So by now, I’ve hopefully put forward a pretty clear case as to how good, reliable, honourable and empowering edification is. Since it’s not our default behaviour and requires work to filter through the consumables that aren’t going to end up doing us any good, it can seem too difficult and too distant for us to efficiently access edifying experiences but the reality is our world is entirely full of them each and every day.
Every opportunity to gratify is an opportunity to consciously choose to edify. Doing so in even the simplest of ways can quickly begin providing positive feedback and experiences of personal growth, while compounding those ‘rewards’ through consistently making the edifying choice can provide what feel like a wormhole propelling us into a completely different world. A world where our senses are heighted, we see, hear and smell everything more clearly, life tastes better and feels limitless.
At the end of the day, we have to consciously acknowledge the reality that the small decisions matter. Especially any small decision that has any capacity to compound through common reoccurrence. The propulsion of momentum made available through consistent edifying choices, even in the smallest and simplest of daily matters, can quickly take us to a place where we’re overwhelmingly fulfilled. Thinking the small decisions to edify aren’t worth the effort is exactly why we don’t return there more often. We must be willing to explicitly say to ourselves that developing our edifying habits is more powerful than we realise.
We’re more capable of good than we think
It’s natural for us to live life thinking we’re not as good as others, or that we’re trapped by our failings, or we’ve ‘missed the boat’ to become the best version of ourselves, already drowning in too many bad habits, but all of that is too far from the truth to be helpful beliefs. The reality is as long as there’s any life left in us, we have the capacity to improve, and even the smallest of improvements matter, especially when we’re able to improve their consistency.
Remembering that all failures, all gratifications, all weaknesses, all depravity, is but progress away for any of us, the same ‘pathway of progress’ leads both in and out. The number of people or situations where escape, improvement, and progress towards an entirely superior way of life isn’t available is going to be extremely low to nearly zero. The primary contributing factor to our staying exactly where we are, descending into further gratification, or insisting on improvement, is going to be ourselves, our own willingness to allow things to get better. Although we can certainly drive and drive hard, a lot of the time all that’s required to improve our situation is for us to stop investing into the gratification, and allow edification to take a greater hold of our lives. I’m not going to delve too deeply here into the power of ‘let’ as I’m intending on doing so in one of my subsequent books ‘Edifying inspiration’, but suffice it to say that the path we want to be on is rarely one that requires new establishment but is much more likely to be one that is already very well paved and already freely flowing with traffic and momentum, meaning we can get up and going with the already existing flow and shouldn’t fear an enormously difficult task of pioneering a new way. Although yes, it may very well be very new to us, but once we’re travelling on it we’ll realise just how many others are already on it, how many have been before and how much are sure to follow.
Once on that road, we’ll start to see a little more clearly those countless gratifying, painful and completely unnecessary difficulties that we spend our lives heaping on ourselves as we begin to realise that things we needed weren’t so critical after all. We can begin distancing ourselves from our own habitual blindness and more clearly recognise that the ‘better world’ we craved for was largely already available to us and many people all around us were already living in it. Addictions, and I don’t just mean the obvious ones like drugs, but distraction (my own biggest addiction), filterlessness, anger, sugar, the rat race, drama, whatever it may be, can too often feel like a normal, inescapable part of everyone’s lives. This is of course until we get ourselves on a completely different road, finally getting our head above the surface realising that we’ve been underwater the whole time, recognising that millions of people carry on living without ever concerning themselves twice with our unique addictions. We’ll always have trials, unquestionably, but to think “our current trials are ones we must live with throughout our entire lives”, I argue is far more self-inflicted than anything else. We can be free. It doesn’t mean we won’t have to fight to stay free, fighting the same battles or different ones, but we all can escape.
The main thing separating us from engaging in life’s greatest accomplishments is our honest willingness to work toward it. We’re all capable of edifying ourselves out of whatever holes we’ve buried ourselves in. It’s all only edifying progress away. Once again, to all who honestly believe that their biggest bottle-neck is a lack of opportunity, I would once again point you to a thorough self-analysis to first ensure you’re really making the most of what you’ve already got. I argue that in more cases than not, opportunity presents itself to the appropriately prepared. To nearly every single one of us who is betting our lottery numbers on ‘opportunity’, the act of doing so is concrete evidence of how unprepared we are. We would be wise to always assume we’re more blind than we think and as such should remain committed to regular self-assessments, ensuring we’re at least periodically attempting to see clearly.
Once more, we must all answer. We must all take responsibility. We’re only going to be worse off by pretending it’s somebody else’s problem. It’s our problem, and the solution surely starts with us all individually. We must repetitively align ourselves to our own conscience, and demonstrate the beautiful benefits of living in such a way as to help persuade others to do the same. As cliché as it may sound, it remains our job to raise the global standard of human sensitivity.
Once more, if you haven’t already, commit today to minimising the world’s desensitisation through proactively improving your own sensitivity to your own conscience. Commit to edification: to aligning your life with whatever your conscience is telling you would be best for you; forsake gratification, and helpfully help others do the same.
We have a responsibility to do what we can not just towards ourselves, but also to those in our circles of influence. We all have the power to become so accustomed to edification that it’s a normal part of our every day lives. Let us take advantage of the opportunity we have to live, but ensuring we live well. Let’s prioritise the things that help the most, to increase our capacity to be good. The power to get momentum going and build it quickly is more accessible than we realise. The amount of edifying material around us is immensely innumerable, but it’s not the default, so we simple need to ensure that we proactively look for it. Through the honest pursuit of edification we can quickly find it to propel us upward faster and further than we can currently imagine.
Edifying Success 