Disappointment and Perspective.

Disappointment and Perspective.

Being disappointed is all about perspective. It took me a long time to realize this. I was under the impression that if someone did something I didn't like, or a situation evolved that I wasn't happy with, then I had the "right" to be disappointed. I never once thought it was just my perception of the matter that was causing my disappointment and that I could control this!

What I slowly began to realize through studying myself, as well as paying attention to others around me, was that those things that would upset me, would not upset someone else. I also noticed that those things that appeared to be the biggest deal to someone else, only made me laugh. So what was going on? Obviously, it couldn't be the situation itself because that was the one constant thing in each equation. What did change was who was interpreting the situation. That was what was different. So I began to wonder if my perception of a situation, any situation, was something I could control? Could I change the way I perceived something, and therefore, change my emotional reaction? I discovered, that yes it was possible. I wasn't necessarily in control over what happened to me, or around me, but I was definitely in control over how I responded to those situations.

I began to play with this idea a bit. I believe that the people in our lives are great mirrors for how we think and behave, and therefore, can be great educational tools.

What I began to see over and over again was that when most of us get upset it is for one reason and one reason only. The universe is not behaving the way we believe it should behave. This could mean that we didn't get the raise we believed we were entitled too, so we become disappointed. If we had not expected a raise in the first place, however, we never would have been disappointed would we? It could also mean that someone does not treat us in a particular way that we believe we should be treated. Or our dreams don't turn out the way we believe they should have turned out. Or an investment didn't work out the way we thought it would. Or someone dies before we believe they should die. It can be as heavy as that. I am not saying it isn't sad, but at the same time it isn't our choice to say how long someone is to live, now is it? Those are our perceptions of what we want, of how we want the universe to behave. When we get disappointed, we never stop and think that it is our perceptions or beliefs that are wrong. We think it is the universe that is wrong because of how we feel personally! That is a pretty grand stand to take when you think about it.


So how do we change our perceptions? By becoming more aware of what your perceptions and beliefs are. You cannot change what you do not understand. So spend some time looking internally and when you become disappointed, think about what is disappointing you. Is it really the situation or the person, or is it because they are not behaving in a way you believe they should behave? Then slowly as you do this, force yourself to look at the bigger picture of what is going on. Force yourself to see the situation from a new perspective and offer positive spins on what has happened. I believe that the more you do this, the less you will be disappointed because you will stop taking things so personally. You will also begin to realize that the way things turn out are the way things are supposed to turn out, whether they are in line with your beliefs or not. This will lead you to feeling more in control of your emotions as well as of your behaviors and actions. You will also be able to use any challenge as an opportunity to grow, develop, and move your life forward, because you will not continuously be knocked down by disappointment.

© Kim Eickhoff

TRUE BLISS IS WITHIN YOU

TRUE BLISS IS WITHIN YOU

Placing your happiness in the hands of others will lead to a lot of pain and disappointment, says Donna Thomson

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet,” said James Oppenheim. True happiness cannot be sought outside of yourself — not in your relationships with others, the groups you belong to, or in the things around you. Unless you can stand alone in your own shadow and feel happiness from within, true happiness may always elude you for external things come and go like the tide. The only constant in your life is you. Love you, admire you, value you and be happy to be you.

Why do we seek happiness from outside of ourselves? From His Holiness The Dalai Lama: “Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.”

So we learn from a young age to rely on others rather than on ourselves. If we rely on others for our food, shelter and other needs, why not happiness? Well happiness of course does come from many things and our social relationships and other external factors can bring us much joy, but many of us have not connected with ourselves as we have connected with others. The negative side is that placing all of your happiness in the hands of others will lead to a lot of pain and disappointment throughout your life.

No matter how much you love a partner, a child, or a friend, you cannot make your happiness conditional upon them. Why? Because you will have certain expectations of others and when those expectations aren’t met, you may feel hurt, betrayed, misunderstood, taken for granted, invalidated, confused and so on. Everyone is individual. We have each grown to develop our own sets of values, beliefs, attitudes and ways of looking at the world. Our views may not be exactly the same as our loved ones. However, we often expect those loved ones to know what we want from them.

