1. awake: means recognizing that you have a choice to direct your life, your results, and your situation. It means waking up to and being conscious of that realization and choosing to do something about it. Principles: Be Proactive, taking responsibility, using your choices to direct your life, acknowledging your ability to change your life, initiating change, and living with intention
Hi, my name is Ben Balden. My life’s mission is to help everyone live a happier, fuller life. My intention for creating this information here is to realize my vision of a world full of happy and successful people at peace with themselves and in harmony with others. I warmly invite you to join me in this passionate cause: to help all people everywhere live a happier, fuller life. Let’s start with ourselves.
The Main Idea
This is about being alive. If you look around, you’ll notice that the great majority of people live their life by simply reacting to what happens around them. They are not really awake. There are many reasons for this:
- first of all, it’s easier,
- takes less energy,
- we hit so many dead ends in life or hardships (learned helplessness),
- this response is more emotionally comfortable.
But this is no excuse for you. You must be different!
You must awaken and activate your power to create your life and your existence. This includes acknowledging that you have the power to choose – that between stimulus and response, your power to choose enables you to direct your life. Secondly, and this is huge, take responsibility for your life. Taking responsibility gives you back your rejected power to choose.
You must wake up, be proactive, take initiative, choose to exercise your choice, innovate, be intelligent, and become… alive again!
EXPECTED TIME FOR COMPLETION: 1 hour
What We Will Cover
Let’s talk about how this process of personal growth starts.1 Before you can take a single step, you must believe that stepping is possible. You are a being with the power to choose. That is to say, you can write your own program, you can determine your own results, you can create who you ultimately are. But first, you must awaken to this power.
In this lesson, we will cover these concepts related to awakening your intelligence:
- You must wake up (consciously live life)
- Acknowledge power to choose
- Take initiative
- Recapture responsibility
- Engage your intelligence
- Be alive
Wake
Something inside you needs to wake up. Be conscious. It is imperative that you leave the throng of people who let their life be directed by what others want and by what happens to them.
Waking up is a realization. For some people, it is an intense moment when they realize that they have the power to get what they desire. For others this realization is gradual and piece by piece.
This might come after getting fed up with your life being lived and directed by others. It might follow some disgusted downward turn which left you in turmoil and ruin. It might have been a moment when you looked up from the dirty ditch of a broken life and cried out, “I want something better.”
How do I wake up?
This realization is that you have the power to direct your life. This realization may take on one of these forms:
- I now acknowledge my power to direct my life and create my future.
- I recognize that I have a choice in every single moment, a choice that will determine my life.
- I initiate my growth and my progression. I must do something. No one else will do this for me.
- I take full responsibility for me. I am the only one to blame or take credit.
- I use my intelligence to apply my knowledge to better my life.
- I live intentionally, enjoy life, and create myself every day.
Ponder on these ideas. You can see they are merely beliefs and intentions. You can start by declaring these beliefs and intentions to yourself and looking for evidence in your life to support these new ways of interpreting the universe.
Choose
A crucial step in awakening your soul is to acknowledge your power of choice. You have a choice. The choice is yours alone. No one can exercise this personal power for you. Choice is power. With it, you can direct your life on an upward curve.
As Jeff Olsen says in his book, the Slight Edge, you can direct your path upward for greatest happiness when you daily choose to practice those simple and seemingly insignificant principles proven to lead to success. The power is in recognizing AND making those simple choices.
What many people don’t realize is that they very frequently fail to recognize those simple choices. You may have been missing many choices that, once acknowledge and seized back, have the capacity to catapult you to success. Too many people believe they are victims of their past, or they blame their present circumstance on others. But the truth is that whenever that language is used, there are personal choices rejected and buried. There is always a choice.
How do you choose? There are three steps:
- Mindset or belief shift: “There is always a choice in every situation” – In his book,The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey teaches us that between every stimulus and response, there is always choice. Declaration: “I don’t have to accept these results. I have a choice.”
- Identify the choice: “Life handed me a lemon. I can either rub it in my wounds or make lemonade.”
- Take Courage to exercise: When you see the choice in front of you, you make a selection that will support your intentions or dreams. “Although it would be easier to rub the lemon in my wounds, I choose to make lemonade because I want greater happiness in my life.” Then do some physical action to bring that choice into the physical world
Initiate
It is imperative that you take the initiative. Initiate means to cause a process to begin. You are initiating a better life for you. No one is coming to save you.2 For you to grow, YOU must take the initiative. Nothing will happen if you don’t do something. If you sit back and let life happen to you, you will never experience what it means to live.
in·i·ti·ate /iˈniSHēət/
verb – to cause a process to begin
To truly live, you must wake up and take the initiative. You must power your own personal growth. What this means is that you must START and start today. Today is the most important day of your life. You can’t do anything to change yesterday and tomorrow will always be one day out of reach. Today is always within your grasp, but only for a moment. Grasp it. Take responsibility for your life and do something about it.
Initiate like your life depends on it. The truth is that your initiative is the only thing your life is depending on.
How do I initiate?
- Mentally create it – what does your desired result look like. Taking the effort to create it in your mind might seem like an insignificant action, but it is the first and crucial step in creation.
- Lean into it – identify the first step and take it. This begins the process of bringing your mental creation into the physical world.
- Commit to it personally – if you can sacrifice something from your world, no matter how small, your initiation makes your life.
In the above example, to make lemonade, you first think of lemonade (create it in your mind), you take the initial steps like planning the recipe or gathering the ingredients. When you begin to commit that lemon by cutting, squeezing, adding it to the pitcher and mixing in the other ingredients. You are committed, and you have caused the process to begin.
