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- Herausgeber: Loving Healing Press
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Serie: The Lamplighters
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010
Decisions That Will Change Your Life
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IT'S YOUR CHOICE!
Decisions That Will Change Your Life
By Marjorie McKinnon
The Spiritual Dimensions Series
Loving Healing Press
It's Your Choice! Decisions That Will Change Your LifeCopyright (c) 2011 by Marjorie McKinnon. All Rights Reserved.from the Spiritual Dimensions SeriesAuthor's site: www.TheLampLighters.org
Cover photo by Tom W. McKinnon, courtesy of Lauren Bumgarner.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McKinnon, Margie, 1942-
It's your choice! : decisions that will change your life / by Marjorie McKinnon.
p. cm. -- (From the spiritual dimensions series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-61599-045-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-61599-045-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-61599-044-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-61599-044-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Decision making. 2. Self-actualization (Psychology) 3. Success. 4. Change (Psychology) I. Title.
BF448.M37 2011
153.8'3--dc22
2010020025
Distributed by Ingram, New Leaf Distributing, Bertram's Books (UK), Hachette Livre (France)
Published by
Loving Healing Press www.LHPress.com
5145 Pontiac Trail [email protected]
Ann Arbor, MI 48105
Tollfree USA/CAN: 888-761-6268
London, England: 44-20-331-81304
To Lois, for her support and friendship
Acclaim for Marjorie McKinnon's books
“The information in the book is presented in a direct manner, which is very easy to comprehend. The writing does not consist of a lot of technical terms that are hard for the average person to understand. The book is written by a regular person, and intended for an average, regular person to read. This is one thing that makes McKinnon's book stand apart other books addressing this same topic.”
—Kam Aures for Rebecca's Reads
“After finding Marjorie McKinnon and the support she offered, we are now into our program. Our first meeting was a huge success. Thank you Marjorie and God bless you for adapting this program for our survivors to follow. You have given survivors hope to continue on their healing journey.”
—Donna Gustafson, Executive Director, Sunrise Center Against Sexual Abuse
“I just want to tell you that you are an amazing woman and I want to thank you for sharing your story, life and truth in this book. I feel honored to know you, and like you, am dedicated to helping other women have and find their voice.”
—Monteze Deputy, Victim Advocate
“…a magnificent book, written with such understanding of the pain a child goes through and the gates that are needed to get through and enter in order to heal. Such love and thought goes into this book of healing. I highly recommend it.”
—Cheryl Newton-Boyer, Lamplighter Facilitator
“McKinnon's work, when used as an adjunct to therapy and/or support groups, offers ‘hands-on’ exercises which will facilitate and hasten the process of healing. I have personal experience with many of the tools the author presents and can attest to their usefulness.”
—Marcelle B. Taylor, MFT
My fiancé has well over 200 psychological and self-help related books. Half way through REPAIR Your Life she simply said ‘As it turns out—I only needed ONE book!’ It's a hard journey of not feeling worthy of love. Of sabotaging your happiness and your relationships. We could fill this entire review of stories of struggles or how we almost destroyed ourselves, but I think it's most productive to say, if you want to heal and to have peace—get this book.”
—Two Healers, Austin TX
Contents
Chapter 1 – Purpose in Life
Chapter 2 – Quality of Life
Chapter 3 – The Interconnectedness of the Six Dimensions
Chapter 4 – Perception vs. Reality
Chapter 5 – Reducing Choices to Pragmatism
Chapter 6 – Making Wise Decisions
Chapter 7 – Master of My Fate, Captain of My Soul
Chapter 8 – Preparing for Life, Preparing for Death
Chapter 9 – Making Every Moment Count
Chapter 10 – Mental Dimension
Chapter 11 – Emotional Dimension
Chapter 12 – Physical Dimension
Chapter 13 – Spiritual Dimension
Chapter 14 – Social Dimension
Chapter 15 – Financial Dimension
Chapter 16 – The Vowel Syndrome
Chapter 17 – Sudden Death and Other Changes
Chapter 18 – Fear
Chapter 19 – Maintaining Optimism in the Face of Adversity
Chapter 20 – Letting Go
Chapter 21 – Creating a Vision
About the Author
Bibliography
Index
Henry David Thoreau, in Walden, wrote:
“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor… To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked, to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.”