When someone else’s actions don't live up to your expectations you are let down. Often the other person won’t even realise they’ve done something to cause you pain because they don’t know your expectations unless you have explicitly shared them. Often we don’t even realise our own expectations until we feel someone has hurt or disappointed us.
For example, you may unconsciously expect your partner to show their love in a particular way such as saying “I love you” regularly and when this doesn’t happen you start to wonder if they truly care for you. You may feel unacknowledged and unloved. However your partner may feel that they are showing their love through their actions. You have one belief while your partner has another. Is there a lack of love? No. While you let your feelings build into a stressful negative state within you, your partner would probably be very surprised to know you feel that way.

It’s unrealistic to expect another person to know what's in your head — your values, beliefs and expectations. Thinking “Well they should know!” is not good enough, yet most of us would have thought this of someone else at some stage. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. They see you become sad, angry, unresponsive to them, or upset and don’t know what they’ve done, or if it’s even them who has made you unhappy. This leads to negative feelings from both sides and possibly arguments that could be avoided through open communication.

Rather than looking to others for your needs, begin by looking within yourself. When you feel a sense of disappointment in someone, use it as an opportunity to analyse your own expectations. The only person who should truly be able to disappoint you is yourself — when you are not being true to yourself in some way. You can take that disappointment and turn it into a positive — a pledge; an action that you can take to better yourself.

Analyse why you are disappointed or hurt. You may find your initial thoughts or statements begin with “Because he did” or “Because she didn’t”. Now look deeper to the true reason for your disappointment. Such statements will start with “Because i expected”, “Because i wanted” or “Because i thought he or she should”.

You truly only ever have control over yourself and realising this can save you a lot of pain. Of course you can be disappointed in others but you have no control over their actions and reactions. You can share the reasons for your disappointment but you cannot expect the other person or situation to change because the other person has free will.

When you realise that you are responsible for your thinking and expectations, you will start to see that you’ve placed much of your happiness in the hands of others. You can now take your power back by recognising that you have the choice to react to something either negatively or positively. By making your happiness conditional upon another person, you hand your power over to them. You feel a ‘victim’ whenever things don’t go as you want or expect. In doing this, you set yourself up for pain, but you can now turn this around and instead set yourself up for happiness.

The key is to not expect a particular outcome. What happens next is up to you. You can choose to wallow in negative feelings which may further damage a relationship, or you can try to place a positive spin on the situation. Perhaps you can find your happiness in the fact that you’ve done your part in dealing with the situation by getting your issue out into the open. Realise that it may not be an issue to the other person, but ideally you will work together to reach a compromise. You can also decide to be happy for the other person and the pain they show you because it helps you to grow. There are always choices and different ways of looking at the same thing.

It puts things into perspective when you resign yourself to the fact that people do make mistakes — they forget things, they don’t think properly, they don’t always consider how others may be affected by their actions, they can act selfishly at times, and so on. We are all humans and we are designed to make mistakes as they are our greatest opportunities to learn. As Horace Friess says, “All seasons are beautiful for the person who carries happiness within.”

Power Mantra

Robin says “Power doesn`t come from forcing people to listen to you and coercing them to do what you say because you have the right title on your business card.Real power comes when you spread your passion, offer people a reason to climb your strategic mountaintops, treat them with rare respect and give them permission to shine, grow and Lead Without Title.Be there for people and they will be there for you”

Amazing and True !

Handling ego/anger with Acceptance , Approval , Appreciations (AAA) Part-1

Handling ego/Anger with Acceptance , Approval , Appreciations (AAA)

Two of my good friend fall in love and got married

One day, I was asking my friends wife , who you handle my friend ( her husband ) because some time he seems to be very egoistic. She say simply by “acceptance” , acceptance is power. I oppose and said that mean you compromise too much and it look unfair. She just say no …….

