How to Start Taking Responsibility for Your Life | Eckhart Tolle on Creating Abundance

You have to be vigilant to see if your actions, any given moment, whether they are no more than a means to an end. Another question, when we lose a form that represented abundance, do we resign ourselves to the loss, or should we take action to bring new forms of abundance into being? Again, the question may refer to you, so I cannot question you directly here. Maybe you lost possessions, money, whatever, and the question do we resign ourselves to the loss, or should we take action to bring new forms of abundance into being? Well, you can do. You can resign yourself. It's not a question of either, or whether or not you create more of the same. Whatever it is, if you lost a house, whether you work to have another house, or if you lost investments, whether you work hard to create the same again, or whether you no longer are interested in doing that. In any case, resigning yourself to the loss applies in any case, if you don't do that, then you suffer and then you build up negativity and then you. All the action you take is then based on negative reaction. And you can work very hard and perhaps you'll recreate the same abundance, but it's not pleasant. So acceptance of what is always comes first, and then you are free to go on from there. Acceptance of loss, that's what is. Nothing is permanent in this world. It consists of gain and loss. Sooner or later you have to let go. Acceptance comes first, and then there's a choice. If you enjoy the creation of abundant forms, whatever you do, why not carry on doing it? And very quickly you will probably create the same abundance if you don't enjoy the doing, if the doing is only a means to an end, because you need the money, you want to have the psychological security of money, you still haven't learned that it doesn't really work, then you just go through the same cycle again and you won't be happy. You'll be compulsively working hard, trying to get your money back. So it's a question of step one is acceptance of what is, because it is. Step two is you listen within and see what it is that wants to be done. Perhaps you worked for 20 years, built up something, lost it. Do you want to work another 20 years? Or even 10 years or 10 years? If you enjoy it, yes, why not? The important question, whatever you do, is what I'm doing primarily a means to an end, or is it primarily an end in itself? If it's an end in itself, means, as I do, what I do, there is an enjoyment there, there is an aliveness there. Yes, I Know what I want to achieve. So that's why I'm saying primarily. Primarily a means to an end or primarily an end in itself? If your doing is not primarily an end in itself, then there's lack of enjoyment and lack of harmonious doing. And that's unconscious. And it makes you unhappy, basically, even if you don't know it. Many unconscious people are unhappy and they are so unconscious they don't even know that they are unhappy. But because it's their normal state, isn't everybody else the same? So that applies to whatever you do, not just going beyond this particular question. You have to be vigilant to see if your actions, any given moment, even simple things, running errands, things you do every day, you need to be vigilant to see whether they are no more than a means to an end, in which case you are not present in what you do. You are probably impatient or stressed or complaining. Would rather be somewhere else, as the car sticker says. The bumper sticker stickers you have say things like I'd rather be fishing. And if your mindset is I'd rather be. Even when you're fishing, you won't be happy for very long. And then very quickly you'd rather be sitting in your car driving somewhere exciting. So taking responsibility for your life is taking responsibility for how you perform your actions, what you do. And if most of your actions are means to an end, your whole life is of low quality. It lacks presence. And you are always looking out for the next moment which you think is going to be better. When it comes is unfortunately only the present moment, which is never good enough. That's low quality life. The quality of your life. The way in which I use the term is is deeper than the conventional use of the term, although it's good to have the term at all. Quality of life, because it implies that what determines the value of your life is not quantity. It's not how much you consume, how many things you own, or whatever, how many people you control in your job or your whatever. It's not quantity that determines the value of your life, it's quality. So in the conventional term, I'm glad that this term exists, it means how you, whether you enjoy, whether you can go to have quality time with another human being, which means attention, quality activities where you're not just working all the time, but doing other things. They have the quality of life for cities. Every year they have a list. I don't remember who publishes it or how exactly they determine it, but it's an attempt to determine how pleasant it is to live or how unpleasant it is to live in a particular city. Many factors contribute to that, so that's a good thing. But the way in which I use quality goes even beyond that. Well, it is connected somehow, but it goes deeper. You can live in a city that's very low on the life quality list and lead a life of the highest quality, which means as you do what you do, you are giving it full attention, knowing that, yes, I'm doing this because I need to get there and there, you know what the end is that you want to achieve. But your primary concern is the doing the smallest thing. And then your life is of high quality. Every action has a certain aliveness and presence to it. It's not stressed, it's not done with reluctance, it's not done with impatience, it's not done with irritation. All this, can't you see how that lowers the quality of your life? All those things. But it's so normal. But you can do the same thing. Why bring all that to the action? The irritation, the stress, the dislike, the impatience, the complaining? Why? What purpose does. It has no real purpose, except it strengthens your false sense of self. So you can see you have a choice. You can do the same, even if you do nothing to change your life. On the external level, let's say everything that you've been doing so far, you carry on doing it, but you bring a completely different. You take out all the resistance patterns from what you've been doing. You take out all the complaining and the wanting to be somewhere else, and the irritation and the impatience and the stress. So you're still doing exactly the same. And yet your life is completely transformed on the inside. An amazing thing on the outside, at first, nothing has changed. You still do exactly the same. It.