Life is rich.
Your life is rich.
Regardless of how it may look or feel to you, your
life right now is rich with enough naturally existing elements and deposits for
you to live the rest of your life enriched with significance, purpose, meaning
and more. And these treasures that currently exist in your life, right now, can
be accessed by mining for them. Happiness, purpose, contentment,
and joy may be hidden but are waiting for you in various aspects of your life that I
reference as ‘the “environments” of your life’. Examples of these
“environments” include your Present, Potential, Possibilities, Character,
Preparation
and Power.
Each of these environments are
is
a rich opportunities opportunity to
discover and possess your life’s true treasures. Recognizing your present, your
potential, your possibilities, and your preparation as environments (or
opportunities) to be mined will help you realize personal success through the
process I call Life-Mining.
To strengthen the analogy of Mining Your LIfe in your mind, let’s first consider the concept communicated by the word “mine”. According to Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, the most appropriate definitions for the purpose of this process is the fifth one listed:
5 a : to dig into for ore or metal b: to process for obtaining a natural constituent
// mine the air for nitrogen c: to seek valuable material in
// mine old records for more details
Merriam-Webster online also defines “mine” the form of a noun as “a rich source of supply”. GOOGLE presents another definition as to “delve into (an abundant source) to extract something of value, especially information or skill”.
Mine Your Life© presents the
process of “life-mining” as the concept of mining for things of value hidden in
your life. Life-Mining© is a proprietary method to Mine Your
Life© and enjoy the treasures in and around you. Though I’ve trademarked the
analogy of mining as an ideology, methodology, and process, NONE of these
principles are new. In fact, you can find success from the application of these
concepts affirmed everywhere. However, taking action with this perspective
empowers your efforts with a clear purpose. The goal of all life-mining
activity is the production of outcomes, objects, and/or understandings that you
immediately appreciate and eventually celebrate. This unique approach to
developing and applying life skills as a branded process is the result of
mining my own life. Life-mining is designed to exercise your personal power of
intention and
to cause you to think, act and speak with the
expectation of a valuable, dare I say “profitable” result. Why “profitable”?
Because the goal is having
to
gain something worth more than the investment
of work it takes to get obtain
it.
Another benefit of Life-Mining is that it works with
other personal development methods like the “law of attraction”. However, this
process gives your
you practical
steps of action to facilitate the successful outcomes of other
philosophies.
Life- Mining
will always require an exchange because producing the treasures that exist in
your unique life experience requires a giving give and
take. Life- Mining
does not work because you learn about it or even understand it with
mastery. Life- Mining
requires and an
exchange of intentionality
intent, effort
[MS1] and
personal resources in exchange
for valuable outcomes to treasure
that
can be treasured for
a lifetime. Giving of what you have (or have access to) to get the “treasures”
you need or desire should be expected and accepted. This process of exchange is
important because it is what actually “appreciates” the outcomes of your
mining. When I say “appreciate”, I am using it in the sense of “increase in
value” and “gratitude”. Recognizing the worth or fully understanding the cost
of acquisition add depth and richness to both the mining process and its
results. In other words, the exchange required of life mining
Life-Mining
increases the value of your life’s treasures.
The increase of value is two-fold, to first you first
to your life treasures,
then eventually (if not immediately) to the world around you. Fortunately,
gratitude, recognition of worth (valuation), increasing worth, and an enriched
understanding of implications are by-products of the Life- Mining
Exchange Process.
The
Life-Mining Process
The primary phases (or steps) in the life-mining
process are Connection, Communication, Creation,
and Celebration.
The primary phases
(or steps) in the life-mining process are
1.
Connection:
the
initial phase of your life-mining process of assessment and excavation
2.
Communication:
the
step in which you begin to identify, extract and process the elements or raw potential of
valuables in your life.
3.
Creation:
refinement
process for that which was identified in the communication process.
4.
Celebration: the outcome of
benefit, consumption and sharing[MS2]
Once you are skilled in the steps of
Life -Mining
process you can improvise with additional steps or rename these steps to better
articulate your understanding of how this process works for you.
Connection is the initial phase of your
life-mining process of assessment and excavation. Communication is the step
in which you begin to identify, extract and process the elements or raw
potential of valuables in your life.
Creation is the
function that is your refinement process for that which was identified in the
communication process.
Celebration is the
outcome of benefit, consumption and sharing. [MS3]
Though Life MIning
Life-Mining
will benefit ANY LIFE at ANY STAGE or PHASE,
it may be MOST enriching to those facing a need to RESTART or an opportunity
to re-invent yourself. The reason I
am of this opinion is that the benefits Life Mining produce in my own
restart.
