Get in Touch With your Inner-Self
Jul 6th, 2007 by Rahul Bhambhani
Do you know yourself? I mean, do you REALLY know yourself?
Do you know your greatest talents? Your life’s purpose? Your passions? Your beliefs?
It’s easy to get caught up in the rhythm of life and forget to seek out the answers to these important questions. When I hear the excuse, “I’m too busy to think about those things right now,” I think to myself, “If you figure out the answers to these questions, maybe you’ll be busy doing tasks which truly matter in the grand scheme of things!”
Rather than choosing to ignore the questions listed above, why not seek out their answers consciously? Many people say, “Oh, I’ll just take life as it comes and let it answer those questions for me.” I also take life as it comes, however, ever since answering these questions I feel as though I have a map to guide me along my way. My life now has more direction, purpose, and passion. Wouldn’t you like a map of your own?
Identify your talents
Each one of us has our own unique set of talents. If developed consciously, these talents can become our greatest strengths, and propel us to new levels of success in life. However, the most common mistake we human-beings make is focusing on the development of our weaknesses, rather than on the development of our talents. Why not become more of who you already are? Recognize the fact that everyone has their own set of strengths and weaknesses. You can always compensate for your own shortcomings by surrounding yourself with people whose strengths are your weaknesses.
When I say “talents”, I mean abilities which come naturally to you; special skills you were born with. It takes conscious action to develop these talents into strengths. Think of Tiger Woods. He was not born with the ability to play golf as well as he does today. Since the age of 2, Tiger has been developing his natural gifts of eye-hand coordination and intuition into strengths he now uses to win PGA tournaments. He practices 14 hours a day, tirelessly hitting the same shots over and over again until he is satisfied with his level of performance. Tiger has developed his talents into powerful strengths. As a result, he is arguably the greatest golf player in the world. Now ask yourself, “What am I capable of if I develop my talents into strengths?” Let me give you a hint… more than you ever though you were capable of!
The first step is to identify your talents. A great resource to help you with this is the book “Strengthsfinder 2.0″
- Relator
- Harmony
- Competition
- Input
- Intellection
To exemplify what I mean by “develop your talents into strengths,” here are a few examples which apply to me specifically.
This website is a tool to help me develop my input and relator talents into strengths. By synthesizing the knowledge I have acquired through my life experiences, and then sharing the knowledge with you through these articles, I am deliberately honing these talents into strengths.
In order to develop my intellection talent, I have increased the time I give myself to be alone. I use this time to reflect and get in touch with my inner-self. This process is highly beneficial and energizing for me. The extra alone time has given me new clarity of perspective towards my true nature. I can only imagine the power of this strength when it’s fully developed.
Discover your purpose
Think of purpose as the bigger picture of your life. All of your beliefs, values, actions, and thoughts should fit underneath this purpose. Without a purpose, life has no direction. Without a purpose, it is impossible to recognize your true potential. Without a purpose you can’t experience the feeling of waking up each morning full of joy, excitement, and readiness to start your day.
Most humans choose to take life as it comes, and make the mistake of answering the question “What is my purpose?” as they go. Others choose an even worse option, and ignore the question entirely. This terrible choice will most definitely lead to a sub-optimal life. You may still earn a billion dollars over the course of your lifetime, but this doesn’t mean you’ve recognized your true potential. Perhaps you were destined to change the world in some profound way instead. True potential can never be recognized other than through the fulfillment of purpose. Moral of the story: don’t let yourself choose the mentality of “ignorance is bliss”. Choose to discover your purpose right away!
I firmly believe each individual has a purpose that goes hand-in-hand with his/her interpretation of his/her reality. If this is the case, it means that you too have a purpose! Why lead your life for 50 years, only to realize you have been leading a life out of line with your purpose all along? If you are ready, you can discover your purpose now and spare yourself 50 years of directionless life (maybe even more!)
All it will take is a little bit of time and patience. Steve Pavlina, self-development guru, has posted an article on how to discover your life’s purpose in 20 minutes. Keep in mind this time requirement may not apply to everyone. The time requirement for each person varies, as we are all stubborn and rooted in our beliefs to various extents. The post can be found here.
