24 - In your heart with your free Will

It's in your heart with your free Will to choose how you will walk your trail

Transcript

Current Episode Introduction

This episode is informed by the verse of the poem representing the letter:

• W

• It's in your heart with your free Will to choose how you will walk your trail

It includes a brief description of the verse, a personal reflection demonstrating how the verse has facilitated my own resonance with Doses of God in my life, a statement of gratitude, and a few guiding questions that may be considered for your own reflection.

Description

Here is description of the verse:

• It’s in your heart with your free Will to choose how you will walk your trail

• We are granted the free will in our heart to choose how we will walk our trail. We can choose to walk the trail that is guided by societal pressures or the trail that is guided by God’s grace. The trail of societal pressures will lead us toward discontent and unfulfilled dreams. The trail of God’s grace, which can be easily identified through our awareness of His presence, will lead us toward contentment and satisfied dreams. You know that you are following the trail guided by God’s grace if you feel right in your soul. Your mind and your body are not influenced by societal pressures to choose the trail you walk. Rather, they are tools used to help you travel the path chosen by God’s will through your soul. When you exercise your free will to walk the right path, the path guided by God’s grace, you realize that the direction you travel is more meaningful than the quality of the path. Sometimes the right path can be obstructed with rough terrain and may even seem to be leading us in the wrong direction. These obstructions exist as opportunities to gain new insights and strengths that will ultimately aid our journey.

Reflection

Here is my personal reflection on the verse:

• To me, this verse is about being intentional in how I interpret and interact with the world. It’s about being deliberate in my decisions and actions so that I may authentically live in accordance with attributes of my core values and beliefs. Lately, I have been choosing to walk my trail by attempting to cultivate and carry myself with holistic conduct that will help me achieve my current interpretation of what it means to live in a successful way. At this point in my life, I consider myself to be succeeding if I am consciously doing what I can do well and enjoy doing in a manner that positively affects myself and others. In other words, I feel like I am walking my trail in the right way when I am doing things in a present state of being that I have the capacity to do and am passionate about in ways that are relevant to the wellbeing of myself and others. Given this understanding of what it means to succeed, I have been trying to be intentional in the way that I live so I can attain and sustain a lifestyle representing a combination of these areas.

• My intentionality in pursuing such a lifestyle has been strengthened in recent years through the development and application of a framework that addresses my understanding of what it means to be successful. For example, over the past six years or so, I’ve been working with a few friends and colleagues to create a framework that synthesizes domains of capacity, passion, relevance, and presence. In its current state of development, we refer to it as the CPR Success and Failure Analysis framework. The capacity domain is rooted in Hettler’s Dimensions of Wellness and comprises four subdomains of intellectual, social, emotional, and physical capacities. The passion domain is informed by Vallerand’s definition of passion and comprises four subdomains of liking, finding importance in, spending time on, and putting energy into something. The relevance domain represents attributes of Bronfenbrenner’s microsystem and includes subdomains of self, family, peers, and community. The presence domain is linked to Tolle's concept of presence, Kabat-Zinn’s work on mindfulness, and Rohr’s teachings on contemplative practice, as well as an array of other spiritual and academic texts and teachings that speak toward its essence. The presence domain currently includes subdomains of attention, awareness, present focus, and acceptance, which are based on Kabat-Zinn’s definition of mindfulness.

• According to the framework, I see myself as being successful when the attributes of my lifestyle collectively represent a merger of the capacity, passion, relevance, and presence domains. When this is the case, I am consciously doing things that I am good at and have a desire to do in ways that matter. If there is a lack of representation by one of the domains, then I consider myself to be living a less than optimal lifestyle. For example, if only the domains of capacity and passion are represented, it is an indication that I am doing things that I am good at and have a desire to do, but they don’t matter. If only the domains of capacity and relevance overlap, it indicates that I am doing things that I am good at and that matter, but I don't have a desire to do them. If only the domains of passion and relevance are represented, it indicates that I am doing things that I have a desire to do and that doing them matters, but I’m not very good at doing them.

• The CPR framework suggests that being in a state of presence may optimize the likelihood of living through a synthesis of all four domains by better positioning me to identify and act on opportunities to do relevant things that I have the capacity to do well and am passionate about. Furthermore, the framework also suggests that if I am doing things that I have the capacity to do, that I am passionate about, and that are relevant, then I may be more likely to sustain my state of presence through the duration of what it is that I am doing. Another way of interpreting the role of presence through the lens of the framework is that being present allows me to be receptive to God’s guidance on how to use my gifts and desires to do good things.

• Since the inception of the CPR framework, I have increasingly been reflecting through it as a lens to inform a variety of decisions across an array of contexts, such as making decisions about assuming new professional responsibilities, volunteering through formal or informal ways, pursuing personal projects, engaging in recreational activities, spending my moments of leisure, and allocating time to be with family and friends.

