The Ultimate Life Map: A Transformational Journey Towards Greater Freedom, Fulfilment and Happiness

By Leigh Martinuzzi

As long as we are asleep and unaware, we may never wake up to our true purpose in life.

The Ultimate Life Map will assist you in defining your Life Compass. It will help you understand the fundamental Life Principles so you can purposefully navigate your way towards living life with greater freedom, fulfilment and happiness.

Stop teasing yourself. Wake up! Believe and know that the life you wish for is possible. Align your thoughts and behaviours with your values. With what matters to you.

We cannot live The Ultimate Life by aligning ourselves with societal expectations and external demands. Those paths lead us into traps of acceptance and conformity. Break free from the status quo!

Question everything. Ask Why?

The Ultimate Life is available for anyone willing to create the change. Are you ready to wake up?

Toltec wisdom aligns beautifully with The Ultimate Life Map. Its purpose is to connect people to their why, their authentic Self, and in doing so putting them on their own unique journey in life that will open the doors and shine the light on greater freedom, fulfilment and happiness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Sep 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781504322393

Leigh Martinuzzi

Leigh Martinuzzi is The Hidden Why Guy. He’s an expert in lifestyle and business design although would say that he's just another guy trying to figure out life. He is passionate about creating and living a meaningful life – a life that dissolves suffering and regret. And he wishes to inspire and educate others how to do the same. He assists people via speaking, mentoring, writing, and podcasting. Having a corporate background in senior executive positions for various multi-national companies, Leigh realized that it wasn't the life he wanted. How he was living his life didn’t make a great deal of sense. Leigh made a decision and decided to redesign his life to give him more freedom, fulfillment, and happiness. He has successfully transitioned from a dissatisfying existence to living with higher purpose. Now he pays forward what he has learned to help other people do the same. To do this Leigh created a template called The Ultimate Life Map - a guide that he has used to develop more passion and purpose. The compass and paths that continue to keep him on track to dissolving the suffering and regret in his life and leading him to more significant liberation and a deeper state of happiness. People describe Leigh as sincere, spiritual, compassionate, driven, curious and highly motivated. He is integral to his values and the autonomous leader of his life. It is his discipline and leadership qualities that inspires others to live with more passion, purpose, and meaning. He is by far from perfect, and doubts there is such a state, but belief in progress and the power of constant improvement has on the quality of our life. Here is to breaking free of stagnation and conformity to genuinely unleashing the absolute beauty life given us all.

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Prologue

Deep happiness is an everlasting state of peace and satisfaction found within every moment regardless of its pleasure or pain, richness or poorness. Leigh Martinuzzi

Happiness! Everyone strives for happiness. It is life’s most significant pursuit. In every moment, knowingly or unknowingly, there is a purposeful intention to everything we think, say and do, an effort to seek a higher state of happiness.

The core purpose of life is survival. A consequence of natural selection, the fundamental mechanism behind evolution and the progression of life as we know it.

What drives our ability to meet life’s this need? Purpose and a desire to continually improve the quality of our existence. The driving motivational force behind it all, the pursuit of happiness.

It is my belief that the current modern-day existence of life is severely challenged.

How we live today is being altered in significant ways. The continual and rapid advancement and changes to the likes of technology, environmental factors, diet, the working landscape, among other matters, have changed how we live on a day-to-day basis. Our modern lifestyles have created an inability to express life’s purpose and most of us either neglect or have merely forgotten how to meet our most fundamental needs and the importance they have on our overall happiness. We are our biggest threat, and perhaps we always have been, not only to our own life but the survival of all life as we know it. Natural progression has brought us this far yet now is appears that we are in the process of creating a new form of being, one that we are unfamiliar with and struggling to keep up with. Will we continue to progress and learn to adapt or are we on the brink of distinction?

These issues affect us all and for that reason I believe we should all be asking, why?

It may be naive to think that we are the most advanced intelligence that exists, both in the past, present or the future to come. Has life developed from non-life, from space, from emptiness, from consciousness, from energy? Is there a God or is the God we believe in just a representation of the original energy that created all life? Are the gods merely a sign of hope?

