How Do You Want To Be?

How do you want to be?  I think that's a better question for guiding life than the more common "What do you want to do?"

I didn't realize it at the time, but in 2011 when I began to explore meditation and then yoga, having decided I wanted to be more positive about life, I was approaching my life question as how, rather than what.

How did I want to be?  I wanted to be more positive.  With that intention, I created a message for myself, phrased as if it was a present fact: "I am positive in all things."  Then I set about to live that way.  When faced with challenging events, it wasn't that I didn't have negative feelings, it was that I moved beyond them to ask, "What good can I gain from this? What is there to be positive about?" And there always was something.

Sometimes I know what I want to do.  Other times its harder to identify.  But I always know how I want to be.  I want to be kind, to be open, to enjoy life, to be positive.  Maybe the "what" doesn't really matter that much.  I wouldn't trade how I want to be for any particular achievement.

It seems to me, looking back, that this process was a way for me to uncover and connect with a deeper part of me, the real person underneath the superficial material goal-oriented achievement shell I had built.  That early, simple identification of how I wanted to be - more positive about life - has stuck with me for the past five years and grown more rich as I followed where it led me.

How do you want to be?