I have come from a middle class upbringing with a loving father that worked two or three jobs at a time, whilst his beautiful wife worked as a “day-care mom” looking after other people’s children in her own home, to assist in earning enough to ensure that their own children could be well educated and raised with good manners, morals and ethics.
Overall I had a really happy childhood, one of which is comparable to many of the average people who happily roam through their lives on this great planet we affectionately call Earth. Just as with most people I had times in my childhood where I was happy, sad, angry, joyful, excited, bored, surprised, confused, lost, focused, amazed, scared, loved, annoyed, grateful, resentful, passionate, guilty, hopeful, satisfied, worried and so on and so forth. I have experienced a great deal more than some, and a great deal less than others.
My childhood and upbringing was not one filled with grief and distress and thus I feel that many will affiliate with where I have come from.
Mine is a simple story of an average, simple guy who has found something that genuinely works for him, something that is so simple and easy to do that I am one hundred percent certain that anyone can emulate the results for themselves. This is something that does not require years and years of endless training and study, nor is it something that requires hard labor of any description. This is a means of generating any or all of the results in life that all people in this world not only desire but possess an undeniable right to. This is the right to be, have and do everything that you can think of.
There is enough stuff in this world for everybody on the planet to have everything that they want three times over, and isn’t it odd that everyone wants so much to be happy but no one can seem to find it? In the Will Smith movie, “The Pursuit of Happyness”, it is said that, “…in the American Declaration of Independence it states that everyone is entitled to, not happiness in its own right but merely the “Pursuit of Happiness”. Then the question is posed that, “Could it be that we are not allowed to be happy? Are we only allowed to be in pursuit of happiness?”
I can tell you emphatically that I am genuinely happy and now live a blissful life doing exactly that which I have always wanted to do and am truly loving it! This is unequivocally everyone’s right! It is not something that is only available to the privileged or a select few. This is as much your right as it is mine or the homeless guy living in the alley or for that matter any person in this wonderful world’s right. We all have the right to absolute health, absolute happiness, absolute wealth and absolute success. This is not just our right though, it is what everything in the universe desires for us. Everything anywhere in the universe that is living, by definition is either growing or disintegrating. There is no standing still. By definition we are expected to attain absolute health, happiness, wealth and success.
For me I came to understand that everything comes from a creation point of gratitude. The practice of being thankful for what we already have is one that has been touted as the “be all and end all” by a vast number of teachers and practitioners of modern day personal development circles since the industry began. However, I believe it is the practice of being thankful not just for what is currently presenting in our lives, but for that which we know is yet to present, or is “on the way” in the near future.
An interesting way to look at your life from a state of gratitude may be like this….
I’m fairly confident in suggesting that everyone either knows of, or has heard of a story of someone who contracted a terminal illness, whether it is cancer, aids, heart disease or something else of some description. Often people in this situation, once they get over the initial morning period, grief period or shock and adjustment and then begin to accept the fact that they are going to pass at some time, move into a state of peace, or contentment. They begin to look back over their lives from a place of absolute gratitude and they look forward to the remainder of their days with a joyous expectation. The funny thing is that we all suffer from the same terminal illness; it’s the one which affects us all; it’s called life. I am terribly sorry to inform you but it is incredibly contagious! In fact, you too suffer from it!
I can make one absolutely clear promise to you, this is that every one of us can be certain that we are going die, we just don’t know the date yet. Couldn’t we too therefore look back on our lives past, with gratitude? And too, couldn’t we look forward to the remainder of our days with joyous expectation or knowing?!
When I first recognized that I was born with the terminal, highly contagious, untreatable illness called life I was driving home from work, somewhat stuck in traffic thinking about one of our dearest, family friend’s mother, who was recently diagnosed with bone cancer. Catherine, our friend, was understandably extremely upset about the diagnosis as too were we, as Nathalie (my life partner) and I both cared greatly for not just Cat but her entire family. But in the moment of thinking about them it dawned on me that we are all going to die. I knew for certain that her mother would move into a state of acceptance or understanding and be once again at peace with herself, whilst moving into an emotional space of absolute gratitude for not only the time she has had, but furthermore the time yet to come. This made me realize that I too had a limited time on this planet, and even more so not that long in this ‘flesh bag.’
This was yet another catalytic moment in my life. Now I know it sounds silly that in this moment, at the ripe old age of thirty six and a half I had a light bulb moment and realized that I was not going to be around forever. It was more that I realized that if it takes a terminal illness for us to take stock of what we have and of what we are yet to have, and feel complete happiness, love and gratitude for it, then we all should be living our lives being absolutely grateful for everything!! It made me realize that all of the garbage or all of the ‘stuff’ that I focus on in my life, all of the little things that irritate me, or frustrate me or anything like that really, really truly does not mean anything to me anymore. I made a vow in that moment to live a life of gratitude. I was going to live my life the way that I should, to the full, a life of absolute health, joy, wealth and abundance.
There is no doubt in my mind, I am living my life the way it should be, not the way it was presenting itself to me. Wallace D. Wattles, author of “The Science of Getting Rich”, wrote about the “Truth Regardless of Appearances.” You have the ability to choose what you would like to be aware of in your life. I decided to live my life to the full, after all I knew that I suffered from the most common terminal illness mankind is ever to be afflicted by, life. I refused to allow my apparent circumstances dictate to me how I should or should not be feeling at any given moment. I knew that that very day could have been my last and made a conscious decision to fix the things I could, not fuss over the things I couldn’t change and enjoy life fully in the process.
Turn off the television, switch off your cell phone, shut down the stereo, dim the lights and allow yourself to be in silence. Be grateful for everything that you currently have and write out a list of the things that you would like to see in your life. Perhaps start by writing… “I am so happy and grateful now that…..” And then go on to write a really vivid story of what you would like to see in the present tense. When teaching people how to create an effective vision statement I often instruct my students to pick a day, say five or ten years from now and imagine yourself being in it presently. Imagine it to be exactly the way you would like to see it, with all of the things and the stuff and the partner, people, places you could dream of. And then write out what you see. Start it with, “I am so happy and grateful now that…” And then go on and write what you see. At the very least it’s really fun. Who knows? It may just be more than just fun?!
Happy Creation!!
<taken from the International Best Selling Book – “If I Can You Can (Insights of an Average Man)”
