How to Pursue the Life, Experiences, Work You Want to Live, Have, Do

Practical steps and strategies to manifest the life you want to live

What you seek is seeking you. -Rumi

Choices

Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth. -Rumi

Everything we do or do not do in our life is a choice that we make. We can choose to excel or choose not to excel. We can choose to bring focus and quality to what we do or choose not to. We can get stressed about things beyond our control or choose not to. We can choose to let other people upset us or choose not to. We can choose to approach obstacles and react to challenging situations in positive ways or in negative ways. We can choose to dwell on the negative or the positive. We can choose to embrace our dreams and go after them or not.

These are our choices and our choices create our life. These choices determine whether we manifest the life we want to live or not.

Decisions

The universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are. -Rumi

We decide to choose the life we want to live.

There has never been an athletic champion, successful leader, successful scientist, masterful artist or maker, or a person living an extraordinary life that did not decide that he or she was going to go after his or her goals with full focus.

If we want to live the life of our dreams, at some point we have to decide to do it with full focus. After we decide, we pursue our dream and follow a path with full focus and commitment. Then, we decide to persist through the challenges again and again. People who are successful, persist through the challenges. They decide to persist. They choose to persist.

How do they do that?

Our Why’s

Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. Seek the path that demands your whole being. -Rumi

People that are living and manifesting extraordinary experiences and things know their why’s, and their why’s are very important to them.

• Why are you doing what you are doing?
• What are you hoping your pursuit will give you in the short and long run?
• What do you like or love about doing it?
• What are the feelings you are looking for in pursuing it?

Our why’s must be sustainable.

When we can sustain the personal reason, desire, purpose, focus, love or joy in the pursuit, our choice is attainable, possible. Our why’s support us, energize us, excite us, and keep us in action.

Our why’s help us focus.

Our why’s help us choose to focus on the positives rather than the negatives, choose to focus on the opportunities rather than the challenges, choose to bring a fully engaged focus to our pursuit, choose to focus fully on the next step rather than the distractions, choose to learn from our lessons and grow.

Our why’s help us continue to choose our dream.

When we see the control we have over our choices, our focus, we feel empowered, energized, joyful.

Key steps to pursue and manifest the life you want to live, the work you want to do

Focus

Focus is the key ingredient that guides us on our path, that drives our success. What is focus? Staying positive, staying fully connected to our dream, acting consistently, being persistent.

We have to choose to focus, decide to focus, commit to improving our focus so that it works for us.

It’s a practice. A regular practice. We choose to practice every day. If you are practicing physically, why not be there totally and practice mentally too? Fully focused, fully present, fully connected. We learn how to focus, and we learn to practice.

• Do you have a way to get into your best focused state?
• Are you working on improving the quality and consistency of your focus?
• Are you working on focusing on the little things that work best for you?
• Are you working on focusing on the duration of a step, research, action? Can you do better? How?

Commitment

In each moment the fire rages, it will burn away a hundred veils. And carry you a thousand steps toward your goal. -Rumi

Commitment is a key ingredient in guiding us along our path. With focused commitment, we can achieve almost anything. Without it, our desires, dreams, goals are not possible.

Our commitment requires focus, requires us to learn and grow. Our why’s are our source of commitment and helps it grow. We celebrate the special moments, we absorb our self in our mission, we love the experience of ongoing personal growth in the areas we are pursuing. We feel fully alive. We become more competent. This renews commitment.

Commitment is required through each obstacle, each step. We look for the possibilities surrounding the obstacle, focusing on what is in our control, taking the next step and the next. If we waver, we remember our why’s, we find joy in the simple daily pursuit, we find joy in the little victories or the small steps forward. We embrace the ongoing learning.

We, also, commit to taking time for physical, mental, and emotional recovery. Sometimes the best way forward is to listen to your body, your heart, and respect your basic need of rest, relaxation, space, good nutrition, and joyful moments away from your pursuit.

• Are your goals, dreams clear?
• Are you doing something every day to take you one step closer?
• Are you keeping an aspect of joy in your pursuit of your best life, work, self?

Mental Readiness

Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open. -Rumi

There is a big difference between talking about what we want to do and being mentally ready to do it. Mental readiness is being positive, focused, persistent, and fully committed to acting on our intentions. We choose to get mentally ready. We choose the path because we want to, not because we feel forced to. We choose to see opportunities rather than obligations.

