The 4 Keys to Creating Lasting Prosperity, Happiness and Joy in Your Everyday Life
BY EMMANUEL DAGHER
prosperity, at it’s core, is really about living your happiness and joy.
Typically, when people think of prosperity, they think of monetary prosperity. They think of how much they have in their bank accounts or how much their car or home is worth. But monetary prosperity is only
one kind of prosperity, and even though it’s definitely the one people seem most concerned with, it’s rarely the most important.Prosperity is about so much more than the contents of your bank account or investment portfolio. Prosperity is about what we achieve and how we look at reality. It’s about choosing to operate from a space of knowing that you are enough. You aren’t lacking.
If we can acknowledge and accept who we are and where we come from, and operate from there, we are better equipped to overcome any challenges we may face.
In our consumer-driven economy, we tend to measure our self-worth in terms of net worth. Of course, having money makes life easier, but it does not make life. It’s our friends, family, and health that make life worth living.
The dictionary defines prosperity as “a successful, flourishing, or thriving condition, especially in financial respects; good fortune.” Although this is accurate, it’s not complete. At its root, prosperity is about happiness. In my experiences with clients and in my own life, I’ve come to create another definition of prosperity as being “the successful pursuit of happiness; a thriving and flourishing state of being.”
“All we need to pursue in life is happiness.”
Prosperity is overcoming your fear and doubt, making the choice to actively step into your ideal self.
1. Purpose and Prosperity
One of the most important steps toward prosperity is acknowledging and discovering our purpose. Our purpose in life is more than pursuing that 9-to-5 job, paying off the mortgage, or counting how many friends we have. Our purpose in life, the meaning of life, is to be happy.
That’s it. All we need to pursue in life is happiness [Editor’s Note: see the two prosperity exercises at the end of this article to help you amplify your happiness greatly]. Through happiness, we will discover prosperity encompassing all the aspects it entails—family, friends, financial, health, and career.
We know our purpose by knowing what brings us joy.
As we search for our true purpose, every choice before us should be simplified down to one question: “Does this align with my joy?”
If you’re living a purpose that doesn’t bring you joy, it’s not your true purpose.
2. The Mind and Prosperity
Throughout our evolution as a species, the human brain has become the perfect observer.
We can use our five senses to deduce almost everything about our environment, which likely evolved as a way to protect us from predators. It is also a fine-tuning of the problem-solving skills we already had. Our minds are excellent observers, and we can further our journey to prosperity by allowing the mind to fulfill that role and that role alone. Our five senses were honed through survival and fear. We learn to do things, or not do them, because it helps our survival in one way or another.
In some regards, the brain is very similar to a three-year-old child. A three-year-old doesn’t know not to touch the hot stove until he uses his senses to deduce that touching it hurts, and threatens his health or survival. Instead of allowing the three-year-old child to be in control of our feelings and actions, we need to allow our spirit to lead the way.
As human beings in the modern world, we have a habit of pushing ourselves too hard, of putting too much pressure on the brain to be perfect, to succeed, to have all the answers, even while we are learning something new. Would you tell a three-year-old that he was unintelligent because he didn’t grasp a new idea immediately, and because of that, he was incapable of succeeding? No, of course not! He is just a child, and he doesn’t know any better.
Yet this is exactly what we do to our own minds, and it’s just as unfair—and keeps us from experience greater prosperity in our lives.
We need to be patient with our minds and give them time to adjust and consider new ideas. If we allow our spirit, our intuition, to lead the mind, to guide it gently through decisions and desires, we have a greater chance of being on task and on purpose, than if we drag our mind kicking and screaming into a whole new way of looking at things.
3. Transcending Fear
As we evolve, we develop new skills to overcome fear. It’s my honor to be able to share with you another way to deal with and move through the emotion of fear with more ease than what most people experience and as a result, tap into even more prosperity, happiness and joy in your life.
The idea of fear itself can be challenging. Even just thinking about the things we fear can cause our heart rate to spike and our breath to quicken. Many people who experience anxiety can relate to the immediate adrenaline rush that can come from an upcoming deadline.
What if I were to tell you that fear isn’t bad or good—that it’s just the mind (our inner three-year-old) trying to protect itself from something it’s unfamiliar with?
“Fear, whether of failure or success, is just an emotion. It’s not rooted in reality.”
Well, that’s exactly what fear is. We can better understand fear when we choose to think less and feel more. It seems kind of backward, right? But by thinking less and letting our intuition and feelings guide us more often, we can observe the fear instead of reacting to it.
Fear, whether of failure or success, is just an emotion. It’s not rooted in reality. If you’re afraid of something and you succeed at it anyway, nothing has really changed, except your perception of yourself.
A number of authors and teachers, such as Lissa Rankin, have written about how fear affects us and holds us back in life, keeping us from experiencing greater prosperity in many different ways. There seem to be four main types of fear that most people experience: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of the unknown, and fear of losing something. None of these can hold their own outside of our minds once we step outside of our thinking, and realize that there is no such thing as the “unknown.” We all come from universal energy. We all come from the stars. What we consider to be “the unknown” is simply energy the mind has forgotten about.