Upon first reading these words, I felt their salve on my soul as I had pondered for decades, why do humans exist? This question has haunted man for centuries. Being born, living in “quiet desperation”, and then dying, only to be forgotten, is not a sufficient reason. Why would God create so many individuals; yet only a few seem to impact mankind? Does that mean that the average person has no purpose; does not even need to be here? Is it all a cruel joke told by some masochistic creator of the universe? With such a belief system, we become only another grain of sand in an endless stretch of inconsequential beach.
To counteract the detrimental effects of such thoughts, we need to find a reason for individual existence. Over 400 years before the birth of Christ, Socrates said, “an unexamined life is not worth living”. Centuries later, Peter, Paul, and Mary added, “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind”. In between, hundreds of poets and philosophers have created their own answers. Everyone has a theory and, like the blind men and the elephant, all are true. Yet, the intangible thread that runs through all of them cries for an individual purpose, one that is stitched together by the fabric of one's own life. For if there is any one truth, it is that we are all unique. From that uniqueness grows the potential to follow our own path—create our own purpose, our own reason to be.
One has only to look at faces in a crowd to see that we were all created different. That difference is not limited by facial characteristics. Behind each face is a different personality, a human with limitless possibilities. Sadly, most of them have no awareness that they can be whatever they want to be. Even if they have a vague sense that something beyond their current existence waits for them, they have no idea how to access the power to put it into play.
Some will climb to the greatest heights—world leaders, research scientists, and Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners. Others will create a need, a cry in the wilderness. Hitler's reign ignited the genius of Churchill, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and many others who joined together to bring peace to a world at the brink of annihilation and a deeper comprehension of what man's intolerance to man can bring. Thousands of potential purposes exist, a honeycomb of human activity buzzing with the sound of mankind.
To exist without a purpose is to drift rudderless in a sea that has no destination, under a sky that contains only blackness. To block out that reality, man creates numerous distractions. For if we are on any course at all, we are on a course towards death and with no purpose in our life, the reality of death becomes intolerable. But think what it could mean if each of us were to discover our own purpose, set it in motion, and realize its fullest potential. In making a contribution, not matter how small, we arrive at the niche our spirit craves. Behind the old philosophy, “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link,” lies the truth of supposedly inconsequential contributions. All contributions have consequence, so a society is only as successful as its smallest contributor. If you see the complete picture of any meaningful event carried out by a significant member of society, you will see that no one succeeds alone.
Behind Charles Lindbergh's unprecedented non-stop flight from New York to Paris stood hundreds of others—his financial backers, the mechanics who serviced his airplane, The Spirit of St. Louis, the company who built it, the people who offered a tantalizing carrot of $25,000 to the first person to do it, and a mother who believed her son could accomplish anything. Lindbergh alone would never have flown his historic non-stop flight. So it is with any meaningful event or the success of any significant individual.
For every human who already is purposeful in their life, thousands are not. This is a sad commentary on the human race. Can we not decrease that number? In doing so, we can change not only the direction of mankind, but heighten the awareness of a world that still has many purposes needing to be filled.
Even if one did not ascribe to the highest achievement, there are—like pieces to a puzzle—many parts that make up a whole and an opportunity to be a part of that whole. Not all of us are queen bees. Some are worker bees and there is no shame and lack of glory in being such. I have had much of my greatest satisfaction in my “worker bee” activities.
What if we carried this a step further? What if, in addition to finding a meaningful purpose to life, we discover that death is not an ending, but rather a beginning? What if we truly came to understand that there is no such thing as death as we know it; that the reality of what happens when you stop breathing is that you simply step out of your body like one would shed a suit of clothes? That body is only a part of us. What if beyond the awareness of the body, there is an awareness of the soul?
The best way to start changing your life, so that you are more than just a grain of sand and so can grow to your fullest potential, is to develop healthy behavior patterns in six dimensions: mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, social and financial. Everything stems from one of these and only by all six working together at optimum level can you create your own perfect world. Before I begin examining how to make wise decisions in these areas, I want to spend a few chapters exploring concepts that will prepare you for the exciting journey you are about to embark on.
Let us begin with the essential character of quality. Quality is a degree of excellence. We all have choices in which degree we would like to strive for. Are we content with the mediocre or, sadder yet, does even mediocre seem unattainable? Does just making it through a day indicate all we are capable of? If you believe this, you are not giving yourself enough credit.
