Editor’s note:  This is a guest post from Carolyn Elliot on how to read poetry to expand your heart.

Carolyn is author of the book  Awesome Your Life: The Artist’s Antidote to Suffering Genius.   She won several awards for playwriting, fiction, and poetry, fresh out of high-school, and later, taught the courses Reading Poetry and Literature and the Contemporary. She is well read, and some of her favorite authors include Dickinson, Emerson, Goethe, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Neruda, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Whitman. Carolyn did her undergraduate work in Creative Writing and English at Carnegie Mellon University, and in her dissertation, she investigated the relationship of literature to the soul as it is imagined in romantic aesthetics.

Given her background and passion, I asked Carolyn if she could tackle the following challenge:
How can anyone, without a poetry background, get started with poetry as a source of inspiration and insight in their day to day?

The result is a powerful recipe below for awakening your senses and dipping your toe into the evocative pool of poetry.  Without further ado, here is Carolyn …

Poetry isn’t just for folks in tweed jackets with leather elbow patches.  The greatest poetry is language infused with the wisdom of a powerful heart.  If we learn how to read that great poetry well, we can let that infusion soak into us and transform our own perception for the better.  Reading poetry sensitively can be a spiritual practice that gradually alters our consciousness so that we see our world with vast insight and love.

The mode of encountering poetry that most facilitates heart-expansion isn’t the kind of technical, critical reading that’s taught in most English classes (“The caesura in line 8 creates a tension that magnifies the alliteration within the ABDDC rhyme scheme, highlighting the hendiadys that follows in line 10….”).  That kind of reading can be interesting if you’re already a balls-to-the-wall poetry buff and you want to “get under the hood” of a poem.  But most of us don’t want to tinker with the engine of a fantastic car.  We just want to drive it.

The way to “drive” a wonderful poem so that it opens you up is through contemplative reading.  In contemplative reading, we meet a poem via our intuition and imagination rather than our analytic brain.

To get a feel for contemplative reading, try this exercise (I’ve used it with my Reading Poetry students at the University of Pittsburgh for years to great effect):

Entering the Aether

Select a poem that you want to meet deeply.  For those just starting out, I suggest the opening pages of “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman, “Ode to a Lemon” by Pablo Neruda, and “I Dwell in Possibility” by Emily Dickinson.

For the purpose of this example, we’ll use a magnificent lyric, “The Orchard” by H.D.  Sit comfortably with the poem within easy-reading reach.  Read the poem once, not bothering to “figure it out,” just getting a sense of what’s there.

Now close your eyes.  Settle in by breathing deeply and slowly.  Imagine that you see swirling all around you a very fine, very silvery substance called aether.  Aether is the material of the imagination and spirit, thought to be a basic element by classical and medieval philosophers.  The aether is fluid like silk, and moves around you in spiraling eddies.

The aether is extremely sensitive.  Whatever words or images you bring to it, it will amplify by means of all the senses and emotions available.  In a moment, you’ll bring a line from your poem into the aether, and the aether will respond by creating visions, sounds, scents, touches and feelings.  You might see whole scenes unfold.  You might hear music.  What you experience may or may not directly relate to the words you bring in.  The aether offers its response from a place of deep wisdom beyond the conscious mind.

Bring into the aether the first lines of the poem, “The Orchard”: “I saw the first pear / as it fell.”

Now close your eyes again and observe how the aether responds to just these lines.  What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel?  Sit in contemplation for a few moments, allowing the aether to fully unfold its response to these lines.

After observing the response of the aether to your satisfaction, write down what you witnessed in terms of every bodily sense.

Here are responses my students have recorded:

“I caught a scent of lemon mixed with black coffee, and felt overwhelmed.”

“I saw Versailles, with rows of round pear trees and a huge blue sky.”

“I saw Adam and Eve under the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden.”

“I saw a giant primeval forest, with a huge pear falling slowly, bursting with juice.  I heard the sound of quick-beating drums.”

“I felt a woman’s cold hand on my shoulder.”

You’ll notice that some of these responses pertain directly to the words of the poem, and some don’t.  That’s perfect.  The point is not to find what the lines “mean” but instead to discover what they do.

Repeat this process of bringing lines from the poem into the aether, observing the aether’s response and writing it down until you complete the poem or until you feel full (like you’ve eaten all you want from a delicious meal).

The wonder of this mode of reading is that it requires no background knowledge, no technical terms, no “expertise” at poetry.  And yet again and again, I find that when my students partake of it, they intuitively and immediately discover all the rich mythological and historical resonances that a poem has to offer, often finding more depth than the most highly-trained critics offer in their essays on the same poem.

Reading contemplatively by entering the aether with a poem gives you a way to create a meeting space between the wisdom of poetry and the wisdom of your own imagination.  Over time, this practice of reading feeds your deep self and renders you capable of seeing from your calm heart rather than your frantic mind.  It accomplishes what the great poet John Keats called the work of “soul-making,” a process of being able to discern the profound truth beneath disturbing appearances, so that bliss rather than worry becomes your default experience.

Love!

Carolyn

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by best selling author, Lisa McCourt.  Lisa is here on Sources of Insight to share with you insightful and actionable steps to be comfortable in your own skin.

If you don’t know Lisa, you’re in for a treat.  Lisa specializes on the topic of self-love and her books on unconditional love have sold more than five and a half million copies.  Lisa’s latest book, Juicy Joy –  Seven Simple Steps to Your Glorious Gutsy Self is all about leading a life that is rich, real, and powerfully satisfying, while embracing your biggest, gutsiest, and most authentic self.  It’s you, at YOUR best.

I asked Lisa to write a guest post to share her best lessons learned on how to be comfortable in your own skin because of her personal experience.   I’m a fan of people sharing what they have learned the hard way or what they have had to work at.  It’s always deeper and more meaningful.   Most of all, it’s keeping it real.

Whether or not you are already comfortable in your own skin, I think you’ll really enjoy this post.  I’m impressed with Lisa’s ability to distill and share such pragmatic wisdom on the fine art of loving yourself, flaws and all.  This is more than a beautiful piece of prose.  It’s life wisdom that you can use to live a little better every day.

Without further ado, here’s Lisa with her top ten lessons learned on how to be comfortable in your own skin …

Imagine being blissfully comfortable in your own skin, knowing with the utmost clarity exactly who you are and feeling eager to lovingly, proudly share that authentic you with the world. Imagine being perpetually sustained by an inner source of joy—not the smiley, fluffy kind of happiness we sometimes associate with the word “joy,” but the rich, meaty, substantial flavor of joy that comes with extraordinary self-knowledge and self-appreciation. That’s the vantage point I want for you. From that vantage point, in the words of Franz Kafka, “the world will offer itself freely to you. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

In uber-consolidated nutshell fashion, here are the top 10 ways to be comfortable in your own skin:

1. Get real.

Do the work to get clear about who you are—not just who you routinely consider yourself to be, the person you habitually show the world—but who you are in the deepest recesses of your authentic heart and soul.

