In today’s episode, we focus on one of the most popular topics in the Happiness Insiders community: relationships. We delve into the intricacies of personal growth and preparation for a fulfilling relationship based on the first two of six modules from the Preparing for the One Masterclass.
The ultimate goal of this masterclass is to encourage individuals to take practical steps to improve themselves in various aspects of life to attract healthy, fulfilling, and compatible relationships. The course provides a structured approach for participants to address each area of their lives to align with their mission statement.
Learn about the six integral ways to get into “relationship shape.” From the spiritual to the financial. we cover everything you need to know! We also unpack the significance of understanding one's mission, aligning life decisions with your mission, finding self-inspiration, fostering a genuine path toward self-improvement, and more.
This episode acts as a compass for harmonizing the twin journeys of self-discovery and the pursuit of meaningful, fulfilling connections. To discover the roadmap to transform your life through a purpose-driven approach while preparing yourself for “the one,” tune in now!
In today’s episode, we focus on one of the most popular topics in the Happiness Insiders community: relationships. We delve into the intricacies of personal growth and preparation for a fulfilling relationship based on the first two of six modules from the Preparing for the One Masterclass.
The ultimate goal of this masterclass is to encourage individuals to take practical steps to improve themselves in various aspects of life to attract healthy, fulfilling, and compatible relationships. The course provides a structured approach for participants to address each area of their lives to align with their mission statement.
Learn about the six integral ways to get into “relationship shape.” From the spiritual to the financial. we cover everything you need to know! We also unpack the significance of understanding one's mission, aligning life decisions with your mission, finding self-inspiration, fostering a genuine path toward self-improvement, and more.
This episode acts as a compass for harmonizing the twin journeys of self-discovery and the pursuit of meaningful, fulfilling connections. To discover the roadmap to transform your life through a purpose-driven approach while preparing yourself for “the one,” tune in now!
“LW: If you are trying to adopt someone else's idea for what it means to be happy, fulfilled, and successful, then you're living a life that's out of alignment with your spiritual path, Okay? Your spiritual path is based on whatever you're naturally curious about, whatever you're naturally drawn towards. A lot of this is beat out of us, sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively, through bullying and shaming and other tactics with our family, with our friends, with our peers, and our young life as we're in school and everything. So, we get to the point where we start to even believe ourselves that that's weird or that's crazy. I can't even consider doing that. I need to become successful in this conventional way. When we do that, we end up creating a lot of internal friction in our lives, a lot of internal tension. So, getting back in alignment is really the first step in getting in shape in order to prepare for the one.”
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:01:05] LW: Hey, friend. Welcome back to the Light Watkins Show. I'm Light Watkins, and I interview ordinary folks just like you and me who've taken extraordinary leaps of faith in the direction of their path, their purpose, or what they've identified as their mission in life. In doing so, they've been able to positively impact and inspire the lives of many other people who've either heard about their story or who witnessed them in action, or people who've directly benefited from their work.
Today, I have a special, special treat for you. As some of you know, I've had a thriving online community that started in 2021 called, The Happiness Insiders. In that community, I've got dozens of challenges, such as my very popular 108-day meditation challenge, which has an 80% completion rate. There's a 108-day movement challenge. There's a gratitude challenge. There's a no-complaining challenge. Currently, we're all doing a resting squat challenge, where you just sit in a resting squat for a minute a day for 30 days.
There are also a dozen or so masterclasses on various topics, like how to find your purpose, how to become more radically authentic, how to manifest abundance, how to overcome fear, and a slew of other experiences that people who are relatively new to their conscious spiritual path want to better understand how to do. So, this week, I thought that I would dedicate the episode to one of the most popular areas of interest that we've created content for in the Happiness Insiders community. That's the area of relationships.
[0:02:54]
We've got a masterclass on how to move on from a breakup, but one of the most popular masterclasses in the community is a class called Preparing for the One, which is all about doing the inner and outer work that it takes to call in aligned partnership. It doesn't have to necessarily be romantic, although it's a heavy emphasis on romantic partnership. I felt called to give you the listener a glimpse into how these masterclasses actually work by playing the first two of six modules from the preparing for the one masterclass.
This episode will sound like one of my solo episodes, but it's the first third of a longer series called, Preparing for The One. Here's the thing. You may think to yourself, “Well, Light, I'm already in a relationship, so I don't really need to listen to this one.” But one of the points that I make in the masterclass is how a lot of people treat their relationship as the prize, meaning they'll do the work that it takes to give the illusion that they've done the work. That's to get into a relationship. Then when they get the relationship, what happens? They stop doing the work. They start thinking, “Oh, I'm good now. I already have the relationship.”
When in actuality, getting into a relationship is really when you want to start doubling down on the work. This is probably why you are seeing such high divorce rates in marriages at 70% divorce rates because people just stopped doing the work. This masterclass is extremely applicable to you, whether you're in a relationship in a marriage, or if you're in between relationships, if you're a divorce, say, looking for the next relationship, or whatever the case may be.
In other words, if you want to attract an aligned partner, or if you want to learn how to keep an aligned partnership, attracted to you, then you want to make sure that you're doing all the things that are necessary for creating that type of dynamic. Spoiler alert, there are no days off. Some of these things are very simple things. Some of them are so simple that they are often and easily neglected. Okay. So, that's what this episode is about. I think you're going to get a lot of value from it. Enough of the preamble. Let's just get into it. Let’s get into it and you can see what I'm referring to when it comes to those little things that we want to make sure we're all doing to properly prepare ourselves for the one.
