by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jul 21, 2016 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
The more fulfilled we are, the more we inspire and fulfill the people around us. The more successful we are, the more we support other people in being successful.
In fact, how we live our life is our only tool to making the world a better place. Who we are and what we do makes a huge impact on others. When we make the world a better place, we enjoy being in it more.
Caring – as in really giving a damn – is essential to our fulfillment and success. The problem is that people often only care about meeting their own needs and having others meet their needs. They think that this is the only way to make themselves happy. While your needs are important, they are only part of the picture.
Once we learn to move out of apathy and start caring, we step into a whole new way of being in the world where:
We are at choice in all that we do.
We contribute and feel a healthy responsibility to the world around us.
We create a better world for everyone.
This kind of positive impact is at the heart of Right Livelihood.
People who feel fulfilled in their lives tend to be more generous, supportive, and available. They’re better able to give more to their partners, their children, and their community because they have the inner-resources from which to give.
A successful life makes everyone richer. When you on the path towards your Right Livelihood, you provide more for your family, those associated with your work, and those associated with them.
Every bit of Right Livelihood you create adds to the lives of others. It feeds, clothes, and houses other people as well as inspires them to create something for themselves.
When we focus on a path that leads to holistic, comprehensive success, we increase the general wealth in the world.
One of the first steps on your path to Right Livelihood is to find a representation of what you want to create. If you can see what you want then you can achieve it. When you can’t see it, you can\’t actually have a relationship to what it is you want. When you imagine a bigger or more expanded life, you’re on your way to it. Did you catch that? If you can see it then you are on your way.
Take a moment to journal about who or what represents Right Livelihood to you. If you don’t know, spend a few moments researching it.
Want a step-by-step guide to find and live your life purpose? My Morning Mindset Life Purpose is an inspirational daily video series that delivers tips, insights and exercises straight to your inbox for three weeks. Morning Mindset will help you step-in your purpose and live your life to its fullest. Learn more here!
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jul 12, 2016 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
How you answer these questions will reveal the impact your work has on you, your community, and your world.
1. As a result my work, was anyone harmed or made unhealthy?
2. As a result of my work, was anyone diminished?
3. To do my work, was anyone required to earn less than they ought to, expose themselves to negative work environments or unhealthy work conditions?
4. Through my work, are the contracts I make with others mutually respectful?
5. Is there an excessive/harmful gap between my earnings and those who help me earn them, or the reverse?
6. Does you work have a negative effect on your mind or heart?
7. Is my work perfectly aligned with who I am? Do I love what I do, am I good at it and does it fill me with a sense of meaning?
8. Does my work afford me the ability to work on other things that are important to me?
9. Do I do my work for free leaving myself uncared for?
10. Do I over or under-perform my work? Is my effort in balance?
Give yourself 1 point for every statement you responded \”no\” to:
8-12 Knocking it out of the park!
You likely have created work for yourself that has both a positive effect on you and others! Keep honing it from here – there is always room for growth.
4-7 Figuring it out.
Seems there might still be some work for you to do with regards to your Right Livelihood. What is one change that you might make now to head in the right direction?
1-3 Feeling the Burn.
It\’s very likely that the way you are working right now is harming you and others. This could be affecting you more than your realize. Is it time to start making changes?
Want a step-by-step guide to find and live your life purpose? My Morning Mindset Life Purpose is an inspirational daily video series that delivers tips, insights and exercises straight to your inbox for three weeks. Morning Mindset will help you step-in your purpose and live your life to its fullest. Learn more here!
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jul 7, 2016 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Right Livelihood is taken from the Buddhist teaching of the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment. The path of right livelihood means earning your living in a way that does not cause harm to yourself or others.
There is a difference between Life Purpose and Right Livelihood even though they are often understood as the same thing.
Right Livelihood has as much to do with the way you go about your work as it does the with your given profession.
The reason Right Livelihood is so important is that everything we do can either contributes to or detract from our overall wellbeing. The more conscious you are of yourself, the more you will feel the positive and negative effects of your choices.
If you want to help others in their transformation, whether through being a healer or acting as one, your work is limited or strengthened by a multitude of factors that fall under the umbrella of right livelihood.
In general, I look at spiritual concepts as information that help point the way towards riches that we most need to discover. There are many versions of Right Livelihood across religious and spiritual teachings. I make no claim to the correct ones.
Here are components of the path to Right Livelihood that I think might be useful to you as you move forward in your own pursuit.
Passion:
Start with something you love, something you feel passionate about. It’s impossible to create Right Livelihood without basing it on something that inspires your soul. We find passion by doing what we love and are excited by. It’s never too late to connect more fully with our passions.
Growth:
Allow for continual growth. You will change over time. To consistently be on your path to Right Livelihood you will need to define, refine, and redefine your knowledge of yourself to stay true to your path. If you can’t grow in connection to your work, then you might have hit a stumbling block on your path to Right Livelihood. Assess the impact that the lack of growth has on you. Sometimes it’s just a comfortable plateau. Other times, it’s a push towards something new.
Alignment:
What you do needs to be in alignment with who you are. Just because something worked in a certain way for someone else does not mean it will work for you. Your Right Livelihood depends entirely on who you are, how you are made and what you need to learn.
Harmony:
Do you feel more or less peaceful as a result of your work? Right Livelihood requires that our work creates an inner sense of wellbeing. That means that even if you do something you love, you can do it in a way that creates a lot of distress. If you take the wrong approach to your passion, you’ll wind up feeling stuck. Likewise if you do something that you do not feel good about, you may suffer a sense of restlessness that you need to attend to.