Responsibility
Taking 100% responsibility is the first step in initiating you taking back your life. Seize back the responsibility that has unwittingly been given away to blaming and complaining. Responsibility means accountability. If you are accountable, it means you are to be praised for progress and must pay for the lack of progress.
Many have pointed out that the word responsible comes from two words: Response + Able. It embodies your ability to respond. To act. Like the choice that exists between stimulus and response, you are able to respond.
Responsibility means you must make a choice, you must act on the choice, and then you must answer for the results of the choice (be accountable). The buck stops with you. The buck also starts with you. If your life is the pits, it’s because of you, and you pay the ultimate price. If your life is awesome, it’s because of you, and you receive the ultimate reward. You can’t blame anyone else or complain that your results were out of your control.
More responsibility is good. As you can see, responsibility can be bad and scary, but it can also be good. You want more responsibility if it means responsibility for the results in your life.3 The more responsibility for those results you take on, the more power you have.
How do you take 100% responsibility, and how do you know you have accepted 100% responsibility for your life?
- First, you have completely given up blaming, complaining, and making excuses.
- Second, you have acknowledged that your life is the result of your choices and actions
- Third, you search for ways that you can take responsibility for how things are and how they will become
For more on taking 100% responsibility for your life, see my responsibility post.
Intelligence
The final part you need to awaken yourself to your personal progression is to engage your intelligence. All human beings are intelligent whether they seem smart or not. Being intelligent means the ability to (1) acquire and (2) apply knowledge and skills.
in·tel·li·gence /inˈteləjəns/
noun – the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.
You are also an intelligent being because you wield the power to choose, and with that power to make sentient choices is the awesome power to create who you are. This is truly an amazing concept. You are basically a program that can rewrite itself. And the key to progress, improve, and grow personally is engaging your intelligence.
How to engage your intelligence?
You essentially need to get the intelligent, imaginative, and decision making parts of your mind working like reving up a motor. As you ponder on your path,
- Engaging your imagination
- Creating new solutions
- Making decisions
- Matching resources with needs
- Adapting concepts to your situation
- Innovative and resourcefulness
- Driving the process – “What needs to happen next?”
This is all about “Being Human.” Using your mind to overcome problems, innovate solutions, and create something new: you!
Alive
Finally, you must awake and be alive. Participate in life. Live in the moment. Being happy is a verb not a state of being. There are other verbs necessary for being alive. To be alive means to live, enjoy, choose, and experience the creation of the world around you. It takes effort. That effort repays itself many times over.
This can only happen if you take a moment to look around you. Look at the beauty. Imagine the possibility. And wake up and live your life.
- Renew your intention to create who you are – (awake to your power)
- Reclaim your power to steer your course – (cherish your choice)
- Retake the helm and re-ignite the fire – (initiate your journey)
- Recapture responsibilities stolen by misplaced blames and excuses – (take back your responsibility)
- Rev up your creative powers and get to work on your life – (engage your intelligence)
Conclusion / Recap
Awakening is about being alive. Left unchecked the natural-man slides into a place of complacency. If you start with a little spark, you can begin to awake, turn back on the lights, start exercising choices in your favor and directing your life for good. You have the power to create the life you want. Waking up to that power is the first step.
Live a happier, fuller life!
Application in Your Life
So, how can you apply this lesson today? The true value in learning new concepts is applying them in your life to help you live a happier fuller life. That’s my intention here. Choose one or all of the challenges below and carry it out before you end your day.
- Choose today to wake up and take control of your life – Make a conscious decision, and bring it into the physical world by writing it down or sharing it with someone. “I choose to take control of my life!”
- Find three choices you didn’t know you had and reclaim them – Notice the moments where other forces in your life have been making choices for you. Like how you respond to someone else being angry. Make your own choice and apply it. “I choose my own responses.”
- Take the initiative and do something today to change your future for the better – I can’t tell you what this means. That’s where you must engage your own intelligence. Think of an action you can take that will improve your life even if in the smallest amount. Don’t just decide it. Take that choice into the physical world by carrying out your plan. Do it.
- Find one responsibility you can reclaim and do something about it – Listen to your words and identify some instance when you blame your life’s results on others or where you complain. Bingo, there is your missing responsibility. Ask yourself the questions on the take 100% responsibility post and reclaim the power that responsibility brings with it by taking responsibility for that result.
The Oil Advantage
Essential oils can help unlock your mind, get your moving, and bring courage and conviction in times of doubt and hesitation. They can help give you the extra boost to get you where you want to go. Here are some blends to try.
About The ALIVE Blend
The Alive essential oil blend is about renewing your lease on life. It’s about participating in life again. I intend the formulation to help wake you up emotionally to a renewed sense of responsibility and a new hunger to wake up and initiate change in your life.
Learn How To Make The ALIVE Blend Here
About The RESPONSIBILITY Blend
This oil blend is formulated to help you mentally and spiritually take responsibility for the direction of your life.
Learn How To Make The RESPONSIBILITY Blend Here
I only use doTERRA essential oils. The best way to buy doTERRA oils is through a wholesale account where you can save 50%-80% when you buy.
Open a Wholesale Account Today
Thank You
Thank you for joining me in this Personal Development journey.
Books Mentioned In This Post
The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson (REVIEWED HERE) (Recommended in Get Off The Bench)
Buy “Slight Edge” Here
Footnotes and References
- Before any growth lies either desire or necessity, the reason you are here. We will talk about purpose next time. We assume you come with some reason to be here.
- True, some people may love you, but they can’t be you and they can’t live your life for you. God’s made sure of that. People are limited in time and resources to live the lives of others.
- This does not mean taking responsibility for the happiness or the results in the lives of others. Those are just distractions and drains of your power and resources. You serve them better by helping them take responsibility for their own lives.
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