[EPISODE]
[0:05:51] LW: Hello there. This is Light Watkins, as you may know. I am the founder of The Happiness Insiders community, as well as your facilitator for this masterclass on Preparing Yourself for The One. Preparing Yourself for The One. I facilitated several masterclasses in this community. We talked about finding your purpose. We talked about overcoming fear and how to stop overthinking. Relatively recently, there's a masterclass that we created, meaning I created, called, How to Move on from a Breakup. Okay. Which is another way of just saying how to move on from rejection.
We can look at this masterclass as an extension of that one, because naturally, if you get rejected by someone in a love relationship context, then you usually are in a space where you think, “Well, this next one is going to be hopefully the one. I've learned my lessons, etc. etc. So, now I want to really, really call in the one.” If you spent even five minutes in any spiritual community or scene, you probably heard that finding the one phraseology get reversed. People say, “You're the one. You're the one that you're looking for.” It's true.
There's actually a lot of truth to that statement that you are ultimately the one, but I know that you didn't come here for me to tell you just that. That's going to be a part of what we talk about, but we also want to get into the nuts and bolts of what it means to call in a partner. This is also not about finding your soulmate. It's not about getting into some beautiful relationship, although those goals may become the desirable side effect of the work that we're going to be doing together over these next six weeks, but we don't want to focus on that.
We really want to focus on preparing ourselves, just like the title says, we want to prepare ourselves for the one because a lot of people think that getting into a relationship is the prize, right? But that's not really the prize, because to be in a relationship means that you are now in some union with someone else. If it's a healthy relationship, then that means that that other person has a healthy sense of agency, right, which means they don't need to be in a relationship with you.
That's a part of the one. That person doesn't need you. Conversely, you don't need them. If that relationship starts off beautifully, but then six months into it, a year into it, or whatever the case may be, they decide, “Okay, this is no longer relevant for me. This relationship is no longer serving me. I'm going to explore this direction over here.” If all of your happiness was tied into this person coming into your life, and you being into this relationship with this person, then when they leave, you're going to be right back at square one. Okay.
[0:09:21]
Preparing Yourself for The One is another way of saying — putting yourself in a position where you're no longer going to be seeking happiness in a relationship. You're no longer going to be seeking your fulfillment in a relationship. You're no longer going to be depending on someone else to come in and fill you up, make you happy, make you feel secure within yourself, make you feel worthy, validate your existence, none of that stuff because all of those are the qualities of unhealthy partnerships or relationships.
I think that we've all done enough research at this point with what that feels like. The reason you're here now is to try something different, to take it to another level. That's the work that we're going to be doing. Most of our work is going to become inner work, which is why our community is called, The Happiness Insiders, because we are about the business of cultivating happiness, and fulfillment, and security, and validation, and verification, and everything else that we ultimately seeking inside. Then our relationship model takes on a different type of paradigm.
Instead of looking to the relationship to bring these qualities into our life, we will start to look at relationships and not just even love relationships with any relationship with anything. We're looking at relationships as outlets, as outlets for the happiness, the security, the fulfillment, the compassion, the empathy, the care, and everything else that we've cultivated inside, and either a relationship is worthy of that of what we have inside or it's not. If it is worthy of it, then we hopefully will be able to identify that and invest our time and attention into that. If it's not worthy of it, then we will hopefully be able to recognize that and make some adjustments. Okay.
This is a masterclass for people who are even in a relationship right now, but the way you've been relating to your current partner is unsustainable as identified by whatever amount of tension or friction, you may have been noticing in your relationship dynamic over the last however many weeks, months, years, maybe even decades. So, there's always room for improvement. There's always room for taking things to the next level.
There's no graduation point from preparing ourselves for the one because we are growing, we're evolving, we're learning who we are on a deeper and deeper level every day, so we need to be able to make fine-tuned adjustments and not find ourselves getting too stuck in our comfort zone and expecting whatever has been working for us to continue working for us in a relationship dynamic, because as we move from one age to another age, from one life stage to another, different aspects of relationships become more of a priority than other aspects. So, we have to grow and evolve with all of that. That's what we'll be addressing in this masterclass.
[0:12:59]
We'll also be talking about values. We'll be talking about mission. We'll be identifying the real red flags in terms of preparing ourselves for the one. we'll be talking about frequency and vibration, which also plays a role in manifestation. We're going to talk about specifically how to cultivate more happiness and fulfillment inside. This is a guidebook or blueprint or whatever you want to call it for taking yourself from where you are right now, which again, you could be in a relationship. Maybe you're not in a relationship. It doesn't really matter, because this is life's work.
Knowing that you are moving forward in terms of your preparation. Okay. To start, to kick things off, we want to talk about some of the tactical, daily, actionable steps that we can begin to take literally right now to start preparing ourselves for the one while we're theorizing about all these other aspects of preparation. We're going to get into the nuts and the bolts of preparing ourselves today. There's a list of six things that we need to start to become more cognizant of as we are preparing ourselves for the one. Okay.
I call these the six ways to get into shape. The six ways to get into shape. The first way, I would say even the most important way to get into shape is we want to get into spiritual shape. We want to start getting into spiritual shape. In order to get into spiritual shape, we need to focus on our inner exercises. What that means is we want to become more aligned with our soul, with our spirit, with our inner guidance. Okay.
Just a point of clarification. Your spirit is not broken. Your spirit is already perfect, whole and complete. When I say get into spiritual shape, what I mean by that is you want to get your human aspect in alignment with whatever is going on spiritually, right? The spiritual perspective is that you came to this plane of existence, this planet, this earth, this dimension, with certain objectives, with certain spiritual objectives, you can call them karma. You can call them your life purpose. You can call them your spiritual contract, whatever you want to call it, but there's some objective that brought you here.
