The Meaning of Life with Dr. Bob

I write and speak a lot about finding the meaning of your life. But I would also like to pass along some ways that are not necessarily spiritual in nature, having to do with your every day happiness and your day-by-day search for meaning.

Here are five tips that may help you in your practical life to be happy with yourself. When you are happy with yourself the world seems so much brighter and more generous.

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1. Don’t procrastinate. One of the strongest killers of well-being is to put off doing what needs done. Sometimes these needs-doing things pile up so high that the climb looks impossible.

Do what needs done as quickly as possible. Try not to let undone things get ahead of you. You will feel happier.

If you are a list maker, then by all means make lists where you can check off accomplished tasks or events.

If you are not a list maker, you may wish to develop a chart wherein you keep track of your accomplishments. Keeping account in some such manner will help you to keep from dragging your feet.

2. Finish what you start. This follows right behind procrastination as a happiness killer. Leaving projects uncompleted will weigh upon your spirit.

In my view, it is a fact that you ought not start anything you do not intend to finish. Sounds simple enough. But you might be surprised at the number of people who have good intentions, but that’s all they have. They have no power to finish.

Give your life a real boost by finishing what you start. Sometimes this means avoiding trying to multi-task. I know. I know. Multi-tasking is the information age’s way of dealing effectively with the present world.

But sometimes doing multiple things at the same time only gets one tangled in one’s own process. Beware. Decide what is most important and get that done as soon as possible.

3. Invest in your relationships. The time and effort it takes to help any relationship thrive is time and effort very well spent.

It’s true that some folks believe they ought not to have to invest in relationships. So, it feels like you end up doing all the relationship work yourself. That may well be.

You have to decide if you want to keep the relationship. If you do, then you need do all you can to keep it thriving, even if the other person is not willing to put forth the effort.

It took me some years to realize that some in my family were just not going to keep up their ends of our relationships. They would not correspond in return to my missives, for example. If I wanted to keep in touch, I had to be the constant initiator.

If you want to keep in contact, you may need to be the instigator.

4. Maintain your linkage to the Divine. This is a relationship too. And although the Divine, in my view, is always making effort to remain in relationship to you, it may not often feel like it.

Remember the Tao Te Ching says, “… the greatest love seems indifferent … ” because it is so quiet.

So, it is for you to put time into that relationship through the meditative arts. This investment on your part will pay big dividends.

In your connection to the Divine there flows the meaning of your life, which, I believe, is to be happy.

5. Share yourself. There is no greater earthly happiness that giving of your time and energy (and money, if you have it) to inspire or help other people. This so often gets neglected.

Perhaps it gets neglected because folks don’t realize what a boon it can be to their own lives. Or perhaps it gets neglected because people think it is somehow perverse to share themselves with others to build their own happiness foundation.

There is no perversity here, whatsoever. To share yourself with others helps your world. Making the world a better place will return to you significant benefactions.

Therefore, I think it perfectly acceptable to give and not expect any return, but give so that you feel good about yourself.

There you have five tips to help you feel happy with yourself. Use them beginning right now. Feel the difference.

This has been Dr. Bob 4 U, and I invite you to change your life for the better by claiming your Free Instant Access to a Force-Source-Resource including a monthly newsletter titled The Force-Source-Resource Newsletter. Just Click Here. Remember, one bit of information can give you a lifetime of satisfaction.

My Vlog: http://themeaningoflifewithdrbob.com/drbobslifephrases

One Person Can Change The World

Chance knocked on the door of my office. He had been away in military service serving in war zones. He was a Marine and looked every ounce of one in his dress blues.

I had not seen Chance in many months. I almost snapped a sincere salute as he walked through the office door. I did jump to my feet, round my desk, and shake his hand as firmly as I could. “Thank you for your service, Chance,” I said. “What can I do for you?” (Lame, I know, but the best I could muster in the moment.)

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“I want to know what to do with my life, Dr. Bob,” he said.

His statement took me aback. As I motioned for him to take a seat and I moved back around to my desk chair, I quickly pondered what was my response to be.

First, a question: “What do you mean, Chance? Are you leaving the Marine Corps?”

“I finish my hitch in another month. Now that I am faced with it, I don’t know what to make of my life. I have seen some heroic things and some horrific things. Both of which made me question my role in this life. What do you think I should do, Dr. Bob?”

I had known Chance since he was twelve years old. Now twenty-four, he was a young man who had had extraordinary experiences. I knew his questions were serious.

I steepled my fingers together and looked at him, straight into the eyes. “I think you have to see your world for what it is. Then with all you being, give yourself away to it.”

He looked me right in the eyes as well. He said, “I know what discipline is. I know what it means to give yourself away. I saw it many times on the battlefield. Some of those who did never rose again. Some came away maimed.”

I saw, then, the Bronze Star among his array of ribbons. I knew he had put his own life on the line, too. He knew what he was talking about.

“But I don’t know in which direction to go,” he said.

“What gives you the best feeling of well-being?” I asked.

