The Mastery of Life Blog

Do you have something special to go for?

When you have something special to go for, life becomes an exciting adventure. It also adds a tremendous amount of joy to life. It gives you direction and purpose, a reason to wake up in the morning. You feel better about yourself and better about life.

When you have nothing to go for, life becomes empty and meaningless. Instead of becoming a source of joy, life becomes something to endure, and a life to be endured is not much fun. It leads to depression and all sorts of suffering. If you want to create a great life, find something to go for that is important to you.
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How to let go

At any moment, your situation is the way it is whether you like it or not. When you are at peace with the way your situation is, you are very effective. You see clearly and can take effective action. When you fight the way your situation is, you create a state of fear and upset. You destroy your ability to find solutions and usually make your situation worse.

To handle a difficult situation, you need effective action, not the inner state of resisting. You restore your effectiveness though a process called “Letting go.” Letting go is the inner action that removes the fear and upset. The moment you let go, you restore your ability to see clearly. You can then take action based on facts instead of emotion. You can also find solutions that you could never have seen before.
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The key to having life work

Almost everyone has a relationship or an area of life that isn’t working. These problem areas seem to be the result of another person or our circumstances, but this is an illusion that creates needless suffering. The problem areas of life are not the problem. They are the symptom.

If you have any area of life that isn’t working, there is an underlying condition of resisting or hanging on that is either creating the problem or destroying your ability to resolve it. This condition makes us defensive and creates a state of fear and upset. It destroys our ability to see clearly and forces destructive behavior.

Fortunately, this condition can be found and removed. The moment this happens, you restore your ability to see clearly. You can then take action based on facts instead of emotion. Solutions appear and this area of life starts clearing up. To see how this condition works, let’s look at the nature of reality.
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Relationships are 100/100

How I treat you determines how you will respond to me. If I am loving and supportive, you will respond one way. If I am judgmental, critical, or resentful, you will respond in a very different way. This makes me 100% responsible for the presence or absence of love and you are 0% responsible. You are 0% responsible because you are reacting to me. I’m the cause and you are the effect.

The other side of the coin is also true. How you treat me determines how I will respond to you. If you are loving and supportive, I will respond one way. If you are judgmental, critical, or resentful, I will respond another way. This makes you 100% responsible and I am 0%. To say this another way, each of us are totally, 100% responsible for the presence or absence of love, but this is not what we have been taught. We have been taught that there is only one responsibility.

Either you are responsible or I am responsible, or we cut it down the middle, 50/50. This is what we’ve been taught, but it’s not the truth. Everyone is responsible. When we believe that there is only one responsibility, we get into trouble. Here’s how:
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Love is never enough

Love is never enough to have a relationship work. The divorce courts are full of people who love each other. The key to having a relationship be great is actually very simple. Make sure the other person feels loved.

You do this by giving the gift of acceptance and appreciation. Notice how you feel when someone genuinely accepts and appreciates you. Doesn’t this feel good? Of course it does. You feel better about yourself and better about life. You also feel better about the other person.

The same thing happens when you accept and appreciate someone else. That person feels empowered and gives it back to you. By giving acceptance and appreciation, you create the experience of love.
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