Chasing money, recognition, or status is a recipe for a shallow life. And if you spend your days seeking acceptance, you’re guaranteed to become miserable. As you mature emotionally, you want to know that the way you live your life makes a difference beyond yourself. Success isn’t nearly as fulfilling as significance.
Which takes us back to our series of posts defining the four quadrants of living a prosperous life...
Last post we explored the third quadrant: Spiritual Harmony. Let’s dive into quadrant four: Significance. This quadrant is where concepts like meaning, contribution, and challenge factor heavily.
At some point, most of us reach a stage where we start looking for more meaning. We look for a purpose, community, and becoming part of something bigger than ourselves. This usually leads to contribution. We seek out charities and causes, champion the neglected, and work toward a greater good for all. Maslow depicted this brilliantly in his Hierarchy of Needs. I believe the key word there is needs, because as developing humans we need to feel we’re doing more than just taking up space and acquiring things. The physiological rewards contribution provides are an integral part of your development to becoming the highest possible version of yourself.
But your growth will stall if you leave out the challenge aspect of all this...
Believe it or not, having everything go your way all the time is actually depressing. Iron sharpens iron and facing some friction along the way is necessary for growth. (And growth is required for sustained contentment.) To manifest thermonuclear prosperity, you not only have to embrace challenge but actively seek it, knowing that it is your stepping-stone to enlightenment.
Challenges force you to become the person you need to become – to achieve what you truly desire.
At the risk of being branded as a drunken metaphysical poet, allow me to opine like a drunken metaphysical poet: Thermonuclear prosperity comes into existence once you become a figurative cauldron with the ingredients of the four quadrants sloshing around in synchronistic relativity, ebbing and flowing with the energy transference between you and the universe around you. The power comes not from one quadrant or another, but the symbiotic synergy created by the whole. Because true prosperity is holistic. It’s an intoxicating mélange of:
- Vibrant health
- Abundant finances
- Spiritual harmony
- Positive self-esteem
- Contribution
- Empowering relationships
- Fulfilling work
This is the sweet spot where you live in gratitude – yet still possess the “Divine Discontent” to do, have, and become more. Your life becomes more about meaning than money. (Although this often creates a vicious cycle of prosperity. You provide more value to the universe and receive yet more prosperity in return. Because you can’t out-give the universe.) Sometimes you do this through your vocation or avocation, and sometimes both. But it always involves finding something bigger than yourself to be a part and circulating the principles of prosperity.
Are you up for that? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
Peace,
- RG
Prosperity TV
Enchanted by the poetry of thermonuclear prosperity, as well as by its author, I experienced a special autumn season reading. Through the lens of the intertwined quadrants, it seems that all the layers of needs in A. Maslow's pyramid are given equal importance. None of them can be neglected or sacrificed if the goal is for the results to last. A sense of purpose in one's actions, combined with health and financial security, enhances the energy needed for self-expression in meaningful activities. It is up to those who find value in such activities to determine whether they are significant or not.