[0:15:41]
The way I to think about it is, you know how sometimes when you're scrolling through Netflix or some streaming service, and you're looking for something to watch at night, something entertaining, right? Now, there are dozens and dozens of categories of the types of movies you can watch. Dozens of genres within each of those categories. You may choose to watch a comical documentary, you may choose to watch a horror movie, you may choose to watch a thriller, you choose to watch a critically acclaimed drama.
Usually, what makes a movie universally good in most people's eyes is the fact that there's an arc. There's an arc to the story. The story starts off in one way with a protagonist and an antagonist, right, the hero and something they're fighting against. There are obstacles placed in the way of the hero. The hero has to figure out how to overcome those obstacles. This applies to any movie, any documentary, any type of entertainment, right? The hero has to figure out how to overcome these obstacles to achieve their ultimate goal. In the process of overcoming those obstacles, they learn something about themselves, which is of course revealed at the very end, the redemption moment.
They learn something that they didn't know before about the world. Maybe that is that they had way more potential than they thought. Maybe that is that the world was different than they thought. Maybe that is that someone who's around them is more benevolent than they thought. They were able to save the day. They were able to find the girl or boy. They were able to fall in love, right? That's what a good movie is. The writers and director and the actors, they all show up fully and they're able to really create a convincing story arc. At the end of that movie, whatever genre it is, we go to ourselves. That was a really good movie. We usually learn something from that.
Again, from the spiritual perspective, that's usually what's happening when we get ready to think about our next incarnation and how we want to be in life. It's like scrolling through Netflix, where we're looking at, okay, do I want to have a very dramatic life? Do I want to be in a comedy? I want to have a very fun and funny existence. What about sports? Strong athletic warrior type of life. Do I want to be in a horror movie and have some really scary things happening that I have to overcome?
[0:18:23]
A lot of this is based on what I experienced in the last life. Maybe I did a horror in the last life, so now I want to do a comedy, or maybe I did a comedy in the last existence, maybe this time I want to do a drama or I want to do a thriller. Why? Because there are interesting lessons that I can learn from this particular experience that I've never learned before. I don't want to watch the same movie that I've seen dozens and dozens of times when there's all other kinds of great movies out that I can watch, so I'm going to try something new.
Based on the objectives that I want to achieve and the story arc and all of that, that determines what life I decide to enter into. That's why there's such variety of types of lives on the planet earth and in history, right? Somebody's objective for what success means. It could be completely different from someone else's objective. Somebody may need a billion dollars to feel fulfilled. Somebody else may just need a good family. Somebody else may just need to be able to overcome a physical disability. There's something for everybody is my point.
If you are trying to adopt someone else's idea of what it means to be happy, fulfilled, and successful, then you're living a life that's out of alignment with your spiritual path, okay? Your spiritual path is based on whatever you're naturally curious about, whatever you're naturally drawn towards. A lot of this is beaten out of us sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively through bullying and shaming and other tactics with our family with our friends, with our peers, in our young life as we're in school and everything.
We get to the point where we start to even believe ourselves that that's weird or that's crazy. I can't even consider doing that. I need to become successful in this conventional way. When we do that, we end up creating a lot of internal friction in our lives, a lot of internal tension. So, getting back in alignment is really the first step in getting in shape in order to prepare for the one.
How do we do this? Well, we indulge ourselves into the foundational practice within our community, which is meditation. Meditation is something that every single person who joins this community gets complimentary access to in the form of a seven-day meditation kickstart. Okay, so you take your seven-day meditation kickstart, you start today with your seven-day meditation kickstart, it will have you meditating for 10 minutes a day and learning the principles of how to meditate in the easiest way possible that you can do so online and an online challenge.
[0:21:13]
In addition to that, you also get access to our mindfulness triathlon. The mindfulness triathlon includes 10 minutes of meditation a day. It includes some walking each day. Includes hydration, and drinking some water each day. That's a way to just again address the spiritual part, address the physical movement part, which we'll talk about in a second in more detail. The diet part or hydration, right, which is also important for becoming more mindful of things that we're putting into our body. Okay. So, that's the spiritual component. I want you to start your meditation.
Then we have the mental component. The mental component is not going to correct itself as a result of meditation. We have to be intentional about looking at what's going on in my mind. Some of you probably have already seen a therapist before. I've certainly, seen a therapist before. Here's what I like about therapy, right? I like the fact that therapy is one-sided with your friends. You can, of course, bounce things off of each other and say, “Hey, how was your day or what are you going through?” But you can't monopolize the conversation. At some point, you have to go, “What are you going through? Tell me about your life.” Right?
Then it takes the focus off of whatever you're going through. Maybe one person is going through more than the other person is going through, but the other person doesn't really recognize that and you feel a little shortchange. It's not really an equitable type of exchange, but also people get tired of you if you're always talking about your problems. Going to a therapist is awesome, because you don't have to ask the therapist, how is your day? What are you experiencing? What are you going through? Right? That's the therapist's job is just to listen.
A really good therapist is not really going to – it's not like a fortune teller. They're not going to tell you what your future holds. They’re not going to try to correct you or try to fix you. They're just going to ask you questions that allow you to be self-referral, that allow you to make connections on your own, that allow you to troubleshoot your own experiences. Now, they may give you medical or psychological language for the things that you're experiencing to let you know that, hey, you're not the first person to feel this way about your parents. You're not the first person to feel this way about your kid. You're not the first person to feel this way about yourself.
[0:23:34]
There are other people who have felt this throughout the past, and this is what they've done. So, this is a buffet of different options that you can choose. I can't really control your experience, but I can tell you what has typically happened when you keep choosing this path here. If you say, this is your objective, and you keep choosing this path here. It's going to take you further away from what you say your objective is. Sometimes it takes a while to bet a good therapist, to find a good therapist, but you want someone that challenges you in that way to make your own connections and to draw your own conclusions.
