When I say success, you probably immediately think of money and business and belongings. Those things are part of success. They're an important part if that's what you want. I believe we're here to have and live what we want. There's nothing wrong with those desires. They're important to a lot of people like myself. But there's also a whole underbelly to this layer of success which is the base of success. To me, success encompasses a lot of things, and money, business, and belongings are merely the outer layer.
First comes the way you feel. First comes your happiness. If you imagine a circle with layers, happiness would be on the very inside, and then the outer manifestations would be on the outer layer. I feel that the outer layer is a result or manifestation of the inner layer. When the most important part of success, the inner layer, is realized, felt and experienced as a base, then the outer layer of the material is icing on the cake. When we feel happy and content, the outer manifestations aren't a necessity. You need a certain level of safety and survival needs to be met in order to feel happy and content, (See Pavlov's hierarchy of needs) but these are so much more minimal than people realize. The mainstream believes that we have so many more needs than we actually have. You actually need so much less to be happy than you think. In fact, some people would argue that the more simple their lives, the happier, freer, and more content they are. I've lived with very, very little, and I can speak from first person experience when I tell you that you'd be shocked by how inexpensive it actually is to live.
But all this is sort of an aside, because the real reason for me writing this is to address self care as a base when you're trying to achieve these outer successes.
I was visiting friends the other day who were discussing their trepidation and guilt at taking time for their self care. Who can't relate to that? Pretty much everyone feels this great need to prove themselves. Most people are coming from such a great place of lack that they think they must run themselves basically into the ground to have their needs met much less achieve a level of outward success beyond that.
But is that really success? And is that really a life really fully well-lived?
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I'm always telling my students to take care of their base FIRST. Your base is your spiritual practice. Getting whatever physical movement you need. Meditating. Leisure. Hobbies. Self love. Etc. In my friend's case she realized that she could be so much more ready for success if she painted her toenails. And she reminded herself that she didn't need to feel guilty for taking the time to do that because she would feel so much more confident when she sees potential clients out in the wild. Everything is so! We need a strong base for our actions to emanate from! The greatness of your actions are directly correlated to the strength of your base. I feel that all of the actions that I take are supercharged and that I'm a much more effective and potent person than most because my base is so strong. Every single day I take time to do some yoga, take my dog for a walk, draw cards, meditate, see to it that I feel good. And free. First I build a solid base for my activities. And then my activities stem from that place.
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QUALITY of actions.
When you're running yourself ragged, you don't have much gas. You're operating on nearly empty. We want to be operating with a FULL tank! At FULL capacity. What activities do you need to do FIRST and FOREMOST BEFORE you see to your other OUTER activities?
Most people are doing the opposite. Most of the people reading this are in fear and survival mode frantically attending to their millions of daily duties that you believe you need to do for survival and THEN, MAYBE there's fifteen minutes for self care. Reverse that. Time to be happy. Time to take care of yourself. When you do, you're in a league of your own.
Compose yourself for success
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