Without hope, the pursuit of happiness is dead and that will kill our ability and desire to seek meaning, freedom and fulfilment. That will limit our chances of survival. For this reason, I believe broader purpose and desire is underlying the current known theories of life and how we’ve evolved, and we just need to realize this and tap into it once again. I think as a society as a whole we’ve lost the connection that exists within each of us.

Humans desire more than simply surviving: we seek meaning, we seek story, we seek purpose, we seek freedom, and ultimately, we seek happiness. These notions allow us to experience the joys of life that without may otherwise be pretty bland. They assist in creating a sense of unity, hope and peace.

The lack of these qualities is the most apparent cause of the rise of modern-day suffering, and yet the paths to happiness require the dissolution and freedom from suffering. I truly believe this is the nature of all beings; a desire for happiness and freedom from suffering.

Are these pursuits and desires, with the aim of creating a higher quality and more satisfying life, actually pushing us towards undesirable states of existence? Is a utopian ideology flawed?

Life has only evolved due to such optimistic visions and ideology. Faith and hope are what give life confidence and trust in the future. It is the oxygen to the fire that strengthens our motivation to keep pushing forward, despite any adversity.

Have we lost our imagination, wisdom and hope?

I believe when there is a lack of motivation in our personal lives, we tend to sleep our way through life as if we’ve given up. The paths towards happiness are cloudy and misdirected. Thoughts and actions have less intent; as we are not clear but confused. A vacancy of clarity followed by misleading actions pull us towards suffering and away from happiness. Detrimental to our survival. It is the pursuit of happiness that helps us generate progressive and favorable conditions beneficial for survival.

The same can be said for society as a whole. If there are overriding feelings of helplessness and lacking control, motivation declines, and our collective pursuit weakens. Anger, hate, depression and other negative feelings and emotions, evident in the environments and conditions of confusion, cripple life. As stagnation sets in, our behaviors become less purposeful and instead of survival we encourage extinction?

Beyond survival, happiness is what brings meaning to life and our existence. Happiness is opposite to suffering. Buddha said that Life is suffering. I don’t believe the intention was to be negative and dissolve hope. Instead, it was noted as a reminder to be aware and conscious of the causes of suffering, so we can continue to direct our lives beautifully towards happiness.

There is purpose in suffering. It is to help us wake up. To be able to define life by permanent joy, personality and purity; a life of profound happiness. Suffering is life’s biological and physiological attempt to maintain survival and reproduction. It may appear counter-intuitive however that is life; intriguingly beautiful, intense, curious and sophisticated.

Suffering can be used to help life avoid situations and circumstances that jeopardize survival. I believe suffering is a useful measurement of happiness. Affliction, characterized by unease, dissatisfaction, difficulty, sorrow, pain, distress or grief leads to what the Buddha would prescribe as tanha, or craving. Tanah is the attachment to and a desire for conditions of pleasantness or unpleasantness relative to our life. It becomes a perpetual cycle.

The conditions of suffering and cravings result in the arising of unfavorable or negative emotions and character traits. These show up in our behaviors. Therefore, the current socio-economic climate of the world and our state of happiness can be measured.

If any one of these emotional states is excessive - greed, arrogance, patience, jealousy, hate, disgust, pride, anger or fear, it may suggest suffering as a whole is excessive. Obsessive-compulsive actions are good signs of cravings, activities that don’t lead to any rewards and are highly repetitive. These show up in the rates of addiction, obesity, crime and depression within society. Suffering on the individual level is being amplified by how the collective is currently living.

The suffering of the populace determines humanities current state of affairs. An obsession with capital growth, money, politics, property prices, and oil may result from a national level of greed. A nation will have a hostile attitude towards drugs and crime, yet at the very same time support pharmaceutical companies as they increase their presence within society – medicated but not drugged!

