Neale Donald Walsch says personal evolution starts when you believe the highest thought you've held about yourself. His exercise: list three things you want more of, then give one of them to someone else. By giving, you discover you already had it, and it returns to you.
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So the question in life through which you engage and accelerate your evolution is can you believe the highest thought you ever dared to hold about yourself? And then if you actually embrace and hold that thought as your truth, I'm not making it up, I'm not imagining it, I'm not spinning out here. This is actually what's true about me. Then when you embrace that highest, grandest thought you ever had about yourself, then you can embrace that thought about others as well. Only when I see who I am and embrace who I am at the highest level can I possibly see who you are. So I see that my life, in that sense, has nothing to do with me. It's about everyone whose life I touch and the way in which I touch it. Should you choose to live your life in that way, it will shock you. It will amaze you how life's events, life's circumstances, life's situations come to you without effort. Make a list when you get to your room tonight of three things you wish you had more of in your life. This is an interesting exercise. Make a list of three things you wish you had more of in your life right now, whatever it might be. And then tomorrow, make yourself experience that you are the source of those three things. One of those three things in the life of another. By the way, here's what's interesting about this exercise. When you do this exercise, three things I would like more of in my life in the next 48 hours. In the next 48 to 72 hours in the next two or three days, you will meet someone who absolutely feels they have less of that than they want and is looking for that, actually begging life for it. And you can be the source of that in their life. And what moves through you sticks to you. That's the magic formula. As you become the source of it in the life of another, whatever it is, financial help, companionship, whatever it might be, wisdom, clarity. As you become the source of that in the life of another, it flows through you and sticks to you. That is, you have a sudden realization that you already have that to give. You just didn't think that you did until somebody else needed it even more than you. And then you realize, oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh, I had it here all along. I had it here all along. And the more I give, the more I receive. Why didn't somebody tell me this at the beginning? Why did I have to wait till I was a half century old to hear this? And it wasn't even just about my relationships, about my career, the whole business of making money, the whole business of what I was going to do with the days and times of my life, the whole ball of wax was not. So I didn't get it. I finally sat down when I had my first conversation with God. And I begged God, come on, come on. If you're God, then you clarify it. Help me out here. What does it take to make life work? I can remember sitting on the couch, crying out at 4 o' clock in the morning, what do you want from me? What don't I get here? God, said Neil, it's really very simple. You think your life is about you, and your life has nothing to do with you. It's about everyone whose life you touch and the way in which you touch it.