I believe this because I experienced the Life-Mining benefits myself when I dealt with a restart in my own life.
Once upon a time, I had everything. I thought
should make me happy but I was miserably tragically unhappy.
I had two parents that loved me and sacrificed continually to give me more than
they had when they were growing up. I had enjoyed a progressive, upwardly
advancing career and I was then an executive pastor of a church that I
watched grow from 5 members to impacting the lives of thousands weekly. Beyond
services to members and attendees, our ministries touched
lives through television and internet broadcast and global influenced
others globally through members relocating influence
through members relocating around the world through the local
military community . into
local military communities around
the world. And I
was considered to be next in line to take the lead. I had earned a degree after despite
being told by my high school counselors that I wasn’t college material and was
‘guided’ to pursue a trade. I owned a three bedroom, three bath condo on what some
considered the prestigious side of town. I drove a luxury SUV. And last but not
least I had a lovely kind, brilliant and beautiful fiancee.
My life
was full of goodness yet I struggled with feeling horrible and unworthy bad,
always.[MS4]
People liked me but I didn’t like myself. Self-loathing was the underlying
motive of everything I had accomplish or acquired. I didn’t want to be
miserable but didn’t know how not to be.
It was more painful than I care to remember. But I
can’t forget how I medicated
numbed
my pain and loneliness with intoxicatingly
intoxicating
and toxic substances and people. I got lost
in a community of users and became one of them at the expense cost of
almost
everything short of losing my
life.
After losing it all, I struggled to exist. I worked
selling used cars, medical devices and waited tables. I tried to rebuild but the
foundation I was still working with was one I
was still working with a foundation of
self-loathing and feelings of worthlessness.
No matter what changed, everything was remained the
same. One day someone from my circle of pain came over saying he just wanted to
share some new Christian worship music and talk. I said that we couldn’t hang
out too
late, but somehow it ended in a night of debauchery. Again. I remember sitting
at my desk in the used car dealership and asking God for help.
After a lot of introspection, prayer, and counseling,
and fortunately after losing everything I thought I needed to be happy, I found
myself happier than I’ve
I’d ever
been. Left with “nothing”,
Nothing nothing,
“nothing” made me happier. While successfully
mining your life does not require this level of catastrophic loss, this level
of loss will not prevent you mining success.
How to mine the Environment of Your Present
-
To mine your Ppresent
you have to
must treat
your “present moments” as a child does a gift on Christmas.
Wake up, get up, show up strong to play
hard and then “say bye” or in other words move on to the nNext
- your Nnext
nNow. These steps are important and effective when
applied literally or figuratively.
The Present is a gift of your past to your now, wrapped in contradiction and complexity. As you mine your Present plan to confront the contradictions and complexities that you find with courage. Every complicated issue and/or contradiction can be a discouraging barrier to the exploration necessary to identify the valuable deposits that various previous experiences have hidden[MS5] in your Present.
In
keeping with the analogy of mining, the Present is an environment full of
resources that can be mined into a life’s treasure. Similar to how a river or
mountain may be a source of gold ore that must be found, possessed and
processed to realize its highest value. [MS6]
To mine your Present apply the 4C verbs of connect, communicate, create
and celebrate.[MS7]
1. Connection
Connecting is
the key to Connection = Be present, be aware, be
actively interactive.
Mining the Environment of Your Present is begun by
surveying what is in and around you to get an understanding of your present
environment. The quality of your future in is determined
in each right now moment. What you have now. Where you are now. What you can do
now.
It is easy to get so overwhelmed by what you have to do that you don’t decide to do what is best for the “next” that you value and desire. What you value and desire is a treasure hidden among all the stuff you have to do and need to do.
In every present moment, there are reasons to have your mind elsewhere. However, your mind’s focus is always the primary tool for successful Life-mining. In fact, you may pride yourself on your ability to multitask but getting things done is not the same as getting to what you value most. You may feel that you have met the requirement of being present because you have presented your body (physical-self) to a meeting or event. However, to mine the treasure in the present moment you must learn and practice the discipline of Present Awareness. When you want to mine a moment, announce the beginning of that process to yourself by saying “CONNECT”.
2. Communicate = Listen and speak to the people, situation or circumstance in the moment. As you connect with what surrounds you in the moment, the awareness that you allow to grow in that moment should inspire your communication verbally as well as your body language.
Listening and speaking are equally important when they
compliement
each other. When you listen to speak appropriately the impact and effectiveness
of your words is
are immeasurably
enhanced. The objective of listening in the process of Life-Mmining
is to get an accurate understanding of what is presently going on. My mother often
quoted the phrase, “Sseek
to understand more than to be understood”. And it is this concept that makes
listening in the function of Life-Mmining
so powerful.
