Scott Sonnon: Born to Fail - Made to Succeed

Manifest Abundance in the 7 Aspects of Life

Do you seek abundance in all 7 aspects of life:

• Physical
• Mental
• Spiritual
• Familial
• Social
• Vocational
• Financial

Without attention to challenging growth in each of those seven “muscles”, the entire organism suffers. When appropriate stress is given to each, you unlock unlimited flow to permeate throughout your life benefiting each arena in a mutually reinforcing manner.

Keith Ferrazzi (NYT Best Selling author) teaches 4 principles within the Social (networking) realm:

• Generosity: the base from which all other behaviors arise. This is the commitment to mutual support that begins with the willingness to show up and creatively share our deepest insights and ideas about the system, the organization and the world at large. It’s the promise to help others succeed by whatever means you can muster. Generosity signals the end of isolation by cracking open a door to trusting emotional environment that’s necessary for creating a netowrk in which the each other can flourish.
• Vulnerability: letting your guard down so mutual understanding can occur. Here you cross the threshold into a safe space, after intimacy and trust have pushed the door wide open. The relationships we engender through generosity then move toward a place of fearless teammateship where risks are taken and invitations are offered to others.
• Candor: this is the freedom to be totally honest with those you confide in. Vulnerability clears the pathways of feedback so that you are able to share your hopes and fears. Candor allows us to begin to constructively interpret, reflect, grapple and respond to that information.
• Accountability: the action of following through on the promises we make to each other; it’s about giving and receiving the feet-to-the-fire tough love through which real change is sustained.

However, these principles apply in even the spiritual and physical arenas. I believe so strongly in Keith’s representations of the Social that I’m a city ambassador for his organization. His latest book, “Who’s Got Your Back?” is a key addition to understanding the 7-piece puzzle.

Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, the “hugging saint” (personally embracing 26 million people) and awarded the UN Ghandi-King Peace Award and keynote speaker for the United Nations for her massive humanitarian aid, professes that her religion is “love.” She suggests that the primary characteristics of all spiritual paths are:

• Compassion
• Patience
• Selfless Service
• Humility
• Love - the overarching denominator throughout all religions and spiritual paths.

Wallace Wattles (the “father” of the New Thought prosperity consciousness) names the characteristics of financial abundance:

• Wealth is a necessity. Divinity, the Universe, God, needs you to be wealthy in order to positively transform the world through your deeds and acts.
• Thoughts are things! Whatever you conceive you can achieve.
• Action: Whatever we can imagine vividly, take action upon audaciously and consistently, becomes a reality.
• Alignment: since wealth is a necessity, if you imagine a righteous event and take action upon it, the universe will conspire to your success, and “greenlight” every intersection in your journey.
• Gratitude: “What we think about and thank about, we bring about.” - told to me by Dr. John Demartini when he invited me to dinner in Sydney, Australia at the prestigious American Club.

For the mental aspect, can anyone name the 9 factors of flow-state described by renowned flow psychologist and author Mihály Csíkszentmihályi:

• Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one’s skill set and abilities). Moreover, the challenge level and skill level should both be high.
• Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
• A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
• Distorted sense of time, one’s subjective experience of time is altered.
• Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
• Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
• A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
• The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
• People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging.

From my book Body-Flow: Freedom from Fear-Reactivity, the characteristics of physical flow written within:

• Balance tension and relaxation. Too much tension and you’re immobile. Too little and you’re impotent. As the father of biotensegrity Dr. Stephen Levin writes, “a sea of continuous tension pulling in with hard compressive struts pushing out in balance.”
• Find stability through mobility. Nothing abides (but the mind.) Everything vibrates and moves. Embrace this, and you’ll always tap into your power-stream.
• Lose the idea of rote technique. You are a master already and always. But to understand that, master the basics of a physical discipline which will permanently remind you.
• Health-first: place health as your primary attribute, followed by mobility, performance, attributes, and lastly physique.
• Melt into composition of forces. Fichte wrote that there is a process of position-opposition-composition. Since force (opposition) only begets force, blend immediately, and find flow.
• Be Breathed by movement: sync your breath, and grace erupts. There is no “try” - only “is-ness” of power.
• Perpetual Exercise: every moment conditions you to make repeatable what you’re doing. Take care to only do those things you want to improve.
• Systemic not Segmental: everything affects everything. Nothing happens in isolation.
• Attend the Movement in-Between - as Claude DeBussey said, that “music is the space between notes.” So too is grace and power.
• Synergy: the whole of your movement is greater than sum of parts
• Your nervous system craves complexity: from recovery to coordination to refinement

What principles have you found to be effective in manifesting abundance in the 7 aspects?

flow thyself,