People who radiate love and inner peace are beautiful. They may not be physically beautiful, but their inner beauty will shine through and you will love being in their presence. Such people have a certain magnetism and charm that's very hard to ignore. Have you ever wondered how they got to be that way, what their secret is?
These people, if you notice, don't necessarily drive the most expensive cars or own several mansions, but you won't see any dissatisfaction in them. However, it will be glaringly apparent that they are living abundant lives. You will probably feel inadequate despite all your material achievements and you will be conscious of everything you lack in your own life, realizing that even if you are living the life that poor men dream about, you’re still not happy.
Synchronicity in Your Life
You feel that you are doing everything you can possibly do to make things work at home, in the office and in every area of your life; however, nothing seems to be working as you have planned. Consequently, you do one of two things: you stop doing your best because it doesn't seem to matter anyway; or you keep on searching for answers as to why, despite all your efforts, your life is still a mess.
Take your health, for instance. You don't smoke, don't drink, you have a regular exercise regimen, and you basically live a healthy lifestyle. Then you get the surprise of your life when your doctor tells you that you have a heart condition! You can't get over the shock. You don't believe it. How can this happen to you?
You could be living a healthy lifestyle, but your mind may not completely agree with you. You’re stressed all the time because of pressures at work. In effect, your body is actually overworked and overstressed even if your mind refuses to accept it. Your mind may be telling your body that you are healthy, but if what you think is not in sync with reality – i.e. your body is overstressed, lacks rest and is overworked – your body will not be able to follow what your mind dictates.
Putting order into your life is important because as your environment becomes organized, your life will become more so. You will find that someone who is very organized at work – he files papers neatly away in color-coded and labeled folders – also has a very well-kept house and well-organized life.
Your life reflects the way you act. So if you can't be bothered to clean, don't be surprised by the mess – and you will see this mess no matter how hard your mind tells your eyes not to notice.
The Power of the Paradigm Shift
Let's say you have a daily prayer habit. You are very close to God and you go to church on Sundays and even on special Holidays. Nevertheless, your life is far from wonderful. You struggle with your finances, you can barely make ends meet and, in fact, you’re always late paying bills. You pray about it and ask for Divine help, but no help comes. What are you doing wrong?
As a child, you were probably taught that sufferings and sacrifices are necessary if you are to receive blessings. So you actually think the current state of affairs is okay; you’ll receive your blessings after you have suffered enough, right? Ironically, the very belief on which your hope for success is based may be the very thing that is keeping success perpetually out of your reach.
Your belief system (your paradigm for happiness and success) tells you that, in order to be happy, you have to suffer first. It is true that you have to work hard and, in a sense, make some sacrifices if you want to reach your goals. However, you don't have to stop yourself from being happy just because your belief system says that you have to be miserable first.
Let me put it differently. You may have to make some sacrifices if you wish to succeed in life. For instance, you won't always be able to attend your son's ball games because you’ll have to work late; you won't be able to go on that long vacation as you planned because you have to use the money for something more important. These sacrifices may make you miserable, all right, but the misery is not necessary – only the sacrifices are. Unfortunately, some people automatically equate sacrifice with misery.
Our own paradigms are probably not obvious. In fact, you are probably thinking of the analogy above as nothing more than some trite psych claptrap. You may ask, “How can any sane person believe that misery is a prerequisite for success and happiness?” However, you forget that the beliefs we have now are probably what we were taught when we were young. They may not be apparent at the conscious level, but they are nonetheless there in our ‘programming’ (i.e. subconscious) and, as such, they may be influencing our current actions.
It is necessary to acknowledge the presence of inaccurate paradigms before we can shift to the correct one. After realizing how your childhood programming (e.g. you have to work very hard for every dollar; money is hard to come by; you have to make sacrifices and be miserable to be happy) is now affecting your life and actually making it hard for you to achieve your goals. You should start believing something else, preferably something empowering.
Creating Balance in Your Life
In order to achieve a ‘Body, Mind & Spirit’ harmony, you have to work on each of these three areas of your life then blend all three together to create the perfect balance. Excelling in one area is not enough to give you the kind of abundant and happy life that you want and deserve. When the balance scale is tipped to one side, the other suffers and you are not living in harmony with the Universe.
Remember that the Universe, Divine Being or Higher Power plays no favorites. It's how you've been living your life that has been bringing all the good things or bad things into it. When you learn not to blame anything or anyone for what is happening to your life, and look within yourself for answers; you will find that, much to your surprise, you have the power to create your life just the way you want it.
Of course, you will encounter circumstances that you may have no control over such as natural calamities and economic meltdowns. However, you can choose how to react to these events and how you will let these affect your life. It's not what happens but how you choose to react to that which will determine how productive and how fulfilled your life becomes. They say that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I say put a little sugar in it and pour them in wine glasses for a full effect!
When you've mastered the balancing act of ‘Body, Mind & Spirit’, people will look at you and notice that you radiate love and peace just like others you've so admired before. When your whole being is in harmony, everything in your life will be harmonious, too.
By TTS Holistic Counselor Mehdi Jaffari
By TTS Cofounder Botanical Chef Omid Jaffari
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