This is optimal living daily episode eight hundred and three living congruently part two by Steve Pavlina of Steve Pavlina.com and I'm Justin Mollick. Welcome to the podcast where simply narrate blogs for you sometimes books anything I think will optimize your life and always with permission from the authors today's author being Steve Pavlina And this is part two of two. So if you're new here, definitely check out yesterday's episode first Let's get right to part two and continue optimizing your life Living congruently part two by Steve Pavlina of Steve Pavlina calm If you violate a universal principle it negatively impacts all areas of your life If you follow a universal principle, it positively impacts all areas of your life universal principles don't compartmentalize So the key then is figuring out these universal principles and aligning your thoughts and actions with them This is how you achieve congruence between all the different parts of your life So what are the universal principles? Stephen Covey claims that the seven habits of highly effective people are based on universal principles I tend to agree and it's a good place to start But I think all of these principles can be reduced to just one to love not the passive squishy emotional feeling of love But to love the action verb to love your body translates into proper diet and exercise to love your mind equates with learning to love Others is service to love your work is to do it passionately and enthusiastically to love your feelings means to respect and honor the messages They send you this verb translates into different specific actions for each area But the underlying principle is the same depending on the situation to love may mean to listen to serve to work to relax to touch And so on when you start injecting universal principles into every area of your life Alignment will gradually occur the parts of your life will be transformed such that all these different pieces assemble themselves into one congruent whole You won't feel like these different parts of your life are in competition for your time and attention Instead, you'll feel a sense of internal cooperation You'll have a sense that exercising your body is the best thing for your health and your relationship and your career and your spirituality Within each area you'll either adapt your current circumstances to align with universal principles or you'll let go of all the Misaligned pieces and start fresh so your career may shift slightly as you adapt or you may switch to a whole new career your old relationships may transform Or they may end while you seek out new ones It just depends on how well the external parts of your life are able to align with who you are Alignment comes down to working on these four questions until they all produce the same answer What do you want to do desire?
What can you do ability? What should you do purpose? What must you do need when these four areas are aligned motivation occurs automatically thought and action are automatically balanced Because we're living your purpose consciously You won't feel like you should be thinking when you're acting or acting when you're thinking the line between thought and action Will disappear being and doing will become the same thing when you experience a misalignment between these four areas or questions The natural tendency is to slow down sometimes to a crawl you'll feel like you have all these ideas pulling you in different directions But you aren't fully satisfying any of them your mind knows that continuing to work hard is likely to be futile And won't solve the real problem of incongruence It knows it's time for you to stop ask directions and choose the path of alignment I went through this while running my games business while I made projects to grow the business I knew deep down that I didn't want to run that business for another decade I was containerizing everything my health over here my relationship there my work here and my spirituality there Each part of my life felt like it had its own set of rules eventually I started questioning whether this was the best way to live are we supposed to live like a collection of parts or as an integrated Whole I wondered whether it'd be possible to live in such a way where there's only one set of rules governing all areas Essentially meaning that I followed my deepest spiritual beliefs in all matters This line of questioning led me to discover just how it might be possible for all these different parts of my life to become a single Integrated whole this would mean that my business and my conscience and my interpersonal relationships were all one There'd be no sense of separation in order to go through this process I had to transform certain parts of my life while totally shifting others I tried to transform my career initially from within but the disconnect was big enough that it required a more dramatic shift Other parts of my life were able to adapt more flexibly The main reason for my shift away from my game's business was that it wasn't a strong enough outlet for service for me I think that given enough time the original business could have been shifted But that wasn't the best route for me to take it was faster and simpler to build a new business from scratch with the goal of congruence in mind Then to try to refactor the existing business. I must say that this push for congruence in all areas turned out beautifully I don't feel that sense of separation between the different parts of my life anymore My purpose says I'm here to serve and help people My ability says I can do it through writing and speaking and running a website my knees say I must support myself doing it And my passion says it's what I love doing most I don't have to separate supporting myself with a job and then having fun on the weekends and thinking about spirituality at other times work equals play Equals love when you live congruently it says if all the different parts of your life lock into new positions to form a new Whole that's greater than all the individual pieces everything grows stronger health relationships motivation actions results, etc I know that as a practical matter It seems as though different rules often govern in different areas separating your spiritual beliefs from your work is very common A lot of businesses seems operating on the assumption that universal principles don't exist I don't buy that at all.
There are non-universal principles that apply just within their own domains the rules of nutrition apply to your health But not to your work for instance, but universal principles apply to all areas I think that one spiritual beliefs are the single most important factor in choosing a career or a company to work for If you have a deeply held belief that you hold sacred You cannot violate it in any area of your life without suffering the consequences in all areas You must be true to your inner self at all times That's the only way to be congruent and to live as a whole person instead of nearly as a bag of competing parts When you live congruently a quantum leap will occur in each of these four areas desire becomes passion purpose becomes mission need becomes abundance Ability becomes talent and it becomes almost ridiculously easy to achieve fulfillment in every area then because all the parts are working together in the same direction You just listen to part two of the post title living congruently by Steve Pavlina of Steve Pavlina calm I'm constantly thinking about how to optimize my health what supplements to take hours of sleep What my diet should focus on super power finally takes the guessing out of it one simple lab test covers over 100 biomarkers in their App gives you a complete picture of your heart liver hormones metabolism even environmental toxins plus it used to cost $499 right now It's just $199 and head to super power calm and use code old at checkout for an additional $20 off your membership All right, that will do it for today. Have a very happy Wednesday Thank you for being here and being a subscriber of the show and I'll be back tomorrow reading to you So I'll see you there where your optimal life awaits