What IF You Don't Have the Resources to be Successful?

When you have unlimited resources, the goals / priorities / focus don’t really matter. If you have twice as much money and the time to achieve a simple task to getting it right the first time isn’t as important as you might have otherwise thought.

The idea of “having enough resources” is just a logical interpretation of your current situation. Most of the time, it’s an attitude issue, related to your prioritizing skills.

It might seem like you have to achieve success the first time around — or that you might run out of money, manpower and experience — but what if that just might be a perception illusion. What if getting it right the first time means that you only achieve mediocrity? Is that good enough for you? What if running out of money means you have to deliver a product that isn’t beautiful? Does beauty matter? What about functionality? How would you make the product ready for market?

You subconsciously place all kinds of restrictions and inhibitions around what you need to do in order to be successful — magically hoping that by playing by the rules your  formula for success will yield better results than the last time.

There is no scarcity. No real scarcity for anything that matters. As long as you can think and work you have everything that you need in order to be successful. Logically, at some point you run out of time and money and opportunity. That’s just common sense. But the truth is that you have more resources than you realize right now.  You have better resources.

And so, sometimes feeling like you are running out of resources is a healthy thing. It reminds you that what you are doing today matters. It reminds you that the choices you make are important; and relevant. And that those choices ultimately determine how successful you become.

It's never been about the resources that you have. At some point all of your resources will be gone. Whether its life or health or money or friends, at some point, those things go away. What you are left with is the resource that you are. You. You are left with you.  And that’s not altogether such a bad deal after all. Because you can do with no one else can do.

You can care more. You can whine less. You can stand up when you have been knocked down. You can smile in spite of the pain. You can live, laugh, love, and lead all while feeling broke and sad and unprepared.

It’s not the resources you have but how resourceful you are that really matters. So act like it.

Quantum Leap

If you have ever found yourself looking within yourself (attempting to assess what you need from an insider's perspective, while recognizing that at that moment you sense you are an outsider to your own self) then you might have concluded that, on more than one occasion, you may not know what you need because how can you be inside and be objectively outside yourself.

How can I give up something I love? It's all I know, right? Do I want to let go of something I have loved? No, I can't let go!

However, a quantum leap can occur when you learn to change the phrasing to say, "How can I let go of something I have found frustrating, debilitating, painful, and hateful?"

This will allow you to shift from a frame of entrapment to one of permission - permission to accept the notion that maybe it is okay to "let go" of the past and not shame the identity that was so profoundly attached to you. You can accept your perceived known identity and integrate it with what has not yet been developed. You can feel frustrated, painful, hurt, and angry at a life that did not bring lasting happiness, without causing shame and hate upon your core self.

And so, how can this shift bring a sense of comfort within your soul? Honestly, it may not. However, it may. Each of us is unique, and we each must look inward to look outward, or vice-versa; in order to find what can enable our own movement towards healing. What is helpful for me is to write down my thoughts. As they become written, I become clearer as to my thoughts. But words that remain on paper can fade as time passes. So, for me, I need to speak them outwardly, not just inwardly. My friends listen, and in conversation, my thoughts can be accepted, stretched, or understood. I like to process inside and outside.

Inner And Outer Realities

Continuing with the last week's thoughts on my outer world realities as a reflection of my inner turmoil; is it any wonder that if we are inwardly in turmoil then we are certain to see a tumultuous world? 

Just as we question our personal intentions and behaviors to change, we also must question the social intentions and behaviors of our current society. The two are never separate. What applies to the individual is equally applicable to the collectivity and the society.

Growth and moving forward begins the moment we summon the courage to create change in our lives. Courage is a universal phenomenon. It is something we all muster up in times of challenge.

Come Together

The challenges and travails we endure as individuals we also endure as a collective society. However, without awareness of this we fail to see that our individual problems stem from the fact that our cultural ethic condones a life of isolation, fear for survival, the need for comparison, as well as a multitude of other ways of being that diminish our quality of life. And in the same way that we are numb to the disastrous effects that the corporate state is having on the planet, so too are we numb to the fact that this corporate state and the life it espouses is detrimental to us as individuals.

