Do you know how to direct your energy to the right place? How can you use obstacles to your advantage?
Simon Alexander Ong says that you can chase your dreams by changing the obstacles in your way into stepping stones. In doing so, you can also energize people around you, helping others live better lives through the examples you set.
Let’s explore how you can live a more satisfying life where your dreams come true.
Envision Your Future
The first step on your path to learning how to direct your energy is to define for yourself what success will look like. Without a clear goal in mind to guide you, your energy will be directionless, no matter how well you cultivate it. Ong discusses the importance of clarifying your goal, how to turn your dreams into an actionable plan, and how to frame your feelings toward wealth if that is part of what you’re trying to achieve.
Ong argues that having a specific, long-term vision lets you focus your energy, overcome obstacles, and attract opportunities. He cites many examples from the field of sports, where imagining your goal before achieving it is a standard practice for winning athletes. People who regularly use this practice show that mental imagery can enhance your performance and create a sense that achieving seemingly impossible feats can be done. One way to create such a vision for yourself is to imagine meeting an old acquaintance at some date several years in the future and describing to them everything you’ve achieved in the intervening time.
Though important, having a dream for your future won’t get you far without a plan. Ong relates how a survey of college graduates revealed that thinking through your goals and writing down how you’ll achieve them has a huge impact on long-term success. Therefore, to make your dreams achievable, set aside regular time for self-reflection and strategic planning. If the steps toward your goals aren’t clear at first, Ong offers a variation on brainstorming to guide you—but instead of trying to come up with solutions, think up as many questions as you can, such as “What are your talents? What are your obstacles? What strengths can you develop? Who can help you?” Answering these questions will help you chart your course of action.
Adopt a Positive-Energy Mindset
While you’re envisioning what you want to achieve, you also need to think about what’s standing in your way. Ong suggests that our biggest obstacles are self-inflicted mental blocks that we put in the way of our own energy. To get around these blocks—or remove them entirely—you need to adjust how you think about yourself, learn to see failures as stepping stones to growth, and persist through any challenges and fears that may be slowing your progress.
When it comes to directing your energy, mental barriers are more serious than you think. Ong argues that we behave in accordance with our self-perceptions, and our beliefs create our reality. Therefore, any negative self-beliefs you have will manifest in how the world reacts around you. To counter this, Ong writes that you need to identify and challenge your self-limiting beliefs and replace them with more empowering ones. You can do this step-by-step through journaling to root out and reexamine your beliefs, countering them with positive self-talk to boost how your energy expresses itself. Speaking to yourself with compassion and encouragement will shift your energy and your outlook on what you can achieve.
But do self-affirmations really work? Ong says “absolutely.” By consistently repeating positive statements, you realign your brain toward success and happiness, raising your energetic levels in the process. In addition to adopting positive beliefs about yourself, Ong goes a step further and suggests you adopt the belief that the world itself is working to help you—an attitude that will help you maintain your positive energy and overcome obstacles. Even if such a belief isn’t literally true, a hopeful outlook on life can be a strong placebo, and psychologists have demonstrated the near-miraculous power of the placebo effect to better people’s lives and make the seemingly impossible come true.
However, no matter how hard you wish against it, life will throw hardships and curveballs in your way. Ong suggests that this isn’t a bad thing, because obstacles and challenges can be transformed into sources of energy and growth. If you keep an open, positive mindset, you’ll recognize that every problem or failure contains a hidden gem of opportunity that you might turn to your advantage, if only by learning to overcome it. What’s important is to focus on what you can control, which is largely your own response to events. If you respond in a way that’s self-empowering, then what greater boost could your energy receive than the knowledge that you faced adversity and beat it?
Energize Those Around You
Ong concludes by returning to the idea that energy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Just as you’re energized by the people in your life, so too is the world affected by the energy you have to offer. For that reason, Ong says you should deeply consider how your energy can benefit others and in what way the energy you bring to the world will linger into posterity.
Even the small things we do can be significant to those we interact with. For this reason, Ong argues that everyone has the ability to help others, regardless of what’s going on in your life. In the end, your energy is your most valuable possession, and what better use for it could there be than to elevate the world and lives around you? How to do this runs the gamut from being an energizing leader in your workplace or community to simply showing kindness to a person in need. Ong insists that by giving energy to others, you gift yourself with a sense of joy and fulfillment that keeps your positive energy flowing.
Ong asserts that how you direct your energy every day shapes your personal future and the way that others will remember you. To this end, your past doesn’t matter as much as what you’re doing now and where your energy is going. Ong suggests you reflect on how people might think about you when you’re gone. The point of this exercise isn’t to be morbid, but to help you be aware of the distance between who you are at present and who you’d like to be. The energy that you give back to the world is what will let you cross that distance, so let go of the negative beliefs and influences that are holding you back and let your positive energy flow in a way that lets you and those around you feel more alive.
