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Welcome back to the Growing Tree of Life, our weekly exploration of personal growth and well-being.
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I am not feeling well, so today's newsletter is late and it is going to be short.
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How to start finding you
Issue Number: #054
Date: 25 January 2024
Reading Time: 3 minutes
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My apologies for writing so late. I am poorly, so I am in bed second day in a row. But I dragged myself out just to write this newsletter.
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Let's go to finding out who you are, what are your values and what is your purpose on this Earth.
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- Why are you alive?
- What are you willing to die for, today?
Were you able to come up with answers? If not—or you aren't happy with your answers—don't worry. It means that you are in a perfect place to start looking for the answers.
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When I started my journey of growing an authentic life, I wasn't able to answer these two questions in any positive way. I was alive because I was stopped from executing my suicide plan and I was willing to die just to get out from this life. Not the greatest place to be.
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But after I've been stopped, I decided that I want to create a life I would never want to escape from ever again. That meant one and one thing only:
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"I have to find a purpose of my being."
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I will not bore you with all details of where I searched and what I found. Let's dive straight into the tool I found most helpful in that dark period of my life.
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Look at the impact
The step which steered me in the right direction to understand who I am and what is my purpose was a simple review of the following questions:
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- What energises me?
- What drains my energy?
- What makes me emotional?
- Positive ~ joy, happiness, peace, contentment, gratitude, awe, love, etc.?
- Negative ~ sadness, anger, fear, terror, fury, disgust, hate, etc.?
It had a few limitations due to my situation. I couldn't look at my current life as I saw only ruins. Looking at the future wasn't gonna help either as all I could see was a darkness. But what I was able to look at was my past.
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Because of my dark, depressive mood, at first I focused only on finding the events in my past which energised me and evoke positive emotions. Once I was able to see the good parts of my life, then I went into the other side as well. You can do the same, or, if you are in a good place, you can do both sides at once.
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My tip:
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Get a notepad or four sheets of paper and create four lists: Energising, Draining, Positive, and Negative.
Set aside a 20-30 minutes daily to look into your past, present or future to identify events or encounters which give you energy, drained your energy, created emotions you see as positive or negative.
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For now you don't need to think about why they made you feel that way. The reasons will come later. At this moment just write the situation on the relevant list.
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Try to write down at least 4-5 things per session. They can be focused on positive lists or spread evenly, that's up to you. But they cannot focus only on the negative side.
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If you need, you can use old diaries, photos, certificates or messages to help you remember. The best tool for me was handwriting. I just took pen, notepad and wrote down the question. I divided the the past into distinct eras. Different schools, different age, different jobs or hobbies. The main thing was to intentionally search for the things in my life I enjoyed. Thinks I was good at. Things which I nailed. Things I felt good about. Later I noted things I detested. For several weeks, I just kept expanding the lists.
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For this exercise, do it every day for the next week. At the end of the week you should have around thirty entries. Next week I'll tell you how to evaluate them.
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Todays questions:
- What energises me?
- What drains my energy?
- What makes me emotional?
- Positive ~ joy, happiness, peace, contentment, gratitude, awe, love?
- Negative ~ sadness, anger, fear, terror, fury, disgust, , hate?
Again, there are no right or wrong answers. There are only your answers. It's not about others, not about what you "should do" or "shouldn't do". It's about you.
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Thank you for being a part of the Growing Tree of Life community.
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Lubo
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What you can do next:
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The Growing Tree of Life newsletter is sent out every Thursday.
Reading time is usually 4 minutes or less.
- The Tree of Life Quest website is a resource for you-centred personal development. Check it out.
- Do you have questions, comments, suggestions or complaints?
I would LOVE to hear from you.
You can reply to this email or use the Contact me Form.
- Follow me on X (Twitter) for posts about personal growth, life improvement and occasional threads with tips and tools you can use.
(Note: I don't post on other platforms too much. Yet.)
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Lubo
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