Self Realized, Shatter Your Limits

3 Unexpected Keys to Unlocking a Fulfilling Life

• Linton Bergsen • Episode 86

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In this episode of the Self-Realized Podcast, join me, Linton Bergsen, as I explain how mastering the art of engagement, response, and follow-through can be the key to a fulfilling life. You'll discover the transformative power of being fully present in various situations and learn about a simple five-star evaluation process to illuminate your level of commitment. I’ll guide you through enhancing your ability to respond meaningfully rather than react impulsively, fostering self-realization and deeper understanding.

You'll uncover the often-overlooked importance of follow-through in your quest for a more enriched life.
Whether you're a long-time listener or new to the Self-Realized community, you're invited to actively participate and share your insights. To deepen your connection, visit selfrealized.com, explore Linton's book "Purposeful Vision," and join a network of like-minded individuals committed to purposeful living. As you continue this journey, remember to take good care of yourself and others along the way. 

Let me know your thoughts on this episode. Text me your feedback! 🙂

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Linton Bergsen:

Welcome to the Self-Realized Podcast with Linton Bergsen, where you will shatter your limits. I am not much into the self-help industry as much as I'm into the self-realized individual, which is you, what matters most to you, how you get there and the obstacles that may be in your way. If you would like to be part of this podcast and part of that discussion, I welcome you here with an open heart, open mind and open arms. So, without further ado, let's get on with the podcast. I would like to thank you very much for taking the time out of your very busy day to join me on today's episode, number 86 Three Unexpected Keys to Unlocking a Fulfilling Life, which obviously something that we all want to have. But how do you actually achieve that? What are the three keys that would allow you to move forward in this life in a much more fulfilling way, which is obviously something that we all want?

Linton Bergsen:

One of the things we don't always understand about life certainly I've learned it in my own life is that when we go forward step by step, every day, into this life and anticipate the positive energies that we want to have manifest in our lives, the first key to understanding what can help you toward living a more fulfilling life is the power of engagement. Why would I suggest that to you? A lot of times we are not fully engaged in life and if you are not fully engaged in what you are doing and committed to what you are doing, it is going to affect your life on so many different levels. Contemplate on this for a moment. Is it possible for you to be fulfilled in anything that you are not fully engaged in? Sometimes we don't even realize that we are not fully engaged. We are half-heartedly doing something. We are not engaging ourselves in our work, in our commitments to what we have set out to do. So it is a very self-aware process of being aware whether you're pursuing spiritual goals, religious goals, professional goals, whether you're looking to increase your workout or look at your diet.

Linton Bergsen:

You could look at all these different areas that you have set goals in and you can begin to make a very comprehensive list and reflect on that list and use a five-star process. That is what I do sometimes for myself. I use a five-star process to say, well, am I fully engaged in all of these areas? And if I'm not fully engaged, then where do I need to improve? For example, if you were looking at your spiritual life and you don't feel that you are spending enough time in meditation or you are not getting enough alone time. You may rate that two out of five stars, because I use five as the highest and then you want to begin to look at how would you create more time for meditation and you simply continue going through each area of your life and create the changes that you need to to create what it is that you would like to have, and you do that periodically. You could do it weekly, you could do it monthly, whatever works for you.

Linton Bergsen:

But I strongly suggest that you track yourself regularly so you don't allow yourself to get too far off track and keep yourself in the mindset and in the space that you need to to keep yourself fully engaged effectively in each area of your life to get the ongoing results that you would like to have. I am a firm believer that you need to track what you're doing in life so you can measure your results. That is a very strong suggestion that I would give you, because I know that when I begin to look at my life in detail and I begin to measure by engagement and that process that I've just given you, it is seriously a very strong eye-opener and I have adjusted my goals and the way that I've just given you. It is seriously a very strong eye-opener and I have adjusted my goals and the way that I've approached my life by using this engagement process. That's what I call it. Once you understand what engagement really means to you personally, you will understand how that contributes to leading a very fulfilling life.

