Measuring Your Worth?

If you’re presently evaluating your level of achievement based on how much you’ve accumulated, here’s a way to make a major shift in your state of personal satisfaction and contentment. Verse 46 of the Tao Te Ching invites you to discover a more peaceful and self-satisfying way of knowing success. “Contentment alone is enough,” says Lao-tzu. “Indeed, the bliss of eternity can be found in contentment.” As you let go of the determination to acquire more, your new views will change the world you’ve known. You’ll find that the experience of inner peace becomes your true gauge of accomplishment.

The “disease of more” has created an environment that personifies Lao-tzu’s observation that there is “no greater tragedy than discontentment.” When you truly understand what it means to live peacefully, satisfaction will begin to replace your desire for more. Your world will begin to become tranquil as you change your own life and then touch the lives of your immediate family, your neighbors, your co-workers, and ultimately your nation and the entire planet. Begin by simply thinking of the opening line of the famous Prayer of Saint Francis when you notice that you’re demanding more of anything.

Silently say, Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace. As that instrument of peace, you’ll radiate tranquility to those in your immediate surroundings, and you’ll feel the flicker of a new and different success in contentment, perhaps for the first time in your life. By refusing to lose the Tao, regardless of what others may be doing and what our world’s governments elect to do, you’re living harmoniously. Your connection to the Tao will make a difference, gradually inching the Earth away from the precipice of discontentment.

When your feet hit the floor every single morning, without exception, say, “Thank you for an opportunity to live in a state of contentment.” Invite the magical energy of the Tao to flow freely through you and inform your responses throughout the day. You’re in harmony with your Source when you’re soliciting gratitude and gratification in these ways. Set aside time each day to consciously send peaceful energy into the world, especially to anyone you see as an opponent or competitor, anyone you disagree with. Find authentic success by practicing gratitude and contentment each day.

Topics: harmony, lao-tzu, tao te ching

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