She keeps explaining me, See ego is like hunger and everybody has ego (little or more). Until unless you don’t feed hunger s/he will not think any thing else. If you say your problem is that you thinking too much on stomach. It is no use. So feed hunger, once s/he satisfy , then tell what we think is right and what is wrong again make no demand just tell preferences. If you demand and keep thrashing,
it will increase his/her ego/hunger and make person more demanding. Once her/his hunger is satisfy, s/he ready to listen (that is important). In bottom of mind and heart every egoist person know what is right and what is wrong. It is his/her ego(=hunger ) that keep them away from wisdom/truth/understanding. Once his/her ego/hunger is satisfy, s/he able to concentrate on wisdom/truth and will behave more understanding way. Give person there space so he/she able to
analyze them self other wise s/he keep repeating.

Again if cup is full of tea and if you pore more tea , it will fell down. Same bubble of ego ( = wrong belief/image ) occupy all space in cup(= mind). Once ego / hunger is satisfy , bubble bust and there is enough space to occupy new thought / belief / wisdom / truth.

I oppose again and said , this way you will make person more demanding , every time his/her ego grow up. She Said use this formula AAA, ego will never grow up. AAA means

A – Acceptance
A – Approval
A – Appreciations

She future said gratitude is power. First Accept what you have , Approve what you have and appreciate what you have. End of the day stability in life and peace of mind is more important then any other things.
She further explain relation between belief system and ego. ………..
She is from Big metro city and her husband is from Small town … and how she handle belief system clash and culture differences clash …….. very peace fully ……..with AAA

Person died who hindering your growth

The most important relationship you can have, is the one you have with yourself

One day all the employees reached the office and they
saw a big advice on the door on which it was written:

"Yesterday the
person who has been hindering your growth in this company passed away. We invite
you to join the funeral in the room that has been prepared in the gym".


In the beginning, they all got sad for the death of one of their
colleagues, but after a while they
started getting curious to know who was that man who hindered the growth of his
colleagues and the company itself.

The excitement in the gym was such that security agents
were ordered to control the crowd within the room.

The more people reached the coffin, the more the excitement heated up.


Everyone thought: "Who is this guy who was hindering my
progress? Well, at least he died!".
>

One by one the thrilled employees got closer to the
coffin, and when they looked inside
it they suddenly became speechless. They stood nearby the coffin, shocked and in silence, as if someone had touched the deepest part of their
soul.


There was a mirror inside the coffin: everyone who
looked inside it could see himself.

There was also a sign next to the mirror that said:

"There is only one person who is capable to
set limits to your growth: it is YOU.
You are the only person who can revolutionize your life.
You are the only person who can influence your happiness, your realization and your success. You are the only
person who can help yourself.

Your life does not change when your boss
changes, when your friends
change, when your parents
change, when your partner
changes, when your company changes.
Your life changes when YOU change,
when you go beyond your limiting beliefs, when you realize that you are the only one
responsible for your life.

"The most important relationship you can
have, is the one you have with
yourself"


Examine yourself, watch yourself. Don't be afraid of
difficulties, impossibilities and
losses: be a winner, build yourself
and your reality.


The world is like a mirror: it gives back to anyone the
reflection of the thoughts in which one has strongly believed.


The world and your reality are like mirrors laying in a
coffin, which show to any individual
the death of his divine capability to imagine and create his happiness and his
success.

It's the way you face Life that makes the difference

I recieved this email box .............

Attitude

Attitude

Once there was an old and very wise man. Every day he would sit outside a gas station in his rocking chair and wait to greet motorists as they passed through his small town. On this day, his granddaughter knelt down at the foot of his chair and slowly passed the time with him.

As they sat and watched the people come and go, a tall man who surely had to be a tourist -- since they knew everyone in the town -- began looking around as if he were checking out the area for a place to live.

The stranger walked up and asked,"So what kind of town is this that we're in?"

The older gentleman slowly turned to the man and replied," Well, what kind of town are you from?"

