Dr. Heléna Kate, Author at HELÉNA KATE

The Essential Elements to a Fulfilling Life

by Dr. Heléna Kate | Aug 28, 2016 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog

Here’s a list of the elements I consider essential to living a deeply fulfilling life.

Passion:

Figure out what you love to do. People are happier when they do what they love.

Do it often. Doing what you love makes you feel more fulfilled.

Remove things from your life that are mediocre, beige, flat, or merely tolerable. You only have so much time, attention, and energy. Don’t waste it on what doesn’t matter.

Courage:

Know what’s important to you.

Know why it’s important to you.

Because, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.” F. Roosevelt

Kindness:

Learn to be good to others and do it as much as possible.

Learn to be good to yourself and do it as much as possible.

Go out of your way every day to do something especially nice for a total stranger.

Gratitude:

Pay attention to all the wonderful things that are a part of your life both large and small.

Thank people for what they bring to your life.

Learn to find gratitude even for the things and people that you find difficult.

Contemplation:

Take a few moments each day to sit quietly.

Keep a journal.

Learn to listen fully to what someone is saying. Really take it in before responding.

Forgiveness:

Make a list of everyone in your life that you have an unresolved issue with and find a way to resolve that issue within yourself and (if possible) with them.

Forgive yourself.

Make it a practice to forgive others as quickly as possible.

Play:

Make time to be creative in ways that please you the most.

Laugh as much as possible.

Remember that your life is what you dream it to be.

Does one of these essential elements particularly resonate with you? If so, I suggest that you write it down and put it somewhere you will see it every day. Every little reminder you create for yourself will help you stay on track!

How to Develop a Path to Your Right Livelihood

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 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!

10 Questions to Help You Create Your Ideal Work-Life

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.

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?

What Right Livelihood Is All About

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?