DECISIONS OF DESTINY
In this
video, Tony Robbins points out there are three decisions of destiny for
everybody. These three decisions we are
making every moment of our lives, whether we are aware of it or not. So, to become aware of it is huge! We want to know why we are doing what we are
doing! The three decisions that affect
your destiny are: 1. what am I going to focus on? 2. What does it mean? 3.
What are you going to do? Let’s
go back to the first one, what am I going to focus on? Your focus, whatever it is you are focusing
on right now, is where the energy is going to go. Where thought goes, energy flows. You have to decide where you are going to
place you focus. Is it going to be on
the past, or am I going to focus on the present and the future? That’s your choice. If you focus on the past, which as someone
who suffered from PTSD, depression, and trauma, all I did was focus on the past. My attention would be on the regrettable
memories of my past, the pain, the suffering, wondering if I could have done
something different which might have changed the outcomes, shaming myself and
living in guilt for the things I had done, I punished myself unmercifully! My focus was only on the past. As a consequence, I was barely able to
function, I wasn't able to connect with people on an emotional level, I felt
different and isolated, and then I’d get angry at myself for not being able to
handle things better. What was the
meaning for me when I focused on my past?
It meant that this was the end.
There was no future. I turned my
anger inward and became depressed. I
didn't believe I deserved to have good things in my life. I was guilty of unforgivable sin. I was ashamed for the things I did and didn't
do, for allowing events to happen the way they did, for committing and being
the cause of so much pain for so many people.
It led me to feel that I was being punished for something. So, what was I going to do? I was just going to give up. That’s it.
That was my thought process. What
was I going to focus on? The past. What
did it mean? I am being punished for my
sins from the past. What was I going to
do? I was just going to give up. That was one way to look at things.
When I
decided to focus on my future, then the energy and emotion for me changed. What am I going to focus on? I’m going to help people heal themselves from
PTSD, depression, and trauma. What does this
mean? This means this is the
beginning. Since I healed this within
myself, I know how to heal this. This
empowers me to create a beautiful life, and the emotion behind it is love and
compassion for the suffering of others and wanting to give them the tools to
fully heal and break free from this disorder, no matter where they got it from,
to be who they truly are. What was I
going to do now that I had this focus and meaning, what was my plan of action
from there? I started writing a
blog. I started writing a book on how to
heal from PTSD and trauma. I created a program, bringing in all these marvelous teachers of science,
spirituality, psychology, philosophy, and higher consciousness; I've been working with a doctor for almost 3 years, Dr. Sarah Larsen, an amazing, incredible woman, an angel on earth (there aren't enough words in the dictionary to express my gratitude for Dr. Larsen), who
shined the light for me where I needed to go to work this program out on myself and who helped me put this all together. I hosted and led conference calls. I’m doing radio interviews and webinars. I was led to the brilliant Dr. Edward Tick, an amazing, deeply compassionate, wise man with an enormous heart (again, there aren't enough words to express my gratitude for Dr. Tick). He is the foremost expert in the country on PTSD experienced by our soldiers. Dr. Tick was instrumental in helping me heal my war wounding from the military, my own and the wounding passed down to me generationally. I had the glorious opportunity to travel on a sacred pilgrimage to Greece with him and reclaim my honor in the sacred fields of Athens, Greece. I hosted a panel discussion of experts about Solutions to PTSD and Trauma following the encore presentation of my production company Lightning Rod Productions (formerly Sewer Socialists Productions) performance of the award-winning play, 'Woof-Woof.' All these things were the actions I took to
bring this message of healing to others.
Think about
this in your own life. What emotions are
driving you? Look at the decisions you've
made in your life. How have your
emotions and what you focused on affected the decisions that you've made? You've got to get emotional fitness in your
life. You've got to work out emotionally
the same way you would work out physically in the gym for the health of your
body. You've got to clear up all the
toxic emotions that are keeping you down. Yes, you have to process the negative
experiences from your life, and it is so important to take the time to heal and
discover the good that came from those traumatic events, but you don’t want to
wallow in it. Wallowing in our pain
keeps us stuck. You want to digest what
is needed to be processed, and then allow for the rest to be washed away.
You also
want to get psychological strength.
You've got to get your thoughts in order, you've got to understand there
are these automatic negative thoughts that come into your mind and you've got
to learn how not to attach yourself to them.
You've got to understand how the mind works, and learn to focus on what
it is you want to produce and experience in your life. You want to raise your vibration. How do you raise your vibration? You raise your vibration by changing your
thoughts, your emotions, and your feelings.
