Always tired no matter how much you sleep? Always hungry no matter how much you eat? Always unsatisfied, no matter how much you struggle forward? You’re not alone. I’ve been there, far too many times. We all experience it, the question is really “To what extent?”: How much, how frequently, how much rule does it have over one’s life?
When we’re tired of trying to satiate the unfillable void, fed up with spinning wheels with far too little traction, or sick of the numbing pain of habitualised mundane existence, this is me, speaking to that version of you. We need appreciate that we’re not always in such a state, all of the time, but when we are there, there’s some important considerations that need to be remembered, to help get out.
Whenever you find yourself there, and you’re wise enough to get serious enough about wanting some help to get out, please take the time to consider these concepts thoroughly. If you do, I guarantee you, their implementation can produce wonders, and I’m completely committed to helping you experience them.
So we’ve covered why we need to pursue edification over gratification, particularly because the latter is dangerously addictive and powerfully blinding. Let’s talk about what we can do to ‘see’. What we can do to stop the drowning or to ‘wake up’ from the sleeping blindness that surrounds us. I find myself often returning to this concept, in my mind: the psychological high’s we experience, despite feeling like the dream state, are closer to long-term reality than the ‘psychological lows/norms’. It’s at such times that we are sufficiently ‘alive’ to be able to identify and appreciate just how connected everything is, just how unimportant many of the goals we establish for ourselves are, and how meaningful and significant even the smallest of efforts can be when invested in some capacity, with a purpose.
The day-to-day, the rat-race, the grind, now that’s the dream state: Meaning, that’s the place we’re detached from reality. That’s the place we’re numbed to the truth that enlivens us. That’s the place we get trapped investing into things that don’t improve our reality. That’s the place we forget what matters most. That’s the place we imprison ourselves in unedifying distractions. For such reasons, those ‘psychological highs’, really need to be not only prioritised but also habitualised, to make sure we’re regularly at least touching base with reality.
There’s a concept I’ve been chewing on for years now and I’ve found myself constantly referencing it with this image…
It’s symbolic of:
- the multi-layered state of our beings,
- each layer’s potential to be independently aligned to varying ends, and
- the benefit of alignment.
In order to try and keep it simple for now, let’s say we only have 4 metaphorical ‘layers’ of our being and they’re divided up between:
- What we know
- Could be defined as the ‘core’ of our being, our engine room/life map etc.
- What we think
- resides closest to the ‘core’, having more interactions with it than any other layer, although still occurring internally with little visibility to the outside world
- What we say
- being more observable to the external world, often flowing on/being heavily influenced by whatever we’ve been recently thinking.
- What we do
- being the most observable to the external world, often flowing on/being heavily influenced by what we’ve recently been saying and thinking.
Despite there being exceptions to the order, generally speaking there remains a common pattern and flow of action and re-action observable in us all, and it works from the core out (from internal to external). We learn a principle, or find some ‘truth’; start thinking about it and mulling it over; begin talking to others to acquire multiple perspectives; and commence experimenting or applying it in the world around us. Often we struggle with misalignment. Sometimes that’s due to a flaw in ourselves, sometimes a flaw in the concept we’re testing.
When the truth doesn’t line up or fails the consistency test, we should re-assess the concept itself and adjust accordingly. When the test is also demonstrated a failed line up in ourselves, or we fail in consistency when testing the truth, we also should be re-assessed with adjustments made accordingly. The reality is, we often don’t align. We frequently find ourselves doing things we said we wouldn’t do; saying things we don’t really think, or entertaining thoughts we know aren’t helpful. We not only need to test new truth against the truth already in us, but we need to test the truth in us against the new truth.
From the perspective of edification, we should respond to each test, each stimuli, in ways that build us and cause us to grow into more functional beings.
- If the stimuli is what we know, we’re responsible for guiding our responding thoughts to ensure they will produce personal growth.
- If the stimuli is what we’re thinking about, we’re responsible for guiding our responding language (the things we say) towards things that will build us.
- If the stimuli is what we’re talking about, we’re responsible for guiding our responding actions to ensure they’re producing a helpful end.
When we choose gratification in life, we’re usually not consciously choosing it over edification, or even what’s easy as opposed to what’s best etc. However I do believe that at some level, each gratifying choice is made with some degree of conscious appreciation that there’s a misalignment. We all know something’s not right when we think or hear things like “Do as I say, not as I do”; “I shouldn’t think like that”; “You talk the talk but do you walk the walk?” These are all common lines that evidence the frequent misalignment between our ‘layers’.
If we want to “truly” be something however, we should be aiming to be that things thoroughly as we can, meaning at each layer within us. There’s obviously some issue or degree of insincerity if, say for example, a husband acts lovingly towards his wife but spends his days entertaining unloving thoughts. Or the father who knows he should be a kinder dad, but remains content speaking unkindly to his children.
If we’re struggling to become something new or better, are we appreciating our need to develop ourselves at each and every layer? Or do we constantly find ourselves solely ‘doing’ what we think we should do and wondering why we keep reverting to old ways of living? Can we fix broken behaviours if we don’t also commit to fixing their associated language, thoughts and ideologies?
It is as if we all have X reach/influence/perspective spanning out into the world around us from the core of our beings, like a sonar signal trying to get feedback on one’s surroundings, but each misalignment of our layers skews and dampens the signal decreasing both the quantity and quality of response information. Sometimes the signal we’re experimenting with is flawed which causes its own problems (such might be an idea or principle or truth that we’re trying to better know/understand/become etc.) but even when it’s a perfect signal, we handicap our own feedback & results.
I’m extremely thoroughly convinced that we all live lives in states FAR more blind than we realise and I’m just as convinced that our refusal to align the entirety (each and every layer) of our beings to the truths we know is one of if not the primary contributing factor to that blindness.
Commit to this challenge: Wake up through alignment and tell me you don’t genuinely feel more alive and psychologically aware than you have ever been before:
- Calculate your average weekly free time
- Dedicate at LEAST 55% (majority/more than half) of it to completion of the following tasks:
- Decide what is the MOST VALUABLE TRUTH you know you should next apply to your life, and aim to truly incorporate it into your being via your thoughts, words and actions for the period of time your conscience tells you would be required to truly wake yourself up. Somewhere between 30-90 days would be my recommendation but you make the call.
- Don’t waste any of your life entertaining thoughts or language that doesn’t help habitualise actions that align your being with your truth.
Tell me you don’t feel your conscience pricking at you as you read this and telling you to commit to the challenge. Listen to it. Vocalise/externalise that commitment right now by telling me/someone else/your journal ANYBODY of your desire to begin. Then let me know so I can support you while you do it and we can use our gathered experiences to help others do the same.
Let’s align, let’s wake up, let’s do it today!
Want help? Book a free chat and I’ll gladly walk you through my arsenal of tools, all at your disposal.
Edifying Success 