The word “authenticity” is misunderstood sometimes. People think of it as a virtue, like honesty . . . like you owe the world your authenticity and you should feel bad if you’re not authentic. That’s not the case. I’m not suggesting you should become more authentic because it will make you a better person—you already are a phenomenal person. I’m telling you that becoming more authentic is your golden ticket—to joy, to success, to vibrant health and energy, to easily manifesting the life of your dreams. It’s every bit that transformative. You’re not doing this to better serve the world; you’re doing it to better serve you. But—happy bonus!—it happens to be the best way to serve your loved ones and the world as well.

2. Adore YOU.

If you’ve been on a personal development path for a while, I’m probably not the first to suggest that you need to love yourself. But I’m surprised to discover how often my students don’t really seem to know why I’m so insistent on that point. Are you tired of hearing about how you need to love yourself more? Does the thought of it feel kind of like of a burden—one more thing to check off your To-Do list? Does the whole concept feel a bit worn-out and cliché? Maybe you just need to understand what’s in it for you.

Self-love is the fastest route to literally anything you want right now. Money, love, health, romance . . . it all hinges on your level of self-love. The circumstances of your life are always providing you a crystal-clear, precisely accurate measure of how much you love yourself and what you believe you deserve. All you can ever create is what you believe you’re worthy of experiencing. It’s an immutable energetic law. That’s why elevating self-love is the not-so-secret path to elevating everything else.

3. Trust your wants.

Stop trying to justify and rationalize your most heartfelt desires. Your desires are the clearest indicator of who you are. Denying them is denying you. No one needs to understand why you want what you want. You don’t even need to understand it yourself. Just trust it, and trust yourself to manifest it. The reason you don’t already have everything you want is crazy-simple. You don’t love yourself enough yet to deeply believe that you deserve everything you want. My students argue that sometimes, but they always discover it’s true. You might even believe, on a conscious level, that you do deserve a certain thing, but I promise you that if you were fully, wholly believing you deserved it—even in the cobwebby corners of your unconscious belief system—it would already be in your life.

4. Stop trying to vanquish the “bad stuff.”

And stop whining about it, too. Celebrate our unwanted circumstances because there’s so much valuable information for us in them. Get clear on why your unwanted circumstances are here and why you created them. Then use them as a springboard. Once you can start genuinely thanking “the bad stuff”, it’s pretty easy to move past it.

5. Take responsibility.

Own every last drop of everything you’ve ever created. We’re so conditioned to blame our unwanted circumstances on other people, or on the “system” or the world . . . What if it’s really all within your control? Taking full responsibility for the life you’ve created for yourself and the life you’re in the process of creating is hugely empowering. But it requires first getting uber-honest to a degree that’s terrifying for most people. Don’t be “most people.” Understanding that you alone are holding the reins on your life is the first critical step toward learning how to operate them.

6. Stop tolerating.

Tolerating is slow emotional suicide. It sucks the life out of you, drains your energy, numbs you, depletes you, and keeps you immobilized. There’s no reason for you to ever tolerate anything. We sometimes confuse tolerating with accepting—we all know it’s good to accept the things we can’t change, right? If we make very clear distinctions between what can be changed and what can’t, then it’s astounding the kinds of life-altering adjustments people are able to easily, joyfully make when they understand the underlying reasons they’ve been tolerating things.

7. Get out of the spin cycle.

Where in your life are you on autopilot, creating the same situation for yourself (in essence) over and over again? Maybe you keep dating the same romantic partner. Maybe the current model is better looking, or more successful, or slightly more open than the one before, but in essence you’re with a lover who triggers your tried-and-true insecurities, defense mechanisms, and familiar unhealthy spirals. Or maybe you find yourself in the same employment dynamic over and over again—even if you change careers completely. Maybe you’ve attracted a series of supervisors, or a series of friends, who stir up the not-good-enough feelings a parent invoked for you as a child. Escape the spin cycle by learning how to look closely at how these patterns develop and how to benefit from the opportunities they offer.

8. Permanently shift your beliefs.

Focus on the deliberate rewiring of your belief system because your beliefs are determining everything you experience as your reality. That’s not New-Age speak anymore; it’s common knowledge. It’s why researchers always have to use placebo control groups whenever they test any drug. If they don’t have a group taking a sugar pill, their findings won’t be considered valid by the agencies that govern pharmaceuticals. In pain-control experiments, when a new pain pill is tested, fully half of the sufferers who are given a placebo will report having less pain. The mind is that powerful and the scientific community knows it. Changing your mind will change your life.

Many of your limiting beliefs are not unique to you; our culture suffers from a long-standing epidemic of crappy shared beliefs. Most of us, at some level, harbor the same fears, the same tragic self-doubts, and the same profound longings to be liberated from our self-made prisons. In our outer circumstances, we may vary greatly, but at deeper levels, this is seldom the case. If you aren’t living the precisely blissful, richly textured life you crave, take the steps to discover which of your beliefs are keeping you from it and what you can do about that.

9. Dream loudly.

Stop limiting yourself according to what seems practical. Practical goals do not inspire enough passion to propel you toward their certain fruition. As John F. Kennedy wisely surmised, “The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.” Be those men (and women.).

10. Live passionately.

Once you’ve done the self-examination work to uncover your most delicious desires, don’t pussyfoot toward them. Hurl yourself recklessly in their direction! Trust that the Universe wildly adores you and is always orchestrating on your behalf. It’s been waiting for you to get pumped and grow a pair so that it could swoop in with divine assistance that will leave you breathless.

The author Natalie Goldberg has a cake analogy I love. When you bake a cake, you have ingredients, right? You have eggs, butter, milk, sugar, flour. The ingredients are the different parts of your life. You mix them all together in a bowl but this doesn’t make a cake. It makes goop. To turn it into a cake, you have to add the energy of intense heat. To turn your life into a life worth living, you have to add the heat and energy of your whole heart and soul. Otherwise it’s just goop.

Being comfortable in your skin and living with authenticity is knowing precisely who you are and passionately adoring who you are—with all the countless accoutrements and benefits that come along with that practice. You are spectacular. Not the elaborate representation of You that you routinely show the world, but the raw, uncensored, vulnerable You underneath all of that. Find that You and learn how to deeply love and honor that You. That’s feeling blissfully comfortable in your own skin, and it’s the secret to everything you’re longing for.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Paul Enfield on how you have to take risks, to get the rewards. I’ve worked with Paul for many years at Microsoft, and he was one of my early mentors. I’ve learned a lot of life wisdom from him, and I thought this particular nugget was especially useful. It’s about taking a leap of faith.

The big idea is that for so many things in life, there is no way to be 100% certain before we act. We have to take risks. We can spend all our time trying to make things certain, know the unknowables, and wait for the perfect conditions, or we can dive in a little more.  We can do more big things and act on more windows of opportunity.  This is the heart of bold action.

Without further ado, here’s Paul on the leap of faith …

Some life decisions we face can seem colossal. Some seem so large that we can get stuck attempting to reach our decision and fail to ever act. I found myself in one of these situations when I came upon a revelation that empowered me make my decision.

Quite a while back, I was faced with a decision on whether or not to propose to my wife. While pondering the decision, I realized that no matter how much I thought about it, I would never be 100% sure that I was making the right choice. It was at that time that I also realized this correlated to a concept I had learned in college Statistics class called “degree of certainty.”

In a simplistic form, degree of certainty indicates how likely it is that the decision is the correct one. You can be fairly sure of your choice, and therefore have a high degree of certainty.