Balance:
Our work benefits from balance between our effort and our reward. Balance between our time at work and our time on other activities. When we get out of balance we lose our ability to function optimally.
Positive Impact:
It’s not Right Livelihood if it negatively effects others. I’m not talking about a bad day every once in awhile. I’m talking about the small and not-so-small negative impact that your work has on the world. Do you run a sweatshop, underpay people or dump toxic waste in the river? Or, does the organization you work for underpay people, run a sweatshop, or dump waste into the river? These are extreme examples, but more often than not our work has negative impacts on the world. Are you doing your best to make yours impact as positive as possible?
Take a moment to reflect on where you are on your path to creating Right Livelihood. What is something you can do to advance your growth in this area?
Want a step-by-step guide to find and live your life purpose? My Morning Mindset Life Purpose is an inspirational daily video series that delivers tips, insights and exercises straight to your inbox for three weeks. Morning Mindset will help you step-in your purpose and live your life to its fullest. Learn more here!
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Jun 15, 2016 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog
Day-in and day-out, I talk to people who want to find their life purpose.
I make a point to pay close attention to what my clients, associates and colleagues say as they describe the purpose-driven life they seek to live. As I see it, my job is not simply to respond to what I hear, but rather to figure out how I can help those around me get what they really need to feel happier, healthier and more successful.
When people talk about finding their purpose they often also talk about identifying their passion. They want to have a sense of meaning in their life. They want to make a contribution.
I go into great detail on what life purpose is REALLY all about and how to FULLY LIVE a purpose-driven life in my Morning Mindset series, LIFE PURPOSE. So, if you’re in the midst of finding your life purpose, this series is for you! Sign up here.
Myth #1 Your Life Purpose is Your Vocation
This is one of the mistaken ideas that I tackle first when I talk to someone who wants to find their life purpose. Why is this myth about life purpose so pervasive? I think it’s because we live in an increasingly work-centric society that doesn’t teach us that there is a difference between our life purpose and our work. They are, in fact, two totally distinct things.
Truth be told, it’s absolutely possible to integrate your life purpose into your work. HOWEVER, when people feel stuck and struggle to identify their purpose it’s often because they’ve come to think of their career as the place in which they’ll find their purpose. Or, it’s the reverse. In this scenario, people try to find their life purpose through the process of developing their career and meet with tremendous frustration. Either way it just does not work.
Solution #1: Ask yourself: “Am I trying to trying to figure out my life purpose or my next career move?” Allow yourself the space to see your life purpose and your career as separate things.
Myth #2 Your Life Purpose Can Only Be One Thing
Because people often conflate their career with their life purpose, they often think that their purpose is one specific thing.
As kids, when we’re asked what we want to be when we grow up, we tend to say things like: “I want to be a fireman” or “I want to be a ballerina.” As adults, when we think about life-purpose, we mistakenly hyper-focus on a single outcome the same way we did when we were young. But this is not how things really work. Instead, once you begin to feel into what a purpose-driven life might look like, a number of options often emerge and many of them will be equally satisfying.
Solution #2 Don’t try and narrow things down too soon. Ask yourself why an idea appeals to you rather than if it’s the right idea or not.
Myth #3 You Must Find Your Life Purpose Before You Start Living It
Our life purpose is intimately connected to what we love most. This means that when we start doing what we love we take our first steps along the path towards our purpose. This also means that we don’t need to wait to live a purpose-driven life. All we need to do is to determine what we love and do it as often as possible.
Solution #3 Do what you love to do. Discover more things you love to do. And make time to reflect.
Myth #4 Only a Fortunate Few Live Their Life Purpose
This is a tricky myth. On the one hand, a fortunate few actually do have a career that successfully integrates their life purpose. On the other hand, I’m not sure if these people are particularly fortunate. It can be overwhelming to tie up your livelihood so closely to your passion.
When we recognize that our life purpose is a combination of what we most care about, what we love to do, and what we value, it becomes clear that we always have the option to live our life purpose. It’s not necessary to fit our purpose into our career. Rather, it’s necessary that we fit our purpose into our lives.
Solution #4 Figure out what you care most about, what you love most to do, and what you value the most and proceed from there.
Myth #5 You Should Be Able to Figure It Out On Your Own
It seems like common sense that WE ALONE should be able to figure out our life purpose. Right? It’s ours after all.
But, sometimes we have a difficult time seeing it BECAUSE it’s so closely connected to who we are. When people come to me looking to find their life purpose, I often give them a series of exercises. I ask them to answer a set of questions and I tell them not to spend much time worrying about the answers. Instead, I prompt them to write out the first thing that comes to their mind and send me what they wrote. When I reflect back my synthesis of my clients answers, a funny thing happens. More often than not clients have an Eureka moment where they finally see what their purpose is all about.
Solution #5 Find the support you need! Sometimes you need outside eyes to see to help you see within yourself.
So, if you’ve been coming up empty as you look for your life purpose, it’s time to de-mystify your thinking and try on these solutions. Most important, though, is to start with what you LOVE.
Want a step-by-step guide to find and live your life purpose? My Morning Mindset Life Purpose is an inspirational daily video series that delivers tips, insights and exercises straight to your inbox for three weeks. Morning Mindset will help you step-in your purpose and live your life to its fullest. Learn more here!
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The Conscious Creative: Life Purpose, June 2016