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What does it mean to thrive in life, in your business, career, sport or any other interest you have?
Well, it could mean to grow, to develop, or to flourish.
But, what if thriving means you reach your truest, highest potential – that is unique to you – getting the recognition, reward and ultimately the impact or difference you want to make?
What if thriving also meant having freedom?
For many, the word freedom conjures financial or personal freedom. But, freedom is much more than that.
It’s being free to the true essence of who you are – without limitations. True freedom is living without negative thoughts, judgements, and patterns of belief that keep you from achieving what you most desire.
Life’s a game. Games are supposed to be fun. To thrive in life, you must embrace the fun as explored in the Snakes and Ladders life post here.
So, what if you had the rule book and the know-how to not only win the game but to excel at playing it?
Well, most people never learn the rules nor understand how to play the game of life. As such, they don’t reach their highest potential.
We can break the population down into four categories.
No matter how hard they work, and generally, they work very hard, these people (and their businesses) struggle.
Their fears keep them struggling.
The majority of the population reside here. They have hit what you’d call the “good enough ceiling.”
They are achieving what’s good enough for them, which keeps them doing it until things start to drop from good enough to just ok.
Fear kicks in. These people start working harder or doing something active to get back to good enough.
As soon as they get to “good enough”, they relax and take their foot off the gas. Essentially, people doing “just ok” cycle through good enough to fear and so on. The ones that get past good enough move to the next level.
These people do a lot better than all the others – the strugglers and the ok people. They’re doing just great!
These people make up a small percentage of the population.
But why is that?
The vast majority of people have a vision of where they want to get to.
They have an image of what they want their life, business, and career to look like.
To achieve that vision, they invest in all the mechanics of getting their business, career, or life right.
They also invest in supporting elements such as sales and marketing, technology, university courses etc. These people believe that these things will make them more fulfilled.
However, thriving people understand that success involves more than just changing and improving yourself. It’s about changing how you view and interact with the world.
Buddha talked about three different types of people that we are talking about here.
Thriving people know who they are and live who they are because they understand their true self.
Most people cycle through twelve distinct states of being.
A state of being is how you view yourself at a particular point in time. It’s how you’d describe your mental state and how you perceive the world.
We’ll highlight five of the twelve states here:
In this state, you feel empty. Your life feels meaningless and you have a sense that other people just “don’t get you.” You isolate yourself and sometimes contemplate ending your life.
For most people, this is their life behind closed doors. To the outside world, they portray the “everything is fine” persona. But, in reality, they are just surviving.
In this state, you’re looking towards the future. You’re planning. You have desires or dreams to fulfill, but you also have fears that hold you back.
But you’re not thinking about ending your life. You’re thinking about and hopeful for what your life could be like in the future.
You have a sense of identity of who you are, and this might be expressed in terms of your business, career, job title, or whatever is most important to you in your life.
You have a focus, and you’re interacting with other people. It doesn’t matter if you class yourself as an extrovert or introvert – you’re still engaged with the world and not wanting to isolate yourself – unlike when you’re in despair. You’re hard-working as you’re hopeful about the future and want to achieve your goals as quickly as possible.
In this state, you believe in yourself. You have a sense of how good you can be.
Your ego is higher than in the other two states of despair and hope. You feel more confident. You feel yourself becoming more successful and aim to achieve as much as you possibly can. But it tends to be in terms of money, relationships, or status.
In essence, there’s no real meaning to what you’re doing. You’re doing what you’re doing to get ahead, to get the money to pay the bills, to buy the things you want to buy, to have the holidays you want to have. You’re ambitious.
You’re driven. You have loads of toys – the cars, the houses, the holidays, the meals out, the possessions – and you have the title.
And it’s at that state of being that the critical line is present.
It’s that critical line that is the threshold. The threshold that can prevent you from being able to thrive in life.
On one side, you have the states of despair, hope and belief.
And then on the other side of the critical line are the states of knowing and mastery.
Several things can show up in our life that makes us aware of the critical line. It can be the sudden death of a loved one. The illness that alters our life. The financial loss from our business or redundancy. Or the separation or divorce.
It’s these moments of impact that get us to reflect inwardly.
For some people, they get over the speed-bump and go back to the way they were before – before the death of their loved one, the illness, the financial setback, the divorce – or whatever it was.
But for others, there is a slow awakening.
They have a desire for something better – to be more significant – to thrive.
Or they have a sense that they should be doing something different, like as if they’re being called to something greater. To make a difference and have an impact. Not just in terms of the business or career, but in making other people’s lives better off.
It’s at that critical line that they move to the state of knowing.
In this state, people have an inner calling to change towards something more significant. They have more compassion for others or their environment. They get more inspired thoughts as they listen more to their intuition or unconscious.
They seek out more and more knowledge. They attend more courses in search of a deeper truth.
As Buddha describes – they are becoming more awakened. They become more deeply spiritually aware and have a deeper awareness of a Higher Power – God, Universe, Higher Mind, or Source.
They become more about giving to others and serving others. It’s less about themselves and more about others. They understand deeply what is meant by emotional intelligence – because they feel it deeper inside themselves. They become more emotional themselves.
They’re more inspired by the wonderment of nature, the Universe, and the accomplishments of people. Some get involved in coaching other people or volunteering as they see and feel its impact on themselves and others.
But for many, they are still a split person.
Inwardly, on one side, they’re trying desperately to hold onto the old world that they knew on the other side of the critical line.
On the other side, they’re trying to follow what their inner self is moving them towards. They’re split.
This is the ultimate way of living and being.
In this state, you’re on a mission. You’re driven – not like before. You’re driven to achieve your mission for the impact it’ll have on others. You feel abundant in all meanings of the word. There is no scarcity. You are in sheer awe and gratitude for how the Universe works.
You are completely in a state of flow and have total freedom. Free from everything and with no attachment to anything. In essence, you’re one with yourself.
You desire to make an impact and bring about change and influence. Equally, you’re well rewarded because you completely understand the Law of Compensation. You know how to flow and interact with the Universe. You have become the true alchemist. That’s true mastery.
To recap, we’ve covered five out of the twelve states of being, namely: despair, hope, belief, knowing and mastery.
Most people spend days, weeks or even months in one state. Others might find themselves going up and down through the different states over the day, week, month or year.
Different things trigger them. And from that trigger, their state changes. By identifying the triggers and then dissolving them, we manage to maintain equilibrium and then move up to higher states quicker.
When you know and understand the different states of being and understand the differences between each state – you realise what you need to do to get to a higher state, and ultimately, thrive.
Therefore, to start thriving in life, identify your current state, and then from that, determine what you need to do to move to one of the higher states.
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