Linton Bergsen:

For example, if you go out into the world and you don't really engage people or you don't begin to have an engagement with the surroundings around you especially if you're in nature walking around you are missing a lot of the interactions that you can have with those people, with nature, with just life in general, because you are not engaged in the energy that is being provided when you are in those environments. People have energy, nature has energy, food has energy, life has energy. So being self-aware and being engaged simply means this you are not absentmindedly going out into the world on a day-to-day basis. If you engage an individual, you are present, you are listening and you are very interested in what they have to say as well as your contribution. When you are engaged, you are present, you're not drifting, your mind is not thinking about something else or what you're going to say. You are present in the moment, engaged fully with what is going on. If you're talking with someone and you're listening intently and you're not thinking about what you're going to say next, you are engaged in their energy. They will feel that they will be aware of you. That helps you on so many different levels.

Linton Bergsen:

If you're involved in sales, if you're involved in wanting to build a relationship with people, personal or professional, that is a magnetic force within itself. Engagement allows you to be magnetic. It allows you to have a solid connection, whether you're dealing with an email or you're dealing with text messages, or you're dealing with people in person. Engaging people, reading things carefully before you send out a text and respond not react respond is all part of engagement. Looking at an email, reading it carefully, absorbing the content of what that person may have written to you that is an engagement in the email process as well as when you are personally in front of people. So you have a one, two, three punch going on here.

Linton Bergsen:

In today's world that we live in, with social media and personal engagement, as well as Zoom and every other video format that we have now, what's the most important thing that you are aware of is that in every process that you are involved in, when you're dealing with people, you are engaged. Doesn't make any difference whether it's on Zoom, whether it's text messaging, whether it is email. People know when you haven't read that email or that text message with as much attention to the detail and the tone of the message because, for whatever reason you may have been distracted, you weren't engaged fully. But people know when you are just reacting to what was written. People know when you are reacting to what was said because you're not fully engaged in what has been presented to you.

Linton Bergsen:

If you take that one step further and you look at your life whether it's in meditation or whether it is walking in nature, your spiritual food, your religious sustenance, so to speak, whatever you find the God force or the conscious living experience that you want to have at a different level of everyday life and what I mean by that is your spiritual practices you have to be fully engaged in what you're doing. Meditation is not an absent-minded process is not an absent-minded process. It is a process that allows you to be fully engaged in the presence of what it is that you're trying to accomplish. So let me ask you this If you go into meditation absent-mindedly, if you go into meditation without an idea of what you're trying to engage with, what do you think the results will be? Ask yourself that about anything. If you go into any process in life without knowing what is the result that you're looking for, how engaged can you possibly be?

Linton Bergsen:

Let's take an example of walking in nature. That requires you to be engaged in the environment that you're in to understand that when you're walking in nature, are you just seeing a tree or are you engaged? Are you engaged in the process of experiencing the tree? What I mean by that is do you understand and can you begin to look at the tree as more than just that? It is more than just a tree. It has different subtleties to it. It has different hues and colors to the bark, to the leaves, to the veins in the leaves, to the shape of each leaf.

Linton Bergsen:

If you begin to look at the tree in nature, or look at anything around you in nature, whether it's mountains or ocean, there is an engagement in that process, in that particular moment, that allows you to have a deeper experience. That's what engagement allows you to do. It allows you to have a much deeper experience than most people, who are not always engaging life at the deepest level, so they're missing out on a large part of the information that is available to them. But once you've engaged something and you've looked at the details of it whether it's a person, whether it's a tree, whether it's just a casual conversation, whether it's a tree, whether it's just a casual conversation you are now in the position to apply key number two for living a fulfilling life, which is to respond effectively to what you have engaged. Initially, because you have got the right details and information, and responding to something is different than reacting to it. A response allows you to follow up on the engagement that you made, because when you're fully engaged you can have a meaningful response. You can have a meaningful response If it's nature be very aware of how your spirit has responded to the experience. You've had your internal awareness. If you're speaking with a person and you understood what they were saying, you're engaged in a conversation. You had a two-way conversation. Your response will be totally different than if you were absentmindedly, half-heartedly, listening to what they were saying.

Linton Bergsen:

Looking at your life from the perspective of engagement and response changes the dynamic of your life and how fulfilled your life will be. Having a fulfilled life means you are present and that you are able to focus in the moment on what is going on. Engagement and response require full focus. For a meaningful engagement and response, essentially, what you're trying to do is to be present in the moment without a wandering mind. That allows you to have fulfillment in life because, energetically, you begin to feel fulfilled within yourself as you engage in the right way with the right process. What that means to you is that you are participating in life at a much deeper level than if you were just participating at a mundane surface level.

