Reflection Guide:
As we celebrate fathers day, let’s reflect on the greatest gift your father gave you.
My loving father taught me that no one is perfect and that I can be happy if I accept myself for who I am, improve areas that can be improved and give of my best to the world, starting from my own little world, my family, my team, my community and so on.
I love and respect my dad; Stephen Richard Francis De Silva, who left us 16 years ago to enjoy eternal happiness.
The Most Beautiful Poem of All Time by Nefthali Hoyos Barrena
Discover the secret to happiness in this soul nourishing poem
I hope this could be useful in nourishing your soul with hope, aspiration, positivity and confidence to deal with the present and gear up for the future.
Please feel free to share this poem with others who can benefit and communicate with me if you would like to share your thoughts.
Today’s Quote for Reflection
I have learnt that we keep discovering our higher purpose as we live life once we discover the notion of purpose and is conscious of its existence. This had got me in to the habit of reflecting, reviewing, refreshing and re-writing my purpose every month.
The first part of my current purpose statement is;
Inspire others to live a purposeful life based on their own evolving beliefs, values and methods.
This is based on my discovery of how my beliefs, values and methods evolved during my first-person inquiry and my discovery of how different people have different beliefs, values and methods that evolve as they attempt to live purposefully, during my second-person inquiry. First- and second-person inquiry are methods of action research that I adopt in my doctoral research into the notion of ‘purposeful living’. Continue reading “Take a JUMP in to your purpose – Purpose of Living – Part 36”
The question for today’s blog post is; How can we use messages from our sub-conscious mind to live more purposefully? We have been exploring the notion of purpose and purposeful living over the past 33 posts and hence I assume the notion is clear to you. Therefore, let’s directly move on to exploring the sub-conscious mind and how we can use it to live purposefully.
The idea of deeper levels of information processing was developed and extensively studied by famous Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939). According to him, the mind could be divided into conscious, subconscious and unconscious levels. The Conscious Mind – defines all thoughts and actions within our awareness. For example, the beauty and pleasance of the smell of a red tulip. The Unconscious Mind– defines all past events and memories, inaccessible to us no matter how hard we try to remember to bring things up. For example, the first time you had ice cream, or how it felt to be able to speak for the first time. The Subconscious Mind defines all reactions and automatic actions we can become aware of if we think about them. For example, our ability to ride a bicycle: once we get skilled we stop thinking about balancing, when to pedal, when to break, when to speed up, when to slow down, when to bend etc., but when we think about it later, we become aware about all the action we took.
After having been a student and teacher of how to master ourselves by living a purposeful life and programming our own mind, for the past twenty five years and believing that this is one of the best methods available to help us live a happy and successful life, finding ‘Releasing’ (or did Releasing find me?) has opened possibilities I thought never existed.
Sometimes opportunities find us when we welcome them. And perhaps it was one such serendipitous moment when my guru Omar Khan, who helped me find purpose and live purposefully about 25-years ago, offered to conduct the ‘Releasing Discovery’ workshop. Releasing, also presented under the rubric of The Sedona Method (same methodology with a different presenter), has been hailed by people like Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, was showcased in the best-selling The Secret, has been the subject of numerous testimonials from leading authorities like Dr. David Hawkins, Michael Singer and others in terms of being an exemplar of “inside out” breakthroughs. Continue reading “Purposeful Living through Releasing – Purpose of Living – Part 32”
Have you ever faced a situation where you have a purpose that clashes with the purpose of a colleague, such as your boss, peer or a direct report? Has this situation led to misunderstandings, arguments, anger, click formation, politicking and even violence that starts affecting the business of the organisation? How did you handle the situation? Has it made you become disgruntled about the notion of ‘purposeful living’ and even resulted in discouraging team members in living purposefully. I will try to address this issue in this blog post from the experience I have had in dealing with such situations as a team member from within the organisation or as a consultant and coach from outside the organisation. Continue reading “When purposes clash at the workplace – Purpose of Living – Part 25”
My work over the last 20 years around the notion of purpose has informed me of diverse viewpoints about purpose. These viewpoints are defined by the values and beliefs of different persons I was fortunate enough to interact with. Attempting to articulate at least a glimpse of one’s purpose may require an appreciation of such values and beliefs, so that such a purpose does not conflict with who the person is and his/her viewpoint of the nature of the world. Therefore, I would like to dedicate this blog post to various religious viewpoints regarding purpose of life. The next blog post will be dedicated to the scientific viewpoints regarding purpose of life. Continue reading “Purposeful Living – Part 3: The Religious Viewpoint”
This image is the sunrise at the ‘Ashridge Business School’ captured earlier this month during my quarterly stay there. I consider this my spiritual home that nourishes my soul as I pursue my doctoral studies. This is a place that helps me grow towards my fullest potential, giving me real inner happiness during the process.