I also realized that different people will need to achieve different degrees of certainty before they will act upon their decisions. However, the commonality would always be that you can never achieve 100% certainty on your decision. Therefore we are always faced with a “gap” we must jump to reach 100% certainty. I chose to name this gap the “leap of faith.”

I was 90% sure I should make this decision to propose, but was forced to realize that I must make this leap of faith if I were ever to make my decision.

Being armed with this truth is empowering. Once you realize you must be willing to take a chance no matter what your decision, you can move forward and evaluate other factors.  Other factors might include what is the opportunity cost for not making the choice. IOTW, what will I lose if I fail to act?  Also, what is the benefit I can obtain by making the choice?

Empower yourself to make tough decisions. Recognize your personal needs to support your decision and when you reach your threshold, jump. Make your decision and take your leap of faith.

Photo by Hunterrrr.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from David Straker on how to influence and change behavior. David is an expert on influence and change.  He is the creator of ChangingMinds.org and author of  Changing Minds: In Detail, where he shares his wealth of insight and action on the art of change.

Not very long ago, David and I had been discussing effective ways to persuade.  I had said to David that a rule that worked for me is, “Win the heart, and the mind follows.”

David responded that where we start depends, and that we’re most effective at changing ourselves and others when we fully engage head, heart, and hands. I liked the the idea of “head”, “heart,” and “hands” because it was simple and sticky. I asked David if he would write a guest post to share his thoughts on how our actions, thoughts, and feeling are shaped by our “head”, “heart”, and “hands”.

Without further ado, here is David on shaping change through  “head,” “heart”, and “hands”.

In the field of business and personal change, there’s a pattern that keeps coming up. I’ve met it in change seminars, psychology text books and assorted theories and models. I call it ‘head, heart and hands’. You may have come across it in other forms, such as ‘cognitive, affective and behavioral’ (if you’re a psychologist) or, in more common parlance, ‘thinking, feeling and doing’.

Here’s a story of how it all began, at least in the history of management and psychology.

It was All About Hands

A century or so ago, psychology emerged out of the evolving ‘age of enlightenment’, where science grew wings and truth was what you could prove rather than what the local priest said. Psychologists sought to use the methods of natural sciences, where measurement, causality and proof were the order of the day. They could not measure what brains were doing, but they could analyze what people said and did, which led to behaviorism developing as the first step along the way.

Hard at the heels of psychological science came management science, which adopted the behavioral principles and where people such as Frederick Winslow Taylor and Henry Ford viewed people as ‘rational man’ for whom behavior was directly correlated with external cues. Treat a person in a certain way and they will respond in a predictable manner.

In other words it was all about ‘hands’.

Hands Follow Head

Further developments in psychology found that to explain what people did, you had to consider what they were thinking. Game theory tripped over it in John Nash’s theory-of-mind equilibrium. Therapy went this way too, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) recognizes how behavior is closely linked to thinking. Then management followed suit, with motivation being more about getting people to understand rather than just telling them what to do.

And so we had ‘hands follow head’.

Hands Follow Head and Heart

Yet this still had problems. Psychologists had largely ignored emotions for a long time as they were almost the opposite of rational thinking and rather hard to measure. But they steadily realized that how you feel is real and cannot be ignored. If you are to treat an anxious person, it helps if you recognize and acknowledge the individual experience of anxiety. And in management, emotions at last poked through, notably in Daniel Goleman’s ‘Emotional Intelligence’. We can even see and measure emotions now, thanks to advances in brain scanning, with systems such as fMRI and PET.

And so now we had ‘hands follow head and heart’.

Explain or Enthuse First?

Is this the end? Well, not quite. There isn’t another ‘H’ on the horizon, but what we are finding is that the relationship between head, hands and heart is not as simple as we first thought. For example, to get somebody to act in a certain way, should you first appeal to their feelings and then explain, or should you explain first and then get them enthused? The answer seems to depend on circumstance and the individual.

Changing Actions, Changes Thoughts and Feelings

In a curious reversion to the original command idea, there is even an argument that you can change what people think and feel, just by getting them to act in certain ways. This is explained in Robert Cialdini’s classic ‘Influence’ book, where he talked of compliance and consistency, showing that if we have to do something, we may change our beliefs and what we feel about this to justify our actions. This helps explain some of the darker side of human behavior, from the cruelty of prison guards to conversion in brainwashing.

We can go from head, heart and hands to any of the others, with a quite reasonable thinking process to take us from A to B, as indicated in the table below.

Engage Head, Heart, and Hands for Effective Change

So how do you use this? In change, you really want to get to full engagement of head, heart and hands. A path you can follow is to use the above table to identify the best first step for your situation. Then use the table again, to reel in the third aspect. For example to go ‘head, heart, hands’, you first need to get them to think ‘This makes sense, so I feel good about it’, and then add in hands with either ‘I like the idea so I’ll give it a go’ or ‘It makes sense so I’ll give it a go’.

Whenever working in change, when you are trying to understand people or when you are just trying to persuade them of something, it can be very helpful to consider all three H’s in your analysis and plans. If you can get a person’s head, heart and hands all working together, then you have the person.

Photo by Swaity.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Alicia Arnold on how to apply creativity to your specific challenges.

Alicia is the author of Creatively Ever After: A Path to Innovation, where she shows you how to innovate to get results, and how to apply the Creative Problem Solving (CSP) Process to your work and life.

I asked Alicia to share her best insights learned from studying and teaching creativity skills over the years, and to make it as actionable as possible for readers of Sources of Insight to instantly apply it.

To set the stage, you can think of creativity as simply applying the use of imagination and ideas to produce a result.  You can also think of creativity as a skill that you can build.  By thinking of creativity as a skill, you empower yourself to make the most of any creative techniques and thinking tools that are readily available

Without further ado, here’s Alicia …

By now you’ve probably heard the chatter about creativity – an IBM study of 1,500 CEO’s around the world identified creativity as the number one leadership competency for the future.

In addition, creativity is top of mind for CIO’s as well. CIO’s have identified issues like globalization, the need for acceleration, increasing amounts of data, a push to digitize, increasing proliferation of personal devices in the workplace, and having to do more with less budget, require creativity and innovation.

However, creativity is one of those funny topics. Creativity can be difficult to understand and many people do not believe you can learn to become more creative. The good news is, it has been statistically proven, over decades of longitudinal research, that creativity can be learned. Based on leading creativity courses in business and academic settings, I’ve compiled a list of top insights and lessons learned. I hope you find these valuable in thinking about how creativity and creative problem solving can be applied to your specific challenges.