Finding Ethics Over Fear

Early this year, as part of a series of articles on Quantum Physics of Beliefs, I wrote in one of those articles, Quantum Physics of Belief - Scarcity is a Limiting Belief that the competitive business practices advocate that there is not enough for everyone to win, and therefore we have to make sure we are one of the winners. This demonstrates that we believe profits are not abundant, but rather they are scarce; and that the only way to secure our personal or business need is to compete against each other. As shown in that article, this fear driven ethic is simply a self-limiting belief; underlying this is a profound reality that there is no limit to the abundance that exists in the world, except for the limits that exist in our minds. As such, we can learn to be better at choosing how we perceive the world.

But without questioning and inquiring into the possibility of a new way of life, at both the individual level and at the societal level, we condone a spiritual death that eventually consumes the entire soul of humanity.

I encourage you to think for yourself and question standard cultural assumptions. For example, question to yourself, what is “progress” at the social level? Is progress all about how we create greater sums of profit? But has not profiteering off the destruction of our ecosystems had devastating global consequences?

Outward To Inward

The dominant cultural ethic suggests to us that our advancements in technology, medicine, and production outweigh the consequences of their proliferation. Yet, a race that is not mature enough to use advanced technology destroys itself. A race that does not allow its greatest medical achievements to reach everyone, because it is a for-profit industry, leaves millions bankrupt and or dead prematurely. We need to look at this reality if we are to grow as individuals.

Whatever happened to the idea that progress is the creation of a communal ethic that creates harmony out of the empathy we feel for each other?

Real individual growth is all about being aware to the fact that our lives are inseparable and thus creating a society that allows for harmony between our inner and outer realities. Without questioning ourselves and without questioning society we fail to grow. The two are not separate. Everyone depends on each other for their individual survival.

Given the state of our world as it is now we can no longer afford to be afraid to look at the hard truth.

Facing the Change

It is becoming overwhelmingly apparent that our society is in the midst of big challenges. Here in the United States of America we have staggering inequality, a real unemployment rate around 8%, and the future of our current economic infrastructure is in imminent danger of collapsing.

The corporate elite who cajoled the public, without a voice, into bailing out their institutions with taxpayer subsidies created a situation that devastated the middle and lower classes. The elite who control political and economic affairs know the system is broken. They are using all tactics possible to accumulate the last bits of wealth and dismantle public power as they go out to create their untouchable gated oasis.

Unregulated markets make monsters out of men, and yet the real problem is our apathy that condones this way of life. We must seek personal insights to overcome our unique personal challenges; we also need to seek social insight into the way we live.

Again, as we fail to see that the collective social problem is our personal problem we are creating a future that is not in the favor of the majority of people. The excess and narcissistic indulgence that we enjoy now comes at a major cost when we will no longer be able to afford the security we need to survive in the future as the integrity of our planet degrades.

Living As One

Spiritual and emotional work is not just personal. It is primarily social.  Imagine asking Martin Luther King or Gandhi what was important to them. It was not their individual gains that led to personal well being, but rather it was the joy and sense of accomplishment they received from their involvement in pushing society towards justice for all. When we continue to allow those in power to keep “business as usual” without protesting for what is “right” justice and equality continue to decay. To see the truth can be a scary thing. But without knowledge and insight we will not grow, but rather, we will cannibalize ourselves into spiritual death.

St. Augustine stated that the rebel knows that hope has two beautiful daughters, anger and courage — anger at the way things are and the courage to see they do not remain as they are. We are at a point now that individual growth is short sighted if it does not account for the well-being of others and a healthy functioning planet.

Do not expect any government to fix these problems. These problems are not exterior to any of us. They are within us. And only with radical courage to see things as they are and a determined collective of voices to make change can we grow as both individuals and as a collective society. We are undoubtedly one. And the challenges we face as individuals, in a profound way, arise because we have lost sight of establishing a society that puts the gains of the community first as opposed to the gains of the individual.

Next week, I'll continue with the interconnection between the inner and outer realities. Namaste!