Man in the Mirror PROJECT - Our Lens of Perception; Acting From Our Center

What is at the core of every individual is a sense of center, the lens from which we see and act from in our world.  Whatever is at the center of our life is our source of security, guidance, wisdom, and power.

Our security represents our sense of worth, identity, emotional anchorage, self-esteem, and personal strength or lack of it.

Our guidance is our source for our direction in our life.  Encompassed by our maps, our internal frame of reference that interprets for us what is happening "out there", our standards or principles and the criteria that governs our moment by moment decision making and doing.

Wisdom is our perspective on life, our sense of balance, our understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other.  It embraces judgment, discernment, and comprehension.

Power is the faculty of capacity to act, the strength and potency to accomplish something.  It is the vital energy to make choices and decisions.  It also includes the capacity to overcome deeply embedded habits and to cultivate higher, more effective ones.

These four factors are interdependent on one another.  Security and clear guidance bring true wisdom, and wisdom becomes the spark or catalyst to release and direct power.  When these four factors are present together, harmonized and enlivened by each other, they create a great force of a noble personality, a balanced character, a beautifully integrated individual.

In most of us, all of these factors are also under minded by other factors.  Our security can be shaken by the fickle forces that play upon it, dependency on other people, circumstances or things over which we have no direct control.

Our guidance can be skewed from a dependence on the social mirror or other unstable, fluctuating sources.

Our wisdom usually falls somewhere between a totally inaccurate map where everything is distorted and nothing seems to fit and a complete and accurate map of life wherein all the parts and principles are properly related to each other.

Our power lies somewhere between immobilization or being a puppet pulled by someone else's strings to high proactivity, the power to act according to our own values instead of being acted upon by other people and circumstances.

During the past few years I have had the pleasure of speaking with many people who have visited the blog.  We all seemed to share much in common.  One commonality has been a very rough past.  Hurtful family relationships, poor self esteem and even substance abuse.  Through statistics most of us would have fallen through the cracks of life and ended up somewhere on the street.  I did always used to say I was going to be a bag lady . . mmm.. anyway, from the people that I've talked to they have always stated that they couldn't have done it without "blank".  The blank was either their spirituality or twin flame soul mate.  Both, to me, imply the same.

The difference here is that when I went through the above concepts, I related it to my own life.  At each of the four centers the answer in my life has always been the same: my spirituality is where my center is.  It has been my focus for years, and because of it I have been able to balance myself enough to remain stable even though many around me may have wanted or expected me to fall.

If you go through the above, ask yourself what is at your center.  In other words, where is your attention at in your life?  Is it your family? Then most likely you will be acting and making decisions all based on that.  Your job - then most likely you attribute your self worth with your position.

Where ever your attention is, your center most often is there as well.  Should we wish to change anything in our lives we must pay attention to where our attention goes.  From there we can ask ourselves at the inception of all four concepts where we are getting our security, guidance, wisdom and power from.  If we don't like our answers, we always have the power to change our minds.

If we do we can begin to ask the deeper questions.  When we feel "unstable" or "shaken" we can begin to ask why.  Do I feel "powerless", has my "security" been shaken?  We can then define what or who has shaken us.  Were we too dependent on someone or something?  Did we allow someone else to take our power away by acting as they wanted us to instead of how we truly are?

These are all questions only you can answer.  If taken in context and looked at internally, they can be a very valuable tool in assessing where you are and where you would like to go in your life.  If you've become the bag lady that I once thought I might be, you have a choice.  You can take back your power and find the resources within yourself to get stronger.  We should never let the "outside" forces that chip away at our lives in when we want to obtain mastery over our lives.  The bag lady on the street and the CEO of Apple don't have anything different internally.  The only difference is how they have used their resources and cultivated their minds.

*** The four "center" definitions were taken from the book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People"