What does thriving in life mean to you? Take a moment and ask yourself this question. Can I say that I am thriving in life? Your answer will set the stage for what is to come next.

What is to come next, not only in this story but for the remainder of your life, depends upon your answer.

Allow me to explain…

1. Life is comprised of moment-to-moment experiences, a bit like stringing beads to make a necklace or stringing popcorn to adorn a Christmas tree. Ugly beads and broken kernels won’t create the best outcome.

2. If you believe that thriving in life means something, in particular, i.e. the right partner, bank account, job, well-behaved children, a particular car, house, or wardrobe, you have set yourself up for disappointment. More on that later, perhaps.

3. We get what we think about life - I don’t mean the New Age view of manifesting. I mean that our moment-to-moment experience is solely comprised of what we’re thinking at that moment, and then the next, and the next; whether we’re aware of what we’re thinking, or not. Nevertheless, Consciousness will bring it to life in the form of a personal experience.

So what does this have to do with thriving in life, you may be asking?

Well, everything actually.

I’ll get a little personal, to illustrate my point.

Years ago, as a young adult, I thought that the only way I could thrive in life was to make it happen. I had this idea back then that it was all up to me whether or not I had a husband and a family, in my future. Do you have any idea the amount of stress that put me through? Every lost love, every disrespectful boyfriend, every rejection, looked to me like a gargantuan failure and it must be my fault. Either I’m picking the wrong guys or I’m going about it all wrong. That thinking, which didn’t look like my own made-up story, was causing me to feel pretty darned depressed and the opposite of thriving in life. What do you think walking around, down on myself, most of the time, caused? You guessed it…I wasn’t exactly a magnet for a great guy, the future father of great children! Do I blame myself today? NO! Thankfully, I learned, from the late Sydney Banks, that people are innocent when they don’t understand how they (as well as everyone else) works.

I have since learned (and continue to learn more and more) that life is what happens and we experience it through the lens of our own thought created world. Do I have sad moments still? Of course, who doesn’t? Would I love to have a great primary relationship? Of course. That preference won’t keep me from thriving in life anymore, though. In the past I would have been on a pity party writing my woes in a journal. Today I am writing to share the best kept secret about how to truly thrive in life, no matter what your situation or circumstance is.

Did I turn myself inside-out to alter my experience so much?

Well sort of…you could say that’s what happened to me, I didn’t DO anything to make it happen. You could say, that I stumbled upon an understanding about the human life experience, in 1985 when I attended a lecture by an unknown person named Mr. Sydney Banks. Something hit me so hard that I read all of his books, not once, not twice, but countless times. I couldn’t get enough, and my life was changing, literally from the inside-out.

I found that, not only in myself, but in the many people whose lives were also touched, by this inside-out understanding, that we really are what we think. Better, higher quality thoughts have come to my mind more often and for longer periods of time, incrementally through the years since I had my first insight about this inside-out understanding.

So, to me, thriving in life is the QUALITY of the feeling I walk around in. I haven't’ found a way to make that happen but it certainly seems to happen more often, as my understanding of how it works, deepens.

Okay, so you are wondering: How do I deepen my understanding?

That happened naturally to me. A deeper understanding comes from looking within - that’s where the answers are about how we work - what better way to learn than to see how it works inside yourself. You and your experience of life, are your life lab. I know it sounds mystical, and guess why that is?

Because:

It is Mystical…

It’s not of this world. It’s not of the physical world that we see, hear and touch. It’s inside, located in a feeling. The feeling of love, gratitude, humility, connection, kindness, peace of mind, acceptance, and love; did I say the feeling of love? You betcha… It’s the feeling I thought was out there in the form of a husband or a child. I discovered it was inside of me, myself, and I, all along, and there was no one, and nothing, I could get it from. I also discovered that no one and nothing can take it away from me.

Even when I get lost in some mess out there, in the physical world, I am not gone for very long anymore. There’s something about the feeling of love, gratitude and peace of mind that is like a magnet, always bringing me back home. I just don’t see the sense in hanging out with disappointment, expectation, anger, and judgment, anymore, for very long.

Now ask yourself again, does thriving in life mean the same to you as it did before considering these words? It’s not about my words, it’s about what you made of what you just read. That’s how Consciousness works with the power of Thought, to create an experience in the moment.

You may want to read this again on another day, in a different frame of mind, and see if you experience it differently. That’s the nature of experience like shifting sands. When we know it’s just a temporary sandstorm or thought storm, we don’t take it so hard, we don’t brace ourselves, against it. Then it passes and we’re back to a nice feeling again. That’s true resiliency. I believe that’s what Sydney Banks meant when he said, and wrote: “Look for a nice feeling.” No one and nothing can give that to you - it’s already inside, temporarily covered up with insecure thoughts that are as temporary as you allow them to be. There is no reason to capture them and entertain them, they are simply self-created stories that we temporarily buy into. Even if your culture or society believes in them, it’s still up to you to choose what YOU want to buy for yourself. There was nothing that Sydney Banks ever said, that I needed to buy into, He would only point me to something I already knew to be true, deep inside myself.

Every one of us thrives in life when we’re not thinking and acting against ourselves or others. The answer is pure and simple!

Want to learn more: You can join me here! Hope to see you soon!