Perhaps you are one of those people who is always tasting success and living happily. Perhaps you are one who observes others in this way of living. Perhaps you are one who is searching for the ‘how’ to achieve such a state of life. This blog is designed to discuss how such a state of life can be achieved.
While there could be millions of ways of making sense of success and happiness, my personal belief is that success comes from improving in areas that are purposeful to me. I am refereeing to action that is driven by a higher purpose as I keep on my quest to make sense of what that higher purpose is. Happiness is what I experience when I am in the process of improving in areas important to me.
What is important to me is my purpose that helps me to be of service to the world and thereby helping me to provide a comfortable and purposeful life for my family and me. This requires me to improve my spirituality that gives me peace of mind, and improves my brain, which helps me learn and teach, improve my body, which helps me act effectively and efficiently, improve my relationships, which provides the love to live purposefully, improve my emotions to be in joy, improve my finances to help fund my purpose and improve the use of my time choosing to do purposeful work.
Continue reading “Universal Energy Sync – For Success and Happiness”
It was really heart warming to see the visions and hear the sound bites of the Inter-faith conference held in Colombo Sri Lanka as a part of the visit by His Holiness Pope Francis on the 1st day of his 3 day visit to Sri Lanka. The conference was led by some of the most senior leaders of Buddhism [followed by the majority of Sri Lankans], Hinduism, Islam and other Christian religions. It was attended by over 1000 members of the clergy of each of the religions. The ceremony included a welcome from a Catholic Bishop, a chant from a Buddhist Monk, blessings from Hindu and Muslim leaders, and an ecumenical Christian prayer led by the head of Sri Lanka’s Anglican church. Each speaker had a message that had peace, unity, reconciliation and respect for each other. Pope Francis said inter-faith work should not blur the lines between different religious convictions and he sought to reaffirm respect for each religion’s beliefs but to ground such respect in a full and forthright presentation of our respective convictions and that religion cannot be used for violent purposes. The Sri Lankan Muslim leader Ash-Sheikh M.F.M. Fazil said, “I will fail in my duties if I do not mention the attack, the killings, that took place in France, in Pakistan,” Fazil said; “Children were massacred and killed in the name of Islam. As we know very well, Islam has no relationship with regard to such practices and evil conduct and deeds,” he continued. “Islam promoted peace, love, and harmony.One of Sri Lanka’s senior Buddhist leaders Niyangoda Vijithasiri Thero who delivered a sermon mentioned all religions are important and used the metaphor of different treatment methods to cure the same disease.
Sri Lanka’s newly elected president, Maithripala Sirisena, was at the airport to welcome the pontiff and in his welcome speech mentioned that he is blessed to have the Holy father visit soon after his elections and requested for his prayers. This is significant coming from a Buddhist, the 1st citizen of a Buddhist country.
The Mass by the pope was not only attended by the Buddhist but by members of other religions and many of them had mentioned to the media that this is one of the most significant days of their life. All this augurs well for inter-faith corporation and understanding that can lead to peace, unity and reconciliation. The world has seen many efforts of unity by world leaders.
In December 2014 President Barack Obama went in to a peace deal with Cuba with a symbolic prisoner exchange and anticipated reforms by Cuba and lifting of embargos by the USA. In January 2015 all political parties in Sri Lanka united to appoint a President known for his virtues and to form a government that will reform the political culture in Sri Lanka. A few days ago most world leaders gathered in Paris to show solidarity after the attacks in Paris. It was significant that both the leaders of Israel and Palestine were a part of the world leaders who had locked hands together in solidarity. In the backdrop of the various conflicts, terrorism and armed conflicts going on around the world, these are efforts to find love, peace, truth, justice, reconciliation, unity, progress and happiness to make our efforts to finding love, peace, truth, justice, reconciliation, unity, progress and happiness to make our world a better place.
Ranjan De Silva 