style="font-size:15px;"> And never stops at all.
We too can be in touch with our inner world and let our creativity blossom. When we're hopeful and open to receiving inspiration, our imagination is fired, ideas seem to come to us out of the blue, and we feel joyful and alive. We're affirming our creative nature and can put our energy into making the future brighter.
I turn inward to access the power of my imagination.
I am putting my creative energy into making the future brighter.
I find myself in a new and wonderful world.
8. Living with integrity
One of the most important things for us to do when we want to change our lives for the better is to pay attention to the spiritual dimension of ourselves, just as much as we take care of the physical, mental, and emotional aspects. All four aspects of ourselves have to be part of the equation of the whole person that we are.
Having integrity is not about fitting in, pleasing others, telling lies, and modifying our behavior accordingly in order to achieve something. It's about living with the energies of the higher vibrations and being in touch with who we truly are. We are happier when we live our truth. The authentic self is naturally balanced and is the real source of self-esteem, courage, and imagination.
Living with integrity doesn't require us to have more time or more resources. We can begin exactly where we are. When we choose hope and commit to working to change the circumstances of our lives through altering our attitude and behavior, we begin to see the possibilities for things to be different and find the courage to pursue them.
Shirin Ebadi is an Iranian lawyer and was Iran's first female judge. With the Islamic Revolution of 1979, women were forbidden to judge men, so she was demoted and given a job with clerical duties instead. Rather than compromise her integrity, she resigned her post, and it was not until 1992 that she was able to set up her own practice. Unlike others, however, she did not leave Iran but chose to stand by her principles and oppose the regime. She worked as a consultant, offering legal advice, writing articles, and speaking out in public about the rights of the most vulnerable in Iranian society—women, children, dissidents, and minorities—and pushing for legal change. In 2003, she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts, but this put her under even greater pressure from the Iranian government (she had been closely monitored since the 1990s with phone tapping, death threats, and imprisonment).
Shirin paid a high price for her integrity. Her family, including her two daughters, were put under enormous strain because of her activities; her brother and sister suffered many interrogations; and after she was forced to leave Iran in 2009, her husband was framed, imprisoned, and beaten (they subsequently divorced after thirty-seven years of marriage). She tells her story in her powerful memoir, Until We are Free: My Fight for Human Rights in Iran. Her aim in writing it was to show what the people of Iran have had to endure under the police state of the last decade, particularly the many Iranian political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, especially journalists, lawyers, women's rights activists, and students who oppose the regime. Her integrity and courage are hugely to be admired and demonstrate what is possible for a human being to achieve in such circumstances.
I try always to live with integrity.
I am committed to changing the circumstances of my life through changing my attitude.
I am finding the courage to pursue new possibilities.
9. Clarifying our vision
Whatever it is that we hope for in our lives—the basic requirements of health, home, relationships, and a means of livelihood if those things are problematic for us; to overcome some past trauma or hurt and to move on with our lives; or something we long to do but have not so far had the opportunity to try, or we hesitate to attempt—clarifying what we really want for ourselves is vital. We can begin by visualizing what we want in our life, what it might look like, and how we might feel with it in our life, and then imagining the steps to achieving it.
Everything we create in our life starts out as a mental image in our minds, whatever we're doing, whether it's baking a cake or planning a holiday or designing a garden. So we have practical experience of the fact that it's not difficult to harness the natural power of our imagination to create a clear image of how we want our life to be. When we form that mental image, we can then allow it to become the experience so that we really can see and feel ourselves in the situation we want, giving it hopeful, positive energy. It's important to be in as relaxed a state as possible, in day-dreaming mode as it were.
It may be helpful to write down in a specially designated notebook our goal and the steps needed to achieve it. Visions can become reality when we are specific and when we work on visualizing our future—perhaps for five to ten minutes a day, whatever situation we're in. Consistency is important, as is the need for flexibility, so that we can adapt and reposition ourselves should the unexpected happen, as it likely will.
Using actual images is also helpful. It's said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and certainly the subconscious mind does not distinguish between a real or imagined situation. Using images also works because it overrides any negative self-talk that gets in the way of achieving our objective. It's also a way of telling the universe of our wish to manifest something different for the future.
We can collect images from magazines or draw pictures of what we want to create and paste them into our notebook or on a board so that we can use them as reminders. We can place them where we will be able to see them every day, perhaps on our dressing table, our desk, or in the kitchen. We can try to picture ourselves in this future scenario and how it feels. Imagining a timeline is helpful too—“by X, I will have achieved Y,” etc. Constantly reviewing and making adjustments to this work in progress is also a good idea.
Gradually, as time passes, identifying our goals and working toward them become a habit. With a new way of life, with a sense of purpose, we begin to feel differently, we begin to behave differently—and things begin to change.
I proclaim to the universe that I am manifesting something magnificent for the future.
I am using my imagination to create a picture of how my new life is unfolding.
I am developing a sense of purpose.
10. Embracing our unique destiny
When we follow our dreams, we're choosing hope over fear. Instead of feeling as though we're staring into an abyss and everything is hopelessly impossible, we dare to believe that things can be better. Our current circumstances can change because we choose to change. We can become commensurate with what life offers us now, seeing the possibilities that are there, and envisioning a future that is more alive and meaningful. Mark Nepo, a poet-author of great insight and understanding, wrote: “Our job is to nourish the spark of life we each carry inside us.” Our unique destiny is to live a life that is meaningful and therefore makes us happy.
Victor Frankl, the famous Viennese psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust and wrote about his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp in his best-selling book, Man's Search for Meaning, concluded that it was “meaning” that made
