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. Continue Reading
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, Continue Reading
Known by his legions of fans as “the father of motivation,” Dr. Wayne W. Dyer is the author of 30 books, creator of audio programs and videos, and has appeared on thousands of television and radio shows. Now, Dyer joins us with “Excuses Begone,” plus a book/CD/DVD combination created especially QVC®. Let Dr. Dyer help show you how to change lifelong self-defeating thinking habits to allow life and all of its abundance to come to you.
See Dr. Wayne Dyer on QVC March 5th, 6th, and 7th! Click Here for the program guide!
Dan Caro has been proving the world wrong since he was in diapers. When he was two years old, he was engulfed in a fireball during a gasoline explosion in the family garage and was left with third-degree burns over most of his body—so severe that doctors held out little hope he’d survive more than a few days. Dan was in such excruciating pain that his devastated parents silently prayed for God to end their son’s suffering and welcome him into heaven. And it seemed as if God was willing to oblige—Dan technically died on the operating table several times in the hours following the accident.
But even though his heart stopped, Dan’s spirit wasn’t ready to give up . . . somehow he knew he had work to do. Despite the odds, Dan survived, but life would not be easy. The fire left him badly maimed and disfigured. His hands were burned away, as was most of his skin and nearly all of his face. He would endure years of painful surgeries and endless months of lonely isolation in burn units, only to suffer the agony of social rejection, shunned and called “monster” by both children and adults in his Louisiana hometown.
With the support of his loving parents and siblings, Dan did not despair. He kept his heart open to the world and focused on the positive energy around him. Before his sixth birthday, he vowed that his life would not be defined by the way others saw him or the restrictions of his so-called physical handicaps. Dan set himself a series of life goals, starting with the art of tying his shoelaces without fingers. Once he had achieved that milestone, he decided he could do anything . . . so why not learn to play the drums?
When Dan was told he’d never be able to do so, he promised himself that one day he’d become one of the most accomplished drummers in the city that gave jazz its name—New Orleans! Since that day, Dan’s music has inspired thousands, and many more have also been inspired by his personal philosophy of focusing on the positive, refusing to accept limits, and living life with an open heart. Today, the young man who was once shunned and called “monster” by his neighbors is very much in demand as a public speaker and travels the country encouraging others to not just overcome life’s hardships, but to view adversity as a gift that can drive us toward reaching our full potential.
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.
There’s a wonderful Turkish proverb that succinctly relates a message underlying both the movie version of The Shift and the book of the same name. It says, “No matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back.” It doesn’t matter how long we’ve allowed ourselves to travel the road of our false self. We know when it isn’t leading us to a sense of purpose and significance, and we can admit we’re on the wrong path. The awareness that our life lacks Meaning is more than enough evidence that it’s time to make a U-turn.
In The Shift movie, I relate how I found the road that resonated with the calling of my soul. I did so by listening to what I was feeling deep within me, rather than what my ego was saying to me about how to capitalize on my fame by writing books to make more money. By trusting my inner excitement, I was able to make a big shift in my life, a real U-turn, away from writing about psychology to writing about living life from a spiritual orientation. That shift away from the Ambition of ego, which tried to control my writing and speaking career, put me on the path of Meaning.
When you turn away from ego control, what is it that you trust to guide you? There are three markers to look for on this road—trust in yourself, trust in others, and trust in the Source of being. When you trust in yourself, you listen to your soul speak and hear what your intuition or the “voice within” is saying. When you trust in others, you practice noninterference and free yourself from trying to control others who have their own inner voice to follow. When you trust in the Source of being, you trust the mystery of creation. The universal Source of all creation, invisible though it may be, guides you just as it guided your development in the womb. When you trust in Divine intelligence, you cooperate and invite the shift to Meaning.
One of my personal heroes is Mother Teresa, who spent her later years teaching and serving others. She once remarked, “Love cannot remain by itself—it has no meaning. Love must be put into action, and that action is service.” These words have inspired me and have helped me make the shift away from my ego’s Ambitions for serving myself toward a life dominated by service to others. Today my life is almost 100 percent devoted to service in one way or another. Each day begins with a prayer of “Thank you,” which are the first words out of my mouth as I awaken. This is to keep me in a state of gratitude for all that I receive, as well as for the opportunity to live my days in service to others.