1. The question isn’t are you creative, but how are you creative

When I describe creativity, I frame it in terms of identifiable skills. Creativity is made up of four skills – the ability to ask questions (clarify), the ability to come up with ideas (ideate), the ability to string ideas together to form a solution (develop), and the ability to take the solution into action (implement). By couching creativity within identifiable skills, it becomes easier to understand how each one of us is creative and what teachable skill is most important for each individual. Generally speaking, your chosen profession is a likely indicator of your creative preference. While there are no absolutes, marketers tend to exhibit high ideation preferences, while information technology professionals tend to exhibit high clarifying and developing preferences. This leads me to the second insight…

2. Creativity in business takes teamwork

Surviving in the business world means tackling complex problems. The more complex the problem, the greater the likelihood it will require cross-discipline knowledge and a variety of problem solving preferences. By diversifying your team to include folks who enjoy clarifying, ideating, developing, and implementing, you will have a greater chance for success. But, this can cause discomfort. The next time you’re in a situation that requires teamwork, but are feeling discouraged, ask yourself why you’re feeling that way. Chances are you may be working with people who have different preferences than yours. To help, ask team members to explain their reasoning and intent. This will help the group focus on the task at hand rather than individual positions. Also, knowing your creative preference helps. If you are someone who enjoys clarifying, when working with people who enjoy ideating, you can add significant value by asking questions to help ensure the ideas are solving the right problem. And, there’s a skill to asking questions. Read on…

3. Asking open-ended questions invites participation and solutions

The best way to ask questions when solving problems is to ask open-ended questions. These are questions that cannot be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” For example, rather than asking “Can you meet the deadline?” rephrase as “What might be all the ways to meet the deadline?” Open-ended questions help in three ways: 1) they invite participation by moving your mind into problem solving mode 2) they help you believe the problem is solvable 3) they diffuse tense situations. The next time you’re in a bind, try asking open-ended questions. When used properly, open-ended questions can change the cadence of the conversation. To get started, practice phrasing questions with…

• How to…?
• How might…?
• In what ways might…?
• What might be all the ways…?

4. Getting a fresh perspective creates breakthrough solutions

Sometimes new thinking comes from physically leaving your work setting. In a memorable innovation workshop I ran, I worked with C-suite technologists, marketers, and finance executives from a global bank to come up with differentiating ways to leverage the web site to deepen customer relationships. We held the session at a local museum and tied all exercises to business strategy and objectives. After crafting the problem statement using open-ended questions, teams used museum exhibits to help come up with ideas on how to solve the problem. It was at this moment team members had a change of heart for tapping into new modes of thinking. When looking at a hologram, one participant remarked how the hologram looked different depending upon where she stood. This hologram experience helped the team come up with the idea of personalizing, customizing, and using data visualization to bring meaning to customer account data. The team proposed by allowing web site users to play with, and combine, account data in new ways, they could realize a way to build stronger, value-added relationships with customers. New perspective can be as simple as finding an object of interest and asking, “What ideas does this object give me for solving my problem?” Chances are this “forced connection” will bring new solutions.

In our lifetime, we’ve been schooled to find the “right answer.” This may work when we are trying to solve mathematical equations, however the business environment is ambiguous and the data set is never complete. Learning how to tap into your natural creativity is an essential life and business skill. Congratulations on taking a step towards building a leadership competency in creativity!

Rob is an author and explorer of the mind.  He inspires minds at MindAdventure.com and Rob is the author of the book, 180: Climbing the Two Ladders to Inner Strength and Outer Freedom.

I asked Rob to write a post on one of the most important lessons he learned in life.  One of Rob’s strengths is painting ideas with words in a lyrical way that makes you think, or re-think, as the case may be.

Just when you think you have your world figured out, Rob comes along and challenges you to see with new eyes, or listen with new ears, or feel with a new heart, to help you take a look from the balcony, from the inside out, and crank up your perspective to a whole new level.

Without further ado, here’s Rob on making mistakes as a way to grow and prosper …

Here is the greatest tip I can give anyone who is interested in fully realizing their potential: needed answers shine at the right and perfect time when you stop pretending you already have them.

Here is what an aspirant does with this tip: he commits to making as many miss-takes as necessary to get the answers needed to achieve his aspiration.

There is a caveat when committing to making miss-takes: don’t make the same exact miss-take – you should learn something from it, and improve on the next re-take of the miss-take.

The process of self-growth is simply a matter of re-taking a miss-take while envisioning a successful outcome. It is part of the growth and development process to miss the mark more than once, that is if your challenges are worthy ones.

• It is part of the ‘path of victory’ to go astray and then find one’s way.
• It is part of self-integrity to commit to making miss-takes in order to get answers that one needs to advance.

Life is forever moving. There are no static instances. There is never exact sameness in two consecutive moments. So, what is a person to do? Higher lessons and fabulous victories are offered to those who are willing to fail forward, are willing to place winning over protecting their vanity.

It’s a big error to commit to making no errors. This means you’re unwilling to take risks. The only way you arrive is to go astray. A right response to errors (miss-takes), is to quiet the mind and let the error tell you the answer it contains. With each answer, you come closer to the outcome you desire.

Intelligence is vulnerable to miss-takes. Intelligence is also more interested in correcting than protecting its old point of view. When you are being intelligent, you are being flexible, you are being spontaneous, you are being open minded, you are being courageous. You are also being vulnerable to looking foolish at first. What a thrill!

It is possible to turn any miss-take over to your intelligence; let it search out the answers for corrections. You cannot do this if you secretly claim you already know the answers. Choose to be open minded when you’re ignorant. Stick with that choice, and a whole world of answers will flock to your side.

For every person who sees the beauty in making miss-takes, there are 10,000 who do all they can to avoid them. This is why so few win, and so many fail in life.

What say you to this post?

What will you do with it?

In what domain of your life are you allergic to miss-takes?

In what domain do you love making miss-takes while eagerly anticipating answers?

Blessings, rob

Editor’s note: Well, look who’s in the house.  It’s Jairek Robbins.  In this guest post, Jariek shares his lessons learned in personal development and how to find the passion in your every day tasks.

Jairek is a professional speaker, performance coach, and creator of the Rapid Results Formula.  And, if you’re wondering, yes, Jairek Robbins is the son of Tony Robbins.

I asked Jairek to share some of his best insights and best lessons learned with readers of Sources of Insight.  His story is a powerful one, and it’s something you can immediately put to good use.  You gotta love that.

Without further ado, here’s Jariek on turning ordinary tasks into extraordinary …

I have spent my entire life growing up in the Personal Development industry and have coached hundreds of clients from around the world in achieving Rapid Results in their life and business. Over the years I have found that one of the key ingredients of incredibly successful entrepreneurs is their ability to identify areas they must improve on in their life and constantly strengthen their weakest points to ensure they are constantly growing and expanding their ability to conquer new challenges that arise.

Being coached by my father early on in life I was given the challenge to learn a few lessons that I feel gave me an edge over many others in todays market. The story below will walk you through my experience of learning to fully apply this tool as well as give you the steps and challenge you to do the same in your life and business!

A Summer Job and a Lesson in Strength

To set the scene, it was the summer of my Junior year at the University of San Diego. Normally the goal for a college student in the summer is to get a summer job, an internship, or take additional courses to get ahead and graduate early. None of these were the options that my coach suggested for that summer. He suggested and arranged with my step-grandfather up in Canada for me to come up for the summer to learn how strong I really am as a man. I never would have imagined the impact that this summer would have on my life and the edge that it would provide for me both in life and business!

My summer job was going to be stacking lumber (hard labor) at a lumber yard just outside of Vancouver, Canada. When I arrived at grandpas house he gave me an overview of how my day to day life was going to look like for the next 3 months. He told me that I would be picked up on the side of the freeway each morning at 6 am (sharp!) by a van of workers and we would drive about an hour north to the lumber yard and begin working from 7 am – 5 pm stacking lumber.