Linton Bergsen:

Look at engagement and response from this perspective and I strongly suggest that you think about this and do so because it will change the course of your life. It's changed the course of my life because it's not about what it is that I want. That's always the most important thing. It's what other people want and what I want, which comes together to make a synergistic approach to life which then creates a reality of fulfillment. It can never be a one-way street. So engagement and response are critical factors for you getting what you want, because people do things for their own reasons and when you engage people, you have to find out what their reasons are for doing something and your response is what your reasons are, given that you are taking into account their reasons as well. That is fulfillment. That is key one and two, because without those two synergistically working together as an effective approach in your life, what can you really accomplish?

Linton Bergsen:

Ultimately, we all want to be in a space that we feel fulfilled. We have to look at it. You have to look at it in my opinion, perspective of how effectively are you and I, moving through this world, aware of the environments and the people and the circumstances that we are engaging and responding with? It is a profound awareness, because engagement and response are 95% of our existence. When you look at working with animals and I say this because animals are very aware of how you engage and how they respond, because both of those are energies If you have a pet, a cat, a dog, you will understand this very profoundly engagement and response. Trust is engagement and response, love is engagement and response.

Linton Bergsen:

Everything we do is pivoting off how we understand those concepts deeply within our spirit, within our psyche, within our mind and as a self-realized individual, because ultimately, the self-realized individual is always on that premise, on that point within themselves that says how is this operating internally? So it affects my life externally? That is self-realization at its core. It means that you understand, as I've mentioned in many previous episodes, that your intuition, your internal compass, your spiritual awareness, your God-given gifts, your ability to understand who and what you truly are, which is pure spirit, allows you to engage and respond in life in a very different way. The self-realized individual is always going internally, first to ask the deeper questions about life and then, from a self-realized perspective, is understanding within themselves? Okay, everything that I need to manifest outwardly comes from me internally. So ask yourself this question are you being self-realized enough to question your engagement and question your response and then question how it is that those two are interacting and interplaying and interfacing in your life to get the results that you would like.

Linton Bergsen:

If you're not seeing the results you would like, you might want to change key number one and then key number two, obviously engagement and response, which leads me into key number three for a very fulfilling life. If you have the engagement and the response process down effectively, with meaning and with your compass pointing true north, then you are ready to move into the third stage, the third key for your fulfilling life, which is follow through. Most people in my experience fail Not because they didn't engage hopefully correctly and not because they didn't respond once again, hopefully correctly. It's because there was no follow through. And let me explain how follow through works and how I have applied it in my life, so that you can begin to understand where I'm coming from, as I give you the final key to this process.

Linton Bergsen:

Follow through is difficult because when you begin to follow through on key number one and key number two engagement and response you might find out that you receive rejection. There's not a response back to you immediately because we have followed through with people and that can be, as I'm sure you're aware of, very difficult to get the responses that we would like. You are aware of very difficult to get the responses that we would like. Sometimes, in this life that we live, the response that we get when we follow through is rejection. Sometimes we don't always get the response that we thought we would like and in this world of social media, you know, you can have 5,000 likes and one dislike and you're focusing on the dislike rather than all the positive likes that you have. This is just the state that we live in, sometimes within our own psyche, but the self-realized individual is not interested in that. They're not really interested for themselves about what the response is going to be to their follow-through. And that has to be you. You have to follow through from your own authenticity and your own integrity, because you've gathered the correct information from the initial two keys, which was engagement, and you responded, and then you listened to the responses and you were aware of what was going on. So you are now following through from all of this very powerful positive energy that you have engaged.

Linton Bergsen:

How people respond to you when you follow through is not going to deter you from moving forward continually with positive expectancy. If you fail once, then you try again and you follow through and you follow through, because failure is lack of follow through. 95% of the time. You may have to follow through two, three, four, five times in anything you do in order to get the response, positive or negative, that you're looking to achieve and accomplish. You, me, everyone, is dealing with different personalities, different people who have different objectives than you do, different places they're coming from in life, different childhood experiences, different feelings they have about the way you may look, the way you may sound, the way you may present yourself so many different parameters going on. I understand that. You understand that as a self-realized individual, you are aware of that and honestly, it is basic common sense. Lack of follow-through, consistent follow-through with information that you have received is going to be the major reason why you don't succeed in life.

