I was listening to an audio replay of Deena Morton’s Four Principles and was thinking what a wonderful skill this would be for all children to grow up practicing in their daily lives.
I would highly recommend listening to Deena Morton’s replay yourself, but I’ll do my best to summarize the main points here and give you an idea of how we incorporate this into our lives and help our children to do the same.
In short, the Four Principles are these:
1. Have a clear goal.
2. Be others’ focused.
3. Experience gratitude.
4. Have unwavering faith.
It works something like this… You get a clear goal in mind, something that you would like to achieve. This can be a small goal like getting your paperwork done today, or a huge goal such as building a multi-million dollar business. Whatever your goal, you need to be able to visualize it clearly – to write it down, see it in your mind, express it in a journal or on your vision board. The more clearly you can visualize or express it, the better.
Then, put it aside for now. Don’t forget about it, but trust that the universal energy is working with you to make that a reality and so you don’t need to stress or strive to get there. Your focus now should be on others. How can you help someone else to achieve their dreams or goals? With every person you meet or interact with, make your primary focus how you can help them. This may be with a smile, a piece of good advice, something you can actually do for them, a contact you can help them to make… whatever. Keep in mind that you are not helping in order to get something in return, just helping for the sake of changing someone else’s world for the better.
Step three is to experience gratitude for everything, and I mean everything. Whatever occurs in your life is there to assist you in moving forward – do your best to see it in this light. All your obstacles and difficulties and issues have some gift to offer you. Look for the gift in everything. Take the best out of every experience. Trust that everything is happening in your best interests. Life brings you only the best. Gratitude is a very powerful force, so even if you can only find one small thing in your day to be grateful for, really feel it. Just listing things you should be grateful for in your head is not the same as experiencing the FEELING of gratitude.
And finally, have unwavering faith that your goals will be realized. Never let obstacles along the way deter you from moving step by step towards your dreams. Even when things look like they’re not working out, that you are moving further and further from your goals, learn to trust. If you are following these steps, things will work out, but they seldom happen in the way that you think they will.
Following these Four Principles will transform your life in ways you cannot even imagine, which is why I think that all children should be given this gift as early as possible.
In our family we do it like this…
Our children are still very young (3 and 5), so we focus on small, daily goals and on helping others within the family. Over breakfast, or in the car on the way to school, we all discuss what our goals are for that day. We each get a turn to say what we would like to achieve that day and all goals are accepted, no matter how big or small. My husband and I help the kids to focus on all sorts of goals by modeling this ourselves. In between our work goals, for example, we’ll express goals like having a calm day where we have time for meditation or sharing a laugh with someone. Once everyone has expressed their goals, we look at how we might be able to help each other to achieve our goals. We will also assist the kids throughout the day in showing them how they might help each other or ourselves to move forward with our goals. Throughout the day we look at things we can be grateful for, and we also each have a turn at dinner to say what we were grateful for that day, how we were able to improve someone else's wrld, and how things worked out for us in unexpected ways. During breakfast I will remind everyone that if they can see their goal clearly then they don’t need to struggle to get it – they should relax, help each other and trust that it will work out.
The Principles are really so simple, that even a 3 year-old can apply them, and as they see success in their practice of these principles they will find it easier and easier to keep applying them and to start applying them to bigger and more complex goals as they grow older. An added bonus is that as children see how they can make a difference in other people’s lives, and help each other and their parents to achieve their goals, even in very small ways, they learn to value themselves and increase their self-esteem and sense of purpose in the world.
I would encourage you to start putting these principles into practice in your own life today, and to start teaching your children to be masters of their own destinies as well!
I would highly recommend listening to Deena Morton’s replay yourself, but I’ll do my best to summarize the main points here and give you an idea of how we incorporate this into our lives and help our children to do the same.
In short, the Four Principles are these:
1. Have a clear goal.
2. Be others’ focused.
3. Experience gratitude.
4. Have unwavering faith.
It works something like this… You get a clear goal in mind, something that you would like to achieve. This can be a small goal like getting your paperwork done today, or a huge goal such as building a multi-million dollar business. Whatever your goal, you need to be able to visualize it clearly – to write it down, see it in your mind, express it in a journal or on your vision board. The more clearly you can visualize or express it, the better.
Then, put it aside for now. Don’t forget about it, but trust that the universal energy is working with you to make that a reality and so you don’t need to stress or strive to get there. Your focus now should be on others. How can you help someone else to achieve their dreams or goals? With every person you meet or interact with, make your primary focus how you can help them. This may be with a smile, a piece of good advice, something you can actually do for them, a contact you can help them to make… whatever. Keep in mind that you are not helping in order to get something in return, just helping for the sake of changing someone else’s world for the better.
Step three is to experience gratitude for everything, and I mean everything. Whatever occurs in your life is there to assist you in moving forward – do your best to see it in this light. All your obstacles and difficulties and issues have some gift to offer you. Look for the gift in everything. Take the best out of every experience. Trust that everything is happening in your best interests. Life brings you only the best. Gratitude is a very powerful force, so even if you can only find one small thing in your day to be grateful for, really feel it. Just listing things you should be grateful for in your head is not the same as experiencing the FEELING of gratitude.
And finally, have unwavering faith that your goals will be realized. Never let obstacles along the way deter you from moving step by step towards your dreams. Even when things look like they’re not working out, that you are moving further and further from your goals, learn to trust. If you are following these steps, things will work out, but they seldom happen in the way that you think they will.
Following these Four Principles will transform your life in ways you cannot even imagine, which is why I think that all children should be given this gift as early as possible.
In our family we do it like this…
Our children are still very young (3 and 5), so we focus on small, daily goals and on helping others within the family. Over breakfast, or in the car on the way to school, we all discuss what our goals are for that day. We each get a turn to say what we would like to achieve that day and all goals are accepted, no matter how big or small. My husband and I help the kids to focus on all sorts of goals by modeling this ourselves. In between our work goals, for example, we’ll express goals like having a calm day where we have time for meditation or sharing a laugh with someone. Once everyone has expressed their goals, we look at how we might be able to help each other to achieve our goals. We will also assist the kids throughout the day in showing them how they might help each other or ourselves to move forward with our goals. Throughout the day we look at things we can be grateful for, and we also each have a turn at dinner to say what we were grateful for that day, how we were able to improve someone else's wrld, and how things worked out for us in unexpected ways. During breakfast I will remind everyone that if they can see their goal clearly then they don’t need to struggle to get it – they should relax, help each other and trust that it will work out.
The Principles are really so simple, that even a 3 year-old can apply them, and as they see success in their practice of these principles they will find it easier and easier to keep applying them and to start applying them to bigger and more complex goals as they grow older. An added bonus is that as children see how they can make a difference in other people’s lives, and help each other and their parents to achieve their goals, even in very small ways, they learn to value themselves and increase their self-esteem and sense of purpose in the world.
I would encourage you to start putting these principles into practice in your own life today, and to start teaching your children to be masters of their own destinies as well!