In order to prepare yourself for the one, you're going to have to become mentally strong. You're going to have to get into strong mental shape. You can't let old patterns and blind spots keep running the show, because that's apparently gotten you what you've been getting all these years. So, if you want to get different results, you've got to do something different. Okay.
Next, getting in shape physically. We need to get into shape physically. As I talked about with the mindful triathlon, it's just about movement. We'll have you walking a little bit more than you've normally been walking. Walking is probably the most sustainable exercise that you can possibly do. In addition to walking, if you are challenged by weight, if you're morbidly obese or overweight, or if you're just not in shape, you haven't really exercised your muscles. You are losing access to your muscles, whatever you don't use, you will lose.
Honestly, you may find someone out there who is attracted to someone who's not strong at all, but if you want to really increase the chances of you bringing the most that you can to the table, which I think you do, then you want to be intentional about getting into physical shape, right? These things I'm talking about mental shape, spiritual shape. You should be doing this anyway.
Forget about trying to find somebody. This is stuff you want to be doing anyway because it makes you a stronger, more resilient person out in the world. Okay.
Again, by nature, that is more attractive to other people. You want to get into physical shape. Now, the mistake that we sometimes make with that is we take on too much too soon, and we burn ourselves out. Okay. So, there is a challenge in this community. It's called the 108-day movement challenge, which you are welcome to enroll in.
[0:26:04]
That movement challenge will hold you accountable to moving every day in the form of bodyweight exercises that will take you about 15 minutes to complete a day. It could be like 25 pushups against the wall because you can't do pushups on the floor. You'll do wall pushups or whatever is doable for you. Meet you where you are. In addition to that, you'll be doing a resting squat, which is just one stretch, where you just sit in the squat, and you can sit on a table and squat if that's better for your knees or whatever.
Then you're walking, you're walking a certain amount, of steps every day and that's your whole movement program. You do that for 108 days. The idea is to help you build up a habit of movement. Okay. You want to start moving, you want to start strengthening your physical muscles, just like in the same way your spiritual muscles, your mental muscles are starting to get stronger. That will also help you in preparing yourself for the one and cultivating happiness and all that inside.
Next, emotional shape. Want to get into emotional shape. What I mean by that is we want to scale back on the substances that manipulate our emotions. Let's say you're feeling sad. I'm not saying feeling sad is bad. You need to try to get happier, but then again, I'm saying, if you're sad, be sad. Don't start smoking a lot of weed. Don't start drinking a lot of liquor to try to not be sad, because if you do that, then in a way you're using it as a coping mechanism. You're escaping the emotion, and there's something that's causing that emotion.
It could be the relationship you have with your job. It could be the relationship you have with your family. Something needs to be addressed, but you're not addressing it, because you're using these substances to shield yourself from feeling the things that you're feeling, right? The more you do that, the more you postpone preparing yourself for that one that you ultimately want.
Now, obviously, this brings up all kinds of questions. What about medicinal? This, I take CBD and THC and FX too, and all these kinds of things, MDAD. I'm not saying to stop any protocols that your doctor has you want. I’m just saying, if you're using things recreationally and you know when you're using it recreationally, and when you're not. If you don't know, then your meditation will expose that and that'll become an insight for you, a point of clarification. Then you can do something about it, right? But you want to start scaling back.
[0:28:38]
I'm not telling you to go cold turkey either. I'm just saying become more intentional about scaling back. Put together a plan. When I first quit alcohol in my mid-twenties. I had a plan. My plan was, I'm going to stop drinking indiscriminately. I'm going to stop just whenever I'm out ordering a drink here drink there.
Now, I don't consider myself to ever had a serious problem, but I was an occasional casual drinker. When I put together my initial plan, I said to myself, “I'm only going to drink red wine.” That's my plan. I'm going to do this for three months. I'm going to only drink red wine. I'm not going to touch beer. I'm not going to touch hard liquor. I'm not going to touch anything else. Okay.
Maybe you don't care about red wine. Maybe your thing is beer, but you find yourself drinking wine and tequila and all these other things. So, maybe for a period of time, you say to yourself, “I'm only going to drink beer. I'm only going to drink no more than one beer every two days, every other day.” That's your plan. Then you start to scale down from there. You go the next week, I'm only going to have one beer every three days.
Then you go to the point where I'm only going to have one beer a week. That means you can still have your beer when you're hanging up with your friends, but you can pre-plan. “Okay, I'm hanging out my friends on Thursday. I'm not going to have beer till Thursday. That's when I have my one beer so I can continue engaging with my friends.” Take the tortoise approach, not the hair approach to these things. Okay?
Same with marijuana and whatever other substances you're thinking of right now. Particularly, the ones you're thinking I can never come off of that. When you feel like you can never come off of it. That's a barrier that's keeping you from the one. Okay? We'll break that down later on. I don't want this first video to go too much longer. Let's get through the rest of them. Okay. You need to get into relational shape. What I mean by that is you have various relationships with everyone in your life. You have relationships with your family, and relationships with your friends, but for our purposes, relationships with your ex-partners. Okay. A lot of these may be estranged relationships.
[0:30:46]
Now I'm not telling you, you have to go and dig somebody up and shake them off and apologize to them or anything like that, but energetically you do have to get closure. You have to get complete with that relationship. That may require you to journal about it. That may require you to get rid of the pictures or whatever you got around that's triggering you and keeping you connected to this person, even though this person doesn't have anything to do with you. You got a clear space. You can't invite someone new in if you haven't cleared out the old. That's a part of getting into relational shape.