The tourist said,"In the town I'm from everyone is very critical of each other. The neighbours all gossip about everyone, and it's a real negative place to live. I'm sure glad to be leaving. It is not a very cheerful place. "

The man in the chair looked at the stranger and said," You know, that's just how this town is."

An hour or so later a family that was also passing through stopped for gas. The car slowly turned in and rolled to a stop in front of where the older gentleman and his granddaughter were sitting. The mother jumped out with two small children and asked where the restrooms were. The man in the chair pointed to a small, bent-up sign that was barely hanging by one nail on the side of the door.

The father stepped out of the car and also asked the man,"Is this town a pretty good place to live?"

The man in the chair replied," What about the town you are from? How is it?"

The father looked at him and said,"Well, in the town I'm from everyone is very close and always willing to lend their neighbour a helping hand. There's always a hello and thank you everywhere you go. I really hate to leave. I feel almost like we are leaving family. "

The older gentlemen turned to the father and gave him a warm smile. "You know, that's a lot like this small town."

Then the family returned to the car, said their thank yous, waved goodbye and drove away.

After the family was in the distance, the granddaughter looked up at her grandfather and asked,"Grandpa, how come when the first man came into our town you told him it was a terrible place to live and when the family came in to town you told them it was a wonderful place to live? "

The grandfather lovingly looked down at this granddaughter's wondering blue eyes and said,"No matter where you move, you take your own attitude with you and that's what makes it terrible or wonderful. "

It's your attitude, not your aptitude that determines your altitude.
Happiness is not something you find, it's something you create. It is within you , nobody else is responsible for it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Picture this : your flight is delayed due to weather and you miss your connection.

You can either have a bad attitude about it and blame the airline and every person who is associated with the airline and then go off unhappy and late

or

you can accept it and move on to the next solution.

Attitude is everything.It can make or break a situation !

Recently there has been a lot of hubub over the show “The Secret” so much so that Oprah and Larry King have done shows about “The Secret”. The story revolves around a universal principle that we get what we give in life. I believe this and while I think that “The Secret” is an old message in a new package, I believe that we all should heed the message. Stephen Covey has taught this for years, in fact in 89 he stated, “Our behaviors are a function of our decisions not our conditions”. In other words we decide what we will do, we being the key word, not the world around us.

Take some time and think about your attitude and the priniciple that you get from life what you put into it. If you are negative, you’ll get negative, if you are positive you’ll get positive. In fact if you are positive, the hiccups in life will be value laden and if you are negative the hiccups in life will be sorrows with no value.

Make the choice and have a positive responsible attitude in life, then teach this very principle to someone else. Its the way we move the message and make the world a better place

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Soch ko Badlo, Sitare Badal Jayenge. Nazar ko Badalo, Nazare badal Jayenge. Kashtiya Badalne ki Zarurat Nahin, Dishao Ko Badalo, Kinare Badal Jaayenge!!

Love all , trust few , don't do wrong to anybody

Be Brave
A real man is who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. It's the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

Treat everyone with politeness, Even those who are rude to U.....Not because they are not nice, But bcoz u are nice....!!!


Don't cry in Love coz 4 whom u r crying does not deserve ur tears & the person who deserves it will never let u cry!!!


You can win me, you can lose me but never try 2 use me

Interests: - Enjoying life as it is........ you are another child of god pure , calm , loving
DOn't be Judemental - Critical - Rigid - Close Mind


The most important relationship you can have, is the one you have with yourself

Just for today, do not worry.
Just for today, do not anger.
Just for today in good and happy, cheerful mood.
Just for today keep similing
just for today MAKE A DIFFERENCE, HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY
Just for today, do not egoiest. -> Open Minded -> try to see world with others POV.
Just for today , do not short tamper ...PTR ... patients ..limit is set by your mind/thinking/communication
Earn your living honestly(Ask yourself every day: "Did I give my best effort to today's activities?").
Honor your parents, teachers, and elders.
Show gratitude to everything.
See BIG Picture ...concentrate on your need , Never Let Small things Bother You
If need a help , speak out/communicate honestly or take experts help

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> *Love While You Live**
> Realize things before its too late.
> Have lots of friends before you are alone.
> Accept things rather than deny them.
> Love people before you loose them.
>
> Life comes just once.
> Love it while you live it.* * *
>
>
> I'm not the best
> but I 'm not like the rest

“The Secret” -> that we get what we give in life.