The various stacks of lumber had boards weighing between a few pounds all the way up to four to five hundred pounds. The job consisted of taking lumber from a wet stack and “sticking” it (placing a bunch of thin sticks between each layer as we re-stacked the lumber to leave a space in-between each piece so it could go into the dryer). About a week later we would then re-stack the same lumber from a dry stack to a “tight” stack to be wrapped and shipped out to companies and people who had purchased it.

Learning to Love the Experience

Seeing that the family had bets on “how long I’d last” I made it a point to step up and over deliver (this is a trait I have kept and use daily in my business to ensure my clients are always given way more than they’d expect).  My goal was to get up at 4:30 am, work out in the gym for 30 min (lifting weights and running at least 2 miles), eat breakfast, get down to the side of the freeway to get picked up, work the entire day stacking lumber and eventually return home. Before dinner I hit the gym for another 30-40 min before having dinner and getting to bed for the next day.

What I learned in this experience, working 6 days a week for 3 months, was both how strong I really was and more importantly how to find the mental, emotional and physical strength to take a seemingly boring and repetitive task that I had absolutely NO passion for and turn it into an experience that I LOVED and actually looked forward to doing each day.

Two Principles to Turn the Ordinary into the Extraordinary

Many entrepreneurs, small business owners and young professionals will face activities in their day to day life that they just are not “passionate” about and/or straight up hate to do! One of the greatest gifts they can give themselves is to learn how to take the seemingly boring or mundane task and learn to LOVE IT!

There are two principles they will have to master to turn the ordinary into extraordinary. These principles are:

1. The ability to shift their perception about how they view the activity
2. The ability to shift their procedure of how they go about physically doing the activity.

Perception and Procedure

When I first arrived at the lumber with the 14 other men (non of which spoke English) and was walked through how to properly stack the lumber, it seemed to be fun. Simply pick up a piece of lumber from one stack, walk over a few feet, and place it down on the other stack. After a few hours of this repetitive activity I was not enjoying it at all. I first got bored, then started getting frustrated. After the emotion built up, I then started building a story in my mind … a story around how I had obviously undervalued myself; this was a horrible decision;  I was wondering how much I was going to get paid for all this work (one thing I had forgotten to ask before accepting the challenge); and began to find every single thing that I did not like about what I was doing.

I was 100% certain that if I kept this mindset I would not make it even a week through this 3 month challenge.

Challenging Myself to Change MY Perception

I challenged myself to answer the following questions…

1. What is great about this experience?
2. What do I (or can I) enjoy about this experience?
3. How can I grow from this experience?
4. How will this experience assist me in the rest of my life?

My first response was….

1. NOTHING!
2. NOTHING!
3. I am not going to at all!
4. It is not, simply a waste of time!

I knew I could do better than these answers so I asked again… (until I came up with a better answer):

I finally came up with this…

1. What is great about this experience is that I am outside in a beautiful part of the world, and I am basically at the “gym” (I started to identify all the different ways I could pick up a board and related it to different weight lifting exercises at the gym). I soon found myself doing bicep curls, tricep kick backs, squats, lunges, shoulder rows, back flys, dead lifts and many other exercises.
2. What I could enjoy about this experience is that I now had 3 months of toning, sculpting and strengthening my body daily!
3. How can I grow… I had an idea, I was going to get an iPod and load it with as many great audiobooks and personal development programs as I could get my hands on and everyday both expand my mind by learning everything I possibly could as well as physically growing in strength daily!
4. This experience will be one of the greatest lessons in my entire life and certainly one that has MASSIVELY impacted my business.

Through answering those questions I was able to shift my mindset from “HATING” the task that I needed to get done each day and turning it into an activity that I actually really enjoyed and actually looked forward to each day (even though at some points I wasn’t sure if I could even walk, my body was so sore!)

A Challenge for You …

My hope in sharing this simple story with you is to inspire you to sift through your life and business to identify the activities that you have been putting off or avoiding because you simply dislike having to do them. As you identify these activities I would challenge you to find a way to shift your perception and/or procedure and turn these activities into ones that you can learn to LOVE to do. The gift you will give yourself (beyond getting the necessary work done) is that you will now have the ability to turn an “ordinary” activity into an “EXTRAORDINARY” experience in your life.

Final thought… if you had the ability to take something you hate to do and through simply shifting your perception or procedure learn to LOVE it… what freedom do you feel that will provide for you in your life and business? How much more effective will you be? How would it affect your personal life?

You would never imagine the freedom this will give you, the amount of fulfillment it will add to your life and the pride in knowing you are able to take a mundane task and turn it into something you are passionate about.

To your success!

Jairek Robbins

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Evita Ochel on finding your inner peace. Evita is is the founder and editor of EvolvingBeings.com.

According to Wikipedia, inner peace, (or “peace of mind”), is “a state of being mentally and spiritually at peace, with enough knowledge and understanding to keep oneself strong in the face of discord or stress.” What a wonderful place to be.

I asked Evita to share her best lessons learned on finding and living with inner peace. I know a lot of people that will greatly benefit from her wisdom on this topic, and I know Evita has plenty of precious insight to share.

Without further ado, here is Evita on finding and living with inner peace …

Many people today are feeling the great change on our planet. The conditions are ripe for awakening to a higher state of consciousness than we have previously known as humanity, on both a personal and collective level. In the midst of this, we have seen what seems like an exponential increase in self-help and personal development resources, especially over the past couple of decades.

As we aim for increased abundance, efficiency or success, we cannot dismiss that the foundation for the most meaningful life comes from something else. This something else cannot be taught or received in the typical sense of the word. It can be inspired or exemplified by others, but ultimately it has to come from within you as a state of being. This is the greatest aspect that differentiates it from the most common personal growth topics. It does not come from a state of doing, but rather from a state of being. What we are talking about here is living from a state of inner peace.

For some whose interests revolve around action and achievement, the thought of inner peace may quite frankly sound boring. It may appear as taking the docile approach or being inactive to what life offers. Ironically, inner peace is anything but docile or boring. Although I feel it is our natural state of being, it takes great courage, discipline and effort to foster, and live out at all times in our modern society. To help explain this further, I will share with you some tips of what I found has worked for me when it comes to making inner peace a state of being from which to live.

Tip #1. Realize You Have Nothing To Prove

Regardless of whether you had a tough childhood, a sibling rivalry, or you measure your worth based on the success of others, each of us tends to have experience in living like we need to prove something. What makes this worse, is that often this driving force can sabotage our life by being completely unconscious. Many of us are very good at convincing ourselves that motivation and ambition are the spice of life, and anything that seems opposite to that is lazy or lifeless. Some people go after a certain career to prove something to their family. Some acquire products to prove something to their friends. Some participate in a certain activity to prove something to themselves. Whatever the action may be, it tends to create a lot of turmoil, pressure and/or anxiety within us.

