Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Ask yourself what you have to give away. Keeping in mind that your purpose is always about giving, loving, and serving, the question of what you will be able to give away as your purposeful mission becomes paramount. It doesn’t take any extra special intelligence to know this simple truth: You cannot give away what you don’t have. If you don’t have any money, obviously you can’t give money away. The same principle applies to your contribution to the spiritual revolution that is now taking place in our world.

If you don’t have love, harmony, and peace within you, then you can’t contribute these qualities. If you have anxiety, stress, fear, anger, and tension within, that is all that you will be able to give away. We cannot go on thinking in divisive ways if we want to bring about unity on our planet. We cannot go on thinking in militant ways if we want to bring peace to our world. We cannot go on thinking in hateful ways if we want to bring love to our world.

Each thought that develops into a helping, purposeful, loving act is your contribution. It matters not what others say or do—they have their own destinies to fulfill. When someone sends you criticism or hate, you can respond only with what you have inside. If harmony and peace reside within because that is how you have chosen to think, then that is what you will have to give away. In that moment you have made a difference. You have manifested a miracle into the world.

The words of Michael Jackson, “We are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who make a better world so let’s start giving,” reflect a truly spiritual message.

You truly are the world, and your thoughts do make all the difference. Have reverence for your mind. Treat your invisible inner reality with sacred blissful appreciation, and know that you are capable of bringing about miracles. Every thought you have of love and harmony is one more atom aligning itself toward the spiritual revolution that is occurring even as you read these words. Increasingly, people are believing in their own divinity and trusting in the divine wisdom that created them. More and more people are using their invisible thoughts to visualize a better, safer, cleaner, more responsible, more loving world. We all make a difference. Our presence here is a divine necessity. Perfect and purposeful. We will see a miracle-laden world when we embrace the responsibility for creating it.

I consider Ralph Waldo Emerson one of my greatest teachers even though he passed on well over a century ago. Emerson was the founder of the Transcendental movement in America; his philosophy emphasized the all-pervading spirit of the universe, wherein God existed everywhere. To understand the greatness of Emerson, it is important to remember that during his period of history, spiritual guidance was the exclusive domain of the established religions. Emerson was challenging the dogma and rhetoric of traditional religion. In perhaps his best-known and most frequently quoted essay, “Self-Reliance,” this provocative American author examined the basic tenets of what it means to be your own person. I can still remember the impact that the essays “Self-Reliance” and “On the Necessity of Civil Disobedience”—by Emerson’s contemporary Henry David Thoreau—had on me when I was a seventeen-year-old high school student.

People who truly understand what is meant by self-reliance know they must live their lives by ethics rather than rules. The rules are not reasons to live a certain way. It is the integrity of your own mind that you must first consult if you are ever to experience this quality of self-reliance. This lesson applies to all areas of your life, from making decisions for yourself about how you spend your free time, to how you will dress, to what you will eat, to how you will raise your children. Don’t let the voices within you grow faint and inaudible in favor of that societal conspiracy. Be yourself and run your life by what you know to be right and in harmony with your spiritual essence. That is, by the integrity of your own mind.

Be yourself, respect yourself, and create a harmonious relationship between the integrity of your own mind and your daily conduct. See the unfolding of God in everyone and in all life. Know that all are equal in the invisible realm of the spirit.

Another of my great teachers, from my own lifetime, was Abraham Maslow who cautioned us to be “independent of the good opinion of others.” If we are true to the divine wisdom within, we’ll be ready to follow our path and make our unique contribution to the world.

How may I serve others so that they may have what I desire? The answer to this seemingly contradictory question holds the key to authentic inner peace. Many callers to my radio show are struggling with fears, worries, and concerns that stem, as they see it, from unfulfilled desires. I usually suggest that they try wanting something more for others than they want it for themselves. The love required to do this turns their focus away from the constant turmoil of the ego and instead opens real possibilities for living their highest and most joyful purpose.

Supportiveness, or service to others, is one of the four cardinal virtues described by Lao-tzu. When you extend yourself in a spirit of giving, helping, or loving, you act as God acts. Imagine shifting your attention off of yourself and asking the universal mind: How may I serve? When you do so, the message you are sending is: I’m not thinking about myself and what I can or can’t have. Your attention is on making someone else feel better.