Realize your passions
A life without passion is a dull one. This is a “duh, Rahul” statement, I know. However, it surprises me how many people commit their lives to work they are not passionate about. Each morning they wake up dreading the day ahead of them. Why lead this life?
The answer is simple; we choose to give away the freedom and enjoyment of life to earn money and provide for ourselves and our families. I don’t blame people for the desire to provide for themselves and their family. We must fulfill our survival needs. However, we don’t have to lead boring, tedious lives to do so. Once you’ve defined your purpose, you must devise a way to earn income in line with this purpose. This can be accomplished through living your passions.
As described in my post “Choose Conscious Growth”, it is important to follow up on any passion “leads” you may have. It doesn’t matter how dumb or unproductive they may seem, follow up on them anyway. If you’ve been interested in palm reading or dreaming for a while, go find a book on the subjects in the library. If you’ve always wanted to learn golf; take the first step today and book a lesson with an instructor. The most important thing is to take action now. You never know, you may discover your life passion along the way!
Empower your beliefs
Empowering your beliefs is like it sounds, powerful! The more empowering your beliefs are, the more successful you will be able at handling the challenges life throws your way.
To illustrate the effect beliefs have on your life, let’s examine the example, “If you believe you aren’t capable of being great, then you never will be.”
The reason this statement is true is because our beliefs cause us to act a certain way. If you believe you aren’t capable of being great, you will lead a life of mediocrity and will shy away from the opportunities and challenges life presents you with. If, however, you believe you can and will be great, you will confront these same opportunities and challenges with a resolute, positive attitude, and will soar with success. Beliefs make all the difference.
To empower our beliefs, we must first identify our current beliefs, and then root out the ones which are hindering our success. This is not an easy task, for many of our beliefs are deeply rooted in who we are. This makes for a tough situation, because we then have to evaluate ourselves from an outside perspective to view our true beliefs. However, just like shoes make footprints in the snow, our actions are the footprints of our beliefs. If we follow these “footprints” back to their origin, we should be able to identify our true beliefs.
When looking at your actions you will realize, sure enough, there is a trail which you can trace back to the belief which caused the specific action. For example, I believe people I interact with should conduct themselves with first class behavior. My actions are in line with this, and when someone violates my belief, I walk away. Now, if I reverse this process and choose to look at my action first, I will see that I walked away from a person when they treated me with second class behavior. This action can then be traced back to the belief of “people should conduct themselves with first class behavior.” This process will take some work and some mental focus, but soon enough you will discover the beliefs hiding behind your actions.
Once you’ve discovered the specific beliefs which are hindering your success (caused by fear, negative experiences, and social programming) you will have the power to replace them with more empowering beliefs. Contrary to what you may think, we will not try and erase the beliefs from our minds. This will be counter-productive and won’t work anyway. When was the last time you were voluntarily able to completely erase something from your mind?
Instead, we are going to use the power of the mind to replace the limiting belief. We will direct our thoughts to the new belief we would like to adopt, and will continue to do so until it has replaced our previously limiting belief. For example, if your actions point out that you have no self-esteem or self-confidence, you can repeat in your mind over and over again the saying “I like myself”. Yes, I know it sounds stupid. But you’ll find, just as I did, these exercises have a dramatic effect on your mind. One last point: It is important to think these thoughts with consistency. Thinking this way for 5 minutes a day will not accomplish anything, because for the rest of the day we will be thinking like we used to be!
For more information on the power of thought, I recommend the books Think and Grow Rich
Tying it all together
It is critical to recognize the answers to these questions will help build your self awareness. Self awareness is the most essential component of success. Without knowing our purpose, strengths, passions, and beliefs, we will severely under-perform in our life endeavors.
Once you know the answers to our self-awareness questions, you will feel the synergistic effect of the whole being greater than the parts. If you know your purpose, you will be able to find the passions which fit underneath it much more easily. If you understand your talents and hone them into your greatest assets, you will accomplish much more with much less effort. If you are able to empower your beliefs, you will be able to succeed beyond measure because you will have the right mindset to back all of your efforts.
Be patient, and allow yourself some time to find the answers to these questions. Simply raising your consciousness towards the questions will bring you the answers you are expecting much more quickly. When you discover your own unique answers, you will feel invigorated with new purpose and reason in life.
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