Working and digging into understanding and having clarity in my day-to-day mindset has been key in helping me figure out who I am, live fully, and find purpose in my life.
Michael Gervais calls it Personal Philosophy. Living your personal philosophy is how we share who we are with the world, what matters to us and is the lens that guides our thoughts, words, feelings and actions. He suggests that we describe it in a sentence of maximum 20 words.
We all have a personal philosophy, whether we have it clear or not. And it changes and evolves throughout our lives. For me, having it clear has been a process that took me a lot of time and work. In fact, throughout my life many times I felt lost because I didn't know how I wanted to live my life. But in recent years things have been very different, I started by clearly defining what my values, my motivators, and my interests are. So, as hackneyed as it sounds, declaring for myself what my values are has been fundamental. Let's define in a simple way what values are, they are those concepts, characteristics or qualities that you consider really important and practice every day, intentionally or unconsciously. You may already have them or they may be aspirational. Observing my motivators, finding their source, and being honest about my feelings has been very important in giving me clarity about my mindset.
All this work has taken me time, work with other coaches, with my old psychologist, with my mother, with my diary, reading, learning; I had to be willing to do the deep work.
I have realized that in my philosophy of life there are two permanent forces, fear and strength. Two forces that without clarity have guided my walk during my life. Today I have them very clear, I have observed them a lot, and they help me at all times, they are my compass.
The feelings of fear and strength are intimately linked for me, and are closely related to my self-limiting ideas. Those limits that I put on myself, those that someone told me at some point and I took them as mine. Those limits that every day I am willing to question and break. Because I understand now that the limits are set by myself, nobody else.
Jim Kwik, the expert on speed reading, memory enhancement, brain function, and accelerated learning says in his book Limitless (2020), “We have convinced ourselves that the circumstances we are in, the beliefs we have accepted, and the path who we are on is who we are and who we will always be. You can learn to break your limits and expand your mindset, your motivation and your methods to create an unlimited life.”
Today I am willing to feel fear, to see what exactly it feels like, not the one that paralyzes you but the one that tells you that this is the path. I want to feel it, I'm going to fight to feel it, I'm going to look for it. Because I am willing to do it to live fully, to live to my fullest, to access the abundance of life and my greatness. Because feeling fear is my compass and strengthening myself is my engine.
My personal philosophy today is:
Acknowledge, accept and step into my fears at every opportunity to learn, grow stronger and understand my purpose.
This is how I intentionally choose to live my life
☀️.