Hello and welcome to this episode of the Raising Yourself Up podcast. I am your host, Ben Povlow, and in this episode, I am going to continue the series that I've been doing. I'm reading from my recent book, You Must Be Present to Win: A Guide to Spiritual Awakening and Personal Growth. Today, we're on Chapter 3, and if you're just tuning in for the first time, you can go back to the past few episodes. I've done the same thing: I did the introduction, Chapter 1, and 2 so far. What I do is I'm going to read the chapter from this physical book right here, and then I am going to do an analysis, basically elaborate on some of the highlights, I guess you could say, that I've made note of that I want to kind of elaborate on. At the end of each chapter, there are some action steps, so if you want to go ahead and grab something to write with—a piece of paper—that'll be maybe helpful. I don't have any real special announcements this week, so I am just going to jump right into it.
The book is available on Amazon and everywhere else online that you buy books. It's available on eBook, paperback, and hardcover. Just so you know, in case you have a hard time keeping up with the readings.
Okay, so I'm going to jump right in here now, and it's Chapter 3. The title of the chapter is "Breaking Patterns, Building Faith, and Your Why".
"It's in the still quietness that we discover ourselves and our deepest desires. This is what gave me the breakthrough I needed to become unstuck.
Quieting the noise has been a game changer for me. There's a long list of things distracting us from unveiling the true wisdom we are seeking. I am practicing pure thoughts, kindness, awareness, gentleness, and appreciation for all that I encounter thanks to my daily meditation practice and reading routine.
Since I've begun driving without music playing, doing chores around the house without television for background noise, and sitting in silence whenever possible, empowering thoughts and ideas have become more prominent.
Sometimes it takes a rock bottom experience for people to change, but it's not necessary. Why wait for an unfortunate situation to create motivation if you already know what you need to do to live the life of your desires? Knowing is the first step to freedom and happiness. Allow your why to kickstart your movement.
Once you know what it is you desire, you can begin working towards attainment. Training your attention on the outcome and beginning with the end in mind is step one. Truly believing it will be yours is step two. Eliminating all doubt and truly feeling the goal realized is step three.
Don't focus on the how. Follow your intuition one action at a time. Pay attention to what the universe is telling you and showing you. Recognize how your body feels around certain thoughts and situations. Spiritual awakening happens in unconventional ways, in my experience.
Blind faith is a key aspect of spiritual growth and seems to be one of the most difficult to grasp. Our logical minds can often be our worst enemy when trying to live a life of spiritual guidance. Pay attention to where your thoughts and feelings are leading you. Obviously, you don't want to follow a path into danger or destruction.
Uncertainty is part of the process. Trying something new or out of your comfort zone may be just what you need. If you are being guided to take a different approach, this is where your faith needs to lead the way.
Put your fear and doubt on the shelf and baby-step your way to something new. New actions will provide new results. If you continue to do what you've always done, you will continue to get more of what you already have.
Not knowing why you're doing something or doing the same old thing because it's familiar can begin to show up as low self-esteem, regret, anxiety, depression, or simple dissatisfaction. Maybe fear of success is what causes these repetitive behaviors. Maybe unconsciously we know we will be safe when we already know the outcome. Fear of failure can be dressed in many fancy outfits.
I believe this is where our why becomes more important than ever. Why we are truly doing something can be the motivating factor that trumps all fear. When I began my personal development journey over 20 years ago, I was a network marketer. One of the phrases that had been burned into my mind was this: 'If your why doesn't make you cry, then it's not big enough.'
Let me elaborate. We were building a home-based business in our spare time alongside full-time jobs, in most cases. I say we because most people in network marketing fall into this category. Only the top 1% make enough to have their home-based business be their only source of income.
Being an independent contractor was hard work and required a lot of sacrifice. I would attend the company's national conferences and local events as well. The top producers would always have a theme to their motivational speeches when it came to how they achieved success. They always thanked God first. Second, they gave credit to their families for being their primary motivation and the reason why they kept going forward when things got tough and challenges presented themselves. And they would always get choked up or cry when telling their stories. The emotion of pushing through difficult times always pointed back to why they made the necessary sacrifices.
Doing difficult things becomes easier when you know why you're doing them. Whether your reason why is to buy your dream home, retire your parents, get out of debt, get sober, become drug-free, purchase reliable transportation so you don't have to take three buses to work, or put food on the table for your children, use it as your motivating factor.
As it relates to this book, maybe you are tired of working meaningless jobs and feel you have a greater purpose in life. You may be at the age where money is no longer the goal, and feeling fulfilled has become your ultimate desire. You may feel called to help other people in new and exciting ways.
Think long and hard about what your life would look like when you achieve the life you've been dreaming about. Then immerse yourself in the feeling of achieving the desired result. Create a vision board with pictures of this dream life and leave reminders everywhere you look to keep your reason why in front of you daily.
When you can make the connection between your positive thoughts and the gratifying feelings, change will become inevitable. Shed the distractions. Get quiet and discover your why, and the shift will begin.
The more you align yourself with your life's desires, with good intentions, and gratifying feelings, the easier your journey will become. What brings tears to your eyes? What makes your heart flutter when you think about it? Is there a recurring thought about trying something that you've been ignoring? If so, start by acting on the burning desire. Be confident, trust yourself and your higher power. Miraculous things are waiting on the other side of your fear, doubt, and worry. I believe in you, and you should too. Discover your why and get busy on creating your dream life today."
Action Steps
- Make a list of what you want to become, do, and have in your life.
- Create a separate list of why you desire those realities.