Before beginning my day, I make every effort to do something for someone else. Since I receive volumes of mail, I often send off a book or a DVD of The Shift, a set of CDs, or a DVD of a PBS special—something that I feel will brighten the day of a total stranger somewhere in the world. As I affix the postage, I take great joy in knowing that a surprise package of love in action will send a message to someone that there are people out there who care, and I am one of them.
Often I call someone I’ve been told is grieving the loss of a loved one or is ill in a hospital setting. Other times some money in an envelope goes to one of the many people who serve in my community. If I’m on the road in a hotel, I seek out the maids who serve me so anonymously and surprise them with a gift of some unexpected cash. The things I’m doing aren’t reported here for recognition, but to provide real-life examples of how shifting from Ambition to Meaning affects daily life. The ego seeks recognition, but in a life of Meaning, loving action is its own reward. I’m reminded of Ram Dass, who told me that his years of putting his ego aside and being of service to his mother, father, and stepmother; as well as to people with AIDS and cancer, were the most fulfilling and meaningful times in his life. There are a multitude of ways in which we can give. It doesn’t really matter what we do—the point is to get in the habit of replacing our attention on ourselves with attention toward others and take loving action.
In the movie version of The Shift, I have a brief discussion with several of the characters about the following key concept: Everything in the material world must be like what it came from, including each and every one of us. In the film I refer to a slice of apple pie on a plate, asking, “What is that one piece of pie like?” The obvious answer is that it’s like apple pie because it must be like what it came from. This is a familiar concept if we think of blood being drawn for a diagnostic test. A small syringe of blood provides medical practitioners with information about the entire supply of the person it was drawn from. Why? Because the sample must be like what it came from.
I extend this logic to myself and you as well. Since I didn’t come from my parents, it isn’t a logical conclusion to state that I must be like they are. Since I didn’t come from my culture, my religion, or anything in this world, it isn’t necessarily so that I must be the same as my surroundings or my society. But since I did come from an invisible energy Source that some call God, or Tao, or Divine mind, then I must be like what I came from. My conclusion about my origination is that I came from Spirit, and my true essence is that I am what I came from. I am a Divine piece of God. I am first and always a spiritual being inextricably connected to my Source of being.
Understanding the answer to Where did I come from? involves, more than anything else, attempting to live from a perspective that’s in rapport with our original nature. We must become more like the spiritual nature of our origin. By recognizing the expression of Divine consciousness that is our physical being, we in turn make the choice of how to express that Divine spirit.
I’ve been engaged for many years in helping people (including myself) make the shift towards their highest potential. I have now made almost 70 trips around our sun, and the one thing that stands out very clearly is that all of us want our lives to have purpose and meaning. What does it take to reach a state of consciousness that nurtures a life of purpose and meaning? First, in my movie The Shift, and now in the companion book of the same name, I’ve tried to map things out.
The Shift—illustrates how and why to make the move from ambition to meaning. Such a shift eliminates our feelings of separateness, illuminates our spiritual connectedness, and involves moving from the ego-directed morning into the afternoon of life where everything is primarily influenced by purpose.
As we contemplate leaving the morning of our life, where ego has played a commanding role, and entering the afternoon (and evening), where meaning and purpose replace ambition and struggle, we may encounter unexpected occurrences that accompany this new direction.
It’s almost a universal law that we’ll experience a fall of some kind. Yet these falls or low points provide the energy we need to move away from ego and into a life of meaning and purpose.
The Shift doesn’t mean that we lose our drive and ambition; it signifies that we become ambitious about something new. We make a commitment to living a life based on experiencing meaning and feeling purposeful, rather than never-ending demands and false promises that are the trademark of the ego’s agenda.
What is The Shift?
The first shift that we all make takes us from nonbeing to being; from Spirit to form; from the invisible to our corporeal world of things.
The next shift is the phase I call Ambition where we take on an ego self that is the opposite of the place of Spirit from which we came. Ego in this context is our false self.
These first two shifts are mandatory in the human journey.
Unfortunately, for many people, Ambition is often the end of their life story, but there are two more shifts open to us!
We can all choose to make the leap past the second shift of ego-driven ambition. We arrive at the third shift when we realize that we have an option to make a U-turn away from the false self. We can do an about-face and head back to the place of Spirit in a third shift.
And then, in the fourth shift, we achieve a life of Meaning and purpose by rededicating our Ambition to the fulfillment of our authentic self. We discover that the laws of the material world do not necessarily apply in the presence of the Meaning that is encouraged by our shift to Source. Manifestations of miracles begin to populate the landscape of life.
