Take the bull by the horns

If the time comes and you decide to take new responsibility for your life, a good place to begin with self-assessment is to zero in on your guiding principles and values.  These unspoken signposts actually influence how you see yourself, where you sense you are and where you wish to go.  How clear you are about who you are and what you feel determines what you would like to achieve in life as well as the ingenuity and resourefulness you would draw on to make it happen.

Taking the bull by the horns means facing a situation head on without refusing to be honest with yourself.  If you're unsure about your guiding principles, its vital to your future to isolate them.  Consider what issues you believe in or what ideas you would support.  If you asked people who know you, how would they describe you? What kind of character traits and qualities define you?  Would you consider these outside opinions to reflect who you truly believe you are inside?

Take self-assessment further:

• Who are your role models? Why do you admire them? How does this shape your values? 
• Who would you offer as examples of people who are incompatible with your values? Why?
• What do you like and dislike about yourself? How do these views influence your values?
• Where would you indicate 5 strengths and weaknesses? How do values evolve from both?
• How would you like to change yourself? What do these desires tell you about your values?

Death doesn't exist

Henry Van Dyke reminds us that "some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live."  Writers, artists, painters, sculptors, teachers and open thinkers evolve to believe death is one of the most exciting revelations of your life.  What they say and create on Earth reflects this. Are humans are on a cyclical journey to learn to deal with issues they were unable learn?

Deepak Chopra draws from parables he learned during childhood to explain how death as a concept seemed to emerge to temper human desire to crave permanence.  According to Chopra, "death itself was seen as a brief stopping point on an endless soul journey that could turn a peasant into a king and vice versa."  He implies that we leave our earthly bodies at pre-destined times, release emotions, and come back again later in different forms to learn new lessons.

Do we have the possibility of experiencing infinite lifetimes and experiences that invite us into limitless adventures?  Eastern and Western cultures as well as a multitude of religions offer their views in texts.  We exist on different levels of consciousness. We understand different vibrations and frequencies. The underlying consensus is beliefs and perspective determine our experiences. What if we only think we expeirence a three-dimensional world and it really far more complex?

It has been asserted death is a set of phases, or states of becoming re-oriented with heightened awareness.  Heaven and hell are considered self-created illusions that we imagine to reward or punish ourselves for things we have done or not done.  Humans will become astute observers of their finished lives and come to understand what they were supposed to learn and what isn't real.

If, at the core, humans are pure energy, death may be a period where we change form again.  In this case, death would represent a doorway through which we would pass in a kind of transition.  As openings symbolize opportunities, this movement would be a chance to expand and create experiences, a chance to be guided by thoughts, visions and sensations you may have forgotten.

Neale Donald Walsch suggests that in death, hope will actully be the "doorway of belief, belief is the doorway to knowing, knowing is the doorway to creation, and creation is the doorway to experience." And so, hope will determine what you think you know, experience and express.

Mistaken objectivity

When it comes to objectivity, you'll get exactly what you expect.  Complete objectivity is a fallacy. Nothing can be observed and also unaffected by the observer. If objectivity is your goal, then subjectivity will be your result. What you see or plan depends on how you perceive.  Even mistaken objectivity can be valuable where you discover different levels of observing yourself.

Goals are our friends. Whether we realize them or not, we may always learn. The more goals we set and pursue, the more opportunities we have to gain insight into ourselves. The faster we gain inner wisdom, the more we discover that everything has purpose, even our perceived mistakes. The more we identify goals, the more we realize that we repeatly come full circle in our results.

How you look at where you are enables you to stand back and learn new and different things about yourself.  Coming full circle means a you can experience repeated learning curves. Stepping outside your traditional judgments and assumptions may lead you to believe you achieve some kind of objectivity.  However, you still ultimately perceive yourself from your own views. 

Consider isolating what you really desire in your business or career, in your personal life, in your level of health and well-being, in terms of spiritual and other pursuits.  Then, identify what you sense stands in your way of achieving these goals.  Recognize your subjective influence means your goals, anxieties, fears all exist in your mind.  They characterize who you are through your moods, attitudes and opinions. You can always learn more about your own feelings and emotions.  They determine how you create, perceive, prioritize, disregard or realize individual goals.

You are what you perceive

Take a risk to see what you cannot see, to hear what you have not heard, to taste what you have never put to your lips, to touch and to feel what you have never felt.  What are the experiences like and what holds you back from exploring them even further than you already have? Who told you that you couldn't? shouldn't? or wouldn't?

Ask yourself why you cling to the ideas that you must fear what you have never done, regret what you have never said, feel guilty about circumstances you cannot change.  What prompts you to make your life more difficult than it is?

Permit yourself to feel all those feelings that may confuse or otherwise trigger sadness, darkness and hardship. Take a risk of letting go of control.  Discover emotions for what they are. What do you sense?  What do they teach you? Consider them all gifts which offer opportunities to learn.

As you take jumps and leaps of faith to explore what you don't understand, you will gain new insight into what you're capable of giving, receiving, creating and encouraging.  Take a risk to remove the limits you have unconsciously self-imposed. Break them down. They'll disintegrate. You may discover that these kinds of steps will re-integrate all that you are, and then some.

Re-create yourself

Each relationship you choose is a means of revealing details about yourself.  Reflect on your values and principles.  Do you choose to spend time with like-minded individuals?  Are your closest companions reinforcing habits you wish to break? Some people choose relationships as an effort to escape challenges or aspects of themselves they don't wish to face.  If you think spending time with certain people helps you hide or escape from what you fear or have trouble giving up, you're in for a different kind of surprise. Perhaps it will even be a rude awakening?

Consider people who repeatedly choose friends and partners who have a negative influence or who enable abuse, addiction, obsession, denial, self-destruction or repressed emotions.  Why do you think troubled people often find themselves in similar situations with other troubled people over and over again?  They may not feel they have the strength or abilitites to face and work through their challenges alone.  Yet, if this sounds like you, you need not re-create the old you.

In essence, these kinds of people seldom admit they feel lonely. They sense no one could understand their past experiences and that no person in their right mind would wish to take that painful journey.  And yet, you do not have to wait for other people to see you as you really are before you learn to recognize it for yourself and choose to make new kinds of choices.  The idea of re-creating yourself allows you to awaken the true self inside who is talented and ready to go.

Take for example that who you sense you are at this moment is actually a reflection of your past.  What you have done up to this point has affected your relationship choices.  If you gave into your own destructive behaviors and chose friends and companions who rebelled or made dangersous decisions, these choices enabled you to continue.  Stand back and reflect on your options. Open your heart and your mind.  If you feel you're in a mess, realize you got yourself into your own mess.  Don't let healthier choices pass by. You can get yourself out of any situation. 

Nothing you have done is beyond repair. Do not judge your past and invite external judgment.  Instead, choose to change your point of view.  Examine your life in new and uplifting ways. As you alter your perception of yourself, you will naturally make new relationship choices. As you grow to believe strongly in what you wish to see, you will learn to recognize that engaging in relationships isn't something anyone has to do.  Yet, we can choose to experience this and grow.