Self Realized, Shatter Your Limits

How to Achieve Material and Spiritual Success: 2 Practical Steps

• Linton Bergsen • Episode 103

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In this transformative episode, discover how to bridge the gap between material success and spiritual fulfillment by achieving true work-life balance and personal development. Join me, Linton Bergsen, as I reveal why career advancement and financial security often leave you feeling empty and explore the central challenge of achieving true fulfillment that requires balancing both material and spiritual success.

Have you ever achieved material success but still felt something vital was missing? That disconnect reveals the profound truth that many prioritize external achievements—career advancement, financial security, comfortable living—while neglecting your internal compass. Yet that inner guidance system quietly influences every decision you make, as you choose careers, relationships, and living situations based on how you think they'll make you feel, confirming that your spiritual self is constantly directing your material choices.

I provide practical strategies to combat career burnout and achieve greater well-being through my two-step process for integrated success. 1st, cultivate acute self-awareness about what drives your decisions—are you acting from intuition, fear, or habit? 2nd, deliberately align your external actions with your internal core values through purposeful living and mindful personal leadership. The trouble begins when you override your internal signals, accepting situations that "don't feel right" due to convenience, insecurity, or limiting beliefs.

This episode is essential for entrepreneurs, professionals, and anyone committed to personal transformation, offering actionable insights on how inner guidance and spiritual alignment can create lasting life satisfaction, attract meaningful opportunities, and build a powerful success mindset that supports both material comfort and spiritual well-being. While conventional paths offer security, they rarely lead to a true sense of well-being or fulfillment—true leadership of your own life requires clarity about personal values and the courage to manifest them externally.

This integration process creates a profound shift in how the world responds to you. When internal motivation aligns with external action, you experience a sense of integrity that radiates outward, naturally attracting opportunities, relationships, and experiences that support both material comfort and spiritual growth. 

Ready to begin? Take a moment now to question what's driving your current actions and whether they align with your deepest values—your well-balanced, fulfilled life awaits.

Subscribe for more life-changing content on leadership development and personal mastery, and visit selfrealized.com to learn more about me, Linton Bergsen, and my approach to purposeful success and my 5-star Amazon reviewed book, Purposeful Vision. See Your Vision / Know Your Purpose. Leave a rating or review where you listen to your podcasts.

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https://www.selfrealized.com

Linton Bergsen:

Welco me 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. A very warm welcome to the Self-Realized, Shatter Your Limits Podcast.

Linton Bergsen:

This is episode 103, How to Achieve Material and Spiritual Success. Two Practical Steps. Contemplate on this for a moment. Would you say to yourself right now that you have both of those material and spiritual success? If the answer to that is yes, then how are you defining that? If the answer is no, then why don't you? In today's episode we're going to explore answers to those questions and how you can go ahead in your life and begin to have some practical steps to manifest into your own life, into your own reality.

Linton Bergsen:

Material and spiritual success. One of the words that is very important to have material and spiritual success. It seems like common sense. It seems like something that we would do just because it's so obvious, but we don't. We don't use this one word enough in our lives to achieve what we want in our lives, which is balance, that one word balance to achieve material and spiritual success. We have to balance those out deliberately, actively, with the goals that we set, as the title suggests in today's episode Achieving Material and Spiritual Success. It is an achievement to attain material and spiritual success. It doesn't happen by accident, and in order to achieve anything and apply yourself to that accomplishment, I would suggest you need to set certain goals, material and spiritual.

Linton Bergsen:

Now, sometimes we get involved a lot in the material success of life and our goals reflect that. We do have everyday bills, everyday living expenses that we have to pay which is part of our material success that we want to have the mortgage, the rent, the car payment, the groceries entertainment, taking care of our children our families they are all necessary material obligations that are recurring day in, day out, month in, month out, year after year. They are not going to go away. As long as we are on this planet, as human beings, you and I, these will be essentially our obligations. Now, they may change at different points in our life, but material success for most of us is essentially very important. Sometimes at the great detriment and expense of our spiritual success, and also sometimes neglected our spiritual goals.

Linton Bergsen:

Without both working in concert, we don't have a great sense of well-being. Your overall sense of well-being is a great measure of your own success that you have achieved. Your well-being is directly correlated to the balance between your material and your spiritual success. There are a lot of people who have material success but don't feel happy. Don't feel inwardly fulfilled. Feel as though something is missing. Many times we hear about people who are financially well off, may even be famous, may even have adulation, but they still feel empty. That is because there is nothing that can fulfill your inner life, your inner sanctuary, like your spiritual development and spiritual success. Why? Because all material success is external. All spiritual success is internal. Let me explain that to you and give you an example.