Having emotional fitness and psychological strength is the difference
between those that quit and those that succeed.
THE SIX UNIVERSAL HUMAN NEEDS
Once you've
addressed the three decisions of destiny, you've found your target, what it is
you want to bring into the world and to experience, you've got to understand
what your needs are. This is much
different from your desires, as I stated to you earlier. We connect your needs to the driving emotion
behind your life in order to imbue your life with meaning and purpose. The key is to uncover what your needs are for
you, the truth for you. From there, you
develop a map, and we look at all your belief systems which will tell you how
you are going to get these needs met.
After you establish your map, you decide what is going to fuel you to
action. Are you doing this for the
money? For recognition? For the fame?
For the big house? Am I doing
this to give what I can to make this world a better place? To add my contribution to the world? Am I doing this to advance life on this
planet? Am I doing this to make a better
life for my family? Am I doing this for
my wife and children to give them the best life that I possibly can? Whatever your motivation is, and it could be
a combination of all of these, is going to determine the direction of your
destiny.
There are
six human needs, and this information comes from the Robbins video. These are universal needs that every human
being has, and I would encourage all of you after reading this blog to look at
where your needs are at and how you are going about to get them met. The first one is certainty. We all need certainty in our lives. Certainty is the feeling that we are safe, we
are protected, we have enough money, we have food, shelter, water, and all of
our survival needs are taken care of.
How do you go about getting certainty?
You can try to control your environment; you can live within your means;
you can acquire a skill by going to school or learning a trade; you can give
up. All these are ways in which you and
I go about getting certainty in our lives.
If we don’t have certainty in our lives, if we fear about our own
survival, we are really not going to be concerned with anything else. However, when we have certainty, all of our
basic needs are met, what happens then?
We become bored. So, the second
need we have is uncertainty. We need
variety. We need adventure and
spontaneity. We need problems and
struggles, it’s how we challenge ourselves, it’s how we grow; it adds to the
color and tapestry of our lives. The
unknown has always been the boarder land of the possible; it is the frontier of
that which has yet to be seen. It can be
the birthplace of something beautiful if we allow ourselves to just step into
it without fear.
The third
need is significance. We all need to
feel important, to feel of value. This
is about our uniqueness, and we all go about this in different ways. Some of us feel this sense of value and
significance by making lots of money; by constructing big buildings and owning
all of them; others by taking positions of power in government or in the
service; for others it’s about being more spiritual; for others it’s the
position they fill at work and the responsibilities that come with it; for
others it’s the role they fill in the family.
Violence gives us significance.
Young men and women will either join the service or join a gang or join
the police force because it gives them a sense that what they are doing is
important. Whether the person joins the
gang, or the service, or the police force, the person is going for that same
sense of value in their own lives, it’s just different ways of achieving the
need of significance. Inherent in all of
these approaches is the individual has a willingness to risk their own lives
for this significance. Before we can
eradicate violence from the planet, there is going to have to be a huge
collective shift in consciousness, particularly and most importantly, in men.
The fourth
need is the need for connection and love.
We truly need this. We need
connection and intimacy from loved ones, friends, acquaintances, and our
community at large. How do we go about
doing this? Spending time with our
significant other, spending quality time with our family and friends, walking
in nature, participating in community activities, joining spiritual groups,
seeking others who have the same interests we have, engaging in life on a
feeling level. This is a huge need for
people who suffer from PTSD, depression, trauma, and stress because we feel so disconnected
with life.
These first
four needs are the needs of the personality.
There are two more needs which are the needs of the spirit. Without these last two needs being met, you
will not be fulfilled. Your personality
will be satisfied, but you won’t have the sense of fulfillment that comes with
the needs of the spirit. The first need
of the spirit is you must grow. All of
life is constantly evolving and changing.
The reason we grow is so we have something to give of value; to others,
to yourself, to the people in your life.
When we grow, we have something to share, and this gives us a sense of
fulfillment because we've added to the value of someone else’s life. The second need of the spirit is to
contribute beyond ourselves. When we
participate in the ever expanding nature of life, we feel at one with
everything around us, we feel connected to something larger than ourselves, and
this gives us a sense of being an active participant in the evolution of life
on this planet. You know what the secret
of living is? The secret of living is
giving. What you give to another, you
receive. What you give to life, you
receive. It may not be readily apparent
to you now, but every thought you have, every single thing you do, is being
recording by the infinite intelligence that governs everything, and you will
get back what you give. Besides, giving
feels good.