Instead of tackling the core issues governments apply the Band-Aid solution. We live in a system of polarized beliefs and opinions that create competing ideologies. It is not easy to overcome such issues, however, are we dealing with the problems effectively? Perhaps we are only treating the symptoms, and this causes a domino effect. The issues that result from the suffering at the individual level stimulate and cause the rise of the unfavorable conditions and problems at the collective level (tribal, communal, national, global).

The collective is awakening to this fact; the individual is beginning to become aware. One effects the other in both suffering and the release from pain. At the collective level, there are excellent ideas currently being discussed and implemented in efforts to help dissolve the suffering at the individual level. A universal basic income is one example of how the collective can assist individuals. Trials have provided evidence of many benefits that are transforming society in many positive ways. Many individuals are doing magnificent things to help the aversion of the collective. Thought leaders and other passionate people sharing value and love in effforts to create a positive impact in the lives of others. Together and united I believe we can create change to bring peace, happiness and joy into everyone’s life.

There is suffering associated with the natural phenomena of life, both in the forms of physical and mental pain. I’d consider this standard and in most respects outside our immediate control or influence. It benefits us in our ability to heal, grow compassion, love fully, find meaning, and with purpose move peacefully towards death. It may sound somewhat a contradiction but without pain how could we differentiate joy, peace, pleasure.

I believe it fruitless and unwise to try hide, run or wish the pain of this nature away. It is best to be with it, without clinging, so we can more deeply feel the experience and the lessons it may hold. It’s a refreshing reminder that we are alive. It is our guide toward meaning and happiness.

Beyond the natural suffering that we are exposed to throughout life, the majority of suffering we experience is self-caused. It becomes the condition and state of mind obsessed by one’s misguided sense of self-importance.

The pain that we undergo due to events outside our control is amplified by the focus of self.

Why me?

Why do I deserve this?

The truth is that all life exists because of an underlying dependency. Our existence and state of being are dependent on all others. However, our self-desires and the cravings we seek in attempt to cling to permanency and satisfy the self’s needs leads to an increased and unnecessary level of suffering.

The Self is forever changing. Life in all regards is impermanent.

Everything is in constant flux. The illusion that something will last forever is cause for pain especially as it relates to the concept of ‘I’ or ‘Self’, the ultimate disillusion. It often sets unrealistic and unhealthy (selfish) expectations, which when not meet, situations are perceived undesirable and conditions become sufferable.

The Self is in constant change. For who I am tomorrow is not who I am today, and who I am as it relates to the essence of the reality that I create, live and believe to be the truth is not susceptible to change but inevitably will change.

Just as suffering can be a consequence of self-developed illusions so can happiness. I call this superficial happiness. A state of joy created by the constant and ever-expanding pursuit of pleasures. Surface level happiness that is misleading and false. I understand that it works even if it’s short-lived. It is our sense of self-importance and ego that pushes towards these pleasure pursuits in efforts to please our desires, but perhaps it is doing us more damage than good.

I desire to dissolve such illusions of Self and assist others to do the same as I believe it is having a considerable impact on the suffering of life and humanity as a whole. It may take me a lifetime to overcome the self-generated illusions, but if it does help minimize the pain in my life and others, then I am committed. It has become my passion. Maybe that is a selfish pursuit in itself.

The misguidance of our pleasure fixes to seek momentary elevated states and to satisfy our cravings results from the desires to avoid what’s perceived dissatisfying or unfavorable or to find some good. It becomes our constant motivation and underlying agitation. It leads nowhere and is never-ending.

The moments and conditions in life will never be perfect, perfection is a state of mind, but we believe it should be, our self-importance suggests we deserve it. It is our misery, dissatisfaction, self-contempt, unease and suffering. It is what keeps us in a constant chase. Our survival mechanism gone wrong. This pursuit of happiness of this nature is impermanent and unhealthy.

The human design inspired by natural selection is flawed to the novelty of today’s society. While we can pragmatically see the truth and what’s real, most of the reality we live is empty. The meaning and essence we associate with this reality is a consequence and condition of the conscious and sub-conscious mind. In understanding this, we can begin to do the work to master the Self by discrediting our attachments, unhealthy pursuit of desires, and misperceptions about the nature of reality to dissolve self-caused suffering and discover inner peace.

