Your sense of meaning, like a compass needle, always points in the direction your soul wants to go. The more closely you follow it, the more meaning you experience. The more you ignore it the more that meaning drains from your life.
"Your internal compass can help you distinguish authentic needs from artificial needs. Authentic needs are the needs of your soul."
AUTHENTIC NEEDS
Needs of the soul
Align personality and soul
Creativity serves the soul
Love and be loved
Life fills with meaning
Create healing,constructive consequences
Fear disapears
Attract others who pursue authentic needs
Create authentic power
ARTIFICIAL NEEDS
Needs of personality
Manipulate and control
Envy
Strive to be safe and valuable
Life empties of meaning
Creat painful, destructive consequences
Insist on being right
Life filled with fear
Attract others who pursue artificial power
Create external power
Ok so now we have the definitions and examples. So lets move towards the exercise.
"Artificialneeds come from the frightened parts of your personality. You feel powerless, and instead of addressing the issue directly, you create a need to address it you."
EXERCISE
Remember the last few tines you had a painful emotional reaction. ie power struggle with spouse, child, friend, slow driver. Describe each circumstance, consider each item and ask yourself if that need was 1) authentic or 2)artificial need.
REASSESS
Make some things you would like. ie new car, meaningful job, thoughtful spouse.....Review each one and ask yourself is this a need of 1) my soul 2) my personality?
Secondly make a list of things you have that are most important.. Then ask yourself the same questions.
What have you learned about yourself?
"To create authentic power, you must use your painful experiences as they were meant to be used; to discover what you need to heal inside yourself"
"PAINFUL EMOTIONS ARE SIGNALS FROM YOUR SOUL THAT REMIND YOU TO STOP AND EXPERIENCE WHAT YOU ARE FEELING"
When you can distinguish between authentic and artifical needs you will develop and natural give and take and become more flexible.....
Now I know why I put self-empowerment tips in once a month. Besides it should be something you read think about, contemplate work on slowly and reassess before you really begin to understand. Working on improving yourself is not an over night process. Everyday you will learn something new about yourself and your capabilities. Hope people get some valuable information out of this. Feedback is welcomed.
Yesterday ||Tomorrow