Linton Bergsen:

Do not give up if you don't get the responses from the engagements that you made immediately and do not be concerned about what other people are thinking of you. I cover that in episode number 83,. Why Do you Fail your Setbacks to Success? One of the important things to understand about responding. A lot of people will say they're going to text you back. They may say they're going to call you back, email you, whatever their preference is to engage with you again. A lot of times people don't going to call you back, email you whatever their preference is to engage with you again. A lot of times people don't. They don't text, they don't follow up, they don't follow through.

Linton Bergsen:

Understand this the power of you, the power of a really truly fulfilling life, really lies in the power of your follow through. People say I have a very strong follow-through. That's okay. I would rather be known for having a strong follow-through than having none at all. At least, I know that. I follow through as far as I could go. You have to know when to stop. You have to know when you're being a nuisance. You have to know all of these things, but that is the reason. You are self-realized, that's the self-realized individual operating at the optimal capacity within themselves. Because they are, you are, I am, we are designed to be intuitively receptive to what we need to do, for how long and what intensity. Learning how to use this information correctly is part of all of our journeys mine, yours In applying the three keys that I've mentioned in this episode engagement, response and follow-up and follow-through.

Linton Bergsen:

Those two go together on a consistent basis, running the experiments on each one of those every day, seeing how each one interplays and affects the other. Learning to really practice engagement and response and follow through. It's habits, basically, that you are establishing, that you are going to apply and hone, ongoing every day. Start out small in a conversation with one of your friends or people that you trust family members Really practice engagement and response and follow-up and follow-through, but don't tell them you're doing that. They will realize for themselves the difference in you, in how you are approaching them, and if you do this long enough and often enough, people will mention to you you know you seem to be a different person, you seem to be doing something differently in your life. They will feel differently about you. Much more importantly, you will feel differently about you. You will feel more fulfilled in your life.

Linton Bergsen:

Fulfilled in your life because exchanging energy at a mutual level and being interested in other people as well as yourself makes you feel fulfilled, because you are participating in life, actively participating by engaging at a mutual level, and this includes you being in nature, you closing your eyes in meditation. It's about a shared experience between you and nature and, in meditation, between you and yourself or spirit or whatever it is that you choose to believe. Isn't that true? It's about participation. It's about understanding that you are not an island, that everything and everyone is engaging with you 24-7, whether you understand it consciously or not. The self-realized individual is always consciously aware of what is going on, and you are a self-realized, conscious, aware individual.

Linton Bergsen:

One thing that I suggest very strongly that you become very aware of is what you engage in first thing in the morning. If you engage in social media first thing in the morning and there's any negative social media. There's anything there that you are involving yourself with and in that would cause you to give a negative response and thereby start the flow of negative follow-through, a negative follow-up, anything that's causing negativity that you are engaging in first thing in the morning. Remove it. Whatever you engage in first thing when you wake up, make sure it's positive, positive engagement, positive response, positive follow-up first thing. That may mean that you don't reach for your phone or social media first thing in the morning. Engage with yourself, engage with the spirit within yourself. Give yourself a positive affirmation.

Linton Bergsen:

Spend some time in that self-reflective engagement mode that is singly the most important engagement that you can have with yourself every day. Put it on your calendar and schedule that the first five minutes of your day is all about you and what makes you feel good. The most important person you will ever engage with on an ongoing, everyday basis is you. Everyday basis is you. You, me, all of us are in a constant state of engagement with something, someone, social media, life in general. All the time. Be careful of how and what you engage with, how you respond and how you follow through, because understanding the complexities and the range of those three keys that I've given you today is going to be the outcome of your life and everything that happens to you. And when you understand that at its deepest core level, you begin to understand the power of unlocking the three unexpected keys to your fulfilling life. To your fulfilling life Because once you've unlocked them and you are aware of them, can you possibly imagine all the doors that now will be open to you that were never there before?

Linton Bergsen:

I sincerely appreciate you listening to the podcast. Please subscribe so you do not miss any upcoming episodes. Whatever platform you're on, please leave a rating and review. I would greatly appreciate it. Any additional information on me, Linton Bergsen and my five-star reviewed book Purposeful Vision is available at selfrealized. com, which is all one word. You can also leave any comments or suggestions on the website. I look forward to connecting with you very soon and take good care of yourself.