Path Week 5: Seek personal elevations

The first four weeks focused on your core values (embracing goodness), your strategy (doing goodness through LRN, LAF, LUV, and LIV), and your mission, both inward toward yourself (growing true wealth) and outward toward others (giving true worth).

Weeks 5 and 6 focus on experiencing elevations––jubilant moments and natural highs in your life caused by doing goodness.  Elevations occur when you are doing all four deeds of goodness in concert and synergistically, resulting in strong doses of true wealth and/or true worth.  When you elevate, you elevate your mind, your spirit, your heart, and your very being.

Your focus for Week 5 is to go deeper in living the philosophy by applying all four deeds of goodness toward yourself concurrently to grow true wealth.  That is, doing activities during which you improve yourself and that you enjoy doing and that strengthen how you value yourself and that allow you to do your best, all wrapped in goodness.

When you simultaneously enjoy what you are doing, find meaning in what you are doing, are doing it to the best of your ability, and are growing from the experience, you are at a personally-fulfilling elevated moment in your life – a personal elevation.

Personal elevations occur when you are able to apply the synergies and influences among the four actions and align them.  Apply the wisdom and righteousness of LRN, the positivity and gratitude of LAF, the compassion and meaningfulness of LUV, and the courage and quality of LIV to each of the other actions to enhance and magnify the moments and the results of your life.

Peer back into your past where you have some memorable personal moments that filled you with joy and that were full of goodness.  Moments where you felt life was fulfilling.  Maybe it occurred while you were playing a sport; you felt “in the zone”, playing at your highest potential, learning something about your capabilities as you overcome obstacles, enjoying the experience, and believing in yourself.  Maybe it occurred while being out in nature; enjoying the outdoors and the views, feeling tired but exhilarated as you pursued this healthy activity and stretched yourself as you applied and furthered your skills as you climbed the mountainside.  Maybe it was something simpler, where you surprised yourself in doing something you didn’t think you were capable of doing, found yourself enjoying it, knowing now that you can do it and that it would be even better the next time.

Just like Week 3, even though the focus of the week is on deeds of goodness toward yourself, do not forego giving true worth to others.  In fact, giving true worth can give you opportunities where you can do all four deeds inwardly.

One important note: Do not be discouraged if you do not feel you had a personal elevation.  There is nothing wrong with you.  Elevating your life through personal elevations, feeling personally fulfilled and jubilant every day, is not a given.  It requires an alignment of applying your core values of goodness and of performing all four deeds of goodness in concert within a situation.  It takes practice.  It takes time.  It takes a mindset of creating and pursuing opportunities to grow true wealth.

Step 1.  Prepare for the week by looking back at your notes from Week 3 – Grow True Wealth.  What actions did you do that grew true wealth for you?  Were some of these personal elevations? Do you want to pursue some of these further?  Have you removed some of the barriers that prevented you from growing true wealth?  For the missed opportunities, are you now able to recognize opportunities to grow true wealth more easily?

While we all like serendipity—and personal elevations can occur in these wonderful, surprising moments—personal elevations are more likely when you target areas that you want to pursue, activities you know that you will likely enjoy, and situations and environments that are more conducive to acts of goodness toward yourself.  Write down a list of activities or outcomes that you wish to do or achieve.  Think how you could apply all four deeds of goodness to those activities.

Step 2.  Before the end of each day, write down a brief summary of any personal elevations that you experienced.  Describe those personal elevations and what made it an elevation to you.  For each personal elevation, briefly note how each of the four deeds of goodness were involved.  Use the Week 5 template, one for each day.  Do not let a day go by; at a minimum, write them down at the end of the day.

The template also gives you time for reflection.  Did you do something during the day that you thought would be a personal elevation but ended up not being one?  Why do you think that was the case?  Was it missing a deed of goodness?  For example, you may have improved yourself, but perhaps you did not enjoy it or were not that engaged in it like you typically are.  Did you miss an opportunity that in hindsight could have been something elevating in your life?  If you did not have a personally elevating moment, what do you think prevented it?  Were you around negative people or situations?  Did “everyday” life get in the way?  What could you do to remove or overcome them?  How can you improve the chances of experiencing a personal elevation tomorrow?

Step 3.  At the end of the week, review your notes.  Did you experience personal elevations? Did the focus on it throughout the week increase your opportunities to experience it?  What obstacles prevented personal elevations and were you able to overcome them and remove them?  How do you see yourself moving forward toward a fulfilling life full of personal elevations?

A PDF version of the template may be downloaded by clicking here.