Who? Me?

The most successful, happy and focused people I’ve ever known, all share one attribute: they each have a clear understanding of who they are. Their success and happiness is not measured in possessions, but in the security of understanding their role in life.

Our lives are a quest for significance, and each of us follows a different path on that journey, and although there are no shortcuts, most of us look for one. The search for these shortcuts often leads us away from the path we need to follow. Unfortunately, the pursuit of a shortcut to success can become our journey. 

 

 Staples call it the “Easy Button.”

 I think that the absolute first step of our journey is the development of an accurate sense and awareness of precisely who we are. Not who we want to be or who we’d like to be, but the sum total of who and what occupies our space in this world. It is the foundation upon which all other knowledge is based, because our perceptions or the reality we experience are filtered through our personal self-identity.

Acquiring money and property aren’t all that difficult. Work hard, sacrifice and travel every extra mile.

All the money in the world is merely paper, unless you understand its true value, just as a life without self-knowledge is a derisory and frightening journey to nowhere.

For me, every step in pursuit of self-knowledge has taken me farther and farther away from the place in which I feel comfortable. But, each step I’ve taken has increased the size of my world and expanded my understanding of the role I am intended to fulfill in it.