There is nothing inherently wrong with being motivated to do something. It simply all depends what is the driving force behind that motivation. This life, this race, this game or however you see it, is only and always with yourself. It is about your personal evolution, not anyone else’s. There is nothing to prove to anyone, not even yourself. We all reach the finish line and along the way we all create, express and experience ourselves. The sooner we realize that and make it real in our lives, the more inner peace we attain. Know that you are everything and you can do anything. Therefore, it would be more valuable to put your efforts into creating for the sake of expressing yourself as an infinite being, rather than creating for the sake of proving some final outcome. You are magnificent regardless of what you do, or do not do. Inner peace comes from finding the joy along the way no matter what you are doing, rather than suffering along the way in hopes of reaching some elusive, final happy place.

Tip #2. Learn To Be Still

I find that a big challenge of living from a space of inner peace is that many of us do not allow for the right environment to nurture it, due to the constant noise in our lives. Our minds are on, all the time. Most of us spend the majority of our days in physically noisy environments. To make matters worse, most of us are caught up in a perpetual state of doing. There is always something to do, and there is never enough time. This is the opposite of what inner peace is all about.

This is why learning to be still is one of the central tenets of achieving inner peace. Although it would seem like an easy task to be still or be in silence, the actuality is far from it. This is why as I stated in the introduction, attaining and living with inner peace is not some easy or boring task. It takes discipline and an active creation on one’s part to live beyond the norm of modern-day society. This can make life very exciting and rewarding.

To experience inner peace, we need to have stillness in our life to at least have the chance to consciously “be” with whatever turmoil may be going on within us. When we are running around and “busy” all the time, it is too easy to dismiss or ignore what our inner being is asking for, or trying to tell us. Therefore, the path to inner peace needs to include a balance of some stillness and silence. Reflect on, process and clear out what does not serve you consciously, so you are not living from it unconsciously.

Tip #3. Forgive For Your Peace of Mind

I will never forget when I had the great realization in my life that forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person, but is actually a gift we give ourselves. So many people still live with the notion that they will not, or cannot forgive another, for whatever the other may have said or done. In actuality all this means is that they are refusing to forgive themselves, thereby creating pain and tension in their own life.

The key ingredient for peace-filled relationships is forgiveness. When I speak about forgiveness, I am not talking about it from any religious perspective, but from a look beyond and let go of perspective. This becomes easier when we understand that no one ever does anything wrong given their model of the world, and that most people live from a habitual place of unconscious words and actions. From that perspective, how can we find fault or blame in someone who does not realize what they are doing? This is where seeing beyond the word or action helps. One person in the relationship must have more clarity, or more emotional maturity, or simply more consciousness to see beyond what may have been said or done. Deep down, we are love and we want love. Inner peace comes from recognizing that and not holding onto any word or deed expressed by another.

Tip #4. Master the Art of Allowing

Various authors and teachers talk about the art of allowing. Some people have heard about it, some get it, while others yet may find the concept completely foreign. Mastering allowing means letting each person be as they are. Naturally, this is very difficult for us to do as it seems our nature is rooted in wanting to change and control people. We learn this firsthand from our parents, who seem to think they always know what is best for us, and how or what we should be. Very few people grow up fortunate enough to have had parents who allowed for freedom of expression, while being supportive guides along the way, rather than entities who seem to think they own us. As we get into relationships, we then model this behavior on our loved ones. Although it can spill onto our friends, our family members seem to get the worst of the brunt.

What confuses many people about allowing is making it synonymous with tolerating. Mastering the art of allowing means that we respect each person’s right to self expression, but it may include us not being part of that expression. For example, if I had a partner who smoked and I did not want smoking to be a part of my life, there are numerous ways I could approach the situation to maintain a level of inner peace. Starting from clear, honest communication about how and why I feel a certain way, which may be enough for the person to realize that this is not actually a habit they are consciously choosing, or re-evaluating why I feel as I do and whether I want to sacrifice the quality of the relationship over it, to temporary or permanent removal of myself from the situation. Bottom line we have choices in every moment to act from a place of inner peace, or cause ourselves and others turmoil, pain and suffering. The choice is always ours.

Tip #5. Know That Everything is Perfect

I find this last tip the most challenging to explain, and for people to put into practice. When we look around at our world today, very few would exclaim that everything is perfect. I mean look at us. Regardless of where we live, wars, turbulent economies, job losses, illness, famine, poverty and weather cataclysms, paint the backdrop for life on our planet today.

Despite all this, there is something so sacred about the state of the world and our lives. Some people get a glimpse of it at times, and know the deep value of the phrase, “everything happens for a reason”. In the midst of what society calls a crisis or disaster, naturally this is hard to see. And yet, the more we live in a state of true inner peace, the more we look at the world through the eyes of perfection. Normally, none of us know the bigger reason for why something has happened to someone, a group of people or geographical area. This makes a lot of people want to be activists and stand up or fight for some group or cause. It may seem noble, but often all we are doing is identifying ourselves with some future outcome which we believe is better than the now. This does not mean that we should just sit back and do nothing, for clearly a lot of people are hurting and can benefit from our help. Yes, go out and do what you feel your heart calling you to do by all means, but make sure you do not attempt to impose your will on another or think you know what is best for them. Act from a space of personal expression, rather than personal identification. Attachment to, or a strong identification with something brings inner turmoil, anxiety or pain, for we live from a state of fear for self or others. In the end, you are not technically saving anyone, but evolving yourself through choices of personal expression.

What makes this more challenging is that we need to have a certain amount of inner peace to see the world and all that takes place as a perfect state of things. Inner peace drives external perfection, and external perfection drives more inner peace. The two are intricately linked together, where normally as we attain one, we attain the other.

Concluding Thoughts

I know in my life, nothing tastes or feels as good, as living with inner peace. It immediately changes your perspective on everything, giving your life a different pace and meaning. Therefore knowing how good it feels, it is my intention to inspire others to create the same in their life. As I mentioned above, no one can teach you inner peace, or give it to you. Yes, you can read about it and hear about it, but ultimately it has to be your choice and come from within you in all that you are, and all that you do.

Inner peace is a lifelong choice. It is a choice we have the opportunity to make over and over again. This is the other thing that I find so exciting about it. Life is always giving us many opportunities to practice it, in every possible context. You are constantly evolving your mastery of living with inner peace.

In the end, it may sound cliché, but we really need to be the change we wish to see. Instead of changing the external to get what we desire, look within yourself and be the joy, happiness and peace you may be seeking.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Nina Yau on how to live an intensely extraordinary life by never asking for permission.

Nina blogs at Castle in the Air and is a seeker of Truth.  She is also a prolific author, a traveler, a thinker and  a philosopher. I asked Nina to share her story because she writes with might and lives fierce. She has taken the plunge to live life on her terms, while she lives her dreams.

Without further ado, here’s Nina on how to live the life you want while driving from your life style  …

January 2011. I’m sitting cross-legged on the creaky wooden floors of my Chicago apartment, warming my hands in front of the space heater in my small one-windowed room. Jesus, it’s friggin’ cold, I think to myself, as the artificial heat starts to penetrate my dead fish fingers enough so I could type on my Mac. I find a one-way ticket to Taiwan, with intentional stops in Seattle and Santiago de Chile. Booked. Done. Packed my minimalist bag and off I went, into the world, not looking back and with no regrets.

Some folks don’t think you’re ever coming back. Some are glad for you and wish you nothing but happiness. Some are in deep despair, either wishing they can come along or supremely jealous of the fact that you are actually doing what you’ve always wanted to do, and for some asinine reason, they can’t.