- Think about who else will benefit from you achieving these results. Are you trying to help others with your new mission? Speak to those you wish to help and enlist their support for your efforts. See the support and wisdom of others who may have a similar goal. Your reason why will create excitement in others, which will become contagious.
- Write your biggest whys on paper. Put these notes on your bathroom mirror, in the car, and carry one in your pocket as a reminder of the importance of your goals for when the obstacles appear.
And that concludes the reading of the chapter.
Now I'd like to just touch on some of the things that were mentioned in this chapter, beginning with the stillness and silence and how revealing they can be. Part of the spiritual journey is going within, and that is going to always be where you find your true answers. That is your true north, and the guidance from within is always going to be more effective than seeking it from outside people and things that are outside of you. So always going within is always going to be the most revealing, and your primary source of knowledge, inspiration, and as it relates to this chapter, your why. The reason why you're doing something—or even more specifically, what it is you're doing—comes from within, then you know that it's the true stuff.
Part of why I think going within is so valuable is because sometimes our why, the reason why we're doing something, or more importantly, what it is we're doing, it doesn't always make sense. It doesn't even always make sense to us, and so how could it make sense to someone outside of us?
I like to use myself as an example as much as possible, and again, with me, it was writing. It kept coming to me from psychic medium readings and other things we'll touch on in a later chapter. But why would I want to become a writer? I was a construction worker when this stuff kept coming to me, and this was what I was talking about in this chapter when it was talking about recurring thoughts. About trying something new or doing something that may not really make logical sense to you. For me, the writing was very prominent. It kept coming to me, and I kept thinking about doing it, and it wasn't like about making money. It was more about helping people, and it was about using my personal experiences to help other people avoid the same path that I went down, which is what my first book, self-help for at-risk teens, was all about. It was using my experiences and also the knowledge I had later in life to reach back and try to provide a roadmap for at-risk teenagers and young adults who may not have any kind of guidance or direction in their life. And so, the why was really to help other people.
On the spiritual journey, you'll realize that everything is about helping other people, in reality, in one way or another. Being of service is always going to play a factor, because if you are the only person benefiting from what you're doing, it's most likely not your highest calling. I would say that your why, why you're doing it, is paramount over even what you're doing. So even though what you're doing may not make sense, why you're doing it is really why you want to keep doing it. Because if your life's purpose—and you're on a spiritual journey, and you're someone who wants to fulfill your life's purpose—that purpose may not make sense, but if you at least know why you're doing it, if you know who you're going to help, it will help you along the way. It will continue to keep you going when times get tough, because they will, and times will become difficult. You will be asked to do things that you don't know how to do, and you may begin to question how you are going to do it, and that's a big part of having faith. The faith that if this has been placed in your heart before you were even born into this existence, that you are going to have everything you need when you need it.
But you do not know it all right away. You don't have all the answers upfront, and you need to kind of just take one step to reveal the next step. Sometimes that can be very hard, it could be difficult, it could be challenging to continue down a path that you don't know where you're even going or what it's going to lead to. But when you know why, and if you're someone who just says, 'I want to serve my purpose, I don't care what it is, I just need to know I'm helping people,' then helping people is your main why. That will keep you going.
I mean, yes, it can be about money, too. If earning money is going to retire your parents, or buy you that home, and it's going to provide for you, then that is a good motivating factor. Yes, it can be your why, it can be part of your why. But understand that your why can't be so selfish that you're the only one benefiting, because then it's most likely not going to pan out. Because, again, we have to serve our purpose, and it's always about serving others in one way or another.
Embracing uncertainty is another big part of it. Embracing uncertainty and not really knowing what's going to come next, but having that faith, assuming the feeling, and having that vision that it's all going to work itself out if you just continue down the path, you're going to continue to have that motivation, that inspiration. Trusting your higher power is always going to be the one thing that will keep you going, because if you can trust that your higher power is guiding you and you're being led down a path that even though you're uncertain about it, you trust that it's going to work itself out, then you're going to continue to move forward. Sometimes we get so overwhelmed by not knowing that we just stop altogether.
Understanding your why is going to help you push through the tough times. So, do the exercises in the action steps. Try to really see it on paper. Sometimes it's more helpful to see it on paper because we can brainstorm, we can think about things, and even in meditation you're getting a lot of things coming to you, but it's sometimes convoluted and you're not really sure what things mean. So sometimes when you write it out on paper, you will begin to see patterns, and you'll see it, read it, and that'll lead you to thinking about something else. It's like a brainstorming exercise, a journaling exercise, of trying to discover your why. As it relates to this chapter, your why and why you're doing something, it might not always be right away evident, and you might have to do some work to uncover it, but you can do it.
In Chapter 1, we talked about purpose, so I'm not going to go backward on these recordings, but if you're still not even sure what your purpose is and you're just tuning in, go back two episodes. Listen to the purpose episode, and then come back up here and listen to the why again.
Chapter 4, the next episode, will be about signs that spirits are all around us. As we continue to do this series—this is going to be a series that touches on every chapter in the book; there are 11 chapters—I'm going to try to do at least one per week. If you're just tuning in somewhere in the middle, just go back and listen to the other ones. They're not really long episodes, and if you can't wait to get to the end, you can always just go get the book. I have a spiritual eBook bundle available on my website at benpovlow.com, where you can read this entire book as well as my memoir, which includes some of my other spiritual-related stories and my journey in recovery, and you can get both of them in an eBook bundle on my website right now for $2.22.
Thank you for tuning in to this episode.
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Have a great day.
Ben Povlow
