How To Live Intentionally Through The Five Universal Priorities Of Being
In the modern world, it can be quite a task to determine your priorities and live in alignment with them.
We’re told we need to be clear on our purpose.
But anyone who’s gone through a purpose statement exercise will most likely share how challenging it can be to create one that we’re truly connected to and one that guides us to living a well-balanced life. In fact, I’ve seen first hand how becoming too attached and obsessed with your purpose statement can lead to devastating effects on your’s and other people's lives. For example, if you designed your purpose statement with ego guidance (you may not even know it ego was guiding you), then your purpose could lead you down the wrong path. You may become so focused on fulfilling that purpose; you neglect other important aspects of your life.
So what’s the answer?
I love reading, especially different forms of wisdom such as spiritual writings, ancient philosophies and religious texts. I love absorbing different views to ensure that I’m not biased and that I stay open to new beliefs and thoughts. What I've discovered through my studies is there's a consistent theme across most philosophies and guides.
I’ve found frameworks an incredibly helpful tool to keep my way and overcome any obstacles I encounter. With that in mind, I had a desire to create a framework that would help me [and others] gain clarity around how to live a healthy, balanced life and where to focus our energy. Importantly, I wanted this framework to stand up even during those times when we don’t have complete clarity around our purpose.
From everything I’ve read, there seems to be an agreement around the most important focuses to ensure we experience our human existence to the fullest.
I call these the 5 Universal Priorities of Being. Be intentional in your life with each of these principles and not only will you feel purposeful, but you’ll unlock abundance, freedom and happiness too.
Keep reading, and I’ll show you how...
Note: My own personal beliefs guide everything I've written here. I share this with you to stimulate thoughts and action. This way is not the only way, but it’s certainly the one that’s helped me most.
The 5 Universal Priorities of Being
Love
Grow
Serve
Joy
Create
Love:
Our number 1 priority is to remember that we are love. As Ram Dass liked to say: we are “loving awareness”. With this in mind, we need to make sure we’re spending our energy doing whatever it takes to bring more love into our lives. The best way to change the world is to heal yourself. Healing yourself really means to remember that you are love, that we are all love and that we’re all connected. When you do this, your vibrational frequency rises, sending out good vibes to others which in turn helps them to remember they are also: Love.
Ways to do this:
Spiritual practices and rituals
Be in nature
Practice self-compassion
Show up more for your loved ones
Show love to humans you don’t know
Grow
Our soul naturally oozes intentionality. Your soul chose the exact second and environment for you to be born so you could have a life that provided you with the opportunities you need to grow.
This is why when we look back at our challenges, heartbreaks, and failures, we usually end up viewing them as gifts. With hindsight, we’re able to see that our challenges were actually perfect opportunities to learn a lesson, grow as an individual, and unlock a more incredible life. The term “wake-up call’ is actually our soul seeking out an opportunity to speak to us. Sometimes we’re so asleep that it needs to go to great lengths to “wake” us up!
We’ve adopted a view that a great and happy life is one where we avoid pain and seek out endless pleasure. But when everything is going swimmingly, we’re cruising, not growing! Just like lifting weights tests and breaks down muscle fibers to make them stronger, we need to do the same with our minds.
This is more than just learning. Today, consuming information is easier than ever. We need to be able to apply these learnings into our daily lives. We need to let ourselves grow, so we’re continuously growing and we don’t have to repeat the same experience in this life - or the next.
Ways I like to Grow:
Any relationship that is holding me back: Failure, fear, money, body etc.
Increasing my knowledge of particular topics
Serve
We’re not separate beings. We are all one. So when we serve others, we also serve ourselves. The greatest way to serve others is to love unconditionally. This is why love and growth are higher priorities because to truly serve others you have to learn how to love yourself first.
How can you serve in your communities? How can you serve your fellow beings, including strangers, not just people you know? Random Acts of Kindness or Paying It Forward can be a powerful way to do this. Doing something nice or helping out - even something simple such as paying for the drinks of the person behind you in the queue or giving a stranger a compliment help to add a little brightness to the world.
Here are some ways I like to serve:
Impacting others through my work
Sharing my expertise and knowledge
Offering breathwork workshops to support causes I believe in
Be part of great entrepreneurial communities such as EO and YEC.
Joy
I’ve encountered many people who believe you must be very serious to walk a spiritual path. Personally, I feel these people risk missing out on the fun you can have as a human! We don’t have our senses for nothing. We’re meant to enjoy this human experience. So dance, eat good food, sing, play, travel to new places, try new experiences, do it all! Joy is so beautiful. It gives us strength to love more, to transform ourselves, to serve others and to just be.
All you need to do is to look at the Dalai Lama or Desmond Tutu, two of our greatest spiritual leaders, to see how ‘spiritual’ constant states of joy can be.
Ways I experience joy:
Reading
Being in nature
Playing drums
Spending time with friends.
Travel
Adrenalin sports like skiing and biking
Create
We are creative beings. We each have a unique skill set and a unique gift we can offer the world. It’s our role to discover them. When we create from an authentic place, we often find our gifts bring more love into the world. Our gifts provide us and others with an opportunity to transform as well as resources to serve others. Creativity can ignite more joy too.
You can create through your work or your passions such as music and art. Whatever it is, find ways to bring your inner creativity out.
Ways I like to create:
Building businesses
Creating visions
Speaking
Facilitating retreats
Cooking
Guiding my life with the 5 Universal Priorities of Being has been incredibly grounding for me.
So often we measure our worth or happiness by one factor. Unfortunately, the measure we choose is often influenced by societal views on success and materialistic achievements.
I used to measure my success on the amount of money I had or the success of my business. Now I measure myself against these 5 priorities [and in the order I described them]. I believe there’s little point having a huge business and millions of dollars in the bank if you don’t love yourself or provide the love that the people in your life deserve - or if your business doesn’t serve the human race.
I check in with these priorities regularly to see how I’m living up to them. It’s a practice I take seriously and intentionally. For example, I have an annual intention for each priority. For example, for love this year my intention is to choose self compassion over self criticism . Then, I have a monthly intention that connects them. For example this month I am focusing on doing a judgement detox. This helps me to take weekly and daily action towards each of them.
As a result of this practice, I’m able to feel the way I want more of the time.
Maybe you’ll experience something similar… I recommend that you try. I invite you to be courageous and try living a life in line with the five priorities of love, grow, service, joy, and creativity.
Dive in and see what happens. I’m confident you’ll achieve greater levels of fulfillment in your everyday life and never look back.