Self-fulfillment

Success is often linked to money and power. I don't think money is endowed with its own power capable of solving our problems.  I think true success is actually grounded in the strength of human relationships and the support at your disposal to enable you to realize dreams.  Consider whether your relationships could survive despite hardship or setbacks in other areas of your life.  The resilience of your close relationships are what build your inner strength.  When you recognize that success is defined by the power you exert to make others happy, to create value in their lives, then faith will sustain you and hope will also encourage you.  This is success.

The biggest risks

The biggest risks you'd be willing to take would likely depend on what you have at the start, what you already have that you would be willing to lose.  Your sense of responsibility where you are, as well as your priorities would influence whether you'd move, who you'd take with you and what your expectations would be.  Your motivations to take risks can grow from deep inside.

Consider a family from one country who decides to pull up stakes and immigrate to another one.  This family may do so with the hope of creating a better life for themselves.  If they leave behind what they know in order to embrace a new language, climate, cultural traditions, job, new people and government systems, then this would appear to be a huge risk.  At the same time, the potential benefits of preferred school, work, security and could incentives could be worth it.  Note how boats of refugees make the trips to Western countries to take their chances.

On Australia day (January 26, 2007), 96 individuals from 30 countries became Australian citizens in Melbourne.  Their symbolic participation in a national ceremony demonstrated they had adopted the burnt country as their new home.  Indiviuals feel it is a safe place to raise children.

New immigrants promise to work within and respect Australian laws.  They bring their own customs and belief systems that can enrich local culture.  They choose either to integrate or to create cultural communities within Australia.  When immigrants wish to live in a new country according to laws and customs of their former country, this can lead to internal conflicts. 

Do as I say not as I do

Awaken yourself to the unlimited ways you can learn about your spiritual self.  In our respective cultures, we're often taught how to live in terms of how to obtain things, how to have and to do all those things we're led to believe we should be.  These are the things were conditioned to think we need to be believed, acknowledged and accepted.  But what does it really mean to learn to be grounded in who you are?  Should you listen to people who ask you to act as they say, not as they do?

Having and doing are the crux of traditional education when feelings, emotions and inner growth are what make us human.  These are the elements of our identity we're empowered to learn about while alone in the real world.  'Being' is the spiritual side, the inner movement to get-to-know oneself. How would you describe elements of your natural essence? There is far more to you than your overt actions. 

If you don't feel you learn enough, or learn 'the right way', then you may feel undervalued.  You may feel people don't know the real you.  It's up to each of us to reach out and explore or interests in order to discover what grounds our identity and connects us with the Divine.  Your spirit is serene, non-competitive, insightful and invisible.  To be aware of your inner Spirit is to recognize how you shift thoughts and feelings, how you seek balance and harmony as you also seek to overcome challenges and meet expectations.  Emotional education is a lifelong process.  Prepare yourself to experience a new freedom by exploring connections of a spiritual nature.  Be willing to explore how emotions influence your behavior and who you were born to be.

Nurture seeds

Some people wait in vain for their lives to start.  For them, its like waiting for a bus that never comes.  Success, as they dream it, is not something that can simply appear.    Now, other people think they'll stumble on success like a discarded newspaper that someone used and left for someone else to benefit from.  This sort of success wouldn't last.  It wouldn't really be yours. You would borrow it.  True success requires effort and vision and doesn't simply happen by chance.

Powerful ideas for success must grow from a seed to be nurtured into workable conditions.  As you develop personal skills, experience and wisdom, these tools can't be taken from you.  They will always be yours so you can use them to enrich your life and the lives of others.  Your will to move forward is what shapes the process of developing your success.  Concentrate on what is unique about your own learning process. What could other people learn from your life? 

When you have both the desire and the will to succeed, you will discover sources of lasting contentment.  The will to be content with your pursuit  must be more than a wish.  Intense, inner drive must move you.  Obtaining tangible things will not ensure you create inner joy.  It has been said that once you tap into your sources of inner joy, once you clarify your inner vision and build on it, then, other things that contribute to your sense of personal success will simply appear.

Choices come from within

I read about a man who was told be doctors his cancer was incurable and he would certainly die.  Yet, by the power of his thoughts, by the sheer will of his inner core, he healed himself without medical treatment.  He lived dozens of years after that in increasingly better health.  This and similar stories demonstrate the fervent desire to heal oneself can lead to self-healing.  The incredible power of loving and believing in oneself is connected to Forces beyond us.

Now, if you dwell on poverty and sources of misery, would it not be logical that these particular circumstances would await you or be reinforced by your own thoughts?  To focus on misfortune, to repeat stories of pain ad suffering would surely bring on continued misfortune. It is never too late to break the cycle.

Rather than wallow and repeat what discomfort you may have experienced, speak instead of how you plan to think and live differently than before.  Write about how you will establish limits for just treatment and set standards for your own self-respect.  Recognize that your state of mind is connected spiritually to people all aound you.    Each person is somehow touched by the development of your inner strength. The value you create for yourself in life also enriches others.

You are never alone.  Your choices carry an incredible responsibility for people you don't even know.  You act in relation to everyone you consider to be human, learning and growing much like yourself.  Believe it or not, you set an example for others and your choices have consequences.  What you choose to pursue, abandon or ignore all affect your growth and how you inspire or otherwise affect others.

Although many human beings live in constant anticipation of a coming happiness linked to love, they often limit themselves to their imagined concept of love among life partners.  Human beings seldom realize that learning to love and understand themselves may be the greatest love of all.