If you have grudges, if you have people who you are in a very bad relationship with, getting into relational shape means addressing those relationships that are causing you stress, and tension, and triggering you and all of that, because I guarantee you if you're with someone who has their stuff together and they're in relational shape and they see you having all these dramatic things happen between you and these other people. That's not going to inspire them to want to stick around you, because anyone who takes you seriously, they're not just getting married to or getting in a relationship with you, they're getting in a relationship with everyone in your life.
They want to see that you have positive, affirmative, inspiring relationships with everyone in your life. Okay. I mean everyone. If there's anyone that you can think of that you have some crazy dramatic thing with you need to get closure on that. You need to do the work and you should have honestly been doing this work all along, but this is what this is for. We're now exposing these areas that could have been keeping you stuck all this time. No one said it was going to be easy. Okay. This is probably one of the hardest ways to get in shape because it involves other people, but you're going to get started sooner rather than later.
We're going to go ahead and start with those aspects of our life and see what we can do to bring closure to that. It's not going to happen overnight. It's not going to happen from one conversation or maybe two or three conversations. That may require a dialogue to get to the bottom of whatever happened and to get to some resolution, but we start and no better time to start than now. Okay?
Okay. Then number six, finally. Financial shape. You got to get in the financial shape. You got a bunch of debt. If you are living above your means, if you are irresponsible in any way with money, then that could potentially pose a problem with the person who you envision to be the one in your life. Again, it's a matter of becoming more aware. Then taking action steps to make change. There's so many different ways to do this. I know there are books that exist that will teach you about money. There are courses that will help you get out of debt. You have to decide which one you want to explore and take some action.
[0:34:13]
Okay. So, each one of these modules. I'm going to chat. This is probably longer than I normally go, but that's because it's the first one. We're going to do a little chat like this. Then I'm going to give you some homework assignments between this one and the next one, because we're going to do these, every week, okay? So, you'll have six days in between modules. This is perfect, because we have six ways of getting in shape. What I want you to do over these next six days is I want you to address each category.
The first category you're going to address is getting in a spiritual shape. That means you're going to take one action step each day to address that particular category. Spiritual-wise, you're going to start your meditation kickstart. Okay? Mental-wise, you're either going to look up some book that is about relationships. There's a famous book called, Attached, that a lot of people have read. There's another book called, The 5 Love Languages.
There are so many relationship gurus. It was his name, John Gray, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. I love that book, but I want you to order a book or get a book, go to the library, whatever. That's going to be your objective for the second day is getting a book, so that you can become more informed mentally. Maybe you go and hire a therapist or just research on therapist. In any case, try to find something to get into better mental shape around understanding yourself in relationship to other people.
Then on day three, you are going to take an action step for your physical exercise. That may require hiring a coach, if you're out of shape. You know, if you're out of shape or not. Let’s not pretend that, everyone's special. Everyone's a 10 and then spiritually and in their mind and all that, but you know if physically you are in shape or out of shape. Okay? We want to be honest with ourselves because this is not about shaming ourselves. It's just about being honest with myself. Can I do a pull-up? Can I do 10 push-ups with my knees lifted? If you can't do one pull-up or 10 push-ups with your knees off the ground. You are not in functional physical shape. Man or woman doesn't matter. Okay?
[0:36:27]
I saw this 78-year-old lady on social media doing push-ups the other day. So, it's possible. I'm not saying you have to be able to do that by the end of this masterclass, but you want to start moving in that direction. You want to start moving in that direction. No one ever saw someone who was physically in shape and goes, “Oh, I'm so unattractive to this person who's strong and who can potentially rescue a child or rescue me, if I'm in trouble or help me or put up a bag in the overhead compartment and all of that.” We want to start moving in that direction. So, that's day three. You're going to you're going to address that. Hire a coach, join a gym, sign up for an online thing, an app. Whatever works for you for where you are for your current budget etc.
Day four, emotional shape. You're going to put together a plan to scale back, and taper off of substances. Any substances you're using right now, including pornography. If you are finding yourself addicted to pornography, as a means of escape from whatever else is going on in your life to numb pain and all that. It would also extend into alcohol and anything you're smoking or inhaling or any pills or whatever you're taking.
Again, this is not about coming off of your doctor-prescribed medical plan for whatever health reason you got going on. But anything else that's recreational you're going to start scaling back from that. Okay? Then day five, relational. You're going to write down all of the people you have gripes with. All the drama you have in your life who's associated with that drama and you're going to start addressing those instances and those people in those relationships one by one. Okay? Setting boundaries if you have to, getting closure where you can.
Again, maybe it's close in proximity you're calling the person up. Maybe you're just energetically cleansing that person and setting a boundary for yourself. I'm not saying you have to go and confront anyone who's not ready to be confronted, but you do have to create space within yourself, at least that you were intentional about, so when the subject ultimately comes up with your one. There's not going to be any weird. “Oh, I just was magically hoping that was going to go away.” That's not very attractive when you have that response.
You want to be clear and concise. Yes, there were some drama in the past. This is what I did about it. You're basically teaching that new person the one, how you deal with conflict because you're going to have conflict with them at some point. If they see you being intentional about it, and you're an integrity with your beliefs and your values etc. around it. Then it's going to make you more attractive to them. Okay?
[0:39:12]
Then finally, financial shape on day six, which is the day before the next module. You're going to get yourself a book. You're going to sign up for somebody's program to get out of debt to get your finances in order. This may again be a year-long process, a two-year-long process. All we know is that if you take progressive steps from this day forward, then there will be an expiration date on whatever crazy financial situation you may find yourself at. Okay? If you do nothing, it's just going to get worse. When it gets revealed, which it ultimately will with your one, then it's not going to be a good look. That could be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
We want to put ourselves in the best possible position to not only make ourselves attractive but in the event that the relationship ends. Okay, someone else, I'll track the next person, right? We don't care because we have our stuff together. I'm in spiritual shape. I'm in mental shape. I am in physical shape. I'm in emotional shape. When you're not in shape in any of those areas, you need someone else to come in and save you. That energy of needing someone else to come in and save me is not attractive.