Anytime you’re supportive of others, you automatically remove ego from the picture. And with no ego, you go from edging God out to being more like God. Practice giving and serving without expectation of reward (or even a thank-you)—let your reward be spiritual fulfillment. This is what Kahlil Gibran meant when he wrote in The Prophet: “There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.”

The greatest joy comes from giving and serving. That’s much better than the discomfort and distress of focusing exclusively on yourself and what’s in it for you. When you make the shift to supporting others in your life, without expecting anything in return, you’ll think less about what you want and find comfort and joy in the act of giving and serving. This giving, loving, serving person is the real you.

Do you blame other people and circumstances for keeping you from achieving the level of success, happiness, and health you’d like to enjoy? Blaming others for deficiencies or any of the conditions of your life keeps you from fulfilling your own highest destiny. Everyone in life does exactly what they know how to do given the conditions of their lives. That’s the way I’ve chosen to look at the story of my life. My mother had three small children under the age of four; and an alcoholic husband who walked away without ever providing any support. She placed one of my brothers and me in a series of foster homes, while my other brother lived with my grandmother until I was ten years old. This is not a story of pity or blame; it’s precisely what had to take place in order for me to learn about self-reliance firsthand. Because I’ve lived self-reliance, and then gone on to teach it to millions of people, I don’t find fault with anyone for any of the conditions of my life. I see all of my early-childhood experiences as necessary gifts, even the ones laced with pain and sadness.

Be willing to accept total responsibility for every facet of your own life. You didn’t inherit your personality traits from anyone in the past—you’ve repeatedly chosen them, even though you may be unaware of how or why. If you’re shy, loud, fearful, assertive, loving, hateful, kind, or cruel, learn to say: This is what I’ve chosen for myself up until now.

Similarly, if you find yourself mired in debt, languishing in poverty, wasting away in an unfulfilling career, or wilting in an unsatisfying relationship—whatever the current conditions of your life, ask yourself if you’re willing to take responsibility for them. I know this appears difficult. You indeed may have suffered at the hands of uneducated, poorly informed, badly addicted people. It was not your fault.

Even as we recognize this, I urge you to accept, without guilt, that everything that has shown up in your life has value equal to your assuming responsibility for its existence. There’s something for you to learn in any difficulty. Be willing to say, “Thank you, God, for the experiences I’ve lived through” on a daily basis. Look for the blessing in all situations, and remind yourself that you’re no longer a child, but a fully functioning adult willing to accept the responsibility that will now give you control of your destiny.

Perhaps the greatest lessons of my life have revolved around the slogan of the recovery movement: “Let Go and Let God”—a notion that involves relinquishing ego’s attachment to, or fear of, something. The single most pronounced attachment for most of us during the morning of our lives is the attachment to being right! There’s nothing ego loves more than to be right, which makes it an important and satisfying attachment to practice letting go of.

I seriously doubt that there’s anyone reading this who hasn’t engaged in arguing about trivial matters that turned into disagreements, which had a net effect of following a road of self-righteous anger. And all of it probably seemed to be for no reason other than the need, the desire, to be right! Eventually we may look back with wistful amusement, realizing now that our fear of actually being wrong was so strong then that another person’s opinion could energize this unwanted feeling. Ego’s strategy was to be right no matter what, a highly successful maneuver that effectively distracted us from genuine purpose. Letting go of an attachment to being right can be a fairly simple exercise.

So how can you choose to let go and let God, in a quest to eliminate an attachment to being right?  You can handle it with these simple words spoken to another—You’re right about that. It stems from a soulful decision you make that when given the choice between being right and being kind—you’ll always choose to be kind. Saying “you’re right about that” will gradually open the entry point to a road that leads through letting go and letting God to experiencing a more significant life.

Part of the meaning we gain by letting go is a movement toward real contentment. Most stress in our lives results from hanging on to beliefs that keep us striving for more, because ego stubbornly believes we need it. When we make the shift away from attachment, the influence of our ego fades. We replace attachment with contentment. Chasing and striving—and then becoming attached to what we chased after—is a source of anxiety that feeds Ambition, but it won’t satisfy the need for Meaning at our soul level.