The Connection

“Peo­ple say that what we’re all seek­ing is a mean­ing for life. I think what we’re really seek­ing is an expe­ri­ence of being alive, so our life expe­ri­ences on the purely phys­i­cal plane will have res­o­nance within our inner­most being and real­ity, so we can actu­ally feel the rap­ture of being alive.”

“Fol­low your bliss.”
–Joseph Camp­bell

Over the years, I have read many books on mind power, self-​​empowerment, time man­age­ment, suc­cess and achieve­ment, phi­los­o­phy, and spir­i­tu­al­ity. I’ve attended many sem­i­nars, lis­tened to moun­tains of tapes, and took numer­ous classes. And the one com­mon thread I have found in all that I have learned was that they all taught in some way that a person’s outer world is some­how con­nected to his inner dimension.

How­ever, since the greater part of my career involved busi­ness devel­op­ment con­sult­ing in the field of cos­metic surgery, I became con­vinced of the fact that not only there is indeed a con­nec­tion between the out­side and the inside but also that one either affects or reflects the other. You don’t need to become a cos­metic sur­geon to rec­og­nize this obvi­ous truth.

For instance, many patients ask, “If your pro­ce­dure is so good, why isn’t every­body hav­ing it done?” Doc­tors usu­ally answer by using a car anal­ogy, such as, “Why does a per­son drive a Chevro­let when he can afford a Cadil­lac?” In other words, it’s all a mat­ter of priorities.

A per­son, there­fore, will never need let alone appre­ci­ate cos­metic surgery unless he or she thinks they need it. I’m nei­ther con­demn­ing nor con­don­ing any­thing that can help a per­son in any way. But whether it’s improv­ing what one does or how one feels, I believe that true suc­cess goes beyond all that. Pay­ing greater atten­tion to one’s qual­ity of life, to the con­nec­tion between what one does and how one feels, is more effec­tive than sim­ply focus­ing on one area alone.

Peo­ple who do so are what I call con­gru­ent peo­ple. Peo­ple whose inner and outer selves are in har­mony or in align­ment with each other are hap­pier, more peace­ful, and live more pur­pose­ful lives com­pared to peo­ple who need to con­stantly focus on goals.

Goals are impor­tant, but not at the expense of your pri­or­i­ties. When you are aligned or when your life is in tune with your spir­i­tual suc­cess­ful­ness you are then truly suc­cess­ful (with or with­out any goals, for that mat­ter). In fact, to a con­gru­ent per­son, a goal is a com­ple­ment or a tool and never a neces­sity. In other words, the goal to him is a means and not an end.

Your con­scious­ness of the high­est that’s within you is what con­nects you to it. When you’re in touch with that which is within, when you have cre­ated an inner har­mony or an inner peace, you also cre­ate a pow­er­ful chan­nel through which the high­est that’s within you may flow. And iron­i­cally, when you’re detached from your goals and when you bring to your life a sense of pur­pose and peace, all that you desire will come to you naturally.

The bottom-​​line is that the bet­ter the rela­tion­ship you have with your­self, the more open the chan­nel to that which is within you becomes. It’s like say­ing that your inner self is the elec­tric­ity while your outer self is the lamp. Once you’ve made a con­nec­tion with that source, it’s like uncov­er­ing the out­lets within you through which you can plug into and shine upon the world.

When I write about the con­nec­tion with the inner self, I am not refer­ring to med­i­ta­tion, prayer, cre­ative visu­al­iza­tion, daily affir­ma­tions, or some sort of eso­teric path or rit­ual. The path you choose is your own and there’s no spe­cific “one” way of doing it. How­ever, before going into any of these areas, you must know why you are worth the med­i­ta­tion, prayer, or whatever.

Before con­nect­ing with your inner suc­cess­ful­ness, you must first rec­og­nize and real­ize that you are valu­able. Ignor­ing your per­sonal worth is, in my esti­ma­tion, the great­est denom­i­na­tor of all fail­ure. Hence, a healthy self-​​esteem is the num­ber one key to open­ing the doors to your suc­cess­ful­ness.

A poor self-​​esteem, on the other hand, is the great­est deter­rent in your attempts to become truly suc­cess­ful because it is from which many self-​​imposed lacks and lim­i­ta­tions stem.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

• How to Capture and Captivate Attention
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Other Related Posts

• Foreword
• Drop Your Goals
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