal version of “white-picked fence.”
The egoic mind is completely conditioned by the past. Its conditioning is twofold: It consists of content and structure. […] What you identify with is all to do with content; whereas, the unconscious compulsion to identify is structural. It is one of the most basic ways in which the egoic mind operates. […] As a spiritual practice, I suggest that you investigate your relationship with the world of things through self-observation, and in particular, things that are designated with the word “my.” You need to be alert and honest to find out, for example, whether your sense of self-worth is bound up with things you possess. Do certain things induce a subtle feeling of importance or superiority? Does the lack of them make you feel inferior to others who have more than you? Do you casually mention things you own or show them off to increase your sense of worth in someone else’s eyes and through them in your own? Do you feel resentful or angry and somehow diminished in your sense of self when someone else has more than you or when you lose a prized possession? (Tolle: 32, 34, 38).
As you can see in the quote, feelings and emotions rule much of our behavior and they steer us in ways we might not really comprehend, if we do not pay attention to them. I invite you to take a moment and decide for yourself what is that you wish to feel today and tomorrow. Next, seek out what behaviors, people and actions can help you feel the way you wish to!