We must cultivate our garden.
~VOLTAIRE
In Awaken the Giant Within , Tony Robbins offers ten emotional seeds you can plant in your garden. If you nurture these seeds by focusing on feeling what you want to feel every day, you will hold yourself to a standard of greatness. These seeds create a life that flourishes and fulfills its highest potential.
1. Love and warmth
All communication is either a loving response or a cry for help. If someone comes to you in a state of hurt or anger, and you consistently respond to them with love and warmth, eventually their state will change and their intensity will melt away.
2. Appreciation and gratitude
Appreciation and gratitude are two of the most spiritual emotions, actively expressing through thought and action the appreciation and love for all the gifts that live has given you, that people have given you, that experience have given you.
3. Curiosity
If you really want to grow in your life, learn to be as curious as a child. If you want to cure boredom, be curious. Cultivate curiosity, and life becomes an unending study of joy.
4. Excitement and passion
Passion can turn any challenge into a tremendous opportunity. Passion is unbridled power to move our lives forward at a faster tempo than ever before. To paraphrase Benjamin Disraeli, ‘Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions.’
5. Determination
Determination means the difference between being stuck and being struck with the lightning power of commitment. Acting with determination means making a congruent, committed decision where you’ve cut off any other possibility.
With determination, you can accomplish anything. Our willingness to do whatever it takes, to act in spite of fear, is the basis of courage.
6. Flexibility
Throughout your life there will be times when there are things you will not be able to control, and your ability to be flexible in your rules, the meaning you attach to things, and your actions will determine your long-term success or failure, not to mention your level of personal joy.
7. Confidence
The only way you can consistently experience confidence, even in environments and situations you’ve never previously encountered, is through the power of faith. One way to develop faith and confidence is simply to practice using it.
8. Cheerfulness
Cheerfulness enhances your self-esteem, makes life more fun, and makes the people around you feel happier as well. Cheerfulness has the power to eliminate the feelings of fear, hurt, anger, frustration, disappointment, depression, guilt, and inadequacy from your life. You’ve achieved cheerfulness the day you realize that no matter what’s happening around you, being anything other than cheerful will not make it better.
9. Vitality
Make sure that physical vitality is available; remember that all emotions are directed through your body.
10. Contribution
The secret to living is giving.
There’s no richer emotion I know of in life that who you are as a person, something you’ve said or done, has added to more than just your own life, that somehow it has enhanced life’s experience for someone you care about, or maybe someone you don’t even know.
Plant these emotions daily, and watch your whole life growth with a vitality that you’ve never dreamed of before.