It is modern-day slavery and I, like most, have been a victim. I have battled nicotine addiction, chased money without understanding why, thought that more stuff would bring me greater satisfaction and yet found a decreasing sense of freedom, fulfilment and happiness as the craving and pursuit progressed.

Caught up in the past or the future, always in search of ways to elevate my happiness now yet in doing so missing out on the full beauty of life in the present. A constant agitation caused by my cravings to run away from all that is, never entirely content. In waking up ever so slowly, I realize that deep happiness lays right here and now, not in the future nor in the past, and yet how ludicrous it is that I spend my time, energy and effort trying to escape it.

I am not alone.

This strange dependency on pleasures to try to inject a little joy into our life is the modern-day phenomenon causing most people dissatisfaction, depression, tension, hate, and suffering. Only in awareness will this illusion of happiness dissolve and improve. Only then will a more profound state of happiness eventuate, at first on the individual level that will directly influence that state of the collective whole.

Deep happiness is an everlasting state of peace and satisfaction found within every moment regardless of its pleasure or pain, richness or poorness. In this state we are void of the sense of self, cravings, desires and suffering. These are the paths to enlightenment. It is life’s journey.

For each of us, the path looks different.

The process of discovery will be unique. To begin, we start by practicing awareness. Develop clarity and remove the distractions of everyday life. Connect back to the essential pursuits. Connect again to our fundamental human needs. To discard the bullshit that has consumed and conditioned our lives by letting go. By waking up!

The consequence is action with purpose. Being integral and acting aligned with our core values, dreams, needs, passions, skills and desires. Strengthened by regular practice. We immediately start to awaken to freedom and fulfilment.

Happiness becomes life’s pursuit.

Happiness is life’s pursuit.

Those that do agree with this ideal are not wrong. The contents and ideas shared within The Ultimate Life Map are neither correct or permanent. However, I believe that many people are not yet awake to the illusions created by the modern society we live. Still caught in their Self-disillusioned life, attached to their self-importance. Asleep to a more in-depth purpose of life. Unsure of their mission.

On the conventional paths offered by society, disconnecting from our authenticity and free heart is too easy. We become stuck, stagnant and find ourselves living a life without significant meaning. It is not right or wrong, good or bad; it’s just one way to traverse this experience of life.

Is it the best way?

My thoughts are deep, and my perspectives on life are open to criticism, and reasonably so. I welcome healthy debate and love to challenge my ideas and beliefs. My writing is introspective and perhaps, in essence, a slightly selfish pursuit. My attempt to try and figure out life. My effort to create purpose and meaning. My desire for the removal of suffering and development of happiness.

The ideas shared in The Ultimate Life Map continue to work in my own life. Since embarking on this journey, almost by accident, I have created a life with more purpose, a consequence of removing the unnecessary and focusing on what is most important, this has given me a broader sense of freedom, fulfilment and happiness.

I remember one day when going for a walk as I did most mornings at the time, I had this moment, that seemed to last. I felt an inflated sense of joy and peace. It was a feeling that became more and more regular. In reflection, I knew that there was nothing new or extra in my life that in the past I would have considered a sign of success or reason to be happier. If anything, there was less. These moments caused a shift within me. An awakening. I became marveled by the beauty of life, excited, calm, energized, inspired and alive.

What allows me to write this book? I will not sit here and tell you that I’ve got it all figured out. I don’t! However, I suppose I am a little wiser to what is truly important in life. In my twenties I was all about career, success, money, sex and rock ‘n’ roll. The truth is that I am no sex guru, rock star or money magnate and while I’ve experienced some ups and downs in my various careers, I am still not entirely sure what the future holds for me. However, I feel I am progressive. Willing to work hard, experiment, learn, figure shit out and along the way improve and better myself than that I was yesterday.

I’ve found myself in a constant chase yet not entirely sure why. Frantically rushing forward, I am sure I’ve missed out on many beautiful moments along the way. Most of my twenties seem like a blur. I had fun. Driven by ego, a desire to achieve status and meet false expectations Nothing came quick enough and everything happened so fast.

