The four previous posts introduced the four deeds of goodness in the Philosophy for LYF and the LRN, LAF, and LUV deeds of goodness. This post highlights the fourth deed of goodness: LIV.

LIV
LIV is about realizing yourself and inspiring others.
Inward Focus of LIV
Realize Yourself
LIV toward yourself are actions to realize the goodness in yourself. Realizing yourself means doing your best and maximizing your skills and innate capabilities.
LIV requires you to being engaged in life. You are not on autopilot. You are not just going through the motions. You are involved, aware, and experiencing the moment.
Realizing yourself involves leveraging your strengths to attain what you are capable of achieving. You are realizing the wholeness of who you are. You realize yourself only when you do your best. Realizing yourself represents self-actualization.
Realizing yourself also involves facing the challenges that come your way. Part of LIV is addressing these challenges and not running away from them.
Realizing yourself is not about attaining perfection, but about understanding your current potential and getting closer to achieving it, even as you continue to raise your bar through your growth and maturity. LIV leverages your strengths and chips away at your limitations.
Outward Focus of LIV
Inspire Others
LIV toward others are actions to inspire the goodness in others. Inspiring others means giving others through example the desire to do better and aspire to a higher level so that they may realize the goodness in themselves.
You inspire others when you lead by example of doing your best. You serve as a role model. You show the path of what goodness can be accomplished. You may even be laying a new path for others to follow.
Activities of LIV
Engage, push/challenge, leverage strengths, take risks, dream
Activities of LIV involve engaging in the moment, pushing and challenging yourself, leveraging your strengths, taking risks, and dreaming.
Supporting Core Value of LIV
Courageousness
To fully implement the goodness deed of LIV, you must embrace the core value of courageousness. Courageousness is not the absence of fear, but the moving ahead despite the fears and uncertainties you have. Courageousness allows you to be:
- courageous in stretching out of your comfort zone,
- courageous (but not reckless) in taking risks for goodness,
- courageous in facing challenges in your life,
- courageous in giving your best,
- courageous in being honest with yourself,
- courageous in persevering and accomplishing your goals,
- courageous in leveraging your strengths and reaching further,
- courageous in acting on your core values when it may not seem in your best interest (but it always is), and
- courageous in leading by example to inspire others to goodness.
The great cellist Pablo Casals eloquently stated this view of courageousness in an interview published in The Saturday Review in 1959:
“Each man has inside him a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a man to listen to his own goodness and act on it. Do we dare to be ourselves? This is the question that counts—and not, must a man be helpless?”
Influence of LIV
Do well
LIV influences the other deeds of goodness by adding the quality to "do well". Doing your best and being fully engaged helps you accelerate your growth in LRN, “play hard” in LAF, and show love more deeply in LUV.
Without the influences of the other deeds of goodness, LIV could become reckless (without the guidance of LRN), noncommittal (without the motivation of LAF), and self-inflicting (without the kindness and caring of LUV).
Mascot of LIV
Livin

Livin is the mascot for LIV.
LIV is represented on the body by the whole being. All of your being does its best when you LIV, and it represents the best of all of you. Livin shows this representation with outstretched arms.
The color of Livin is blue. Blue signifies sky and sea, which you reach up toward and swim through when you truly live.
The next post delves more into your life's vision...an elevated life.
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