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Browse every published article connected to Dante Petrilla, with exact attribution and full-archive search.
Articles
Browse every published article connected to Dante Petrilla, or search within this exact expert archive.
I once heard someone say that sometimes you can't always choose happiness, and it really made me think. Is that actually true? Are there circumstances or individuals who make it impossible for us to choose happiness? Well, certainly there are circumstances and people that may certainly make it difficult. But difficult is not impossible.
Most certainly, happiness is a choice, a decision each and every one of us gets to make in every moment of every day. And yet the world is populated by so many unhappy people. It seems on the face of it to make little sense. Why would so many people choose to be unhappy?
Today, I would like to offer you a challenge that will help you to understand how your beliefs impact your experience of reality and what you attract into your life. Most people don't take the time to examine what their beliefs are and they stumble through life as a result, often with little or no direction. Becoming aware of your beliefs and then determining to change those that are not supportive is a huge first step in changing your life. Now here's the challenge:
William Shakespeare said, "Our doubts are traitors...” If you spend a little time thinking about this quote, you’ll realise its significance and simplistic truth. The doubts that you carry around with you and repeat to yourself over and over again throughout the day serve only to prevent you from trying new things, expanding your sphere of influence, improving yourself and making a true and lasting contribution to the world. They also serve to shatter your dreams.
The bird awakens in the morning and immediately tackles the task at hand. The bird lives in the now. It does what is required of it now. It does not spend time wallowing in thoughts of the past or dreaming of the future. It is alive now and it lives for now. The bird must eat, so it goes to familiar places where it knows there is food to eat. If there is no food to be found at these places, it does not worry or complain or even think about this. It simply continues its search for food, which is required now.
What do you want? Take a moment. Really think about it. I mean it. Don’t just keep reading on without taking the time to answer that question. Stop now and seriously consider the question – what do you want? Do you know the main reason why people do not get what they want? They have never taken the time to figure out exactly what they want! Now that you’ve taken the time to consider this seemingly simple question, what did you come up with? Did you find it easy to come up with the answer? Did you have several answers?
We all have dreams of the wonderful life we wish to manifest for ourselves. We all want that perfect job, lifestyle, partner and all the things that go along with a perfect life. And the truth is that the vast majority of us fall far short of achieving anything near what we truly wish for ourselves. We live a life of quiet desperation as Thoreau put it.
While we always have the choice to look to the positive, we have to acknowledge that life is not always a bed of roses. Things don’t always turn out the way we hoped or imagined they should, even if we’ve done absolutely everything right. We get let down, badly hurt, by people we love dearly, and we thought would never hurt us. Quite naturally, we get angry. If we let the anger stew, it turns to bitte ess and resentment, even to hatred if we permit it.
When you're considering the concept of success and how to be successful in life, the first thing you need to do is to decide exactly what success means to you. Define it in clear, precise, measurable terms, and decide exactly what things need to happen in order for you to be successful in different areas in your life. Define it for each area, i.e. money, career, relationship, family, spirituality, personal development, etc.
If you're feeling somewhat lost, like you're not quite sure what to do, where to go next and questioning why you're here at all, please stop for a moment. Start to consider yourself from a different point of view. If you've ever asked yourself, "What am I here for? What is the meaning of all this," and asked the question in a negative way as if you were saying, "This is all pointless," you need to change the way you're looking at this and ask the question in a different light.
This time of year tends to be a bit gloomy for a lot of people, or to put it more accurately, people tend to embrace gloomy thoughts and attitudes in the Winter season. The reasons or excuses for this phenomenon are many, but are really not relevant to this piece. We’re going to focus on solutions here, not on problems! So here are 5 ways to help you boost your mood and get rid of those depressing thoughts:
You've probably seen the movie The Secret, and chances are if you're reading this article, you're interested in the Law of Attraction. You know that the idea is that like attracts like or that which is like unto itself is drawn. It's a simple concept. The question is this: Is the Law of Attraction the real thing? I have to say that upon hearing about this, watching The Secret, and learning that some people had great success using this while others did not, I was somewhat skeptical.
It’s not what happens to us in our lives, but what we do with what happens that makes the true difference. This is a notion, a truth, that has its roots in 100% responsibility, and this is precisely why many people do not believe or agree with it and often respond with anger to it. When you look at your life, you have to understand that you must take all the responsibility for where you are right now. Your current situation is the product of your thoughts and actions up to this point.
Finding your divine purpose is not as difficult as you might imagine. If this is actually true, then why do so few people actually achieve this, and go through the motions of life without purpose or reason, feeling lost, unfulfilled and disconnected? The answer is simple. Most people do not like to think. It’s too much like hard work, and most people will run a mile to avoid some serious thought.
What we say to ourselves and how we say it have such a tremendous power to shape our lives. In fact, as you take a close look at your life right now you need to realise that who and where you are right now is the result of what you have thought up to this moment. That’s right, every action you have taken has brought you to where you are right now. And as Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us, “The ancestor of every action is a thought.” Everything, absolutely everything begins with thought.
We hear that our thoughts are powerful in metaphysical, new-age circles these days. They have the power to shape the course of your life, determine your destiny, and even have obvious physical effects on your body. The quality of your thoughts can either make or break your life. It is certainly worth considering the idea that our thoughts are not simply random and meaningless. Their effects may be more far-reaching and powerful than any of us realise.
The Monarch caterpillar has no choice. From the time it emerges out into the world to become an eating machine, it has but one destiny: it will transform into a Monarch Butterfly. It is a necessary part of its life cycle. It begins life in one form and will end it in an entirely different form. We consider this transformation to be an amazing feat of nature, and yet in viewing it with such awe, we forget that we ourselves often transform in even more dramatic and powerful ways. There is a crucial difference though: We have a choice. To transform or not to transform?