He thought for a few seconds and said, “I really felt useful when I was helping to set up a school for the kids over there. To see their faces light up, day by day, as the building went up, was a joy in itself. Maybe I could be a teacher.”

“Well, whatever you choose, here are two pieces of advice. First, find out what your world is all about. You have experienced combat and death and also reconstruction and helping others. You have found happiness and meaning in helping. Your well-being was reinforced when you saw the light in those kids’ eyes.

“Second, give yourself to whatever it is you choose. I cannot give you a choice between two or more things, you have to decide that for yourself. But I do know that anyone who wishes to reinforce their meaning and happiness must give themselves to whatever they do. Give one hundred percent.”

“I remembered your lessons on finding the meaning of life, which is to be happy. I often thought about that, believed it or not, as the rounds whizzed by my head. I have made that connection with The All There Is. It was that link that often kept me going amidst the blood and pain all around me.”

I shuddered within myself. Chance had seen more than anyone ever needs to of war. That he was asking these sensible questions was a real credit to him.

“Discover what gives me a foundation upon which to build my life and then give myself to it. I can do that. Thanks, Dr. Bob.”

He rose from his chair, I rose from mine. I came around the desk and shook his hand and hugged him at the same time. I again thanked him for his service. And he was gone.

Chance continued in the fellowship I led at the time. He indeed went back to college and got his teaching degree. He is now off in a foreign land building schools and teaching kids.

Find what your world is all about. Then give yourself to it, one hundred percent.

This has been Dr. Bob 4 U, and I invite you to change your life for the better by claiming your Free Instant Access to a Force-Source-Resource including a monthly newsletter titled The Force-Source-Resource Newsletter. Just Click Here. Remember, one bit of information can give you a lifetime of satisfaction.

My Vlog: http://themeaningoflifewithdrbob.com/drbobslifephrases

One Person Can Change The World

In the garden of Gethsemane, there is a poignant scene in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is given to agonize over what may be coming next in his life.

He is given to say, “Thy will be done.”

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People have taken that saying to mean that God is going give you what life you are going to live. In other words, you are fated to be and do as some outside force wishes. You have little or no say in what your life will be.

Your happiness is determined by an outside force, so many people believe.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is true that a natural disaster such as a tornado may indeed affect your life. That is an outside force over which you have no control.

However, if you had built or made ready a storm shelter with provisions for a disaster such as food and water, you might have shaped your own outcome. So you have some say-so in the matter.

The point of this article is that you do have a part to play in determining your own meaning and happiness. It is not simply handed to you on a silver platter or imposed upon you as fate.

You are not destined to have this degree of happiness or that degree of meaning. These are not thrust upon you in certain amounts by an outside source, namely God.

You choose how much meaning and happiness you shall have.

How? By the connection you cultivate and maintain between yourself and The All There Is (Tathis).

(Tathis is a word I coined to subtract as much baggage as possible from the term “God.” It is a combination of the first letter of The, the first letter of All, the first two letters of There, and the entire word Is. It is pronounced with a long “a” [as in plate] and the  word “this.”)

You build such a linkage through the use of meditation or prayer. It is a discovery of the totally unconditional acceptance that Tathis extends to you.

Please notice I stated, “extends to you.” Tathis does not give something to you in the conventional sense of the word “give.” You already have everything because you are a division of Tathis. So, Tathis need not give you anything you already possess.

Tathis extends to you unconditional acceptance in that relationship you establish with Tathis. In other words, that acceptance is already there but now it feels like it  is flowing toward you.

You have opened yourself to that confirmation. That confirmation was always moving toward you, you just didn’t realize it.

You always have the choice to turn and move yourself toward a rendezvous with Tathis. “God” does not impose anything on you. You are free.

In this freedom is your great choice. But it is in that choice that you begin to make your own life your own life.

Sounds redundant and ridiculous, doesn’t it? Because Tathis does not impose anything on you, you make your life what it is. By your choices and your intentions you attract to yourself all that you will find in life.

Yes, there will still be those incidents where something will be forced upon you from the outside. Still, you have the rock-solid opportunity to make a choice about how you will react to any happening in your life.

Beyond these forced events, however, you attract to your life that which you are. When you find your meaning and happiness, you will be attracting positive people and happenings to your life.

Why? Because you will be in that mode. What mode is that? The style of fashioning your own tomorrows. Forging what the next minute of your life will be all about. You have the choice, always, of having your life be full of meaning and happiness, or full of sorrow and despair because you believe you are fated in a certain way.

Do not ever let anyone try to convince you that your life is simply planned for you – that you are fated to have or have not … anything.

The choice is always yours. So, it is not “thy will be done,” in the conventional sense. It is done as you will it to be, when you will it to be.

Get to it.

This has been Dr. Bob 4 U, and I invite you to change your life for the better by claiming your Free Instant Access to a Force-Source-Resource including a monthly newsletter titled The Force-Source-Resource Newsletter. Just Click Here. Remember, one bit of information can give you a lifetime of satisfaction.

My Vlog: http://themeaningoflifewithdrbob.com/drbobslifephrases

One Person Can Change The World