The first step to achieving your best life is to acknowledge what you mean by “best”, and then acknowledge that “best” is relative and subjective. A true definition of best is that it cannot be any better. It is the highest quality, most excellent, can’t be any more excellent! There are a couple of questions then for seeking one’s best life. What happens when you get there? It can’t get any better, so then what? What happens to us is that we seek even better.
What if we went about this in a different way? What if we realized that life is not about getting somewhere, it is about being somewhere? The end of life is we are no longer alive, we die. Where we go after that isn’t the question so much as why are we here? Are we here to get to death the fastest, die with the most money, the most toys, the best house, best car, most friends, etc.? I believe we are each here for very personal reasons. Those reasons are known by each of us within our bodies, minds and souls. We do not always know what that is on a conscious level, but all of the information for our purpose in life is within us. All we have to do is connect to it. So, while I go about seeking my best self, my best life, my best whatever, what am I missing?
Seeking is always looking somewhere other than where you are. As I seek out something different for my life, I miss the life that I have. I know that people have some hard lives and have a hard time finding what is “best” about the life they have. I have been there too. I can honestly with my whole heart say that in those days and moments when I thought my life could not be any worse, that I was not worth the life I had, and that there would never be an end to the pain that I felt inside, that I was in that moment living my absolute best life. It was hard in those moments to see any light at the end of a tunnel, and in fact, I felt more like looking for light at the bottom of a very deep hole where you cannot even see the top or the way out. How can I say that was my best life? Because what I was experiencing in those moments gave me an opportunity to grow as a human being.
Plants exposed to hardships provide the best nutrition. Bear with me here on this tangent. Research has shown that plants that are bred to be unattractive to bugs, resistant to disease, grown in protected environments have less nutritional value than plants that are grown outside in normal weather, with pests to defend against, and diseases to defend against. They have to change their plant structures to fight off the outside and survive. When they do that, the way their cells change produces more nutrients to strengthen the plant, and so then more nutrients for the being that eats them. That is if the plant survives, which is why we breed more resilient plants. That is not a bad thing, per se, but it can lower the nutritional value of the plants that survive.
We are not plants, but the same theory seems to hold true. I do not know anyone who has had what they consider and “easy” life. We all have our stuff to deal with. But some people’s lives do seem easier than others from the outside. If you think back on your life, when did you grow the most, make the most strides in learning, maturity, skills and talents? Was it when things were running smoothly and you had nothing to struggle for? Or, was it when you had to work hard to achieve, find, be something you wanted to have or be? For me, and for many people I talk to, it has been when life was hard that they learned and achieved the most. It didn’t feel like that when it was happening, but in retrospect, that is what most people I speak to say about the hard times in their lives.
We will attract what we need to live the life we were meant to live. The life we were meant to live was sketched out by us before we were born, and our higher selves know exactly what that plan was, even though, we forgot about the plan when we were born. Our higher selves hanging out in the fourth and fifth dimensions of reality know, and so, we know why we are here. Even if we cannot connect to that purpose all of the time. What that means to me is that everything I have experienced and will experience is a part of the plan. I have free will to do and be whoever I want to be, and I have already decided and chosen who that is, even when I can’t remember it. The more I learn and connect more closely with the energy of the collective source around us, the more I know that this is true, not just for me, but for everyone. We all have a place, a purpose, a meaningful life, and it is happening right now.
No matter what was going on in my life, it was what was supposed to be happening to be ready for the next moment in my life. Everything has always happened as a purpose for the next thing, everything. Things like the mundane daily commute to work to the devastating loss of everything that had any meaning to me all at once. That happened more than once on several different levels. All of it has meaning. People question the meaning of death, illness, war, child abuse, famine, murder, suicide etc. I do not know the purpose or meaning of those things for other people, for the planet, for the collective energy of the world. I do know that there is one, even if it isn’t easy to see. It makes us stronger is one of the usual meanings and purposes of hardship. When we get to the other side of that experience, we are stronger. We do not always get through them in this lifetime though. I think we lose sight of how those things are not just for this moment in time.
We might live anywhere from 1 minute to 110 years. I think that is the oldest living person in this Millenia. The impact of that 1 minute could be more than the impact of the 110 years on something, someone, somewhere. The story of the starfish on the beach comes to mind. A boy is walking along a beach after a storm. There are thousands of starfish out on the beach that will die without water. The boy is picking them up one at a time and throwing them back into the ocean. A man sees him doing this and is overwhelmed by the task the boy is doing and tells him, “You can’t possibly save them all. What difference does picking up a few of them and throwing them back make?” The boy picks up a starfish and throws it into the ocean. “It made a difference to that one, ” he says. The point being, we do not always get to know the difference we make in the life of this planet. Our hardship and struggle might be solely for us. It might also be for someone else, perhaps someone who is there to support us needs us to struggle so that they can have the experience of supporting us.
I think of this when I think of my work. Our company supports people with disabilities. My life is rich with experiences in learning to support other people who struggle to support themselves in many ways. It has taught me that brilliance and love look really different on different people, but they are no less brilliant or lovely, or loving, than others. I have gained so much doing this work. I now work with staff most closely training them to do the work, and I see how much the work teaches them and gives them purpose, and allows them to have the best experiences they can have. Some people might say that having a disability is a mistake. While I would not wish a disability on anyone, I also know that another person’s disability has taught more people than I can count many life lessons, and that if they did not have that disability there would be a lot less ways to learn them. I also know that the people we work with who have those disability labels, defy them every day. They too learn from having that label and experiencing those struggles and being supported by others. Their life they imagined before birth might look different from their original plan, or it might look exactly like it, but they are still getting out of life what they are meant to get out of it, the experiences they need to be their best self, whatever that might be. We are all here for each other, and we cannot always know why in the moment, and maybe ever.
So that is Step 1, knowing that this is your best life that is meant for you. Remembering that you chose this path for you. Life does not happen to you, it is always happening for you. Your job is to figure out how to use whatever is happening to the best of your ability, to be your best you in that moment. It might not be what you think is the best, but in this moment, you are always your best, and you are always living the best life you could possibly live in this moment. What happens in the next moment? Well you get to decide that too! Be you. Live this life you have been given as fully in every moment as you can, and you will know that it is the best life ever imagined, because you own it and make it what you have always been meant to make it.
Namaste