Introducing Simple Workbooks to Solve Life's Intricate Dilemmas!
I am so excited to share with you the project I’ve been working on for the last year: Simple Workbooks to Solve Life’s Intricate Dilemmas. These are short workbooks (approximately 35 pages each) that cover a multitude of topics as you can see from the image above. I am releasing Volume I: Elevate Your Joy and Purpose TODAY and it is available for purchase for only $10 here.
That page will also describe to you why workbooks in particular have been the most effective method for my own growth and healing. The problem is, there aren’t many good ones out there, which is why I created these for you.
I decided to begin the series on joy and purpose because these are words I hear many people saying they want but they’re illusive concepts. People want joy but don’t know how to get it. Both joy and purpose feel like far-away fanciful yearnings. This is a very practical guide with tools and practices that help you to elevate your joy and figure out how you truly want to live your life. There are five modules: (1) The Heart of Living Joyfully; (2) Values-Based Living; (3) Dissolve Your Limiting Beliefs and Old Stories; (4) Practical Tools to Dissolve Anxiety and Resentment Narratives and; (5) Trust, Gratitude and Play.
Here’s an excerpt from Module 2: Values-Based Living:
Values Based Living Versus Outcome Based Living
Before, you lived your life according to others’ expectations of you. This is what got you down, depressed and anxious. You couldn’t meet those expectations and you shouldn’t because they’re not your own expectations, they’re others’.
You also measured your life according to the outcomes of certain life events. If you got a really good grade, for instance, you deemed yourself worthy. If you got a bad grade, you deemed yourself unworthy.
I’m going to invite you to do something that may feel unnatural and counter-intuitive because it’s different than how you’ve been trained to live. I’m going to invite you to craft your life very differently by inviting you to do two things:
1) Live your life guided by how YOU want to live, and nobody else. Figure out your internal compass, your values and that with gives you joy. The source of integrity and high self-esteem is living in alignment with one’s own internal compass and values.
2) No longer measure your life based on the outcomes. Use different tools—not the results of experiences but 1) the values you gained from the experiences and 2) how much they aligned with your greater life vision. Here’s another example: do not determine how successful you were by whether or not you got a job offer but if it helped you in your job search to your eventual dream job.
I used to judge an event or experience based on whether it met my standards of perfection. I would also beat myself up if I made any mistakes. Eventually, I learned the art of looking back not to beat myself up but to learn from that which I wished I did things differently. I then took those lessons and applied them in the situations that came afterwards.
As much as it feels like certain opportunities or experiences only come around once, it’s not true. Our anxiety-scarcity thinking convinces us of this. Opportunities and experiences we long for come back many times over and in many forms.
There is another reason why we must let go of measuring our lives based on the outcomes rather than the values gained. Outcome-based living leads us to the comparison trap. And there is nothing like comparison that steals our joy. Our joy is immediately stolen when we compare ourselves to others as opposed to live in acknowledgement of our own individual uniqueness and life path.
Think about children before they become overly self-conscious and begin comparing themselves to others. We may have even been one of these children who loved a certain activity such as drawing, dancing, etc. And then one day, we realized we weren’t “good enough” because we started comparing ourselves to others or didn’t receive enough affirmation like others. We abruptly stopped doing the activity even though it filled us with so much joy.
Who cares what others think of our work or activities? If we ourselves enjoy them, that’s all that matters. That’s the entire point!
Eckart Tolle writes in The Power of Now, “So do not be concerned with the fruit of your action—just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord. This is a powerful spiritual practice. In the Bhagavad Gita, one of the oldest and most beautiful spiritual teachings in existence, non-attachment to the fruit of your action is called Karma Yoga. It is described as the path of “consecrated action.”
I would also add, it’s also the path of the greatest joy.
Head on over here to get your own copy TODAY!
Also, I received a lot of positive feedback for last week’s post, a form of which I delivered in my sermon this past week at church. If you’d like to take a listen, head on over here.
Have a grand week, everyone!