Courageous communication takes GUTSS (Gratitude, Understanding, Thoughtfulness, Sincerity, and Silence)
3. Create = Attribute and/or Appreciate Value
You can create value for things in your life by
choosing its value. When it comes to your life's treasures, you control their
value. From a casual meeting to a new
tradition established with loved ones, you determine if whether
they are precious our or are meaningless.
An old saying “Ccount
your blessings” is an approach to valuing the persons, places and things that
exist as unrecognized treasures in your life. Another way of saying this is “mMake
a gratitude list”,. tThis
is simply a list of what you are greatful
grateful for
having in life.
4. Celebrate = [MS8] Share publicly the final result with a physical representation
Celebrate is the final phase of life mining
Life-Mining that
resembles having a party. It requires all the intentionality of party
planning the
same conscious
planning as a party, from the from
when, where, how (with simplicity or extravagance) , who
is invited (solo celebration, intimate or
grand), clean up and follow-up thank you messages.
In keeping
with the analogy of mining, the Present is an environment full of resources
that can be mined into a life’s treasure. Similar to how a river or mountain
may be a source of gold ore that must be found, possessed and processed to
realize its highest
value. [MS9]
To mine your P
present apply
the 4C verbs of connect, communicate, create and celebrate.However, the
way you perform each my differ in other enviroments. When
connecting to mine your present your goals are to be aware, be expressive and
get
understanding.
Other environments
can be mined using the 4Cs, however the 4Cs may differ in the way you perform
them in each environment. The environments that we will mine are the following:
·
The environment of your
Potential - the good you can get done by doing good
·
The environment of your
Possibilities - the choice potential (options) associated with character choice
·
The environment of your
Character - personal standard
(ethical right and wrong), personal values, personal commitments. Choices
are decisions
aligned with your character; otherwise it’s coercion,
seduction or deception.
·
The environment of your
Preparation - practice,
·
The environment of your Power -
doing what you can do to change for the better [MS10]
In following
chapters I will be exploring the techniques of mining these environments using
the 4Cs.
Start
a CONNECT moment. Assess your present life and identify a valued gem in your
life. Something you want to pursue, or excavate, refine and accomplish. Maybe
something that you’re good at or liked doing. Something buried in the midst of
your present life that you haven’t followed up on or don’t have time for.
Write
it down.[MS11]
The environment of your
Potential - the good you
can get done by doing good
The environment of your
Possibilities - the choice potential (options) associated with character
choice,
The environment of your
Character = personal standard (ethical right and wrong), personal values,
personal commitments. Choice = decisions
aligned with your character - otherwise its coercion, seduction or deception.
The environment of your
Preparation - practice,
The environment of your
Power - doing what you can do to change for the better [MS12]
I don’t
choose to anchor my identity in addiction so I don’t identify as an addict. I
identify as a human person who enjoys food but must choose not to be a glutton,
who enjoys
buying things but must choose not acquire overwhelming unproductive debt,
enjoys a good time but must choose to be sober. I don’t value or perceive a
benefit in validating socially manufactured identities. Identity categories
manufactured by society
seemed to be instruments manipulation designed by the society to define your
value and thereby limiting it. [MS13]
[MS1]Other possibilities: purposefulness or purposeful effort or conscious effort?
[MS2]Suggest replacing the first sentence with this bulleted version with the definitions from below for concise readability.
[MS3]Suggest combining this with the bullets above. Less redundancy and better flow.
[MS4]Alternate:
My life was full of goodness, yet I carried with me everywhere, in the pit of my stomach, a dark heavy weight of unworthiness and misery.
[MS5]Alternate: buried?
[MS6]This text moved from below to here.
[MS7]These paragraphs extracted from the bottom of this theme where they seemed out of place, to here where they flow into 4C definitions.
[MS8]For continuity of style you should summarize Celebrate in the same way you did with the other 3 phases. (Celebrate = ???)
[MS9]This text moved up for flow.
[MS10]Is this the transition to the next chapters? Can we include the added transition statement at the end?
[MS11]Disregard this if another chapter walks the reader through this in detail. This is my attempt to get the reader to apply the CONNECT concept. You may have better ways to apply the process. I have the urge to apply the principles to my life when reading this and an assignment would make it personal and involved for the reader. Your decision whether to include something like this or not.
[MS12]This is the original text that is replaced in the text above.
[MS13]This seems to belong to another chapter that would address your power to choose instead of fall into a societal definition for you.