I am still young however over the years I’ve become more focused on health and family – shit changes when you have kids. I am still driven by success and a desire to make some money, but I am also more conscious of why. Connecting to the reason I do things and having a greater sense of purpose. I still have selfish intent and selfish pursuits but nowadays majority of what motivates me is altruistic in nature. A desire to have a positive impact in the lives of my family, friends and others. A higher sense of selflessness. I am no saint.

I created the Ultimate Life Map to highlight life principles that I have found essential and enhancing to my overall freedom, fulfilment and happiness. These are health, growth, relationships, expression, significance and contribution. My behaviours and habits within each of these areas have all been guided by my increased clarity and understanding as to who I am and knowing my Why. More of which I will share in the next chapter.

Whether you are 22, 37 or 65 I believe there is value and benefits to be gained and in reading this book I hope the concepts shared will help wake you up as they have me. To guide you beyond any self-inflicted suffering and regret to a life fuelled by passion and purpose. My goal is to inspire, educate and assist you to create and live your life with greater joy. I believe you will find happiness in the pursuit.

If the pursuit of life is not happiness, what then?

Why is it we do what we do?

What’s the purpose?

Ask yourself these questions. Why do you wake up in the morning? What is the deep motivation?

Try to make the connection to why what you do is essential. Ask why. Dig deep until you discover the root motivation and reason for your actions and behaviors.

What are they? Can you find truth in them?

Go beyond them. For everything we do, I genuinely believe we will discover the core motivation in life is the pursuit of happiness.

When you begin to see that this is the nature of life, a pursuit of happiness, you can start to awaken to your journey. That is my hope. Allow your passion and purpose to evolve, gradually removing all that does not serve you and to allow happiness ensues.

The Ultimate Life Map is an operating system for life, a template in which we can all discover greater freedom, fulfilment and happiness and thus make the world a better place.

PART 1

The Why

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Who Am I: The Story

The job isn’t to catch up to the status quo; the job is to invent the status quo. Seth Godin

Who am I? The ultimate question.

I thought I knew who I was until I started asking why. In contemplation and challenging oneself with this question we interrupt the mind and disrupt our personal story. Answers may come at one at the same time with ease and with difficulty. They may disturb and enlighten our lives.

Who we are is an accumulation of life experiences up until this point characterized by the ego Self and the deeper Self. One is our externally defined story, a false creation while the other connects deeper with our truth, our why. One is more selfishly motivated, the other more selflessly motivated. One will guide us on a beautiful journey with an abundance of freedom, fulfilment and happiness the other our greatest limitation and cause of much of our life sufferings.

If the story we are living is not purposeful to the life we truly wish for, we have the ability to change it. The Self that we think we know is a construct of the conscious mind, without consciousness we are without Self. The story of the Self determines our reality. The process of change is both simple, enjoyable, challenging and requires great work.

In this section, I wish to share with you my story to put into context how the Self and the story we live develops. The story of our life hides within it many clues of who we think we are, how we live our life and the reality we exist and how we could better live this life. After reading this chapter, I encourage the reader to reflect on the question, Who am I? As mentioned in the preface, gaining clarity around who we are, and defining our Why is the foundation to building strong habits and behaviors that will guide as towards creating a life with a more profound sense of happiness.

This chapter is heavily me focused however I wish to inspire you, by sharing my story, to write out your personal story and see what truths and mistruths it may bring to your attention. There are some goodies within however feel free to skip to the next chapter is you wish. The importance of this chapter is to connect with your inner self.

My personal story was disrupted in my late 20s when I felt a sense life was not as I thought it would be. I felt I wasn’t really living it. I felt empty. I began asking questions, internally searching for answers. I had a choice, to accept the story I was living, and the limitations of the Self, or take the courage and make change. I opted for change. Keeping in mind that the decision to change can happen in a moment but noticeable change takes time.

