The goal of HigherLevelz.com is to help us live our best lives. There is not one path to happiness but there are universal truths that are required to live a happy full life. After much reflection I found to live a happy and fulfilled life we must pursue living a “Congruent Life”. This in short means living a life that reflects our values, our words and our actions in most settings. This is a challenge and for many is a daily struggle. We will fall short at times but having a tribe around us that will help uplift us, support us and provide an environment for us to be our best selves. Much of the turmoil I have experienced and witnessed seems to stem from incongruence in behavior, either in ourselves or in others.
The pathway to living a congruent starts with 5 unique steps. These steps may seem simple and self evident but no less difficult to consistently achieve.
- Be Honest. Tell the truth to yourself and to others. We often delude ourselves in order not to face harsh realities of our own shortcomings. Where have we fallen short? What are our strengths and what are our weaknesses? Being honest is the foundation of living a congruent life. If you cannot consistently tell the truth by definition you are living an incongruent life. If you say you are a loving faithful partner and you are having affairs at best you are dishonest. If you say you are a God fearing Christian, Muslim, Jew, or Baha’i and you are willfully and consistently doing things contrary to their teachings then at best you are human and a fallible sinner. If you do this without acknowledging your limitations you are a dishonest fraud.
- Know Yourself. To tell the truth we have to know ourselves. Who are we? What do we stand for? What do we believe? When it is quiet and still and we are all alone who is the innocent voice deep inside of us? The problem is that we are bombarded with stimuli that doesn’t promote us sitting still and reflecting on who we truly are and taking inventory of our lives. We constantly get fed a steady diet of we should look like this, smell like that, act like this, be happy like that, pursue material possessions to be happy and on and on and on.
- Communicate your values, desires, and intensions to others. Once we have established that we must consistently be honest and tell the truth and we have an idea of who we are and what we stand for the next critical step is in communicating this to the world around us. It isn’t anyones responsibility to guess, interpret, discern your values, desires or intentions. To live a congruent purpose filled life mandates that you responsibly communicate this to others. This does two things. By speaking your intentions you find like minded souls for your tribe. If you don’t you end up with a fucked up tribe. Your tribe can help you be the best version of yourself. They can provide you with support. They can call you to account when we inevitability fall short. It also keeps incongruent people out of your life. I have not lived a perfect life but I have had some amazing friends and family in my life that have provided me with support. Looking back I see how consistently they are always high character and quality people. The people doing shady shit just are not attracted to me. We just don’t get along. I have tried to befriend them but they know to stay away from me.
- Be purposeful in our actions. Now that we made a commitment to be honest and tell the truth, we have some semblance of who we are and what we stand for and what our desires are and we have communicated this to those around us we have to put this into action. As the saying goes the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Everyone wants to be fit but only a few want to consistently eat well and workout. Many want to run a marathon but only few consistent put in the miles to get it done. Many us us say we want a loving family but all too often we have countless excuses when we cannot be present for our loved ones.
- Apologize when we make a mistake and correct our actions. We all will fall short at some point in our lives. We will all mess up. The mark of a person of charter is one who is willing to admit their shortcomings, sincerely apologize for falling short and actively try to correct the wrong. The first step is to recognize you did wrong. This stems back to being honest. Once you recognize it step up and apologize. This step can seem painful but it is ultimately liberating for not only the person you harmed but yourself. Then we start back on our journey of living a congruent life. We try to repair our wrongs by living a purpose filled life with intentional actions.