“Success in life could be defined as the continued expansion of happiness and the progressive realization of worthy goals. Success is the ability to fulfill your desires with effortless ease. And yet success, including the creation of wealth, has always been considered to be a process that requires hard work, and it is often considered to be at the expense of others. We need a more spiritual approach to success and affluence, which is the abundant flow of all good things to you. With the knowledge and practice of spiritual law, we put ourselves in harmony with nature and create with carefreeness, joy, and love.”
This quote was from Deepak Chopra’s book the even spiritual laws of success, as today we start a new mini-series on this wonderful little book.
Yes, it is tiny, but it contains a whole load of wisdom. In today’s article, we will be starting off with Deepak Chopra’s definition of success, and then we will have an article per spiritual law of success, for a total of 8 articles in this mini-series.
These are:
- The law of pure potentiality
- The law of Giving
- The Law of “Karma”
- The law of least effort
- The Law of intention and desire
- The law of detachment
- The law of dharma
I would actually love to know how would define success. Write in in the comments below this post, or if you prefer, send me a message!
I really like coach wooden’s definition of success that we talked about when we presented his pyramid of success ( Watch the episode here). He says:
“Success is peace of mind that is the direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.”
What I love about this quote, is also that it is very inline with my philosophy.
I like to consider myself an aspiring stoic philosopher as I resonate a lot with that philosophy and its ways of obtaining the good life, the good soul, through virtue and purpose and flourishing.
And the stoic approach to practically everything is to fully focus on what it is that you can fully control: your actions, and your reactions to external events. Once you have done the best you can, the outcome is ultimately outside of your control, and so we do not focus on this.
Success comes then, very much like coach Wooden tells us, from the process, much more than from the outcome.
Again, I will repeat myself because this is so important, the outcome of things is out of our control. The process on the other hand is very much in our control. If we want to be happy and feel a great level of success, we need to focus on the process and forget the outcome. 99% of the time, the outcome is congruent to the process anyway.
If you build a business that is honest and creates value for people, and in which you prove yourself to be authentic and act with integrity to your highest values, there is a very big chance that people will want to be your customers, thus making you money.
If you focus on giving love, on radiating love moment to moment each day, if you act with empathy and compassion and care, that love will very probably be reflected back to you.
If you are a good person in general, chances are that people will be good to you. Now, having said that, in stoic philosophy, we train to be prepared in the event that people are not good to you, and don’t reflect your love, or don’t respond to your wonderful business proposition.
This is something that we will talk about in-depth in future articles.
Let’s get back to this tiny little book here.
If you guys have ever been to a library section on spirituality and personal growth, then you probably have heard of this guy, Deepak Chopra.
He wrote quite a few books that we will cover in later articles.
For now, we will dig into this wonderful little book, and dedicate one episode per law of success. A little reminder, the seven spiritual laws of success are:
- The law of pure potentiality
- The law of Giving
- The Law of “Karma”
- The law of least effort
- The Law of intention and desire
- The law of detachment
- The law of dharma
One really important note if you are a skeptic, or reluctant to all things considered woo-woo. If you have followed me by now, you know that my spiritual beliefs are secular.
I don’t want you to be turned off by words such as spiritual, or dharma, or karma. I know that they might have some religious connotation, but I want you to keep an open mind, the mind of a curious person, or a seeker of knowledge and truth. There is always a lot to learn, and I hope that you trust me as your guide, to dig up gems of wisdom that anyone, from any cultural background, can appreciate and utilize in their daily lives. Ok?
Journaling Exercise
Let’s take out our journals now, and we are going to do a free-write exercise. We have not done one of those for some time now actually, and I know you guys love them, I do to.
For those who have never done a free-write exercise, what you do is that you take your journal, it] doesn’t matter if its on paper on iPad or on the computer, we put our timer for 5 minutes, that is 300 seconds, and we write, without taking the pen off of the paper, without stopping, and more importantly, without editing yourself. Don’t care about spelling and grammar, don’t care if your sentences make sense.
Just write.
Often times, we find ourselves writing little gems and learn so much about ourselves.
The subject of today, of course, is success.
300 seconds, let’s write down our own definition of success. How we view success.
Who for us is successful. I don’t want you to go in Deepak’s direction, or in Coach Wooden’s definition of success direction, but go in your direction. There are no mistakes, everything is valid.
Ok guys, awesome.
Feels great to write non-stop for 5 minutes. Like putting some weight off our shoulders also, no? Great too that you can use often.
Keep that page, what you have written. Maybe come back to it in some time.
EMPOWERING AFFIRMATIONS OF THE DAY
- I choose what success means to me
- I am successful in my own eyes, when I act with virtue
- I am successful when I give the very best of myself to someone, or to an action.
- I have control over my success
- I focus on the process, not on the outcome