I discovered personal development and from there started my journey of Self-discovery and transformation. What I thought I knew became exposed. Cracks in my story shined light on my deeper Self, assisting me to break the chains of conformity and changing the mold of my conditioned past. The best investment we can make is in our personal develop I only encourage others not to wait until your late twenties and early thirties to start as I did.

I did a back flip on how I thought life was meant to be lived. My hope is that I can inspire people to do the same as it relates to their lives.

Our story is incredibly resilient and limited to one’s progression. Because it is comfortable and known it has the strength to lock us into place. I have regrets of my past, the story I’ve lived and the journey it’s taken me on. However, the greatest regret would be being aware of my life’s discontent and doing nothing about it. By analyzing the conditioning of my past, I discovered lessons that assist me to progress and live my life with greater purpose.

The fear of looking back on a life lived with regret is what drives me today. I believe it’s what drive most of us.

My childhood was pleasant. I was happy and had all my basic needs taken care of. I had a loving mother, father and three older brothers to teach and support me. Life was filled with love, adventure, and positive experience. The environment I grew up in was very conducive to the development of a young mind. For this I am fortunate.

I was a child that had the freedom to play in a way that was essential to my self-expression and creative development. Playing with my match box cars in the garden, creating cities in the sandpit, smashing Lego castles with my Ninja Turtles, climbing mountains, playing wargames, riding my BMX, drawing, building, acting, and expanding my Self-definition through vigorous expression. A mind driven by fascination, curiosity and eagerness to find a sense of self-worth and meaning. Our childhood leaves clues as to who we are and perhaps a sign of what’s missing later in life.

I was spoilt with an abundance of things to entertain me and also had an ability to create play time using nothing more than the environment and mind. The love of my mother brought with it spoils of goodies. Easter and Christmas were two days that we were indulged beyond compare. Easter baskets overflowed with eggs and Christmas day began with a couple of hours opening presents that filled the entire room floor.

I often carried Easter eggs from one year until the next, the earliest sign of my ability to discipline and sacrifice my indulgence for later benefit. Hording what brings me pleasure to prolong my happiness. The aftermath of Christmas left me with more toys to play with than I knew what to do with. Such spoils can cause one to take things for granted and also create a character of giving; easy come, easy go!

My life was highly stimulating. Surrounded by nature that provided never ending adventure, brothers, friends and adults that were always there and I had an array of possessions beyond belief. Such stimulation can leave one feeling anxious and bored when without; a notable demeanor of my Self.

Life was grand!

I had great parents. My father always worked extremely hard in his businesses to ensure our family had a great lifestyle. I feel in part it also gave him meaning and a fairly great social life. He was always there yet sometimes I’ve felt I never really knew him growing up. I observed him intently when he was around and for this reason much of his character has rubbed off on me.

He encouraged my sense of adventure. Taking us kids down to the local swimming hole or packing the car for a two-week camping trip, when he could. He was generous, loyal and valued family and friends. He was very socially active. Traits that resonate within me. As hard as he worked, he played just as hard. He never neglected us kids nor did he shy away from living his own life.

Dad loves his sport and I felt I was his last hope. I was taken to golf, tennis, baseball, swimming and cricket. Other than swimming nothing else stuck. Cricket was the worse! I hated standing out in the hot sun waiting for a ball to role in my direction. Patience or boredom are not my strengths. Swimming and other individual sports I enjoyed; it was my time to be alone. In hindsight, with so much stimulation it was likely very welcomed.

I had little interest, knowledge and appreciation for sports and still do. Throughout my years this caused me a lot of anxiety, pressure and often embarrassment around my peers. Such disinterest has created a limiting belief around my ability to play sport. This belief improved over the years and confidence has grown, slightly to do with the I don’t really give a shit attitude that comes with age. I felt awkward trying to fit into the sporting scene until I realized life isn’t about trying to fit in. It’s about being who we are. This is why reflecting on our childhood is important in building our self-understanding.

Today, I enjoy sport for the social aspect. I also appreciate the incredible ability, focus and dedication of the athletes and how their competitiveness in particular shows true character. In my perspective, my lack of passion and knowledge for sports still baffles my mates.

