What determines whether you are happy or sad right now? What determines if I asked you Are you successful? How would you answer?
If I asked you do you have a healthy body? How would you respond?
Regarding the above, my question to you is - how do you know what the answer is? What makes you say “Yes I'm successful” or “No, not at all”, “Yeah have I got a great healthy body” or “No I don’t" ?
In other words, where do you get these answers from? When I ask you these questions, how do you know what to say?
The answers to your questions always come back to one thing; you have to answer them based on and in comparison with your own personal standards. Which means, if I ask you – Are you successful?
You answer them compared to your Personal standards of what success means to you…Am I right?
Does everyone hold the same personal standards? You and I both know that the answer is NO, And the different standards that we hold govern not only how we feel, but also how we behave. Ultimately, they govern what we do and who we become in our lives.
Our personal standards literally shapes our beliefs about what is good and what is bad, what we should do and what we must do, what we should not do and what we must never do; these personal standards are what I call RULES, The Wheel that keeps you moving.
(Hereon, I shall often use the term 'Rules' instead of 'personal standards')
Your wheel of Rules might be moving in the right direction and it might be working the best for you; or it might be moving in a wrong direction; even if you speed up, you will reach a wrong place faster.
And here’s the scary part "you didn't install your own rules". In fact, they are controlling how you feel right now about virtually everything in your life and in most cases you're probably aren't in control of them.
ONCE AGAIN! Are you really a successful person?
You may say “Absolutely” or “Hmmm kind of” or you may say “No”.
The answer you are giving me is based on the Rules that you have about success, this thing in the back of your head that says - ‘In order to be successful, I must do this-this-and-that or I must be/have this-this-and-that’...right?
Do you know someone personally who you think is really successful? But, if you spent time with them, you find out that they don’t think they’re really successful? I mean, by your standards you think “Wow this person’s doing really great, they have great family and friends, they have a great career, they have great luxuries” But, they think they’re not successful because of some blah blah reason, have you come across such thing?...Now that clearly indicates, all of them need not necessarily hold the same Rules.
This is just one example, but most people have a set of rules that control how they think and feel. They make it real hard to feel good and real easy to feel bad.
People who say they’re not successful in answering this question, invariably have a long list of things that has to happen for them to feel successful. They have long list of things saying for example - “Hmmm I want be incredibly rich, unlimited income, I have to change the world, I must have my close ones be absolutely perfect all the time, I have to be in emotional state of happiness in every moment from the time I wake up till the time I fall asleep”. Duh crap!
