Get Connected

By Sally Eichhorst

...how a deeper connection with people can better your life in every way.

The aim of this book is to help you GET CONNECTED again in the true sense of the word.
The book will help you to understand what it means to truly be ‘connected’ on all levels and thus live the successful and happy life you were meant to.
If you are truly connected on all layers of your life – the self, the inner circle, the outer circle and the world at large – everything else will naturally fall into place – your life will be the masterpiece it can and should be.
To obtain success, peace, happiness, love or whatever your heart desires, you need to re-establish true connectivity on every layer of your being. Care about and connect with yourself and you will learn to care for and connect with others – those closest to you and those you will never even meet. Do this and see how amazingly, the puzzle pieces of your life simply fall into place.
Don’t be afraid to connect - it’s through connecting the dots of our lives (all the people in our lives and around us) that we are able to create a beautiful picture – the masterpiece that is our lives.
The human race, the rat race, the race for time – it all makes sense only when we understand that it’s all connected – we’re all connected and it’s only in discovering these connections and building on them to make them stronger, that our lives are made whole and complete.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Reach Publishers
• Release date: Jun 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9780620685238

Book preview

Introduction

In a digital age where everything is about being connected via internet, cell phone and by extension sms, whatsapp, twitter, facebook and so on, it seems that the more connected we are (electronically speaking), the less connected we are as people and the more we need to work on reclaiming true connectivity.

My aim in this book is to help you GET CONNECTED again in the true sense of the word and not in modern terms and to understand what it means to truly be ‘connected’ on all levels and thus live the successful and happy life you were meant to.

If you are truly connected on all levels or layers of your life, everything else will naturally fall into place – your life will be the masterpiece it can and should be.

Know thyself

Written in temple at Delphi (c. BC 500)

Part 1

Get Connected to Self

The closer you come to knowing that you alone create the world of your experience, the more vital it becomes for you to discover just who is doing the creating.

Eric Micha’el Leventhal

Chapter 1

Know thyself

Know thyself! This idea, statement, instruction or whatever you want to call it is as old as time itself and is still as vital to our growth, development and success today as it always was, if not more so than ever. It seems such a basic concept – to know oneself – but is it really, easy I mean, to truly know thyself? I don’t think it is and I think some people even go their entire lives without ever truly knowing themselves. They may have an idea of who they want to be or don’t want to be, possibly they even think of themselves in a certain way but are really not like that at all. Maybe they’re acting out a part others want them to be, trying so hard to be something they’re not – some not even realising it.

What makes you tick?

Is it possible that a great many people have no idea who they really are? They don’t know what makes them tick, what makes them come to a grinding halt and how to make their clock tick like

a Swiss-engineered clock that hums with life and the promise of quality and excellent workmanship.

Does your ticker , your heart, hum and sing with joy at a full life well-lived with quality experiences? Or are you no longer keeping good time and in need of a new battery or a total overhaul?

Why is it that perfectly healthy people are often so sad, so disenchanted with themselves, their lives and their lot? Some no longer wish to keep ticking, and their beat has become softer to the point of barely being present. They’ve become distant, like shadows or bystanders in their own lives, barely existing and simply going through the motions of life.

Is that all there is to life – to go through the motions on auto-pilot – or should there be more, can there be more for us all? Yes, I do believe there can be more for me, for you and for everyone who is able to re-connect with themselves and thus discover a great deal more to life. In fact, I believe the fundamental secret people through the eons have searched far and wide for is not the secret to success, happiness, youth and fulfilment but rather the secret of re-discovering and connecting with the self.

It is wisdom to know others; it is enlightenment to know one’s self.

Lao-Tsu

So the big question of course is HOW do we re-connect to self?

There are a number of practical techniques I regularly use to re-connect with myself and if I can do it, believe me, anyone can. There’s nothing special about me. I have no extraordinary abilities or anything spectacular that differentiates me from anyone else so if I can do this, you can too.

The first thing you need to understand and accept, no matter your circumstances, is that there is no difference between you and me, between those who have achieved great things, others who have survived against great odds, and people who are generally at peace and happy – we are all made up of the same ingenious stuff. We’re born connected to our mothers and totally connected with ourselves. It’s only time, limiting traditions and beliefs, what we are told and learn from those around us and life experiences, that cause us to lose touch with ourselves.

At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and

powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self.

Brendan Behan

No one can be truly happy and at peace without getting connected to self. This is the first step to understanding yourself better and to stop yourself from searching and yearning for something that you cannot quite get a handle on.

On this subject, firstly let me clear something up. I’ve had a

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

Aristotle (384-322 BC)

Chapter 2

Practical strategies to get connected to self –

Meditation

number of disagreements with people about meditation. Some believe that meditation is evil and religiously wrong. I disagree totally and believe that these people are being rather narrow-minded as meditation has been around for eons with no evil intent or anti-religious agenda. Personally, and for many others I know, the only agenda ever sought after with meditation is to achieve calm, peace and relaxation, whereby you enable yourself to clear your head and to contemplate nothing but serenity – a silencing of the mind, so to speak.

What could possibly be wrong with trying to quiet your mind from all the ceaseless chatter going on in your head and the constant demands and pressures of life? It’s a time to forget the to do list, forget your worries, your re-runs of what happened today, yesterday and what may still play itself out tomorrow. It’s a time to simply push away all thoughts, memories, re-runs and clean the blackboard of your mind so that it’s a clean slate.

Meditation is not some weird religion or religious act – all it is and was ever meant to be as far as I’m concerned is a cleansing of the mind; a means of clearing out the cobwebs and starting afresh. When I meditate – and I mean meditate in the most basic sense of the word here, as I’m certainly no guru in the field – it is like an awakening for me. What I mean is that the very act of clearing my mind (like preparing a field for planting crops), makes me suddenly see things more clearly, as if I’m seeing them for the first time like an awakening from a coma. It’s as if I have been sleepwalking through life on auto-pilot, responding to this and that, keeping up with the rat race, when suddenly I come awake from my sleep and things become more real; I feel more alive and in tune with everything around me.

Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity of self-change. And in observing himself a man notices that self-observation itself brings about certain changes in his inner processes. He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening.

George Gurdjieff

So how do you meditate?

There are countless ways to meditate and people often have to experiment a bit to find the method that best suits them. However, there are some suggestions for successful meditation. Whichever method of meditation you choose, for successful meditation you will need to:

Find a quiet place to meditate where you will not be disturbed. If you can, try to make it the same place every time in order to establish a routine habit.

Try and make it around about the same time of day every day – again to develop a routine habit, making it part of your every day schedule. Of course, if you cannot do this, then any time you can have some quiet time to yourself is better than nothing – so grab it when you can.

Focus only on one thing and push away all else. The aim is to clear your mind. Your mind can only focus on one thought at a time. Even though you experience thousands of thoughts a day, you can only give attention to one at