Author: Negin M. Khorasani

Editor: Kim Hansen

Are you feeling enthusiastic and motivated to do what you need to do every day?

Unfortunately, the answer to this question for most of us is “No”!

That’s because we think we know what we are seeking and what we want to be, or to have, and now we just need to work hard in that direction. We console ourselves that it’s normal to not feel so good when it comes to working our way towards our goals. After all, it’s hard work! So, in a way, we normalise ‘not feeling good’ or ‘not feeling joyous’ in our life. The remedy for many people is to take a break every now and then and go on a vacation, where they relax, party, and feel good, which usually ends up being a few days of excessive drinking and numbing themselves to how they really feel about their life. 

By addressing the problem in this way, we forget that most of what we are pursuing in our life has not been chosen consciously. Rather our actions and choices are a result of our programming – from our family, our culture, the society and the world at large. As we were growing up, we were taught certain standards and values. We learned our parents’ wishes and ideals. We started going to school and were influenced by our teachers, peers, the educational system, etc. We chose our directions in college or our majors at university based on what we believed we had to do to be valuable, loved and accepted by the world, from our parents to the larger society. From there things started coming our way as a result of the choices we made. We started to work in certain environments and socialized with certain groups of people, and started our intimate relationships based on the group of people we were exposed to… and life unfolded as it did and as we know it now.

We have never had the space and freedom to look deeply into who we truly are; what are the things we personally value, regardless of what people around us think are important. We have never had the chance to uncover and know the true us! We remain a stranger to our real being. Our educational system focusses on acquiring information and knowledge from outside, learning how others think through reading the books and articles they have written. I am not trying to say that we should not learn in these ways. It can be very beneficial to some extent. But on the other hand, there must be an education from within. Part of our attention, must be directed to what we perceive from within ourselves, our inner whispers, and insights. If we would give ourselves the chance to discover our personal values and deepest longings, we would choose many things differently based on our inner guidance. We might study something else, we might spend our time differently, we might hang out with different people, our relationships might look very different.

So, in the lives most of us live, we are fulfilling other people’s needs and desires, we are following other people’s dreams and agendas. It’s no wonder that despite all of our achievements resulting from a lifetime of dedication to our work, we remain unfulfilled, unsatisfied and empty at some level!

Now, I am not saying all this to blame anybody or to focus on missed opportunities. I am just illustrating a different reality that is possible based on a deeper understanding of ourself and following our inner guidance so that we can pause and think about that possibility now. What makes us alive is being able to do things in the way we truly long to do them, and simply to be in the way we truly long to be. It’s like a dance that is most enjoyable when we dance as if nobody is watching us. That is when the dancer becomes the dance. When we make choices based on our inner guidance, we are living in congruence with our inner being; we are living a life of authenticity and inner fulfillment. To me, this living from inside out is the solution to feel joyous throughout the journey.  Living in this way, we are deeply aware of the ‘why’ of all the choices we make, we are in complete harmony. What we think is based on our inner values and deepest longings. How we feel guides us to how we must speak or behave at any given moment, in order to remain loyal to our inner values and fulfill our deepest longings.

The good news is that it is never too late to start living from inside out! It is never too late to have a more refreshing and joyous experience in our day-to-day life. How can we live this way? It obviously takes a fair bit of inner inquiry and diving deeper in understanding ourselves. There are many tools that can help us on this path; meditation is one of them. Paying attention to our feelings, judgments and thoughts, and figuring out the needs behind them is important. Journaling can be a powerful tool on this journey.

At Be 8nfinite we have created a program precisely to assist you in discovering who you are at a deep level and uncovering your deepest longings. “The Journey to Find Your Joy” is a three-week program designed to facilitate your journey through a set of psychological tests and carefully crafted questions and conversations. The gap between sessions allows you to focus on the coursework through contemplation and journaling and to come up with your answers from within. By the end of the program, you will be able to have a clear understanding about your true self, your deeper values and longings. This new level of consciousness of your Self will inevitably transform your life. You will start incorporating lifestyle changes, adding new effective activities to your daily routine, and eliminating unconscious habits that have not been particularly useful for you. Your life starts to change and your feeling about your life starts to change. You will experience a new-found sense of freshness, enthusiasm and joy on a daily basis.