Being mentally ready means being ready to take action, be in action, take decisive action. Being mentally ready means being ready to focus on our dream today, this week, this month. Our readiness improves through practice.

We bring mental readiness to preparing, practicing, deciding, acting, learning, looking for opportunities, focusing, continually shifting into a positive mindset.

• Are you ready to take action, be in action?
• Are you carrying a positive mindset? Can you do better? How?
• Are you looking for the opportunities in everything?
• Are you carrying a perspective of ongoing learning and growing?
• Are you remaining open to new possibilities?

Positive Visions and Images

Don’t you know yet? It is your light that lights the worlds. -Rumi

Your thoughts become things. All accomplishments and seemingly impossible experiences begin with a single vision, thought, image. A clear vision. And, we make sure we put our self in the vision.

In order to manifest our dreams, we need to sustain our positive vision and continue to focus on it. We visualize joy in the pursuit, joy in the learning, joy in the small steps, joy in the little victories, joy in the daily tasks, joy in the competence building, joy in the confidence we build. We visualize joy in living the life we really want to live.

We all start at the beginning. We all don’t know how. But, if we look for and see the positives in each step, we manifest our dream step-by-step in a joyful way. We want to visualize and manifest the positive great feelings along the path, during the journey.

• Do you have a clear big vision of what you want to manifest?
• Do you visit the vision regularly?
• Are you in the picture? Are you imagining yourself doing exactly what you need to do, accomplishing the things you want to accomplish, and being the way you would prefer to be?
• Are you energizing your positive images by taking action on them every day?
• Do your visions inspire you?

Confidence

I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think. -Rumi

Confidence is an essential ingredient. Confidence comes from committing our self to the work, the practice, talking to our self in positive ways, drawing lessons from experiences, acting on the lessons, remaining positive through the challenges. Confidence comes from maintaining our focus, remembering our why’s.

Confidence grows when we believe in ourselves, when we believe in the process, when we believe we can figure things out.

We rarely start with confidence. But we grow it by feeling joyful in the things we do well, acknowledging our improvements, learning from our successes and stumbles, absorbing the wisdom of others, and discovering that focus frees us to be our best.

The only way to increase our confidence is to continue to focus on the right things.

Remember that someone believes in you, think in positive ways about your abilities, think about your why’s, write down a list of reasons why you can achieve your goals, act as if you can do it, think about your successes, find the positive parts of all your experiences, think about how you will achieve your goals.

• What will you focus on? What is the right next step?
• Do you believe you can reach your dreams and goals? Are you looking for reasons to believe you can reach your dreams and goals?
• Are you talking to yourself in ways that make you feel positive?
• Are you choosing to be confident?
• Are you looking for the good things, the successes every day, every week and celebrating them?
• Are you acting as if you can do it?

Distraction Control

This is focusing through distractions or not letting distractions interfere with our path, our journey, our success. We can control and reduce distraction when we reduce stress, maintain a positive focus, regain a positive focus when we get distracted, stay focused on taking our next step, get adequate rest, stay on our own path and not someone else’s.

Great performers in athletics and the arts often use simple reminders, mantras, sayings, or images to reconnect them with their why, or something positive that is within their immediate limits of control.

• Are you carrying a perspective that allows you to avoid or minimize stress and distractions?
• Are you getting better at turning negatives into positives?
• Can you refocus quickly and regain control when you encounter challenges, stumbles, distractions?
• Do you have a mantra or saying to refocus?
• Do you have a plan to deal with distractions? Are you using it?

Ongoing Learning

Those that manifest the life and work they want to live follow their own path. They are self-directed learners. They love the path of self-discovery, learning, growing, testing themselves, getting outside their comfort zones. They act on their discoveries and lessons learned. They find joy in the discoveries, the learning, the small steps forward. They reflect often on what they did well, what needs to improve, and what mindset frees them to do well.

• Are you committed to ongoing learning? Learning something from all experiences?
• Are you reflecting on lessons learned?
• Are you acting on those lessons?
• Are you enjoying the learning, the lessons, the growing? If not, how can you shift your mindset to do so?

Conclusion

As you start to walk on the way, the way appears. -Rumi

Manifesting the life, experiences, and work we want to have is a lifelong journey that we can choose.

We can choose all of it. We can decide to do it.

We start. We start where we are. We just start.

And so it is, that both the devil and the angelic spirits present us with objects of desire to awaken our power of choice. -Rumi