Success is feedback that helps us discover which experiences we do want more of. That’s all it is! Doesn’t this simple shift in perspective feel so much better than the pressure and fear people carry around about success and failure?
What you refer to as failure doesn’t make you less of a person, just because you experienced it. Creating what you don’t want actually blesses you with the awareness of what you do want to create in life.
Trusting in the Universe eliminates any need for fear. If you can put your trust in the Universe and follow your intuition you are well on your way to a fear-free, prosperity-filled life!
4. Qualities, Not Specifics
People aren’t always sure about what makes them happy. Even after remembering what made them joyful during childhood, and trying to focus more on what actively makes them happy now in their daily life, this can still be a bit of a challenge for some people.
One trick I’ve learned is to focus on the qualities that make you happy, the essence of what you enjoy. Looking at the qualities instead of the specifics of your desires can quickly bring to light what you’d like to experience more of.
For example, if your desire is to have a million dollars, that’s a specific form. Asking yourself, “What does a million dollars provide me with?” can open your eyes to the qualities that you’re searching for and will bring you true prosperity and happiness. In this case, a million dollars might provide you with the qualities of security, flexibility, or freedom of choice. Examining the qualities of what we want—and our reasons for wanting it—opens us up to be more available to the blessings coming our way, because we’re not so fixated on the specific what, where, when, and how of our desires.
When we focus on the overall goal instead of the specifics, we successfully open ourselves up to more opportunities and hence more prosperity, because we aren’t bogged down by a narrow set of outer circumstances.
Focusing on qualities allows us the freedom to pursue the full essence of what we want, not just limited forms of it.
Many of my clients have indicated that this goes against many common teachings that focus on picturing the literal, specific goal in mind. That method can definitely have benefits, especially if you’re a person who needs a specific goal in order to get yourself moving. But once you’ve gained that momentum, losing the specifics and focusing on the qualities creates openings for a broader range of creative solutions.
Prosperity Processes: Finding Your Happiness
Exercise: The Joy List
This exercise will help you to realize and focus on the things in life that bring you happiness and joy and as a result increase your prosperity. For this process, I’ll need you to get a piece of paper and a pen or pencil.
STEP 1: At the top of the page, title your list “The Joy List” or “Things That Make My Heart Sing.”
STEP 2: Take a moment to reflect on some of the things in your life that make you happy. This might mean thinking back to when you were a kid, when you loved to climb trees. It might be enjoying the perfect cup of hot cocoa.
STEP 3: Write those things down.
STEP 4: Start to implement one, if not more, of the items on this list in your daily life. If you like to read, maybe you can set aside 30 minutes every day to enjoy reading a good book.
This list doesn’t have to be created in one sitting. It is a living, breathing document. You can add and subtract items from it as you travel through your prosperity journey. The list also doesn’t have to be exclusive to work or personal life— it can contain both or just one. You could have multiple lists, as long as the items on them make you truly happy.
Exercise: The Quality List
Making a Quality List can help us to focus on what we would like more of in our lives and that leads to greater prosperity as a result. By looking at the bigger picture of our desires—the root of our desires—we can better judge what will help us to achieve them. A Quality List will help us to refocus our energy on the inside, so we are better able to attract the right kind of energy on the outside.
STEP 1: Gather a couple of pieces of paper and a pen or pencil. Find somewhere to sit where you won’t be disturbed.
STEP 2: Write a list of qualities you want to embody— qualities your life could use more of, such as stability, freedom, happiness, flexibility, etc.
STEP 3: Write out a short list of things that you would like in your life, such as a relationship, more money, or a vacation.
STEP 4: With those things in mind, ask yourself, “What quality does __________ provide for me?” and write down the answers. For instance, if you’re asking for a relationship, it might provide comfort, affection, intimacy, and friendship.
STEP 5: Looking at the list of qualities that you’ve determined, ask yourself, “Where does my life already exhibit these qualities?” Example: Just because you aren’t in a romantic relationship right now doesn’t mean that your life is lacking in love and support. Write down some of the positive aspects of your non-romantic relationships, and the gifts that you are already receiving from them. During this process, focus on expansive, not constricting thoughts. Ask what you can do to promote these qualities and where they are already working in your life.
Concentrate on what does exist, not on what doesn’t—this is one of the secrets of prosperity thinking.
Focusing on the inner qualities we want, instead of the outer specifics, opens us up to blessings beyond anything we could have ever imagined for ourselves.
This article on prosperity is excerpted from Easy Breezy Prosperity: The Five Foundations for a More Joyful, Abundant Life by Emmanuel Dagher.
About The Author
Emmanuel Dagher is a highly sought after Transformation Specialist, Holistic Health Practitioner, inspirational social media personality and speaker. He is the author of the Amazon best-seller Easy Breezy Miracles. Emmanuel is a gifted humanitarian who is devoted to assisting people and the planet in positive transformation, in service to the well-being of humankind. Visit his website: emmanueldagher.com