It doesn't add to the security that we ultimately are looking for in that other person. We need to start finding that within ourselves. We find it by being in shape and all of those areas. That's what your homework is going to be. Your homework is listed below. Each day you're going to address a new thing. You don't exactly have to go in this order. This is just to give you a bit of a plan. You can go whatever order you want to go in as long as you address all six things by the next module. Okay? So, this is, as you may have noticed, this is not an exercise and theorizing about what it takes to attract the one.
We actually want to take actions. We want to take actions and those actions are going to compound. When you start with your spiritual on day one, you're going to keep doing the spiritual day two, three, four, etc. and when you start your mental on day two. You're going to keep doing the mental stop. When you start doing the physical in day three, you're going to keep doing that throughout. Okay? So, it doesn't mean do mental on day two and then don't do it again until the next week or anything like that.
This needs to become daily rituals. So, small steps, manageable steps. Maybe mental means you schedule an appointment with someone every Tuesday and that's it. You have something that holds you accountable, right? That's a good standard is putting something in a place that will hold you accountable on at least a weekly basis, so that you're starting to get in shape over the course of the near future.
[0:41:52]
That was Module one of the Preparing for The One masterclass. The classes are structured into six modules that you can listen to one week apart to give you time to do the exercises in between the modules because it's not just about understanding these concepts in theory. It's really about embodying the concepts through direct experience. You can have real-world change occur in your life. Now I'm going to play you module two to give you a sense of how the masterclass continues as well as to provide you with a deeper understanding of how to prepare yourself for the one.
We went over the six ways to get into shape. We were to take each day as a way to get into shape. First day was, spiritual. That was the day you actually watched the last module. That was the day you were supposed to make a plan for your meditation. The plan was to enroll in the seven-day meditation kickstart. Okay? Day two was the mental component. Getting into shape mentally. You were to make some action step in the direction of that, whether it's scheduling the appointment with the therapist or getting a book related to understanding your mind, understanding your needs a lot better. Giving language to what you're feeling. Okay?
Day three, you were supposed to implement some physical exercise plan, right? You're going to go to the gym. Maybe you signed up for a gym. Maybe downloaded an app. Maybe you hired a coach, right, to train you physically. Day four was emotional. For emotional, we talked about abstaining from substances or scaling back on the substances. Making a plan for that, right? Putting yourself on some restriction where you're only going to have a certain number of glasses of alcohol a day, a week, a month, whatever you decide that's less than what you're doing now.
Then day five, we talked about relational. Getting your relationships in order. Making amends, journaling about stuff, finding ways to forgive to heal, etc. Then day six was financial shape. Maybe you went out and joined Dave Ramsey's Financial Freedom program, or you got a book on Money by Tony Robbins, or you started to create some debt structure plan to get out of debt or whatever the case may be. Okay? Obviously, you're not going to solve these problems in a week, or in a day, but the whole point of that exercise was to become intentional about it. Because, let's be honest. We all have the tendency to use magical thinking in the areas of our life that are not together.
[0:45:00]
We think to ourselves, “Oh, that doesn't matter that I'm in all this debt. If they love me, if they love my personality, they won't care about that.” Or, “Oh, it doesn't matter that I'm not in shape. If they fall in love with my mind, that won't matter.” Or, “Oh, it doesn't matter that I have all these abusive relationships in my life, or narcissistic relationships. If they truly, truly love me.” That's all BS. That's all baloney. You know it, because you also have red flags that you're looking for in other people. If you've come across someone who on paper seems like a good candidate for a potential relationship or potential partner and then come to find out, they're broken in all these other ways, mentally, physically, not strong, emotionally not strong, etc. it'll eventually come out.
The longest you can probably hide any of these things is about six months in my experience. After about six months, everything comes out. That's why some of these relationships don't last beyond three, four, five, six months. It can cause a lot of pain. What happened? I felt blindsided. It's because everyone's looking for red flags. That's just the culture we're in right now. It's a part of the lingo, red flags. So, we want to put ourselves in the best possible position to attract the best possible partner.
We don't want to attract somebody with a bunch of red flags either, right? Here's the thing. You know how they say, hurt people hurt people? You know how they say, misery loves company? Well, happy people want to be around happy people, right? Healed people want to relate to other healed people. We end up attracting what we're putting out there. If we want to attract someone who we feel that we deserve is better than us. Then that's magical thinking. We have to make ourselves into the type of person that we ultimately want to attract.
If we want to attract someone who's financially stable, who's mentally stable, who's emotionally balanced, who has positive relationships in their life, who has spiritual foundation and all those things. Then we have to create that within ourselves. Again, the other side effect to that is if and when that new relationship transitions into maybe a friendship or whatever, just you guys go off your separate ways. You don't feel the sense of scarcity, like that was the last one. That's the one that got away. Oh, my God. What if I could – I should have done this. You don't care, because your stuff is an order. You have balance in all these other areas of your life.
[0:47:43]
If you have spiritual balance, for instance, you know that your happiness is not coming from that other person, it’s coming from us. So, that in and of itself allows you to be able to move on with a greater sense of self, instead of feeling empty and shallow. You don't know who you are, because your whole identity was wrapped up into this other person or into this other dynamic that you created with that other person. Then maybe that ultimately scared them off, right?
