“I try to teach my children that being successful isn’t necessarily about performing a specific task, being in a certain occupation, or living in a particular location. It’s about sharing yourself in a creative, loving way using the skills and interests that are inherently part of you.” – Dr. Wayne Dyer
Questions of the Day? What if Life is giving you everything you want? Are you sending mixed messages about what you want and love in your life? What makes you feel alive?
Those may seem like a strange questions because we all know that as long as we are breathing we have life’s presence (presents) and we all want to feel alive. We all attract the circumstances, challenges and issues which fulfill this desire.
What do you want? What makes you feel that your life has value? What is the value system of your life. I really do not know the orgin of the “Personal Value Test” but I attribute it to my dear friend, Wendy Craig Purcell, because in 1993 she gave me a system for determining what I truly value in life. It has taken many years of practice to truly appreciate this gift.
Personal Value Test
Imagine a platform which is 18 inches wide, 50 feet long, and 4 inches deep and is suspended one foot off the ground…would you walk across the platform for $5?
Raise the suspension to 5 feet…what would it take for you to walk the platform?
Raise the suspension to 10 feet…what would it take for you to walk the platform?
Raise the suspension to 50 feet…what would it take for you to walk the platform?
Raise the suspension to 100 feet…what would it take for you to walk the platform?
Raise the suspension to 500 feet…what would it take for you to walk the platform?
What I truly value in my life is what I would cross that final platform for. My answer was a surprise to me and changed the way I value life. This questioning of my own value and value system taught me the that I value freedom and equality– not only for myself but for all Human Beings.
As a child growing up, I learned what was of value in that belief system at a very early age…Competition and the “Hard Life Theory.” In order to be valued you had to have the appearance of being better and trying harder than other people…smarter, prettier, more religious, more education, more money, more athletic. You had to be the best at something or accept the position of being inferior…poor white trash.
The Golden Rule was, “He with the most Gold Rules.” Growing up with the belief that all the good things in life are very limited in an environment where diversity was almost non-existent, the major issues were control and securing a place of superiority. With a position of being in control came the right to fix and save everyone else. Everyone was fighting for control!
The “Hard Life Theory” breeds fear, competition and jealousy. Being superior means someone has to be inferior, being a controller means someone has to be controlled, and believing in being more means someone has to be less thus creating the ultimate class system and prejudice.
Being a fast learner…the area where I could excel and show my value (superiority) was intelligence. I wanted to know more and be more intelligent than everyone else, therefore I practiced by reading everything I could get my hands on and learning about everything.
Life gives us what we want and value. Life gave me more than ample opportunity to practice what I valued in the form of major challenges and hardships to over-come. I had a bumper sticker that said, “Here comes trouble.”
I spent years attracting problems to solve and being in relationships with others who had major drama that I could get involved in. The stress of survival made me feel alive and of value believing that I was superior to others in intelligence.
I created similar situations and relationships over and over that revolved around the control issues. I worked in large corporations where I either held or was in competition for the position of controller, manager or director. I took classes…I earned degrees…I worked “hard”…I did everything that I had been led to believe would add value to my life and make me a better competitor and give me “control” over life which in my mind meant control over other people or superiority.
The biggest frustration was my lack of patience with “stupidity” and “laziness.” I could never understand people who (in my terms) could roll in shit and come out smelling like a rose. There were always people in my life who did as little as possible to get by and were protected and taken care of by those they reported to. They were the brown nosers who found their value in being accepted as inferior or less than other people.
Life gave me exactly what I wanted to feel alive and valued. In December of 1980, I sat in a Church in Escondido California and screamed at God that I wanted twin girls. My daughters were borne by unmedicated natural child-birth in July of the next year. I always wanted to do things the hard way because I believed in the “Hard Life Theory.”
Feeling alive meant always wanting to be someplace else “trying” something else…reading more books…self improvement…following new paths…moving into new homes…getting new jobs…meeting more people…taking more classes…attending more workshops…learning…becoming better. All I ever needed for motivation was to have someone tell me that I couldn’t do something.
This was the role model that I presented to my children. I passed on the myths of my belief system as truth to my children. My children accepted the myth “Hard Life Theory” along side the universal law “You can attract anything you want in life.” My children grew up with “itchy feet” always ready to take on anyone or everything that they considered devaluing of human rights.
My daughters always question authority because they never recognize anyone as being an authority or superior in value or intelligence to them. This is not part of the “How to win friends and influence people course” in a society that believes in fighting, fear and control for security.
Life always gives us what we want by the messages that we send from our belief system and what we place value on in the way we live. The Secret to attracting what we really want in our lives is knowing what we really want. What we “say” we want and what we value are often two difference things completely. We get out of life what we place our personal value on and how we value ourselves.
Raise the suspension to 500 feet…what would it take for me to walk the platform?
I would walk for freedom to live in peace, power, and prosperity where every Human Being is of equal value. I would walk for freedom to contribute to the Well-Being of all.
Raise the suspension to 500 feet…what would it take for you to walk the platform?
Love, Light & Lots of Laughter…Joa
www.joacarter.com
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