Linton Bergsen:

If you were to write down on the left-hand side of a piece of paper, when you have time and you are not listening to the podcast your material goals, your material needs and what it is you'd like to accomplish in your life it could be in your career, it could be in your finances, it could be in your health. On the left-hand side of your page, write those down. On the right-hand side of the page, write down how those material experiences correlate to your spiritual well-being. When you begin to look at that list on the left-hand side material, on the right-hand side spiritual you will begin to see right in front of you how balanced you are. How much thought have you given to your material success in correlation with your spiritual success? The material side, the left-hand side of the page, is all external. When you are looking at paying rent, paying mortgage, car payments, groceries, entertainment. It's all about the outer world how you are going to live in this world as a human being feeding, clothing, putting a roof over your head, having shelter and family on an everyday basis to fulfill your human needs. Contemplate on this for a moment.

Linton Bergsen:

When you thought about career, when you thought about money, when you thought about family, when you thought about where you would like to live, didn't you take into account, when you made those decisions, how they would make you feel? When you thought about living somewhere, did you imagine what it would be like? And when you had those feelings, when you had those thoughts, they were internal and they drove you to make a decision about your career, how you make your money, where you want to live, what your family would look like. They're all based upon internally how you thought they would make you feel, and why is it that you want to make sure, as much as you can, all of these areas materially in your life make you feel a certain way? It's because your main focus prior to any decision is always going to be internal. How am I going to feel about this? Can I imagine myself doing this?

Linton Bergsen:

There's always an internal compass driving your actions. Sometimes they are subconscious. We are not paying a lot of attention to them, so we are on autopilot, which is not the best idea. In other words let me give an example of that. You go for a job. The job may not be something you feel that would work for you, but you do it anyway because it's convenient. You need the money and what you would like to do is not appearing right now, at that moment in time. Not that it won't, it just hasn't appeared at the current moment you're in. So you know what you're about to take doesn't make you feel right.

Linton Bergsen:

The conscious decision to embark upon things that don't make you feel right is, long and short term, not going to bring you peace or happiness. So it's going to affect your own spiritual success and well-being, knowing they don't make you feel right, but you go ahead and do them anyway. Or you meet someone that you feel intuitively may not be someone you want to do business with, date or be friends with, but you do it anyway. So again, now you're affecting your spiritual well-being because you're making decisions consciously that are not in alignment with how you feel. The reason that you do that, I suggest to you, is because of a lot of limiting subconscious programming and beliefs and also limiting destructive self-talk, which drives you to accepting situations and circumstances because you don't believe that anything better is available or could possibly come along. Nothing is further from the truth if you make sure that you're watching how you're programming your subconscious and how you are developing your self-talk.

Linton Bergsen:

Achieving material and spiritual success means this. You are constantly aware of the decisions you're making and how they present themselves in the real world, materially and otherwise, and how they affect you internally when you are making them and sometimes after you have made them and you've walked away. Material and spiritual success is based upon two very important points of self-awareness. The decision that you make externally is going to affect how you feel internally. If you keep overriding your internal compass to only work on your external outcome, you will not be going true north, you will not be combining what is important for achieving your spiritual and material success. You will go off course.

Linton Bergsen:

You will at some point have to recalibrate, readjust, reorganize and get back on track. If you want to feel in alignment, integrated and in sync with your spiritual and your material goals and you would like to achieve them. How long it takes for you to get back on track, well, that's really up to you. It can be a year or two, it can be a decade, it can be a month or two, but your feelings of disconnect with the decisions you're making in the real world, with how you feel internally, never go away until they become in alignment. In other words, let me give an example of that. If you are going forward in your life and you're involved on a career path that you don't feel is right for you, because that's internal, that is your spiritual compass, but you keep going to work and don't change your career path because of your material needs, which is understandable. However, following a spiritual path may require you to take some risks and get comfortable with change, because if you don't, years will go by and you will find that the feeling of discontent never left because you didn't listen to yourself internally. You may make the adjustment. You may not make the adjustment.

Linton Bergsen:

Some people go through their entire life unhappy with what they're doing for a living in their career, unhappy with what they are involved with as a relationship, and a lot of times what you'll find is, is that when you speak to people or you yourself may know this they knew it very early on. You knew it very early on. I don't feel right about this. So when you feel it very early on, that is where you begin to have that combination. That coming together of material and spiritual success is understanding that when you feel a disconnect early on with an action you're about to take in the world that is at odds with your internal world, then listen to it. When you do, and you have the power to listen to that inner voice and that intuitive guidance that says something isn't right, you will have very different outcomes and results in your life than if you didn't listen to it. Because opportunities open up to you when you listen to that intuitive voice, because you are activating other internal spiritual qualities that are very important to your own ongoing material and spiritual success, which is having faith and trust in what you are being guided to do. However, if you act in the moment without faith and trust and take opportunities that may be in front of you, that seem to be the only option at the time and you may be in a position where, if you need money, you take the job. If you feel that you want to be in a relationship, you take the relationship. It affects our personal and our professional lives, so you act upon it, knowing that it's off, it's not driving your compass true north.