Listen up: this one-way ticket to the world with your name stamped on it is not exclusively reserved for the dream maker, the idea creator, the fearless revolutionist, the wanderlust nomad, the entrepreneurial bootstrapper. You can read all you want, you can wish all you want, you can surround yourself with similar spirits, but in the end, only you are responsible for making your life brazenly meaningful and happy. No one else.

This is how you and your one-way ticket to the world dance freely while holding hands in the wild rainstorm of life, gleaned from the most pertinent of experiences and life lessons since I’ve quit my old way of life in order to embrace this new one I’m living.

A Vast Glowing Empty Page

Jack Kerouac, author of definitive generational and cultural novels such as On the Road and The Dharma Bums, has said, “I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.”

Listen, your life is anything you put in it, anything you do with it. Fill it with sex, drugs, booze and rock and roll? Then that’s your life. Fill it with humanitarian work in Africa? Then that’s your life. Fill it with suburban sprawl living and a 9-to-5 with occasional barbecues and golf with the neighbors on the weekend? Then that’s your life.

People will give all sorts of ridiculous excuses and reasons to justify why they can’t have the life they really want. Rather than finding all the reasons why you can’t, why don’t you dig into the innermost cob-webbed corners of your mind, the dark corners where you left your once-ripe dreams to stale and grow mold, and fling that door wide open in a loving embrace that is you and what tugs on your heartstrings.

Your mind is one of the most powerful things on Earth. It can literally transform who you are today into who you shall become tomorrow, merely by infusing an obsessed-over-driven-insane-super-delirious-festive-luminescent-wild-unbridled persistence with the tremendous gall to do whatever the hell it is you want to do, no matter what anyone says or the possible outcomes.

That is key here: no matter what anyone says or the possible outcomes.

I piss people off on a daily basis, not because I’m intentionally wanting to anger others, but simply by living my life with such extreme audacity and fervent tenacity. Because I love life — and maybe they don’t or are miserable — will be enough reason for people to find fault, poke, prod, criticize, call you all sorts of names, tie you up and burn you at the stake of unconventionality.

My life is my own empty page. So is yours. Do what you will with it and care not for others who only want to tear you down.

Give Me Truth

If I could pick only one line I’d live my entire life by, it’d be by Henry David Thoreau from his sensational book, Walden, “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”

Truth is everything to me, so much so that for my first tattoo, I had veritas, the Latin word for Truth, inked onto my body. What this concept, this principle, this characteristic, this belief, this way of life, what this holds is imperative for you to wrap your mind around.

If you are being true to yourself and your heart’s mission, you never need to apologize nor ask for permission to do anything you want to do. That is it.

I physically disappeared from the Western world for half a year already, choosing to spend my time in Asia, and did not ask a single person whether or not I should or can do this. If you continually seek others’ advice or opinions, that’s all you probably will get. Advice and opinions of other people. You know yourself best. Not your partner, not your parents, not your children, not your best friends.

Look in the mirror. Hi. That’s you. Become best friends with yourself and give yourself the Truth by living it fully and unapologetically.

Full and Naked Exposure

Pema Chödrön, world-renowned Tibetan Buddhist teacher and author, has this quote which is extraordinarily thought-provoking, “Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us … It was all about letting go of everything.”

Moving along the rapid tidal waves of self-evolution is incredibly terrifying. I know this because I’m perpetually in a state of changing who I am, what I believe, how I do things, how I view the world and myself, what I hold onto and what I must let go in order to change and grow into a more beautiful and better person.

This means you have to get naked. Fully and without hidden veils. Though physical bodily exposure isn’t a prerequisite to self-evolution (though it can be!), you do need to be honest with yourself. Do that by exposing yourself to situations, people, places and experiences that literally scare you half to death. You may be surprised as to how you might act in those times.

Strip away your insurmountable and impenetrable walls. Tear down your self-built holier-than-thou pedestal. Forget everything you know and let the world teach you.

Cut Deep, Not Broad

One of my favorite books of all time is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig. In it, there is this one passage that reads, “‘What’s new’ is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question ‘What is best?,’ a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream.”

If we are solely concerned with what’s to happen this coming weekend, or what’s the latest going-on’s in celebrity gossip and fashion, or what new TV shows or movies are playing tonight, is it any wonder why we’ve not satiated our deepest longings in our hearts? Us humans are constantly toying with superficial matters, making that our primary priority rather than an optional add-on.

Those who know me know I care for such superficiality, commercial gossip and external validators as much as I care about how many millimeters a baby bamboo plant will grow in a week facing a northeastern sun. That’s right. Zilch.

If you ever get tired of the same mundane day-to-day routine, that is you saying you are ready to opt-out. Opt-in to endeavors which make you happy and which shall challenge you in a positive way. Remember, you need not ask for permission to live your own life — ever.

Educo

The word educate is derived from the Latin word ‘educo,’ meaning to educe, to draw out, to develop from within.

Napoleon Hill of the classic book Think and Grow Rich puts it pointedly, “The person who stops studying merely because he has finished school is forever hopelessly doomed to mediocrity, no matter what may be his calling. The way of success is the way of continuous pursuit of knowledge.”

Knowledge by itself is simply knowledge. Anyone with a simple brain can memorize facts, figures and random statistics. But harness that knowledge and now you have POWER. Unspeakable power to change the world, your life and everything in between.

Education does not stop after you’ve received your high school or university diploma. What the hell is that anyways? It’s some fancy script printed on nice, heavy-duty paper. Maybe a splash of color or two from your alma mater. Don’t be alarmed. This is coming from a person with two undergraduate degrees and one master’s degree by the age of 24.

I say this because I have learned so much more when the entire world is your classroom and you are the student. This is no exaggeration. It is the characteristics which are within you and which you must draw out from within that will then enable you to truly learn from others, places, experiences, yourself.

Blank your mind and fill it with the world instead.

Expectation Fatality and The End of Planning

Paul Theroux, American travel writer and novelist, wrote in To The Ends of The Earth, “It is fatal to know too much at the outcome: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is overcertain of his plot.”

I stopped all kinds of life planning agendas, 3-year and 5-year plans, month-to-month goal and checklists of sorts, at age 25. I gave away my watch and threw away my planner. By 26, I stopped owning a cell phone. Why? I was sick of planning, of having my life scheduled down to the very hour and minute of a particular day of a particular week of a particular month. This left me no room for ambiguity, of spontaneous adventures, of freewheeling extravaganzas of my blazing heart’s desires. Now, I almost always travel one-way, preferring to live life fully in the present moment, knowing that I may not have tomorrow. Yes, I’m definitely your modern-day backpacker/hobo/nomad/traveler/wanderer/meanderer/free spirit/hippie.

You know what happens when you give up all expectations and stop planning your entire life? The present moment truly becomes everything. You experience it to your fullest human capacities to embrace every single emotion under the sun and you let it soak you like a parched camel in the middle of the Sahara.

You’re made to feel like you’re lazy, apathetic or ambitious-less when you don’t plan or have goals. Here’s an earth-shattering concept for you: your only ‘goal’ is to live a mindfully meaningful life, obsessively driven to live it to the max, regardless of what other people think, say or do. That is it.

