The following is an article by Bill Burridge. You can read his blog here
We live in what seems to be an immensely challenged and challenging world. The vast and growing number of people living on earth today pose an unprecedented challenge to the ability of our planet and its environment to sustain life as we have always known it. At the same time, despite quantum advances in technology life, for most of us, is more challenging than ever before.
We are living in a time when it is easy to contemplate these issues and conclude that we are, individually, of little or no significance or relevance in the greater scheme of things.
A simple glance skywards on a clear night might be enough to reinforce the perception that each of is no more important than a tiny ant in a huge anthill or a grain of sand in the desert.
“I am just one human being”
– Dalai Lama
A struggle for meaning
As life coaches we find ourselves regularly confronted with wonderful people who, despite friendly smiles and an outward appearance of having it together are, beneath the surface, struggling to come to terms with the meaning and significance of their lives.
As I explained in a recent post, The Power Within You, it’s easy to feel “What’s this all this about” or “What is the point?” when you focus purely on your place in the vast and confusing world around you.
Change your focus, transform your outlook
But change your focus, be accepting of the vastness and the enormity of the challenges of the world you live in and start to look within for real meaning … and you will transform your outlook on life.
Appreciate your uniqueness
The first step in recovering your belief in your own significance is to appreciate your uniqueness.
You may be a co-actor in this play of life with many billions of others but you, and each and every one else is distinctly different right down to the fingerprints and the DNA or the building blocks of your life.
It stands to reason that if we are each created unique, then we are meant to think and do unique things. In other words, each of us has been cast with a different role to perform on the stage of life.
Connect with the role you are here to play
The next step, connecting with that role, your life purpose – for which you are uniquely equipped and which ignites your passion – is what will bring real meaning to what you do.
Coming to know who you really are on the inside, what you are here to achieve and the many ways in which you can go about that, is what will bring life to your living.
Judge your success by your inner happiness
Finally, by simply accepting that the only benchmark that matters in life is how you feel about yourself and what you are here to do, you can enjoy the type of freedom that others, so enslaved by the idea that their success and significance is something that only others can judge, will never experience.
Judge your own success by your own inner happiness. You are unique, you have a unique role to play and you are the only one who can play it.
Be the one you came here to be. Do the thing you came here to do and do it in your own way and in your own time, such that it makes the difference that only you can make.
The way to a life of real meaning, fulfilment, joy and happiness is to understand that it only takes one special person – you!
Related Articles:
https://blog.blog.liferetreat.co.za/could-stress-be-shrinking-your-brain/
I do agree that success is not what you have but how you feel inside. Happiness IS success
Hi Meera
I agree, if we can be happy, and content with what we have, that is success.