• In a way, I have also been using the CPR framework as a point of reference for contemplating the success of my lifestyle in terms of the extent to which and how I feel fit for life. When I reflect on being fit for life, I tend to begin with a particular span of time in mind, such as a day, a week, a month, or a year. Then, I think about activities that I engaged in during that period of time and the ways in which they represented the domains of capacity, passion, relevance, and presence. I realize that several activities will not individually address all of the domains and subdomains in the framework; however, when contemplating the activities that make up my overall lifestyle during the period of time in focus, I consider how the combination of all the activities represents a synthesis of all the domains. If my activities collectively represent all of the CPR domains and subdomains at levels and in ways that meet my expectations, then I consider myself to be approaching an optimal level of being fit for life. If, however, I identify domains and subdomains that are not being adequately represented according to my expectations, then I consider myself to be regressing away from an optimal level of being fit for life.

• As a strategy to support optimizing my subjective perception of having a successful lifestyle in terms of being fit for life, I have leaned on the CPR framework to help me make decisions about engaging in activities, whether they are in personal or professional contexts or for organized or leisurely purposes. When I use the framework for this purpose, I tend to reflect on the following types of questions:

  • In terms of intellectual capacity, to what extent am I intellectually capable of doing the activity? How does it support development or sustainability of my mental knowledge, skills, creativity, problem solving, and/or learning?

  • In terms of emotional capacity, To what extent am I emotionally capable of doing the activity? How does it support development or sustainability of a positive outlook, awareness and acceptance of my feelings, and/or expression and management of my feelings?

  • In terms of social capacity, To what extent am I socially capable of doing the activity? How does it support development or sustainability of my interdependence, communication, and/or relationships with others?

  • In terms of physical capacity, To what extent am I physically capable of doing the activity? How does it support development or sustainability of my bodily strength, endurance, and health?

  • In terms of passion, To what extent am I passionate about this activity? In what ways is it something that I like, find importance in, want to spend time on, and want to put energy into?

  • In terms of presence, To what extent am I able to maintain a state of presence while I am engaging in the activity? In what ways does it support development or sustainability of my attention, acceptance, present focus, and awareness?

  • In terms of relevance to family, To what extent does this activity have a positive impact on myself, my family, my peers, and/or a community? In what ways does it support development or sustainability of my relevance to myself, my family, my peers, and/or a community?

• Generally speaking, I’ve been wanting and striving to live my life in a holistic way that collectively represents the synthesis of domains in the CPR framework. I want to do things that I am intellectually, emotionally, socially, and physically capable of doing. I want to do things that I like, find importance in, spend time on, and put energy into. I want to do things that positively impact my self, family, peers, and community. I want to do things in a way that allows me to maintain attention, present focus, awareness, and acceptance. Choosing to walk my trail by making decisions and taking actions through the lens of the CPR framework seems to be helping me actualize these wants. I seem to feel my greatest senses of success when what I am doing resides within the synthesis of capacity, passion, relevance, and presence. The direction I have been walking has tended to be guided by a desire to optimize the extent to which my life is represented by the intersection of these domains. When this type of merger occurs, I feel like I am adequately equipped to navigate times of ease as well as times of struggle. There is an overwhelming sense of rightness, harmony, or balance, as if I am in the right place doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons.

Gratitude Statement

I am immeasurably grateful for:

• being able to be intentional in how I interpret and interact with the world and will attempt to remain aware of opportunities to be deliberate in my behaviors so that I may live in authentic ways that represent my core values and beliefs.

Guiding Questions

Here are a few guiding questions to consider that might facilitate your own personal reflection upon the verse:

• It’s in your heart with your free Will to choose how you will walk your trail

Take a moment to reflect on:

• how you have been intentional in the ways that you interpret and interact with the world

For example:

• What are examples of your core values and beliefs, or another frame of reference, that you utilize to inform how you interpret and interact with the world?

• How do you feel when you make decisions and take actions in ways that align with your values, beliefs, or other frames of reference?

• In what ways do you express gratitude for opportunities to act in accordance with the attributes of such lenses?

• What strategies could you implement to maintain awareness of opportunities to deliberately behave in authentic ways that align with your core values and beliefs?

Closing Statement

In closing:

• when you use free will to walk your trail guided by God’s grace, you receive a Dose of God.

Next Episode

The next episode in this series will focus on the verse representing the letter:

• X

• It’s in the eXtra effort you offer that allows you to direct your sail

Positive Vibes

Thank you so much for listening. May you consistently position yourself to accept and resonate with the Doses of God that are ever-presently here for you.