Inform Yourself

Anyone who has spent any time focused on self-improvement or self-growth has heard the word “integration.” But what does it mean? Is it another process? It is an action? What does it mean to you?

Actually, integration is all of those things rolled into one. Webster’s Dictionary defines integration as, “The act of combining into an integral whole.” Ultimately, because we are all unique individuals, every individual defines integration as it relates to them. Some define integration as a process, some a specific action, some merely a definition. However you define your integration, it is the essence of how you meld and weave your new features into your existing core.

So, how do you integrate your changes? What works for one person may be less useful for another. Just as we are all unique individuals, our integrations are also unique. One thing is certain though, integration is a good thing. It leads to a new and improved you!

The objective of integration is to find that balance between your mind, body and spirit in a manner that is most useful for you. It is that easy, peaceful feeling you have when you are in complete balance. Many people utilize meditation, others prayer, and still others a conscious effort to realize this balance. “Your Blissful Life” actually incorporates a process within the process of defining your blissful life, enabling you to naturally integrate changes into yourself. As long as you take action to achieve your blissful life, your integration will take place. This is because you consciously defined your goals for every part of yourself. Next, you consciously and subconsciously checked to ensure that your goals for each part were congruent with your other parts. This process is a step of integration, ensuring that your mind, body, and spirit are congruent. Finally, you defined your action plan to achieve your blissful life. This enabled you to define the actions you need to take in order to achieve your blissful life, all the while, ensuring that your mind, body and spirit are in congruence. As such, you defined your own integration, in your words, so it is most useful for you.

When I discovered my blissful life, I actually spent a great deal of time not only discovering and defining exactly what it was that I wanted for each part of myself, but also how I was going to integrate these things into my life. I did not use the framework defined in this book to help me. As a result, I was actually quite lost for a period of time, searching for a method of integration that was most useful for me. I had my defined my blissful life, but what was I going to do with it? How was I going to use this to change my life? What did I need to do to achieve it? How was going to get from where I was at to where I truly wanted to be? I struggled for a long time. My blissful life was a radical shift from where I was before my discovery. It was, without a doubt, a life-changing event.

After much struggling, I attended a retreat that introduced me to the process for stepping into the future and looking back toward the now in order to discover what I needed to do to achieve that which I wanted. I could clearly see exactly what I needed to do to get here. I took it a step further though. I would focus on a single part” at a time and note all of the items I discovered. I would be very clear and specific about what I needed to do to achieve all that I wanted for that part of myself. After I was done with all my parts, I had many pieces of paper, each with its own action plan. I then reviewed all of them and noted any common actions so that I would know how many separate parts would be impacted by specific actions. I also prioritized which parts were most important to me and then focused on my top three. Since my action plans were already defined, all I had to do was act!

This method became the process that is interlaced in my prior posts. You rintegration is actually sprinkled throughout the posts so your integration would occur naturally, without struggle! You can avoid the issues I faced simply by working through each post. This makes your integration easy and simple to do.