Linton Bergsen:

The issue that we have in our lives ongoing every day with material and spiritual success is simply this. These two practical steps, as the title of the episode suggests. Are you in sync with your internal and external feelings and manifestations as they go forward in your life? Two steps. Internal, spiritual, external, material. Working in sync together. A simple example of that is this. If you are on a career path that you feel that is your purpose, that you feel in alignment with that, you feel empowered and motivated to get up and go to work every single day and it fulfills you internally, you now have the combination of material and spiritual success. That is a very simple but very understandable example. You may be pursuing something that you don't feel is easy to achieve or accomplish.

Linton Bergsen:

It's very important to understand when you are pursuing inner goals, inner feelings, being your authentic self, going into the world and presenting yourself as the unique individual that you are. It may not be the easiest thing to do, but I'm sure that you have experienced this. It is the most fulfilling realization as a self-realized individual, that being yourself makes you feel good. Owning your voice makes you feel good. There is no price on that. There's nothing that someone can say. I will give you this amount of money because you spoke up and felt good about what you had to say and you normally wouldn't do that. You felt empowered. That is internal.

Linton Bergsen:

You begin to feel a greater sense of well-being. You begin to have greater self-confidence. You begin to have greater self-awareness. You begin to realize that going to work every day is important, important fabric of your life, because most of your life is going to be spent working and making money. So why not be happy about what you're doing? Why not take the road less traveled, Maybe the road that is not as secure and the outcome isn't as sure as a road that most people go down and have traveled continuously. Because if you keep going down the road, everybody else is going down, you're going to end up where they end up. The only way the view can change in your life is if you lead and you don't follow, Because when you are at the front of the pack you get the clearest view, and when you're leading your own life, you not only have a clear view, you have a very clear vision of where you're taking yourself and where you want to end up. But that requires you to be so internally connected with what is guiding you and then being able to manifest that materially into the world, as a manifestation, in order for you to reap the benefits within this realm. Essentially, there are two realms, two worlds, two experiences, two expressions occurring simultaneously with you. I've mentioned it in previous episodes the human expression and the spiritual realization. Sometimes we don't give the spiritual realization the emphasis that it deserves and the priority that it needs.

Linton Bergsen:

As I mentioned earlier, we are predominantly centered on our feelings. Most of what we do is so that we feel good. We don't do anything so that we feel bad. Feeling is internal. You and I are designed by default to want to feel good. Our external behaviors, external actions are based upon that inner prompting.

Linton Bergsen:

The self-realized individual is very aware of a very important fact. Be very aware, self-aware of your inner promptings, of your compass, your values, who you are. What is prompting you internally to act? What is prompting you to manifest externally what it is that you want? All external behavior is driven by an internal requirement, an internal need that you, me, anybody, feels will be fulfilled by an action or a behavior that we are about to embark upon. We can get in a lot of trouble if we act on impulse, if we act out of ego, if we act out of anger. All of those are internal promptings motivating us to act a certain way in a given moment in time.

Linton Bergsen:

When you become very aware of your internal motivations, what happens outside of you changes, and the way that you present yourself to other people and the way the world responds to you and people respond to you changes as well. Because there's only one change that really makes a major difference in your life it's how you change yourself internally. It is the most difficult change to make, but the most profound change you will make for the outcomes that you really want, which are peace, love, calm. All are internal. So be aware of what it is that you are bringing about externally to manifest those internal feelings that you want. For example, the friends that you keep, the type and the amount of social media that you consume, the amount of time that you have set in your goals for self-reflection, meditation and self-care.

Linton Bergsen:

Achieving material and spiritual success is very simple. It's an integration. It's an integration of two things your inner compass, your inner sanctuary. Listening to that and then making sure your behaviors match what it is that you feel internally. If you can combine those two practical steps consciously ongoing, take a moment to step back and ask yourself at any moment in time, a simple question that makes you very self-aware of what it is that you are doing. What is driving me internally for the action that I am about to take externally? It's a little bit of work in the beginning when you start thinking that way, but it's very deliberate and if you want to achieve anything in life, especially material and spiritual success, you have to be very deliberate in your actions, your thoughts and your feelings because ultimately they will be the outcome of your life, and combining material and spiritual success will be the most fulfilling life that you could ever possibly have.

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.