At birth, we are all handed the promise of the highest quality of life. This can be defined as becoming all that we want to be, having all that we aspire to, and experiencing everything in the universe in which we have an interest. The lowest quality of life would then be the lack of these.
Our gifts at birth are endless: knowledge, visualization, foresight, prudence, awareness, sensibility, feelings, and so on. Yet, as we proceed through the early stages of life, most of us will lose these very promises. Sometimes we lose them through childhood traumas; sometimes through our own volition. As we do, we spiral downward, away from the highest quality of life that was our original promise. Distractions in life—some pleasurable, some not—keep us from missing what we no longer think we have. Periodically, we meet others who seem to have retained these gifts and are living orderly lives, fulfilling promises they made to themselves to achieve goals that give them a quality to their lives that we lack. We respond with envy, bitterness, and a belief that they must have luck that we don't. We become convinced at the unfairness of a universe that would give to one person success and to another failure, through what we believe to be no fault of their own. Having missed one of the primary stages of development in maturity—accepting responsibility for our own actions—it is easy to blame “them”, the fortunate ones who have life handed to them on a silver platter, or so we believe.
It is often not until we reach our forties, and become tired of life not turning out the way we wanted it to, that we begin to honestly assess the role we played in our own failures. We want the quality of our life to improve. We want to fulfill that destiny we were convinced of when we were young. What happened? How did life go awry? We are forced to look inward, as Aristotle said, “an unexamined life is not worth living”, the truism that we dismissed when we were younger as words that could only interfere with our trek in life.
As one man put it when asked what happed to the millions he had earned:” Some of it I gambled away, some I spent on women, booze and other pleasures, and the rest I wasted.” The sad part of that story is that he continued to waste his life, died in agony, alone and bitter, with few friends, and estranged from all but one of his children. Sadder yet was the fact that he was one of the most intelligent and aware people I've ever known. He was also one of the most abusive. Perhaps this is why he wasted his life. Perhaps a part inside of him felt deep shame and “women, booze and other pleasures,” were only distractions to keep him from thinking about who and what he really was.
It takes more than intelligence and awareness to discover the truth to life; it takes wisdom, the ability to gather from one's experiences the secrets to life. There is always a test to discover whether the quality of our life is at an optimum level. Sit quietly and listen to your inner voices. Are you happy? Do you feel satisfied with where you are in life? Do you look forward to each day with zest? Do you feel wonder, joy, and enchantment at your life on a daily basis? If the answer to these questions is no, then surely there must be information in the road you have taken that can lead you down a path of wisdom, altering your current existence for the better.
A gal I worked with a few years ago complained every time I returned from a deeply satisfying and adventurous vacation that it was unfair that I had terrific experiences while on vacation when hers were always so dreary. I had just returned from a trip to Oregon where I had visited friends, fished and hiked the Rogue River, and driven up to Crater Lake, one of the most scenic and spiritual places in the world. After listening to her sniveling, I told her she had the power to create her own terrific experiences. She questioned, “how”? I asked her what she had done on her last vacation. “Cleaned my garage,” she snarled. I walked away shaking my head. It's not that my garage was never cleaned. I did it on weekends prior to the vacation as well as any other “dreaded” chores so that I could leave with a clean conscience and, more importantly, with a clean house. One can hardly complain about their problems if one has the ability to change them. Yet, we are all guilty of this. Woe is me, we say. My life sucks. Why has it turned out this way? It's almost comical.
The quality of life category can be improved on a continuing basis. Cooking, something I find deliciously satisfying (pardon the pun), becomes an adventure when I take a previously raved about recipe and try to improve it. I experiment, adding a dash of this, a bit of that; take out something else, etc. Then I taste it (also using my poor husband as a guinea pig). It either is an improvement and I feel satisfaction or it tastes horrible, in which case I start all over.
