Well, this will be one of my last ‘official duties’ for Life On Purpose Institute, Inc. before taking a week of “Rest & Rejuvenation.” I prefer calling it that as a way of reminding myself and my family what the main point of this time off is.

More than once we’ve fallen into the common trap that appears to be a part of our American way of life. To take a vacation that is so filled with activity that we end up at the end so tired that it feels like we need a vacation to recover from the vacation. So, rest and rejuvenation is the primary purpose of our quarterly weeks away from work. That and some fun family time. I’m sending out the ezine from my hotel room somewhere in Tennessee where Amber and her homeschool volleyball team is playing in a weekend tournament. Isn’t wireless connections great?

I’ve a number of matters to share with you this week, including:

* A status report on the water4gas project,
* A follow up on “The Land” that could become our purposeful community,
* An interesting social networking site for “Unitics” and others,
* A new and f.r.ee teleseminar entitled Health, Wholeness & the 3rd Age, &
* A new article – My Stuff, Your Stuff — We’ve All Got Stuff

It’s my plan to share much of this through the blog so be sure to check in regularly, or even better sign up to be notified when a new posting is made. So, let’s get to it.

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LIVING ON PURPOSE: My Stuff, Your Stuff — We’ve All Got Stuff
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“What you think of me is none of my business.”

Amber climbed into the car the other day after a volleyball scrimmage, making it very clear to me that she was not happy. As soon as the door was shut she started to report how one of her teammates had yelled at her when she cheered on one of their teammates for making a good play.

The angry teammate couldn’t understand why Amber was cheering because, as she pointed out, “We didn’t score the point.”

“But Dad, it was still a good effort and a good play,” Amber said in an exasperated voice. “And the coach said we should cheer each other on.”

I listened for a while longer until she settled down a bit, then I reminded her of an important Life Lesson that most of us need to be reminded of on a regular basis — We all have stuff going on.

I have my stuff, you have your stuff, we all have stuff. What I mean by ‘stuff’ is that we all have opinions, judgments, upsets, frustrations, etc. that we often generously share with those around us, and if we’re not mindful, it’s easy to get other people’s stuff all over ourselves.

You can think of this stuff as the natural by-product of the Inherited Purpose — that life shaping force that arises from fear and lack that leads to us struggling in life rather than going with the flow of life.

So what do we do with all this “IP Stuff” floating around in our space?

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Being Responsible for Your Stuff
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First off, you don’t HAVE to be responsible for your stuff. In fact, most people aren’t much of the time. However, the more we’re willing to step into this possibility and take on being responsible for our stuff, the more our lives work.

But what does it mean to be responsible for one’s stuff, and how do we go about it?

Well, the starting point is to become aware of the stuff we’re sending out to the Universe, and to then commit to becoming responsible for it. An integral step in being responsible is to recognize the source of the upset. If you ask many people what the source of just about any upset is, they’ll point to some external circumstance — the driver who suddenly cut them off in traffic, or in Amber’s case, the teammate who yelled at her.

But, if we can shift our view and realize that the true source of the upset isn’t outside ourselves — NOT the circumstances at all — NOT what happens in our life…but is instead the meaning we ascribe to what happened….and that meaning comes from within ourselves, and often from our Inherited Purpose.

“Look at that jerk, almost wrecking me. How dare he?” Or in Amber’s case, “The coach said we should be positive with each other. Why is she (the teammate) being so unfair to me?”

Now, granted this shift isn’t easy at first because we’ve become so accustomed to having so much of our life shaped by the fear and lack of the Inherited Purpose, we have a pretty deep seated pattern established here….which doesn’t justify us not taking on a new pattern.

One new pattern to try out is to separate ourselves from our thoughts and feelings. To move into the role of ‘witness’ as Eckart Tolle and others suggest. When we notice that we’re having thoughts and feelings but that we’re not our thoughts and feelings, we realize that we’re safe and not truly in a threatening situation.

Standing in this witnessing position, we can then begin to create meaning more deliberately and consistent with our true Self — our Divinely Inspired Life Purpose. Such meaning is based in love, not fear…in a sense of abundance, rather than lack…and allow us to flow with life rather than struggle.

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Practice, Practice, Practice
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While it’s not always easy being responsible for our stuff, it’s worth the effort. The more we’re successful in catching ourselves about to spread our stuff around, and the quicker we can mindfully pivot through it, the more opportunity we have to share our love rather than our fear.

But, how about when other people want to “share” their “stuff” with you? (Also known as dumping.) Well, again, while it can be a challenge to remember this in the heat of the moment, you DON’T have to accept what they offer. You need only be responsible for your stuff, and believe it or not, it will all work out. Maybe, we’ll explore that aspect of living on purpose in another article.

Try it out this week and let’s discuss it. Let me know what works, what didn’t work, how it worked. Care to share about some of your own ‘stuffiness?’ Sure, go ahead. Let’s have some fun with our stuff. After all, we all have it.