Meaning is now what defines all the moments of our existence. We can fulfill our greatest calling when we consciously undertake the journey from Ambition to Meaning. We can transform our individual lives and influence the destiny of our sacred planet as well.
This week you’ll have the opportunity to get a copy of Dan Caro’s life story—The Gift of Fire: How I Made Adversity Work for Me. Dan is a professional jazz drummer and inspirational speaker and a man of exquisite courage and spirit. You saw him play the drums on my most recent PBS special Excuses Begone! Dan banished excuses as a tiny child when he survived an injury by fire that destroyed both of his hands and almost took his life. Dan survived and grew up loving music and wanting to be a musician. He found a way to play the drums and play them well, proving to the world that the only limits in life are those you create for yourself. When Dan isn’t playing jazz in his native city of New Orleans, he is traveling the country encouraging others not just to overcome life’s hardships, but to view adversity as a gift that can drive us toward reaching our full potential. Dan is passing on the love and support that buoyed him up through the years, giving his all to life in a way that few of us are challenged to do. Dan also serves as an Ambassador for the Shriners of North America, whose hospitals provide specialized medical care for children, including treatment for burn victims. Think of Dan the next time you are tempted to pull out that ever-popular excuse “It will be difficult.” Dan took the gift of fire and used it to fuel the powerful spirit of his extraordinary life.
What’s the difference between our authentic self and the false self created by ego? Authentic self wonders: How may I serve? Ego’s attitude, on the other hand, is: Gimme, gimme, gimme—I need more, and I can never be satisfied. When we align with ego’s voice, the universe provides experiences that match the Gimme, gimme, gimme energy. It may not seem obvious at first, but if we pay attention, it’s quite clear that this energy creates pressure, anxiety, and stress. Why? Because allying with ego means that we’ve chosen to live in a demanding environment. We simply haven’t realized that we have a choice to join forces with our authentic ideals and live in a nondemanding environment. The Law of Attraction works either way!
The more we demand from the universe, the more is demanded of us. The more we give away, the more is given to us. It’s truly a simple matter of attitudinal energy generated from within ourselves. Consistently thinking of needing more attracts that needy energy back to us. When we consistently generate thoughts of giving, however, we attract the energy of giving back to us.
Lao-tzu speaks of the “absolute joy and freedom” we can experience by aligning ourselves with the practice of “kindness and selflessness.” My new book The Shift: Taking Your Life from Ambition to Meaning is a contemporary interpretation of this ancient teaching. I hope to impart that “Meaning” is not achieved through your ego and its selfish ways, but through the part of yourself that is selfless. Lao-tzu speaks of practicing “undiscriminating virtue”—this is your path to the freedom and joy that characterize a purposeful life.
Think about all the people who share the stage with you as you move through life. Can you affirm that everyone you need shows up, and that they’re perfect in every way for whatever needs you have at the time? In this intelligent system that you’re a part of, everything arrives from the field of intention where the infinite, invisible life force flows through everyone and everything. This includes you, and everyone else as well. Trust in this invisible life force and the all-creating mind that intends everything into existence.
I suggest that you do a quick review, and note all of the people who’ve shown up as characters in this play called your life. It has all been perfect. Your ex-spouse showed up at just the right time—when you needed to create those children you love so much. The father who walked out on you so that you could learn self-reliance left right on time. The lover who abandoned you was a part of this perfection. The lover who stayed with you was also taking his or her cues from Source. The good times, the struggles, the tears, the abuse—all of it involved people coming into your life and then leaving.
This is your past, and whatever your energy level at the time, whatever your needs, whatever your station in life, you attracted the right people and events to you. You may feel that they didn’t show up when you needed them, that in fact, you were alone and no one showed up at all, but I urge you to see it from the perspective of all of life being in divine order. If no one showed up, it was because you needed to handle something on your own and therefore attracted no one at that time. Viewing the past as a play in which all the characters and all entrances and exits were scripted by your Source and represent what you attracted at the time, frees you from guilt, regret, and even revenge.
As a result, you’ll go from being an actor who’s influenced by others playing the roles of producer and director, to being the writer, producer, director, and star of your glorious life. You’ll also be the casting director who possesses the ability to audition anyone you choose. Base your choices on taking the path of no resistance and staying harmonized with the ultimate producer of this entire drama: our universal all-creating Source.