We're doing this for ourselves, but a desirable side effects, we end up attracting people who are at that higher level, right? So, it doesn't mean we have to necessarily be there. We just have to be working our way towards being there. We want to do that, whether we are in a relationship or whether we are not in a relationship, meaning you can do that now while you're not in a relationship, but it doesn't stop once you get in the relationship. That’s again, that's another symptom of seeing the relationship as the prize, instead of as the outcome of the work that you've been doing.
If you want to continue maintaining and creating new relationships in that same way, you have to continue the work. This work that we're talking about should ideally be work that feels sustainable enough for you to be able to do this over the long term. We're not looking for a quick fix. We're not looking for a shortcut. We're not looking to put everything we have into one category and all of that. You're not going to get out of debt in a week. You're not going to get into shape in a month, but you can start moving your body.
You can start spending less than you're earning. You can start to meditate for 10 minutes a day. You can start to make one phone call a day to someone and start a dialogue that will ultimately result in some degree of healing. All right? So, this applies to everybody across the board. This applies to men, women, straight, bisexual, LGBT, whatever you’ve got going on. You still want to be in mental shape. You want to be in physical shape. You want to be in emotional shape, relational, etc. financial. So, we're going to start now with being serious. Taking it seriously, taking it seriously, not taking days off, not buying into our excuses around why I'm too old to do this or I'm too – it’s too late to do that. All that is baloney.
[0:50:15]
Again, frankly, that's gotten us to where we are right now. You're taking this course right now because your best thinking got you to this point. We want to start challenging what we consider to be our best thinking and start to dissect it and realize where we were making some false assumptions and where there may be some misconceptions lying around. We want to make different choices. If you want a different outcome. As the cliche goes, we have to make different choices.
We're going to continue going deeper and deeper into all of this, but a really good next step now that we have become more intentional about getting in shape in all those ways. A really great next step. When it comes to, okay, well, what's the best way to get into spiritual shape, mental shape, physical shape, etc. The best way is different for different people. In order to get clear about what that best way looks like for you. You need to get clear about your purpose, your mission, your why. Okay.
I know what you're thinking, Light. Isn't that something that a business does, create a mission statement? Yes, good businesses all have mission statements, but what is a business? A business is a corporation that is comprised of individuals, people. A mission statement for a business is really a mission statement or an agreed-upon doctrine of a group of people. Each one of those people can have their own individual mission statement. You want to start to treat your life as though it was a corporation, meaning you wake up in the morning and you start going through your routine. Whatever it is.
Maybe you wake up and you go jogging, maybe you have coffee, maybe you go to work, maybe you come home, maybe you watch Netflix, scroll through social media, call up your friends and then eventually you go to bed and wake up the next day and you do it over and over again, but to what end, to what end? Now, you know with corporations, most corporations are in the business of making a profit. Every decision that they make in that corporation is geared towards making a profit. That means they're not going to decide to do something or hire someone or put themselves in a certain position that is going to diminish their profits over the long term.
It may be a short-term sacrifice in an effort to have long-term profits. So, they’re taking a risk, but the overall objective at all times is we are going to become profitable. We're going to make profit for our investors and whoever capitalizes business. Who they hire? How often they work? What their goals are on a day-to-day basis is all around the overarching goal of profit. So, like that, when I say you want to run your life like a business. I'm not telling you that you need to have profit as your central point of focus, but what is your central point of focus? You need to know what that is. Okay.
[0:53:36]
Once you become aware of what that is, then you start to use that as your editor. You start to use that to make your biggest decisions. For instance, my mission statement is to leave the world more inspired than I found it. If you go back and think about all the books that I've written, starting with my very first book, which is called, The Inner Gym: A 30-day Workout for Strengthening Happiness. What does strengthening happiness do? It leaves people more inspired.
Second book, Bliss More: How to Succeed in Meditation Without Really Trying. What is learning how to meditate without really trying to do? It helps people cultivate happiness. Leaving the world more inspired. Third book, Knowing Where to Look: 108 Daily Doses of Inspiration, makes the world more inspired. Next book after that, Travel Light: The Principles of Spiritual Minimalism to live a More Fulfilled Life, leaving the world more inspired. How do I spend my days professionally? Leading meditation trainings, creating content for social media.
I have a podcast about hope, leaving the world more inspired. In other words, everything that I've chosen to do in my life has been filtered through my mission statement. If it doesn't allow me to leave the world more inspired, then I'm not going to do it. The same thing also carries over to my personal life. If I'm considering dating someone and through my day-to-day interactions with that person, it doesn't allow me to lead the world more inspired, meaning it may drain me. It may cause all this drama. It may put pressure on me to move away from my purpose and put my focus on something else that's not leaving the world more inspired.
Then I know that that situation is not aligned with me, because I have my mission statement in mind. If I want to move to a certain area and live in that area, and it doesn't nourish me enough to do what I'm here to do, then I know that that is not the best choice for me. It may be a choice, but it's not the best choice. If I want to go a week without exercising. So, as a result of that, I feel lethargic. I feel a bit stuck. Then I don't feel like writing. I don't feel like creating content that allows me to lead the world more inspired. That lifestyle choice is not aligned.
[0:56:06]
As you can see, everything from how I move my body every day to what I eat, to who I surround myself, to who I share my bed with, to what books I read, what content I consume, how I travel, everything that I do gets filtered through my mission statement because I know what it is. It actually, it seems restrictive at first. “Light, you can only do things that lead you more inspired?” but it's also quite freeing because now I don't have to sit there and think, am I going to do this? Am I going to do X or am I going to do Y? Am I going to do A or am I going to do B?
