Our true selves hold the key to true satisfaction.
The events of the past couple of years have made many of us rethink our lives. We may have been stuck in survival mode, but now want to find a way to thrive. We may no longer be satisfied by the status quo. Maybe we’ve quit our jobs or perhaps we’ve moved to another part of the country looking for a better quality of life.
But what do we need to be truly satisfied with our lives? Is it the right job or the right people around us? Being blessed with the best circumstances is certainly a plus and can help us be happy. However, as we’ve learned well, circumstances can change at any moment. And we can be in the middle of a seemingly ideal situation and still feel lonely, anxious, or fearful, or we can have a sense of longing that we can’t explain.
Rather than looking for something more or different outside of ourselves, I suggest the opposite. I would recommend creating satisfaction from the inside out.
Enjoy Ilchi Lee’s blog posts?
Keep up-to-date with weekly wisdom delivered directly to your email inbox.
When We’re Really Satisfied
But when does real satisfaction come? We can feel fully satisfied when we’ve completely emptied and opened ourselves. If we’re completely empty, it means we’re actually completely full. Being completely empty is a state of egolessness in which we feel whole in and of ourselves. That’s when we discover what real peace is.
On the other hand, if we’re clinging to anything, we can never be fully satisfied. Holding onto something or someone, especially out of fear, keeps us from learning, growing, and being continuously in the flow of life. Instead of being deeply satisfied, we end up strengthening our “false selves.”
Each of us has a true self as well as a false self blocking the true self. The true self wants and enables us to be courageous, honest, bold, confident, and cheerful. The desire for something better comes from our true selves. But different fears and emotions stand in the way. These are called the “false self.” Holding onto these fears and emotions, and holding onto who we think we need to be in order to survive, keeps us from being deeply satisfied.
Have a Life Purpose
What brings out the built-in satisfaction of our true selves is choosing and working for a life purpose. For I would call a life purpose is any goal or activity that satisfies the true self. The more we work on and embody our life purpose, the stronger our true selves grow and the happier we become.
A life purpose does not need to be very specific. It can simply be something like “embody love.” However, to live out our life purpose, making specific, actionable, and attainable goals within a specific time frame can prevent our life purpose from stagnating as merely a nice idea.
To decide on these goals, we can turn to our talents and joys, and we can ask our true selves. We can direct our questions to our hearts in our chest. The answers may come in the form of a knowing, words or a voice, an image, a physical sensation, and/or even a taste or smell.
While this can sound akin to being psychic, we all have this kind of intuition, which can be developed with practice. Start by trusting whatever comes to you as soon as you ask a question. Keep asking the same or related questions until you feel sure about the answer. You can also look for synchronicities in your life that support what you discover.
Once we choose a life purpose, we can serve it by aligning all the various aspects of our lives to it. Our purpose goes beyond having a job or business. It’s having a mindset that completes our purpose and gathering the people and resources that amplify it.
Regardless of our progress toward the goals we set to serve our life purpose, the real measure of our success and satisfaction comes from how completely we work toward it no matter what happens. In this view, setbacks become simply fodder for growth.
The fallout from the pandemic has also supplied this fodder, giving us the courage to search for something more. That search begins with our true self.
Related Posts
- Finding Yourself in Stillness
- True Peace Is in Your Heart
- Discover Your True Value
- Meditation to Discover the Bird of Your Soul
- Do You Love Your Work?
Related Book
Jay, the main character in this illustrated storybook, Bird of the Soul by Ilchi Lee, emerges free and happy from profound dissatisfaction with his life.
Related Video