Triple D for Balance in Relationships

Life exists in relationships. To be successful in life, we should work on establishing and maintaining successful relationships. Relationships, being mutual, require balance in give and take. We need to have a sense for what to let go of (Detachment), what to hang on to (Devotion), and how to keep going despite difficulty (Determination).

Detachment is letting go, not insisting on clinging to that which does not serve us. Here are seven things we should detach ourselves from. You can choose a day of the week to practice each one, until you can release them consistently:

• Let go of identifying yourself based on your religion, culture, and race.

• Let go of identifying yourself based on your achievements and reputation (good or bad). Reputation is not located in you, but resides in the mind of others, so avoid allowing your self-concept to be dependent on whom others perceive you to be.

• Let go of how you compare to others, and any need to be seen as better than others.

• Let go of the need to be recognized by others. The less you need to take credit for your work the more you stay connected to God/Source. Then you become free to achieve with peace, compassion, and love.

• Let go of the need to be right, and allow yourself to learn and expand your perspective.

• Let go of the illusion that feeling offended serves a higher purpose. Release your negative emotions to make room for positive ones.

• Let go of dreams you have not yet fulfilled. Be grateful for the experiences, abilities, and blessings you already have.

Devotion is the commitment to love. We can be devoted to a deity, to a sports team, to a TV show, to our families. Devotion means consistently showing up in support, through good times and bad. It means holding something or someone in your heart, cherishing it, and consciously directing your actions to create positive results for the object of devotion. Devotion is grown through repeated, deliberate action conducted with love. Love in a relationship cannot be cultivated spontaneously or learned academically. You will only find true love by actively engaging in relationships. In order to experience love in a relationship, you must choose to put yourself fully into working on this relationship with consistent and sincere effort.

Determination is a key factor in maximizing the results of our brief human experiences. Determination is working with strong intention, a primary source of power for energy beings like ourselves. Putting energy into intention creates vibrations that propel us towards a desired situation. In order to achieve your goals, you must maintain your focus on your own intention. Do not allow others to derail your journey. If you work unflaggingly towards your own goals, step by step, you will not be deterred from achieving them.

Your existence in this life is as a temporary expression of consciousness. The same applies to all other elements of creation, human and non-human. Allow yourself to observe the interactions between these elements and use your experience to learn and grow as an individual. If you balance your attention between what deserves to receive your intentional effort and what will benefit from release, you successfully interact with the other consciousnesses around you. You have success in your relationships. You have success in your life.

Triple G for Contentment

You are a farmer. You have lost everything in a natural disaster. All you have left is the land, however ravaged, and one seed. Just one. But you know the power of this potential. Grateful for the possibility, placing your faith in the miracle of the unknown, you tuck it into the soil. You give it water, and time. Soon enough, it sends forth its first jade tendrils, and then its sturdy stalk. By and by, you harvest fruit and seeds. Back to the beginning, you sow, and tend, and reap. And soon, your hands are full, your arms overflowing with bounty. All of this you owe to the one seed, a vessel for your gratitude and awareness that quickened the sustaining life you enjoy today. Without thankfulness and knowledge, you may have cast aside what appears to be an insignificant thing. But with appreciation in your heart, you were able to overcome the obstacles and give the future a chance. With determination to share what you had, however little, you smoothed the road to an easier tomorrow. And in the end, you grew success.

So it is with our hearts. A man can be materially wealthy well-beyond average, and feel his life is lacking. Or, you can be barely able to offer guests clean water and coarse, homemade bread, but you do so with honor and sacrament, and for this it tastes all the sweeter, seems all the more sustaining. When we feel grateful for our blessings, however small, our excitement to celebrate “little things” easily infects those around us with positivity and delight, spreading happiness and love. It is true that “the more you give, the more you get.” As we raise the vibration of our hearts and of those around us, we grow in courage and resiliency, and feel the pulse of abundance more in tune with our own hearts. Grateful, again, for our experience of provision, we step up a level in our celebration, our sharing, our strength. Our gratitude, giving, and growth become a self-perpetuating cycle of celebration and success built not on having, but on being.

Tune in to the presence and potentials around you in your life. Take advantage of your opportunities to extend what blessings you can share to those around you. Recognize the room to grow. Become your better life.

Triple O for Growth

Encountering challenges is an evitable part of one’s life journey. How we approach this process affects both the experience of existing within the challenging situation, and our resulting quality of life once we move beyond it. Of course, one can choose to merely cope–tread water, if you will–or one can accept the challenge head-on, and approach it strategically with informed determination.

The first step to an empowered approach to encountering challenges is the acknowledge the obstacle. Obstacles range in intensity–perhaps an athlete pulls a muscle, or a musician’s instrument falls out of tune–or perhaps a major investor withdraws from a project, or a life partnership dissolves. These challenges test our willpower for success. By throwing a wrench in our plans, obstacles present us with an important choice: do we grow in flexibility and capability, or do we wither at the touch of difficulty? For that matter, without obstacles, how can we be forced out of our comfort zone? Challenge, though it may present itself in an ugly way, can itself be a beautiful and valuable experience. We all need to grow–we are all here on Earth to grow and evolve. Accepting the inevitability and necessity of obstacles in life is the first step to overcoming them.

Once we find ourselves in a difficult situation, we must engage our powers of observation. If we allow the obstacle to overtake us, we will become absorbed by the problem, as if trapped in a whirlpool. If we are able to step outside the immediate difficulty and examine it from the outside, we can find our footing faster to deal with whatever has come up. It is like climbing a set of stairs: we must pull our vision slightly back from each step in order to more accurately assess the height and depth required to move our feet in order to ascend further. You can ask yourself: if this problem were happening to a dear friend or loved one, how would I want to support her? How could I help her analyze the situation, and brainstorm solutions? Treat your situation with as much objectivity as you can muster, and you will find yourself able to stay calm and collected.

Finally, we must always commit ourselves to achieving order of the highest degree. When we put ourselves, our habits, our homes in order, we inevitably also help put society in order. Do what you can to maintain order in your physical and spiritual environments. If you, at least in theory, enjoy a regular prayer or meditation practice, there is no better time to recommit yourself to the sacred repetition of this habit. Or perhaps you need to exercise on a daily basis–a quick jog around the block might be all it takes to help maintain a sense of order and control in your daily life that gives you a sturdy baseline to fall back on. When everything else seems unpredictable, at least you can make certain choices to reaffirm your commitment to seeking and contributing to beauty and positivity in the universe.

When we encounter obstacles in life, then observe and assess from a calm mindset, keeping ourselves in order becomes all the easier. When we maintain order and balance, the obstacles we encounter will decrease in number and perceived severity. As we grow from each experience of handling challenges, we can thus strengthen our response protocol. Challenges become gifts life gives us to help us grow.