Secrets About Life Every Woman Should Know: Ten principles for spiritual and emotional fulfillment. Barbara Angelis De

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СКАЧАТЬ pain, we encounter obstacles, and we become confused and disoriented. Surely there has been some mistake! The brochure said it was a paradise. So why are we being forced to go through all of these hardships?

      Many of us never recover from the shock of discovering that life on earth is more like a classroom than Club Med. “You mean I’m supposed to work on myself, to go through a series of often painful lessons? This is NOT what I had in mind at all! I thought this was supposed to be about pleasure, about comfort, about fun. I don’t want to be in school! I am ready for recess!”

      Doesn’t this sound an awful lot like the nine-year-old Barbara having a tantrum when she discovered that her magic castle didn’t come all perfectly put together, but rather, required patient and careful assembly? Now, imagine that my mother hadn’t explained to me that nothing was wrong with my castle, that it was supposed to be in pieces, that I was supposed to go through the process of putting it together. If I hadn’t known this, I might have erroneously concluded that I had somehow ruined the castle before I got it home, or that something was wrong with what I’d been given, or that the store had ripped me off.

      Most people are born with an unconscious expectation that they are supposed to come into this world already put together, already very competent at living and loving. There comes a point in each of our lives when we have the unpleasant experience of realizing that we didn’t come all put together, and that, in fact, we are still in pieces. We look at our lives, and they do not resemble the pictures we have in our heads of how things should be turning out. And we conclude that something must be wrong with us, that we are failing at life. And we stop loving ourselves.

       There is nothing wrong with you. You’ve simply forgotten what you signed up for when you came here. Life isn’t supposed to be easy. It isn’t supposed to be a smooth ride. It is designed to be challenging so that you will grow into a more conscious, loving human being.

      If you look around you at the physical universe, you will see that its nature is growth. Everything from the cells in your body to the planets orbiting the sun are constantly growing, constantly changing, constantly evolving. Nothing stays still. Nothing remains the same. So think about it—why would your life be the exception? Why would you be the only thing that exists in all of creation whose purpose isn’t to grow?

      I once heard a thought-provoking quote: A diamond is a piece of coal that stuck to the job. Imagine this tiny piece of coal buried deep in the earth. If you had no understanding of the miraculous ways of Nature, you might examine the black rock and conclude that it was inert, and that it couldn’t possibly “grow.” But if you came back thousands of years later to unearth that same rock, you’d be astonished to discover that it had transformed itself into a magnificent and valuable diamond. It stuck to the job, to its purpose, which was to grow and become the most beautiful gem it could.

      We are all pieces of rock becoming diamonds. And just as the earth which encases that piece of coal puts pressure on it, heats it, and exposes it to the necessary conditions that will enable it to turn into a sparkling diamond, so life is putting pressure on us, challenging us, exposing us to whatever it is we need to grow into the most loving and wise human beings we can be.

      How to Make Every Day of Your Life

      a Great Day

      The powerful understanding contained in Secret Number Two can radically change your experience of life in every moment. Rather than judging yourself and your life based on how perfectly you are fitting into a picture of how you think things “should” be, you begin to evaluate yourself and your life based on how much you are growing, how much you are learning. This is the magic formula for making every day of your life a great day.

       When you think the purpose of life is to do or get or accomplish, you will always feel like a failure when things don’t turn out as planned. When you understand that life is a classroom in which success means growing into the best human being possible, you begin evaluating yourself and your experiences from a totally different point of view.

      Each day of your life, you consciously or unconsciously evaluate yourself—how did I do today? For instance, suppose you work in sales for a living, and you have a week where you encounter one difficult customer after another, the result being that you close no sales and make no commissions. At the end of that week you would probably think, “What a lousy week! I didn’t close one deal. I am so disappointed in myself. What is wrong with me?”

      If you’re evaluating yourself based on the premise that the purpose of your life is to close deals, or to make money, or to achieve certain material goals, then yes, you had a lousy week. But what if you decided to evaluate yourself based on the premise that the purpose of your life is to grow? Maybe during that week, in spite of how obnoxious those potential customers were, you maintained a cheerful and kind attitude. Maybe during that week, in spite of how disheartened you felt, you didn’t give up, resort to stuffing your face with junk food, or getting down on yourself. Maybe you exhibited patience, you were compassionate with people, you kept going, you didn’t lose your temper with anybody, you didn’t go off your diet, you didn’t do anything unhealthy to cover up what you were feeling.

      So now how does the week look to you? It was a fabulous week, a triumphant week! You truly fulfilled your purpose that week by learning, meeting your challenges with steadiness and perseverance. You may not have achieved the material rewards you wanted, but you achieved something far more profound and lasting—you grew into a better human being.

      Have you been feeling bad about yourself lately? Do you look at your life and conclude that you aren’t doing as well as you think you should? Perhaps you haven’t been looking at your life from the correct point of view. Perhaps you are missing your own great achievements because you’re judging yourself by standards that don’t even apply to you anymore. Secret Number Two suggests that it is time to change your paradigm of what success means to you.

       Instead of defining your success by what you have achieved or acquired, why not begin defining your success by how much you are growing each day?

      So how do you begin? Take your “should” list and throw it away. Then, replace it with just one commitment:

       “Today I want to grow into the best human being I can be.”

      Tell yourself, “I want to learn as much as I can and grow as much as I can with whatever comes my way.” Then no matter what happens to you on the outside, it can be a great day, a successful day, based on how you are handling the day on the inside.

      How Can You Have a Successful Day from the Inside Out?

       If you learn even one new thing about yourself today, it will be a successful day.

       If you handle one situation with another person a little better than you have before, it will be a successful day.

       If you have been more patient and compassionate with someone else or yourself, it will be a successful day.

       If you gain a little bit more understanding about something or someone, it will be a successful day.

       If you resist indulging in an old, unhealthy pattern of behavior or of thinking and instead choose a new one, it will be a successful day.

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