A “manifesto”, according to the Random House Dictionary, is “a public declaration of intentions, objectives, or motives”. Your personal manifesto, creed, or magna carta, is a set of rules or guidelines you’ve created for your life. You can also have a set of commandments like Gretchen Rubin has on her blog, “The Happiness Project”. Having a personal manifesto will help you make decisions that are in line with your values and the vision you have for your life. Below you will find the 35 points that make up my personal manifesto.
- To cultivate peace of mind.
“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.” – Buddha
- To meet each day with reverence for the opportunities it contains.
“This bright, new day… complete with 24 hours of opportunities, choices, and attitudes… a perfectly matched set of 1440 minutes. This unique gift, this one day, cannot be exchanged, replaced or refunded. Handle with care. Make the most of it. There is only one to a customer.”
– Author Unknown
- To not take things personally; to realize that nothing others do is because of me, what others say and do is a projection of their own reality.
“Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian.”
– Dennis Wholey
- To have no need for the approval or validation of other people.
According to Dr. Abraham Maslow, one of the main qualities of “self-actualized individuals” is being independent of the good opinion of other people.
- To be myself. To be authentic. To live life in my own way.
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”– Ralph Waldo Emerson
- To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person I meet.
“There are persons so radiant, so genial, so kind, so pleasure-bearing, that you instinctively feel in their presence that they do you good, whose coming into a room is like the bringing of a lamp there.”
— Henry Ward Beecher
- To make my home sacred space.
- To live in a constant state of gratitude for everything that has been given to me.
“There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind than gratitude. It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performance.”
– Joseph Addison
- To celebrate life every day in some way. To make happiness and play a priority. To go on field trips and adventures.
“A philosophy of life: I’m an adventurer, looking for treasure.”
– Paolo Coehlo
- To be in financial control of my life: to have a spending plan, to live within my means, and to have an investment plan.
“Let money work for you, and you have the most devoted servant in the world . . . it works night and day, and in wet or dry weather.”
– P.T. Barnum
- To make the best out of my circumstances.
In “Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl”, Jack Sparrow, played by Johnny Depp, always introduces himself as Captain Jack Sparrow, even though he’s without a ship throughout most of the story. He knows who he is, regardless of his current circumstances. When Commander Norrington challenges him with, “Well, I don’t see your ship…’Captain’”, Jack coolly responds: “I’m in the market, as it were.” He sees his lack of a ship merely as a temporary condition, not as an indication that he has failed and is no longer worthy of the title “captain”.
- To think “Yes” instead of “No”. To imagine “Yes” instead of “No”. To be open to trying new things. To constantly stretch out a little further from my comfort zone.
Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
– Alice in Wonderland
- To always act within my sphere of influence and to focus on those things that are within my control.
“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
– Reinhold Niebuhr
- To improve myself every day in some way, whether it be by dropping a negative belief, learning a new word, adding to my knowledge of the world, and so on.
“I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.”
– Abraham Lincoln
- To create some little bit of beauty every day, even if it is no more than rearranging the flowers in a vase or letting light and air into a room.
- To serve goodness every day by even the smallest act of courtesy and kindness.
- To take consistent and focused action in the direction of my dreams.
“And will you succeed? Yes indeed, yes indeed! Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed!” -Dr. Seuss.
- To know the rules, and to know when to break them.
- To take risks.
- To monitor my energy exchanges and do more of the things that give me energy and less of the things that take it away.
Energy leeches can include certain people, some foods, not getting enough exercise, busy-work, and little distractions. Energy boosters can include positive, supportive people, healthy food, and getting exercise.
- To remember that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and to stop taking unnecessary steps and side routes.
- To trust myself and to listen to my inner voice.
- To see mistakes as feedback, to adjust my aim, and to try again.
“Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.” — Charles F. Kettering
- To write the bad things that happen to me on sand, and to write the good things that happen to me on marble. (Arab proverb).
- To forgive others and to release grudges. To always forgive myself.
- To have a plan.
“You can achieve anything you want in life if you have the courage to dream it, the intelligence to make a realistic plan, and the will to see that plan through to the end.” — Sydney A. Friedman
- To not allow thoughts of fear, doubt or worry get in my way.
Great golfers concentrate on where they want the ball to go, not on the lake to the right or the woods to the left.
- To treat myself like someone I love.
- To make healthy lifestyle choices.
- To always remember that my outer world is a reflection of my inner world, and that I am creating my reality with my thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and words.
“What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneness, and say, “This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned–and you with it, dust of the dust!” Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, “Never have I heard anything more divine?”"
–Friedrich Nietzsche
- To live in the now.
- To be of service. To create value. To give back to the world.
- To be responsible for the talent that has been entrusted me. To have a masterwork, a magnum opus.
“Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.”
– Leo Buscaglia
- To embrace change.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” - Charles Darwin
- To persevere. To never give up.
“The mighty oak was once a little nut that stood its ground.” — Unknown
(“Auto-reflecting”; courtesy of Abdullah AL-Naser (Abraaj))
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