Even in my daily walk, I improved the quality of my life. When we lived in Colorado, I took a certain route every day. Knowing it would be a better cardiovascular exercise, I decide to jog for the first ten minutes. I only made it for three. That's okay; tomorrow I'll do five, the next day eight, until I reach ten. It's amazing how much better I felt when I returned home. One day, I decide to add a different road to my route. It took me past a lovely old red barn surrounded by horse corrals and a pond. My spirits soared as I walked around the property. At the end of the road, I saw a spectacular sunset framed by mountains and a lovely meadow with more horses, more ponds, and groves of trees. My old walk around the neighborhood was never the same. We have since moved to Arizona (more about that later) but I continue with my same thought patterns.
I don't necessarily try to improve everything I do on a daily basis. That would put too much pressure on me and I would lose sight of the tried and true stability points they put in my life. But sometimes it's necessary to go a little further, climb another mountain, and see what's on the other side of that meadow. Perhaps I will sing as I go, “Climb Every Mountain”, “When You Walk Through a Storm”, “I Believe”, or any other courage and idealism songs I can think of. Or maybe I'm just in the mood to sing a silly song that gives me the giggles. It doesn't matter if I don't sound like Barbra Streisand. Who cares! I've just improved the quality of my life, lifted my spirits, and I like the sound of my own voice; so what does it matter?
Opportunities for improving the quality of your life lie in abundance on a daily basis. When I was working, I enjoyed laying my wardrobe out the night before. I checked colors, styles, which accessories would match, and so on. When I woke up in the morning, I was already in a good mood, knowing how well dressed I was going to look.
Years ago, I was at a wedding reception and found myself sitting next to a gal who, if she hadn't been so obese, might have been attractive. She was well-dressed and had a face that looked so expertly painted that I was almost in envy. I noticed that, despite the tantalizing food being passed around, she ate nothing. Upon striking up a conversation with her, I found out that she had gone to Merle Norman Cosmetics that morning and paid a great deal of money to have her face done.
“I'm wearing five shades of lipstick,” she said, pursing her lips for my inspection. “I don't dare eat for fear of messing it up.” She leaned closer to confide, “It cost me a lot of money. I had my nails done too,” she added.
I looked down at her magnificently manicured nails. She had the loveliest hands I'd ever seen. I glanced at my own. The fingers were thin and bony; the flesh on my hands had enlarged veins and had aged before their time. I felt envy and was glad that this woman, who was almost 200 pounds overweight, would have at least one thing that she could take pride in, but saddened at the knowledge that this wonderful meal was being unappreciated because of an expensive make-over.
We all make choices on a daily basis regarding what we wear, what we eat, the type of entertainment we indulge in, the kind of people we surround ourselves with. Our perception of what's healthy is often out of whack. Joy in life is free. All you have to pay is attention. This means using our head as we weave through our day making choices. I like to use the scenario of two women who have different Mondays.
Let's call the first one Mary Jane. After having lain her clothes out for the next day, Mary Jane goes to bed early, gets a good night's sleep, awakes refreshed, goes for a 30 minute walk in the park across the street, comes home, does 20 minutes of transcendental meditation, eats a breakfast of whole wheat toast, a banana, a glass of orange juice, and a bowl of oatmeal. She packs a snack of celery and peanut butter and low-fat popcorn, and a tantalizing lunch to include a large chef's salad with tomatoes, lettuce, bell peppers, cucumbers, chilled asparagus, red onions, cubes of cheese, and slivers of ham and turkey, all with a delicious low-fat sesame seed dressing. She throws in a couple slices of garlic bread, lemon ice, and ginger snaps for dessert. She leisurely gets dressed, grabs her favorite bestseller to read at lunch, and is on her way. She arrives at work in a perky, good-humored mood, wishes her colleagues good morning, and plows through her day. During her lunch hour, she calls a friend and they decide to meet after work for dinner and a movie. Mary Jane has had a joyous day.
Our other female, Wilomena, starts her Monday in a different mode. She stayed up late the night before, drank too many glasses of wine with a friend, and, even though she's been telling herself she's going to quit, smoked a half a pack of cigarettes. She wakes up tired and crabby, and realizes that she didn't do laundry over the weekend because she had a lot of partying planned instead. She looks around at her messy home and cringes. She meant to clean the house but time just got away from her. She steps on the scale, sees that the 30 pounds extra weight she's carrying didn't disappear overnight. This makes her crabbier. She drinks four cups of coffee, with three spoonfuls of sugar in each, and decides to skip breakfast. That could help her lose weight. She throws on a wrinkled brown suit. She knows brown is not a good color for her but it's the cleanest outfit she can find. She sees a run in her nylons and this sends her spiraling into an even worse mood. She tears in to her drawer trying to find another pair and realizes that in addition to not cleaning house and not doing laundry, she also neglected to stop at Wal-Mart to pick up nylons. She hopes no one will notice, but realizes that it's going to make her self-conscious.
