Living the Rich Life

Am I speaking about my life? Your life? Lives in general? Certainly. As you read this blog entry, see if you will not experience a subtle transformation by the end. If so, I will have been successful.

Now, let me ask you a question, and be honest: Is the guy on the left a millionaire, or does he just feel like a million bucks?

(There is no right answer, but take note of your first impression about him).

Now for another question, and be honest: If a stranger walked up to you and asked for the last one of these in your wallet or purse, how would that make you feel?

OK, again no right answer. Just notice your first reaction, and then your internal dialog swirling around afterwards. Follow that internal dialog as long as you learn something useful from it.

Now, let’s talk about meaning. We are meaning-makers are we not? The above questions are to get you to examine your meanings about what it means to be rich. Something I would like to explore with you a little more deeply now…

I am learning to live life as richly as possible through the learned process of building new personal meaning about the meaning of “rich”. Reflexive thinking is one of the skills that NLP has taught me and empowered me to do effectively and consistently, though I did not always think this way…

A few years ago, I defined living richly in terms of what I could possess or control, acquire or achieve. I was certainly dominated by these kinds of thoughts, which at once drove me toward success in my career, and also made me vulnerable. I was always hungry, but only satisfied briefly, on certain occasions, and sometimes at great cost in other areas of life. My life was far from elegant.

Sound familiar? Could this possibly be the story of someone you know, or your story in some ways?

By living richly, I no longer necessarily mean those things having to do with money (although I certainly enjoy the freedom having money provides, and intend to enhance my power as long as I can). This blog entry is all about living life from a lush internally constructed map of the world, having all the resources I’ll need to do what I want to do or must do, while I fully enjoy the most ordinary, mundane or pedestrian things as before. As Tony Robbins pointed out to me… “it’s not resources, but resourcefulness that counts!”

So let’s try a little experiment! Let’s think of some new kinds of “rich” that money cannot buy… Here are a few ideas to get started:

• Rich humor, sorrow or irony
• Rich colors, sounds, flavors, or textures
• Rich friendships and relationships
• Rich meanings and learnings
• Rich …

You get the idea… If your experiences are rich, then you are rich. And as you think of your own kinds of rich experiences you learn that they are rich not because the nature of things has changed, but because the nature of the experience has changed. See, even chocolate begins to taste better in ever smaller amounts; ordinary voices reverberate with greater depth and nuance, the drive home is filled with at least 13 interesting things you never noticed before, 4 of them worth additional time and attention, and 1 of them sure to support your pursuit of what’s important.

Even self-disciplinary tasks such as exercising or studying take on a kind of rich heroic meaning, while the present pursuit itself becomes nearly as rewarding as any future outcome. Now let me ask you another question, and be honest: Which step was the most enjoyable for this man… the first? the thousandth? the last? (Remember, he has to come down again).

What if every step along the way to the top and back down again were salted with meaning, purpose or gratitude? Is this his first trip to the top, or does he do this every Summer?

By now, you may be experiencing that shift I mentioned earlier.

These days, my personal definition of living richly is to recruit and incorporate as many of my senses as possible to experience pleasurable things, and also to use my powers of dissociation and observation to learn from those things that are less pleasant.

By living richly, I also mean to experience life from as many perceptual positions as possible… in non-NLP parlance, that means seeing things from my perspective, your perspective, the perspective of a neutral observer, as well as the systemic (part of a group) perspective, and the universal perspective.

By living richly, I find as much pleasure in asking the question as in finding the answer, as I trust that the two are only separated by time.

Now a promise: If you post a comment to this blog entry, I will not give you a new Rolls Royce, but I will promise that you’ll notice new similarities between your car and that Rolls that you never noticed before… and then you’ll notice who and how those similarities were noticed, and that is the beginning of the rich life.