Attitude is everything.It can make or break a situation !

“Our behaviors are a function of our decisions not our conditions”

“Your mind can only hold one thought at a time, make it a positive and constructive one.”

The answers are within

The answers are within

Situations in themselves do not produce feelings. It is our perception of them that makes us feel good or bad

Paul Coutinho

Stephen Covey, in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, shares an experience that he once had while traveling on the New York subway. Imagine you are riding the subway early one morning, and everybody appears to be comfortable — people are drinking their coffee, reading their newspapers and magazines, working on their laptops, talking on their cell phones. Everything is normal and peaceful.

At each station, a few people get off, a few people get on, everything is calm and sedate, until the train stops at a particular station and a man walks onto your train car with his little children. He finds seats for them and then sits down in a reflective mood. While he is in deep meditation, the children begin to run up and down the aisle, screaming and shouting, running all over the train car.

How do you feel? Are you mad at the man? Why are you mad? You are perhaps thinking, This man should take care of his children in public. If he does not know how to take care of children, why did he have them in the first place! Are you mad at the children for making so much noise? Spoiled kids! you might think. You notice there is no mother. Now you might be thinking, I bet the mother left this man with these undisciplined children. See yourself going up to this irresponsible father and confronting him, saying, “Excuse me, sir, would you mind tending to your children? They’re being so disruptive, and I think everybody is getting a little upset.” The man looks up at you and says, “Two hours ago these children lost their mother in the hospital. She just died, and ever since then I have been trying to explain to them the death of their mother, and their only reaction is this.”

Now how do you feel? The children are still jumping up and down, screaming and shouting. But now you feel terrible. You feel guilty. You feel sorry for the man, you feel sorry for the children, and you feel bad about their mother. You might even feel upset with yourself for feeling negatively about the father and his children.

I give you this example to demonstrate the power of our beliefs. Emotions are not caused by situations. Emotions are caused by our beliefs about situations, beliefs that color our perception and our understanding of events. In this example, the children are still jumping up and down and shouting, but some of us have moved from being upset to feeling sad, compassionate, and concerned.

Others may still feel angry, because they believe that children should always behave in public. Beliefs cause emotions that trigger behavior. If we feel angry about a situation and react in anger, it is because we have angry beliefs about it. If we feel compassionate, it is because we have compassionate beliefs.

Situations in themselves do not produce feelings. It is our perception of the situation that makes us feel good or bad. Just as situations cannot make us happy or sad, another person cannot make us feel happy or sad. We choose to be happy or sad. If we seek greater freedom in our lives, we need to be objective and rational about the power of our beliefs versus the power of situations. We control our emotions. When we live in freedom, we choose the way we respond rather than let our automatic destructive reactions get the better of us.

Now you might ask, “Okay, but how do I do this? How do I choose to respond when I am under pressure, when I have been taught to fear or fight, when the situation seems ‘bad’ to me?” The “PQR formula” can help us live freely in stressful, anxious, or depressing situations. We Pause to Question how we would like to Respond rather than react and live to regret our negative reaction.

Let me try to explain what I mean by react: You push; I shove. Without thinking, I shove. This is my reaction. It is immediate and disconnected from my higher Self, the constant “I”, and the meaning of my life. My reaction is an imprisoned effect. This is not freedom.

By applying the PQR formula, however, I can respond. I pause (find myself in the situation), question (How does this situation relate to the meaning of my life? How do I wish to respond given a world of infinite possibilities?), and then respond (a freely chosen action — not a reaction). Responding rather than reacting helps us live freely and in greater harmony with our true identity in every situation. It helps us grab hold of the freedom we seek in order to enter into the river of divine life.