She arrives at the office in a foul mood and growls at her co-workers. She's tired from lack of sleep, slightly hung over from too many cigarettes and too much wine, and her stomach is growling. She rages inwardly at the unfairness of life that makes her work for a living when she could be home sleeping in. Her day gets worse. The copy machine is on the blink, her boss neglected to inform her that he was out today, and she has scheduled a meeting with his most important client who is in a worse mood than she is when he discovers the boss is absent. She stumbles through apologies, and then promises herself to look for another job. Her boss is a jerk anyway and even though she's worked there for eight years and has been promising herself to find a better job, this time she almost means it. Her lunch consists of candy bars, potato chips, and a soda from the office vending machine. By 5:00, she tells herself that all she wants is to go home and get caught up on chores, eat something healthy, and start her life over. The phone rings and it's Patty, her pal from the night before. Patty has a lot of problems and wonders if Wilomena would like to stop at Robbie's Bar for a couple of drinks. “What the hell,” Wilomena says to herself; “a few glasses of wine would probably perk me up.”
A while back, I was working a temporary secretarial position at Claremont Colleges. My boss, who was a wonderful woman and an extremely fair boss, had a behavior pattern that I found healthy. Once in a while, as she walked through the door, she would make an announcement: “I'm crabby today.” I liked that. It meant that there was no need to take anything personal if she seemed out of sorts. Reporting your feelings to people is a great way to let others know not only where they stand, but also where you stand.
It's never too late to change your behavior patterns. Grandma Moses began painting in her seventies and lived to 101. She became the greatest folk painter that ever lived. One of her more famous quotes was: Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.” While this piece of wisdom has been stated many times and in many ways before, nevertheless, it is almost painfully true. I say painfully, because most people will hear these gems and disregard them. They sound nice but would take discipline to put into action.
Perhaps we are hampered in our search for something higher than mediocre by our low self-esteem. There is no shame in this. Almost everyone suffers from it at one time or another. What to do to overcome this? There are many guides in this area. Start with your childhood. Do you have unresolved conflicts? Are traumas hidden in that closet in your mind? Why not open the door and drag them out to look at? The truth can truly set you free. There is much help available to overcome childhood crosses; therapy, self-help programs, books and tapes on self-esteem building, exercises such as journal writing and talking into tapes about childhood pains, joining support groups, buying a copy of a program called REPAIR Your Life (if there is any sexual abuse in your childhood), and the like. There is no time like the present to clear your mind of negative childhood messages. Your parents may not have done the best job they could but that doesn't mean that you can't re-create your own happy childhood.
Once you work through this sometimes-enormous hurdle, you can begin practicing daily self-esteem. Here are a few rules to help you with this.
Remember that when someone approaches you in a negative or hurtful manner, they are making a statement about themselves, not about you.
If you look good, you'll feel better about yourself. This will increase your self-esteem enormously. If you need to lose weight, get started. If your grooming is less than perfect, work on it. Get a new hairdo; buy yourself some new clothes; get your nails done; go to that dermatologist about those skin problems that have always plagued you, or the orthodontist to get your teeth straightened. Whatever you don't like about your personal appearance, it can be fixed. Most of the glamorous stars in Hollywood don't look that way naturally. Without the right lighting, the right hairdo, or makeup, you'd never recognize them in a grocery store; and some are quite homely. Everyone is potentially beautiful. You need only find your own best assets and accent them.
Don't feed yourself negative messages. If someone pays you a compliment and you respond with “oh, I don't like my hair, it's too thick”, or “I've always thought my eyes were too close together”, your inner self believes whatever you tell it. Tell yourself every day that you are beautiful. Even negative messages like, “my co-workers don't like me” or “my husband thinks I'm too fat”, when there may be absolutely no proof that any of these negative messages are true, can do nothing but work contrary to your own well being.
Reiterate those qualities you like about yourself whether it is your pleasant personality, your graciousness, your work ethnic, your sense of humor, or your intelligence. Make lists of those qualities and put them where you can read them every day.