I already know that if A leads me in a better position to follow through my mission. Then I'm going to do A. If X leads me in a better position to follow through my mission. I'm going to do X. It actually gives you a sense of freedom when you have a mission statement that you can filter things through. Also, if you decide to go against it, and it does end up coming back to bite you in the butt, you now have a frame of reference for why that particular instance of drama happened. So, you can correct it a lot faster, because you know what your mission is, and you know that in that moment in time, you were off your mission.
Now you can come back to your mission and you keep moving forward. Then ultimately, when it comes to the one, preparing ourselves for the one. That one and all the things we're doing to prepare ourselves for that one needs to align. It needs to align. If it doesn't align, that person is not our one. Okay, if we're not aligned, we're not going to attract that person who is our one. You can't get around not having a mission statement. If you want to truly, truly find your one, because it keeps you on your own track, your own path. It creates a bit of a guardrail system so that you know when you're going off your path, and you can put yourself back on your path because you're constantly filtering everything through your mission.
For these next six days, I want you to go back through your list of everything you're going to do to get into shape spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally, relationally, and financially. You are going to filter, you're going to come up with your mission, and you're going to filter your plan, your individual plan for each one of those areas through your mission. Does it serve your mission? If so, how?
[0:58:30]
Write out three ways that your plan serves your mission. If you can't come up with at least three ways that your plan serves your mission, then that's probably not the best plan for you. So, you want to come up with a new plan that serves your mission. Okay? So that's our standard. We want at least three ways that this plan is serving my mission. For instance, I give you my physical exercise for me, right? My mission is to lead to a more inspired. My physical exercise plan is I work out every day for 15 or 20 minutes. I do one exercise a day, one weightlifting exercise a day.
Now, how does that serve my mission? Well, first of all, it allows me to be as consistent as possible. Consistency in that area can cultivate consistency in other areas. That's one. Number two, it allows me to be strong. When I'm strong physically, I can be stronger mentally. That's two. Number three, it allows me to remain youthful, because lifting weights as a middle-aged man, which is what I am. It actually strengthens the bones, and it allows me to stay in a more youthful body. Then the more youthful I am, the more people like you see me and go, “Oh, that guy, he doesn't look like he's 80 years old. Maybe I should try what he's doing.”
It's good advertising. It's good PR for everything that I stand for because I'm going above and beyond to keep myself healthy and keep myself strong, and youthful looking. That's three ways. I could keep going, but just to give you an example, that's three ways how my workout plan serves my mission. Okay? So, you figure that out for yourself as you go through it. I would say take it one day at a time.
Again, tomorrow or today could be your spiritual assessment and your three things, how it serves, how your plan serves your spiritual goals. Tomorrow is your mental assessment. The day after that is your physical assessment and then your emotional assessment and your relational assessment and your financial assessment. You had six days in between now and the next module. Use that time to come up with a good plan, right?
Last week you came up with a plan. Now you're going to refine that to a plan that actually helps you achieve your mission statement. Obviously, the first thing you have to do is come up with your mission statement. Look, don't overthink it, because you can always change it. You can always refine it. You can always upgrade it based on your experience, but at least you have something to work from for now. That's what's most important. Come up with something to work from for now. Keep it simple and make sure that it serves you as well as it serves other people. That's the one criteria for a proper mission.
[1:01:19]
In other words, your mission wouldn't be to make as much money as possible. Your mission would be to be a provider for your community or something like that. In order to do that, you have to have some revenue-generating resource, which could be your job or to be something else. I don't know, maybe you're raising money for charity or something, but in any case, make it about other people as well as about yourself. That will put you in proximity to a proper mission that could just very well turn out to be your life's mission.
[OUTRO]
[1:01:49] LW: Thank you for tuning into this preview of my Preparing for The One masterclass. Again, this is just a snippet of a larger course that you can experience in my Happiness Insiders online community. There are several other masterclasses in the community as well, such as Finding Your Purpose, Overcoming Fear, How to Stop Overthinking, How to Manifest Abundance, How to Access your Potential, etc. We also have a ton of challenges, 108-Day Meditation Challenge. There's a Healthy Eating Challenge, a Movement Challenge. There's a No Complaining Challenge, Gratitude Challenge, etc.
If you got a lot of value out of those two modules that you just heard. You can sign up for the full course at thehappinessinsiders.com. We have a free week-long trial period. If you just want to get an all-access pass to the entire community and dabble in a bunch of the challenges and masterclasses. Theoretically, you could test it out for seven days with no commitment, no obligation. You could cancel before you get charged anything.
I think you're going to enjoy all of the resources that we provide in the community. Plus, there are thousands of folks around the world who are all actively working on their inner practices in the community. That's what's so cool about being a member of The Happiness Insiders is you no longer have to feel like you're this lone wolf when it comes to your inner work. Plus, it's all practical real-world stuff. That's partially because it was created by me. I'm just a practical and real-world spiritual dude.
In other words, if it doesn't help to make your life better in real-time, if it doesn't positively affect your job and your relationships and your personal growth, and if you can't verify by your own direct experience, then my attitude is what's the point of learning it? That's the vibe of the whole community. We leave all that toxicity from social media behind as well. If you've grown tired of trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to mapping out your own spiritual journey, I got you.
Also, you've heard me say this before, but now you have a point of reference for it. I post the raw, unedited versions of each of these podcasts in The Happiness Insiders community, as well. If you want to hear more of that, false starts, chit-chat in the beginning and the end of the episodes, then you can listen to the unedited versions of the podcasts. All you have to do is take any one of those masterclasses and it gives you access to all of those other resources in the community, including the unedited podcasts.
All right, I look forward to hopefully seeing you back here next week with another story about someone just like me or you taking a leap of faith in the direction of their purpose. Until then, keep trusting your intuition, keep following your heart, and keep preparing for the one. If no one's told you recently that they believe in you, I believe in you. Thank you and have a great day.
[END]