2 Powerful Principles For Your Journey To A Life Of Fulfillment And Unity
“True good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good character, good intentions, and good actions.” — Marcus Aurelius
We are continuously influenced by rules and pre-written scripts about how we should live our lives. Each of these rules were integrated at some point by people who weren’t necessarily smarter than us. Yet we “choose” to blindly follow them because everyone else around us is too.
This process starts from the moment we first open our eyes, until our final breath of air.
For years we keep ourselves in the background, always tolerating whatever the world throws at us. At times we feel powerless, aimless, and controlled.
We feel cast out, we feel useless, we feel unloved and we feel misunderstood.
But I feel you.
For most of my young teenage years, I was severely bullied. Others always told me what I had to do, and what I couldn’t do. My grades were bad because I had a non-stop fear of failure. I was afraid of exposing myself to the world because I carried this tormenting feeling of never being good enough.
This lasted up until my early twenties.
Like many other people, I experienced some turning point in my life that became the catalyst of me wanting to take back the reins.
I will gladly share more about myself in upcoming articles, but for now I want the focus to be on you. With this article, I aim to give you 2 clear principles you can adopt to become stronger. I want you to feel stronger.
Principle 1 : Don’t Settle For Anything, Fight For What You Believe In
Whenever you settle for something, you are depriving yourself of the things you truly want. No matter how hard, or how painful it is to let something go, you need to be willing to sacrifice the “okay” things in order to make room for the great things.
In our lives, we settle in many areas.
- A body we are not proud of
- A job that doesn’t give us fulfillment or makes us feel valuable
- A romantic partner who doesn’t deeply love — and respect us
- “Friends” who don’t support us and, instead of lifting us up, negatively influence us
- The opinions of others as opposed to our own
- The place/location where we live
- The safe comfort of our environment vs life-changing experiences
- The way we carry ourselves in communication and through outward presentation
“Your opinion is not my reality” — Dr. Steve Maraboli
What are your values and principles?
How important are they to you?
What are the things that truly matter to you in life?
What are you prepared to do for them?
Where do you want to go?
What do you want to achieve?
Ask yourself these questions every time you feel confused or lost.
“Am I really happy with this, or am I settling for something right now?”
Do everything in your power to change it, because if you don’t, you are convincing yourself that you are not worthy of (insert personal want).
You are more powerful than you think you are
Pursue those career goals! Take control of your nutrition and fitness! Find those people that will make you feel like you belong! Travel to that location you’ve always wanted to visit! Find a way to do it, don’t be afraid to ask for help, and DO it!
Focusing on what you want, and having values of your own, is not selfish. It means that you respect yourself, your time, and your energy. Someone doesn’t agree with you? So what? This is your life. Make your own mistakes, be willing to feel some pain to get what you want.
Making mistakes is inevitable, but I’d rather make them on my own terms; standing straight, not straightened.
Take responsibility for everything that happens in your life, and when you’re wrong, just admit it. When you know you could’ve done better, learn from it.
The final decision should be yours, your life depends on it.
Whatever choice you make, suffering at some point will always be part of it. Knowing this can help you become more aware in deciding what is important enough to you; enough to be willing to suffer for it. Face adversity proudly.
Take responsibility for everything that happens in your life, and when you’re wrong, just admit it. When you know you could’ve done better, learn from it.
Principle 2 : Give Love, Value, And Support To Every Person You Meet
Now that I’ve ranted about the importance of going after what you want, I want to make it clear that I’m not promoting extreme selfish behavior.
Yes, do the right things for you, but not at the expense of other people.
The best way to get what you want out of your life, is to help other people conquer their pains and achieve their hopes in their lives. True fulfillment comes through service and assistance.
Because people are our proper occupation. We will always be in this together. We must support each other, show honest appreciation to one another. Like I already stated in a previous article, the feeling of being appreciated is one of our deepest desires. Give it freely, and give it generously.
What is something you are good at that can help others in any way? It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as your drive is to enrich them. Find a way to be of service to someone. Do it with passion, do it with reason.
Purpose is where passion meets reason.
There is no better feeling than the sense of joy you get from seeing other people being positively impacted by the creations you worked so hard on, and are authentically you.
Banish your ego and keep building on your strong character. Do whatever you do for the right reasons. Don’t do it for money, fame, or idolatry.
People don’t care how successful you are, they don’t care how ripped you are.
Do you have a nice car you like to show off? Cool, but we don’t really care.
What people care about is how you make them feel, especially about themselves. You could make someone’s entire day by merely giving them a heartfelt compliment. Try it! Text your best friend today and tell him why you love him. Or call you significant other and tell her that you are a team.
Be the person with whom others can shine.
Lift other people up through words and actions. Always give credit where it’s due. Show them how much you care about them.
When someone gives you a profound insight, thank them and share it.
That being said, here are some amazing people that have taught me great lessons with their writings during the last couple of days.
Thank you for investing your time into reading this article. If this helped you in any way, please feel free to comment!
Joren