Keep in mind that “owning your own stuff” brings positive self-esteem. If you are late to work and your boss reminds you of it, don't storm off angry with him or her and feeling like you have no worth. Accept the criticism and promise to do better. No one's perfect, least of all your boss. It's amazing how taking responsibility for your own behavior makes you feel more powerful.
Develop a hobby or interest that you have a flair for. Share your accomplishments in that area with others. You'd be surprised how good you'll feel once you see that you are unique.
Do something nice for someone else on a daily basis. You don't even have to point it out to them. The important thing is that you'll feel better about yourself once you do. You'll feel even better if it's your own secret.
Practice being gracious and non-judgmental. Most people can see the inner beauty in people faster than the outer beauty by their behavior. This oftentimes makes them appear beautiful. Remember the opening lines to Gone With The Wind: “Scarlet O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charms.”
Share what you are learning about yourself and how you are building self-esteem with others. When giving something away that has value, you earn more of it for yourself.
If you have judged yourself in the area of virtue—moral excellence—and find your life wanting, don't despair. An age-old philosophical question “Can virtue be taught?” Of course it can. If being dishonest is a behavior you have been cursed with, you can change it. It is your behavior. You own it. It may have been around for many years but so were horses and buggies. That didn't mean the automobile wouldn't appear on the horizon. It may take practice to set a new behavior in motion, but you can do it. I believe that most people are, as Anne Frank believed, “good at heart”. You need only “want to change”, take a long hard look at any quality in the area of virtue that is a part of your make up, assess honestly whether it is positive or negative and begin making adjustments. Take them in easy steps, one day at a time, and soon they will be a part of the new you. With your own shortcomings repaired, you'll feel better about yourself.
When you find yourself worrying about what other people's opinion is of you, keep in mind that most people are so self-absorbed that you need not worry about what they are thinking of you; they are too busy thinking of themselves.
Many people have discovered secrets to happiness and shared them with others in the hope that they would listen. Louisa May Alcott, one of America's most beloved authors, wrote:
I do not ask for any crown,
But that which all may win,
Nor try to conquer any world,
Except the one within,
Be thou my guide, until I find,
Led by a tender hand,
The happy kingdom in myself,
And dare to take command.
Oliver Wendell Holmes said: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” If only we could see that a joyous life is ours for the taking, we would not hesitate to locate the secrets and put them into use. This book contains most of them.
Now, let us get to the meat of It's Your Choice! Decisions That Will Change Your Life.
There are six dimensions in life: mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, social, and financial. Webster calls these “one of the elements or factors making up a complete personality or entity. All else stems from one of these six. Nurturing all six is vital to one's total well-being. Making wise decisions in these areas on a regular basis promotes a more meaningful life. They are all integrated parts of a whole. One can expand one's mind, develop ideas and concepts in a pragmatic and orderly fashion, and yet be unable to love or be loved. That is not a whole person. One can be a Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, an idol in the eyes of one's parishioners, and yet be unable to communicate in an enjoyable, social environment. Again, that is not a whole person.
We all have skills in one area or the other. Few are skilled in all six. But that doesn't mean we can't strive to be competent in all of them. With a natural flair for communication, one individual can be a socially skilled human and perhaps even a mentally gifted one. That same person may even be naturally inclined to make wise financial decisions. But perhaps keeping in shape physically, watching their diet, and utilizing preventive medicine skills is not something they are adept at. One can easily see that without optimum physical health, the mental, social, and financial skills one day may be a moot point. All six need to function together in a healthy manner.
Like an orchestra that, without the grand piano, or with no violins or percussion, no brass or woodwinds, would not sound as harmonious, the physical body needs all instruments working well together. Our ego, that is, our inner self, knows how to pull the best performance out of each of our dimensions. All we need do is listen to our inner self, that internal voice that knows more than we realize.
The central and most important part to our being is the soul, the part of us that no one can prove to exist. And yet it does. It is the only part of us that is eternal. It is like the conductor that draws out beautiful sounds from his musicians. The soul has the power to kindle and awaken, to evoke the beautiful music that lies waiting in all of us. Never underestimate that soul part of us.
When I was a child, I read a book that held such fascination for me that I read it over a dozen times. It was called, The World Would Be Well