My limiting beliefs around my sporting finesse has evolved as I experimented and found pleasure in doing certain individual sports and exercise. I have proved to myself I am capable. I was always the slowest kid on the running tracks at school, awarded for participation. For this reason, I thought I simply wasn’t made a runner. Today it is difficult to stop me, I love it! Like an addiction it makes me feel good. The best way to challenge our limiting beliefs is through experience. In experience we can prove ourselves wrong.

I am a soloist in nature. I prefer independence and control over the outcomes in life. My upbringing was marked by a need to be independent. I do not heed well to direction from others especially when I lack interest towards what is being ordered. A lack of interest towards anything in life will make it difficult to pursue and sustain.

My father is one of my greatest teachers in life, both by how he lived his life and how he didn’t live his life. On the surface people would say that he is a laid back and relaxed man. This is true although, like all of us, I am sure there is turmoil and battle within. He is just effective at managing it so to not have an impact on the livelihood of his family and others. An open expression of one’s emotions may be seen as a weakness in his upbringing. I am not sure if it is anymore.

His relaxed attitude towards life has stuck with me. After my short-lived career, as a chef, I decided to go back to university and felt regretful that I was just wasting time. My dad said words to this effect, Mate! You haven’t wasted time, you’ve had experience. Don’t let fear or regret about change restrict you from experiencing and learning more, that’s what the journey of life is all about. This has had profound positive influence on my perspective on life ever since.

The greatest failure of life is taking no action at all. It is complacency. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. At nineteen, I thought I should know everything including my exact path in life. None of us know and neither should we pretend to know. I felt as though change was a sign of indecision and could only be seen as a weakness. The truth is to avoid any strong desire to change will only cause frustration and greater suffering in life as time progresses. In seeking greater meaning and purpose in life, it has been my ability to make change has been my greatest strength.

Whether one is nineteen or forty-six, there is always more to know, learn and experience that will benefit the lives we live. In order to grow, build character and find deeper meaning it is a good practice to challenge or even forget what we think we know about life. As what we think we know may be the exact limitation to living our beautiful journey. For as long as we are improving and making progress we are always wining.

For a long part of my childhood and teenage years, I had this perception that adults had it all figured out. I thought the day I knew it all and had life figured out I would become a man. How naive I was. Although I am wiser today, I still don’t know much about life but what I do know is that life and the journey we take is enhanced as we continually search and try figure it out.

For this reason, existing with a childlike curiosity and fascination towards life, never pretending to know everything and always seeking to learn more by asking questions and contemplation practice, is a sound approach to life. This is what gives life excitement, meaning and raises our happiness.

Tony Robins, a personal development industry leader, suggests the following exercise to help people break free from their sufferings and limiting beliefs. The exercise is to reflect on which parents love we craved more growing up. For me it was my dad, I received a great deal from my mother. In craving such love, we build behaviors in efforts to gain their attention and that is usually based on a belief of who we think they’d like us to be or become.

In personal reflection, perhaps my need to achieve, to appear in control, and be strong, confident and intelligent would win my father’s attention. My life is still determined by such behaviors. Like trying to fit a shoe that will never fit, such behaviors may be limiting to our authentic journey in life. Subconscious motivators that we may not be aware can lead us down paths we don’t truly wish to take.

Which parents love did you crave the most and how has that influenced how you live your life?

Love is one of the strongest human desires that has great ability of shaping our beliefs, behaviors and reality. What I share is a mere perspective yet an important one. My father loved me as deeply as any father loves their child. I believe that the only expectation and desire he has of me is that I live with good morals and happiness.

Observing my father throughout my life has shaped my character in both good and bad ways. It believe it is due to his influence that I desire freedom, fulfilment and happiness in life. There is no risk in change and no harm in new experience and giving things a go. Approaching life as an adventure can only bring goodness to this experience and an ability to create an Ultimate Life.

The love I have for my mother is without words. I am grateful to have a mother who has taught me a great deal in