TRUE BLISS IS WITHIN YOU

Placing your happiness in the hands of others will lead to a lot of pain and disappointment, says Donna Thomson

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet,” said James Oppenheim. True happiness cannot be sought outside of yourself — not in your relationships with others, the groups you belong to, or in the things around you. Unless you can stand alone in your own shadow and feel happiness from within, true happiness may always elude you for external things come and go like the tide. The only constant in your life is you. Love you, admire you, value you and be happy to be you.

Why do we seek happiness from outside of ourselves? From His Holiness The Dalai Lama: “Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.”

So we learn from a young age to rely on others rather than on ourselves. If we rely on others for our food, shelter and other needs, why not happiness? Well happiness of course does come from many things and our social relationships and other external factors can bring us much joy, but many of us have not connected with ourselves as we have connected with others. The negative side is that placing all of your happiness in the hands of others will lead to a lot of pain and disappointment throughout your life.

No matter how much you love a partner, a child, or a friend, you cannot make your happiness conditional upon them. Why? Because you will have certain expectations of others and when those expectations aren’t met, you may feel hurt, betrayed, misunderstood, taken for granted, invalidated, confused and so on. Everyone is individual. We have each grown to develop our own sets of values, beliefs, attitudes and ways of looking at the world. Our views may not be exactly the same as our loved ones. However, we often expect those loved ones to know what we want from them.

When someone else’s actions don't live up to your expectations you are let down. Often the other person won’t even realise they’ve done something to cause you pain because they don’t know your expectations unless you have explicitly shared them. Often we don’t even realise our own expectations until we feel someone has hurt or disappointed us.
For example, you may unconsciously expect your partner to show their love in a particular way such as saying “I love you” regularly and when this doesn’t happen you start to wonder if they truly care for you. You may feel unacknowledged and unloved. However your partner may feel that they are showing their love through their actions. You have one belief while your partner has another. Is there a lack of love? No. While you let your feelings build into a stressful negative state within you, your partner would probably be very surprised to know you feel that way.

It’s unrealistic to expect another person to know what's in your head — your values, beliefs and expectations. Thinking “Well they should know!” is not good enough, yet most of us would have thought this of someone else at some stage. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. They see you become sad, angry, unresponsive to them, or upset and don’t know what they’ve done, or if it’s even them who has made you unhappy. This leads to negative feelings from both sides and possibly arguments that could be avoided through open communication.

Rather than looking to others for your needs, begin by looking within yourself. When you feel a sense of disappointment in someone, use it as an opportunity to analyse your own expectations. The only person who should truly be able to disappoint you is yourself — when you are not being true to yourself in some way. You can take that disappointment and turn it into a positive — a pledge; an action that you can take to better yourself.

Analyse why you are disappointed or hurt. You may find your initial thoughts or statements begin with “Because he did” or “Because she didn’t”. Now look deeper to the true reason for your disappointment. Such statements will start with “Because i expected”, “Because i wanted” or “Because i thought he or she should”.

You truly only ever have control over yourself and realising this can save you a lot of pain. Of course you can be disappointed in others but you have no control over their actions and reactions. You can share the reasons for your disappointment but you cannot expect the other person or situation to change because the other person has free will.

When you realise that you are responsible for your thinking and expectations, you will start to see that you’ve placed much of your happiness in the hands of others. You can now take your power back by recognising that you have the choice to react to something either negatively or positively. By making your happiness conditional upon another person, you hand your power over to them. You feel a ‘victim’ whenever things don’t go as you want or expect. In doing this, you set yourself up for pain, but you can now turn this around and instead set yourself up for happiness.

