To make our outer lives fulfilling, we must start on the inside. Here are the 2nd and 3rd ways to live more from the inside out.
The second – What lights you up?
Spending time comparing yourself to others or wondering if you are living a the right kind of life is called “comparing your insides with someone else’s outsides.” This curse, built on family shame, advertising, and TV/Movies has now been catapulted into the stratosphere, thanks to social media. The antidote is to ask yourself what lights YOU up? Not what makes you happy or what you want, but what interests you, what do you loose yourself doing (in a good way, not as a distraction)? This isn’t just hobbies, its work, career, relationships, and your kind of lifestyle. Reflect on the times you really passionately cared about something, lost yourself in a project at work, savored an experience, or just reveled in a moment at home. Each one is a clue. When you make decisions for more of those kinds of things in your life, the things you need to learn, do, improve, or release will become obvious and easier to deal with.
The third, and most important – Find your center and have compassion for yourself.
When you take some time to accept your strengths, you begin to know yourself. When you take time to be honest about, not your weaknesses so much as, the things you just aren’t good at or really care about, you start realizing that you are a unique set of ideas, beliefs, interests and talents that is precious and perfectly you. The more you can own all of you, good, bad and indifferent, you will notice a decrease in the desire to fix yourself and an increase of joy and compassion. Take joy in the things your great at, even if no one else does. Have compassion for the ways you are different, not “perfect”, and unskilled. Joy and compassion will open more doors and provide more motivation than harsh words or competitive goals.
Be yourself, there’s no one quite like you. Let your soul, your inner flame, be your guide and your life will be infinitely more fulfilling and less outer directed. A sure-fire way to get happy!