The six universal
needs are: certainty, uncertainty, significance, connection and love, grow, and
to contribute beyond ourselves. When we
understand these needs, rank them from top to bottom, and then connect them to
what motivates you, we can then lay the ground work for creating the life you
want to live!
So, what are
you driven by? Are you driven by
significance? Are you driven by
connection and love? Or are you driven
by contributing to others? Whichever one
of these needs is most important to you is going to affect your choices; it
will determine the direction of your destiny.
Thus, it is important for you to know where you fit on this list,
because it will guide you as you make the important decisions regarding the
meaning and purpose behind your life, why it is you do what you do. This will serve as the foundation for the map
you lay out for your life, for example, creating for yourself a ten year plan. When you start from these needs, and map it
out for what it looks like in ten years, then as you begin to take the actions
to get you there, more will come into focus as time progresses, as each
decision you make is aimed at making your ten year plan a realization.
Critical to making your vision for your life
a reality is the emotion you choose to drive you. You want to choose empowering emotions that
uplift and inspire you, fill you up with love and passion for what you do,
which will undoubtedly create the ideal conditions for your dreams to manifest
as the synchronicity of the universe lines everything up for you to give you
what you truly want to experience. Your
thoughts, your words, your deeds, your feelings, and emotions must be in
alignment for the miraculous orchestration of the universe to unfold itself
before your feet. This is a universal
spiritual law, however, we have to learn how to access our connection to this
process, and this occurs gradually as the negative thought patterns are
replaced with the empowering ones. The
process itself builds trust, so it is important to stay in the process,
avoiding all temptation to fall back to old beliefs and thought systems.
The quality
of your life is the quality of your emotions.
Therefore, you've got to get emotional strength, you've got to have
emotional fitness, and start choosing the emotions you want to feel and
experience. When you start feeling and
experiencing it right now, in this moment, not in some future time, right now,
you will send a different vibration out to the universe. You will send out a different vibration to
the people around you! They’re going to
notice it, they’re going to feel it, and they’re going to sense the
difference! Try this in your own
life. Start with you and watch how it
affects all the other people in your life.
They may not react immediately to this change in you because they will
still be reacting to their own projection of the old you, but as you maintain
this new thought system in your life, eventually, they will respond to this new
you in ways you couldn't even possibly have imagined.
Every day
you want to give it your all, you want to love your all, and you want to be doing
everything you can to make your life everything it could possibly be. Don’t worry about what others are doing, or
how far ahead they might be, or how challenging the road is to get to where you
want to be, keep persevering. It’s never
too late to start doing what it is you want to do. Never quit.
Never give up. Even if it’s just
one step a day, take that step, and keep moving forward. What is yours to have will always be
yours. What is for others to have will
always be theirs. There’s no need to compare
or beat yourself up if you don’t appear to be where it is you want to be. Hold fast to your dreams, follow the whispers
in your heart, know that you are creating from a power of infinite
possibilities and infinite abundance, and thus, you do not have to take
anything away from anyone else to achieve your goals and dreams. Believe in yourself, align all of your
deepest longings and desires with the Spirit within you, and as Joseph Campbell
says, “Follow your bliss.” And all will
be given you.
Exercise to do at home:
Answer the
following questions:
1. What motivates you?
2. What are the 6 needs?
3. Rank your needs from top to bottom
4. What would you do this week if you
knew you were going to die?
5. What connects you to your bliss?
Additional exercise:
Observe your
thoughts this week. Write them
down. Don’t judge or shame
yourself. When you've completed the
week’s list of thoughts, review and note what thoughts preoccupy your
mind? Are they thoughts that keep you
locked up in the past? Thoughts filled
with guilt, shame, anger, or blame? Or
are they thoughts of love, gratitude, feelings of joy and wonder? Are they empowering thoughts lifting you to
the future you want to experience? Are
you creating the future by contemplating the conditions you want to produce or
are you locked up in a cycle of re-creating the dramas in your life both past
and present? Are you becoming aware of
the beauty and silence of the now? What
jotting down all these thoughts will show you are where you are putting your
energy, and remember, where thought goes, energy flows. By writing down your thoughts, you can see
what you are thinking about, and then, you can use this to re-calibrate your
mind to focus on the things you want to bring into your life.
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Charlie Pacello is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at www.charliepacello.com
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