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Chapter 4
The Meaningful Life A meaningful life is the way to achieve lasting happiness. When you are living your life with meaning. When you know there is a meaning to your life. The question is: Do you have a reason for living? What is the aim and objective of your life? Take a few minutes to think about your life. These following questions, inspired by the book, The Mind Gymnasium, may help you to gain an understanding of your life to date and in the future. Answer the following nine questions honestly but don’t spend too much time deliberating. It is often better to write down the first thing that comes into your mind before the editor has a chance to stop you. Number 1. What did you enjoy most last week?
Number
2. Who has
been the most significant person in your life to date? Number
3. What is
the most risky decision you made in your life to date? Number
4. What do
you consider to be the greatest opportunity you missed in your life? Number
5. If
you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? Number
6. What do
you most like about yourself? Number
7.
What was your ambition when you were young? Number
8. Who do
you most admire in the world, living or dead? Number 9. If you were given six months to live, what would you do?
Knowing how to live with meaning and purpose is knowing how to tap into the spiritual you. Not the religious you. Not a system of worship and ritual. The spiritual you. The naturally positive you, living life with a sense of purpose. Living life as a result of examining and understanding your personal values and attitudes. There is a great difference. Therefore we learn to accept that life is an ‘active process’, it is not passive. We have to DO something to make life work. We have to make some form of effort. That motivation or doing is ‘inside us. We are in charge of it. All we need is to be willing to find it and refocus ourselves. Being happy is not something that happens in isolation. You cannot work on happiness alone. It comes as a result of other decisions you have made. If you want to be happy start by finding your original values and attitudes. As you understand them you become more contented with your life and are then able to create the life you wish to lead. In other words contentment leads to fulfilling relationships and a sense of purpose and that brings happiness. What makes you tick? What causes the sadness and the stress? Quite often sadness is brought about by constantly comparing yourself with others. By remembering old things and occurrences. By being arrogant in our actions. By constantly wanting something we don’t have. Constantly striving for the material thing or people or things that we think will make us happy. By getting tired and irritated with others and their actions. In a nutshell by forgetting who we are and living a role of what we think we ought to be or how we think others want us to behave. In other words I am not talking about you learning anything to make you into a fully functioning person who is totally happy. I am talking about unlearning behaviours that stop you achieving. You already know how to live a happy and contented life; the only trouble is you have either forgotten it or your current thinking is ignorant of it. So, the way forward is to provide the conditions that make for growth and then you will naturally grow towards your true natural self. In other words given the right conditions you naturally move constructively towards constant happiness: a Meaningful Life. You can train yourself; train the mind to achieve happiness. Professor Richard Davidson of the Neuro Science Laboratory in the US has found that the right conditions for human growth can be achieved through meditation. In other words meditation can help you to find your meaning in life and let you live it. The rest of this book is focussed on helping you to create the right conditions so that you can find lasting happiness. After all it is your right. Your state of mind is crucial. It is the key that unlocks the door to happiness.
So where do you start?
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