Your short life is affectionately precious and if you’ve not already, you need to have an enchanting rendezvous with your endearing soul. Give yourself unconditional carte blanche over your life.

Your one-way ticket to the world already has your name on it. What are you waiting for?

“Seek progress rather than perfection.” ~ Alissa Finerman

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Alissa Finerman. Alissa is the author of Living in Your Top 1%: Nine Essential Rituals to Achieve Your Ultimate Life Goals , which is essentially about helping people find their inner drive, get clarity on what they want, and make their dreams happen through compelling goals, and inspired action.

What I like about Alissa is her focus on helping people bring out their best and hit their high notes in life. I also like her focus on excellence, getting results, and pushing the envelope of what’s possible. She’s got great energy and it’s contagious.  She also has a wealth of experience, including her Wall Street career days, which she traded up to focus on her passion for inspiring people to be their best, and lead their best lives.  Alissa is also well-educated, with an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. I also like the fact that Alissa is an athlete and she continues to challenge herself.  In fact, she completed a half Ironman Triathlon.  She also was ranked #1 in the USTA National Women’s 40 Doubles in 2008 and 2009.  She leads by example and shows you can use your mind and body together to produce outstanding results in all areas of your life.

Without further ado, here’s Alissa with seven principles to help you lead a better life …

As a general practice, I always focus on moving forward rather than dwelling on the past or what could have been. I’m more of a “what if” and “why not” kind of person. I like to push the accepted boundaries and encourage people to re-think what’s possible. In our quest to lead a better life, it’s important to continuously reflect and assess our actions to see what works and what we need to shift so we can improve.
I’ve shared seven principles to lead a better life that are helpful to implement at any stage in your life to enjoy greater fulfillment, happiness, and engagement. These themes continue to come up with my clients which is how I selected these ideas although there are many more. The most important thing is that you consistently practice a set of rituals in your life. It’s about quality rather than quantity. I hope you will share your comments as well so we can all learn on the path to sharing our best self.

1. REDEFINE SUCCESS: The earlier you can define what success means to you, the more fulfilled and happier you will be. I’ve always had goals but I truly redefined what success meant to me during my career on Wall Street. I was sitting on the Corporate Bond Sales Desk when I realized that I no longer equated success purely with money, status, and title. I wanted to be engaged and fulfilled by my work and feel that I was making a difference in the world. My words may mean different things to each reader, but the important part is that your goals are aligned with your vision of success. In my work as a life coach, I find that many clients either have outdated goals or outdated ideas of what success means. Just because you wanted to start your own business five years ago does not necessarily mean you want to be your own boss today. You have to decide if being an entrepreneur is still a path that resonates with you. It’s important to note that success is dynamic and will change at different stages in your life.
   What does success mean to you and are your goals aligned with your vision?
2. LIVE BY YOUR VALUES: I noticed when I became clear on my values, the principles that guide me on a daily basis such as respect, feeling connected, authenticity, honesty, flexibility, creativity, and learning, I began to gain clarity with leaps and bounds. It was much easier to make difficult decisions (ex: leaving Wall Street and becoming a business coach, leaving my family in NYC and moving to California, or taking on certain projects). This is a critical step because clarity helps you make decisions and move forward with greater ease in the face of challenges.
   What are your top five values that guide you on a daily basis?
3. BE THE CEO OF YOU INC: One of the best ways to lead an empowered life on a daily basis is to start with your most important asset – you. YOU INC. represents all the different areas of your life including Career, Relationships, Finances, Healthy Living, Fun & Creativity and Personal Growth. You need to invest in and be mindful of each of these areas to present your best self on a daily basis. The key theme is that you are in the driver’s seat (not someone else). YOU INC. is the most important business you will run because it’s your life and you need to take an active role in all the decisions. This includes making yourself a priority whether it’s for five minutes or the whole weekend by saying gratitude, getting sleep, giving yourself time to re-fuel, reading, connecting with friends, or exercising. This means taking responsibility for your actions and not being afraid to say “NO” or “YES” in different situations. Before we can truly be a leader for others, we need to be a leader for our own life.
   What would the impact be if you made yourself a priority on a consistent basis?
4. DROP THE SHOULD FACTOR: We all fall prey to living with a bunch of shoulds. It’s easy to fall into this habit and you are not alone. The sooner you can forego the shoulds and fill your schedule and day with the things that truly inspire and energize you the happier you will be. I realize that we all have commitments, but I also believe that people make choices which commitments get added to their schedule. I know this is a dicey subject so before you mention the mortgage, kids, and responsibilities you have, take a moment and think about why you are in a specific situation. If your priority was to start a family then it only makes sense that you have certain commitments for your children. Make no mistake, these are not obligations or “shoulds” but rather privileges. It’s a dangerous habit to get into living a life of shoulds because these are not the things that are genuinely exciting and provide the greatest pleasure. I encourage my clients to make a conscious effort and decision to remove the shoulds from their life as much as possible and to fill their day with at least one thing that helps them lead a better life.
   Where could you lose the “shoulds” in your life and spend more time and energy focusing on what you want?
5. BE CONSISTENT: Consistency is one of the most powerful concepts we can practice on a regular basis to make an immediate impact in our life. You probably fell down many times when you first learned to walk as a baby. If you had decided that walking was too hard an activity to learn, you’d be crawling for the rest of your life. Walking only became possible with practice. The idea of practice translates into results and is dependent on the words, thoughts, beliefs, choices, commitments, and actions we make on a consistent basis. The formula is simple — the challenge is putting it into practice.
   Consistency + Choice + Commitment = Your Results.
   Where can you practice consistency in your life to align your actions with the results you want?
6. TURN YOUR IDEAS INTO ACTION: This is one of my favorite principles and one that really separates the top 1%ers from those that settle for the status quo. There are many people who complain about their job and how they want to start their own company but never do anything to change their situation. Then there are other people who have a great idea such as starting a non-profit organization, opening a surf shop, or doing their first triathlon and the next time you see them they have taken steps forward. You have to choose if you will sit on the sideline or participate in life. You can start turning your ideas into action by believing in yourself, spending time to set meaningful goals, being resilient when faced with a setback, and taking small steps forward.
   How would your life be different if you turned at least one idea into action?
7. BUILD YOUR TOP 1% TEAM: What do successful business owners, elite athletes, doctors, musicians, actors, and CEOs have in common? They have a team! While your team may not be as elaborate as that of a CEO of a large corporation or professional athlete, it’s interesting to learn from those who excel in their sport of choice. The common theme is they set themselves up to succeed.
   Take a moment and consider who are the people in your inner circle? Do they inspire you, challenge you to move outside your comfort zone, and expand your thinking? Are they passionate about their life and excited to start their day? Do they free you up to add the most value as the CEO of your business? Do they have a positive attitude that says, “I can.” These are the people you want on your team.
   What changes need to be made to your top 1% team to put yourself in a position to succeed?

TOP 1% BOTTOM LINE: Leading our best life is a process and involves continually assessing where you are and where you want to be. As our priorities and goals shift over time, they need to be updated to make sure your path still resonates.  It is not a single journey from point A to B. Learn from those around you and decide who are the key players you want on your team to help you make progress each day.
The poet Mary Oliver asks, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Now is the time to answer this question.