The key is to not expect a particular outcome. What happens next is up to you. You can choose to wallow in negative feelings which may further damage a relationship, or you can try to place a positive spin on the situation. Perhaps you can find your happiness in the fact that you’ve done your part in dealing with the situation by getting your issue out into the open. Realise that it may not be an issue to the other person, but ideally you will work together to reach a compromise. You can also decide to be happy for the other person and the pain they show you because it helps you to grow. There are always choices and different ways of looking at the same thing.

It puts things into perspective when you resign yourself to the fact that people do make mistakes — they forget things, they don’t think properly, they don’t always consider how others may be affected by their actions, they can act selfishly at times, and so on. We are all humans and we are designed to make mistakes as they are our greatest opportunities to learn. As Horace Friess says, “All seasons are beautiful for the person who carries happiness within.”

Path to self-awareness

Path to self-awareness

By accepting our weaknesses and sharing our aspirations, we can get the support of others on our journey to self-actualisation

Lois Grant

Knowing what is right and what is wrong in your own inner consciousness is insufficient. It is not the knowing of truth that transforms a person; it is the doing of truth that has an impact on you and on the other people that you interact with. You may know that it is inappropriate to think selfishly and look out for your own best interests first, but your inner emotions may drive you to be blinded to the needs of others.
You may know that it is against your basic truth to judge another individual, but your inner emotions may cause you to look at that person and make a judgment because of the effect you are allowing them to have on your life.You may understand that all of God’s creatures were created equal, but that doesn't stop you, on an emotional level, from feeling that the human race is the most important life form on the planet.
The discrepancy lies not in a lack of information, for the information is available on a world-wide basis for those who would seek it, evaluate it, and accept it as their own; the discrepancy lies in the ability to integrate Universal Law into your lifestyle. Awareness of the self does not just focus into the positive aspects of a personality, or the positive aspects of skills and talents that you brought with you into this lifetime, but into the negative as well; it is only when the positive is weighed against the negative, and the balanced perspective is used as a guidepost in integrating higher consciousness into the self that the influence becomes apparent in your relationships and in your lifestyle.

Self-actualisation can be translated to mean, making the self actual. It means there is no difference between what you think and what you do. There is no contradiction between what you tell others and how you respond yourself. It is manifesting who you are and what you believe in on a dayto-day, consistent basis. T he path is a long and solitary one, and many individuals give up. It is difficult to accept what our conscious choices in the course of a specific existence have driven us to do to other people. It is hard for us to accept that we have been selfish, or resentful, or spiteful. It is hard for us to see where we have deliberately manipulated our lives so that we have control over the people and the situations and the events within it.

It is not easy to admit that we are not the positive, smiling, loving person that we prefer to see ourselves as; when, in the course of personal growth, it becomes necessary for an individual to truly, honestly evaluate how they have interacted with their fellow human beings, the drop-out rate skyrockets.

This is unfortunate, because personal growth cannot proceed — self-awareness and self-actualisation cannot be accomplished — without a true and open acknowledgement of who we used to be and how we used to live our lives, no matter how unpleasant that panorama may be. This does not mean that we need to spend years of our lives suffering regret and remorse for the wrong we have done in their lives to other people. It does mean that we need to take a reasonable amount of time to look back and to evaluate honestly what was really at play in any particular situation, where the two parties were really coming from, and where each conducted themselves with less than universal love.

We cannot change the past; we cannot undo the influence that we have upon other people by our thoughts and our feelings and our reactions, but we can learn from that experience and make a personal commitment never to treat anyone with that lack of respect again. If that person is still in our life, we can have the grace to apologise, and share our learning experience, and say, “I’m sorry that i used to be like that. I want to be like this, now, and i hope that you will help.”
It is only by acknowledging our past weaknesses, and sharing our future aspirations, that we can experience the support and encouragement of others on our journey to self-actualisation. If we are not willing to admit that we have ever made a mistake, ever reacted inappropriately, ever deliberately hurt someone, then we cannot admit that we need to change, or that we need other people’s help in doing so. It is, from a soul evolution perspective, selfdefeating behaviour to remain in situations made from the lower consciousness that create less than fulfiling situations and relationships in our lives.