Clarify your life with the Dante Alighieri method

Are you confused and don't know what you want? This article will help you clarify yourself and get your life back in hand.

 

You know what most people find when they look within himself?

What, Andrè, those 5 euros that I lost last summer ?!

What people find - and so do you, if you're in a deadlock where you don't quite know where to direct your life - essentially they are 3 things.

I'll list them for you:

1. Confusion: you don't know what you want, you don't know the path you want to take and consequently you don't set goals or priorities.
2. Distraction: your attention is dispersed in thousands of small irrelevant streams.
3. Disorganization: your thoughts are out of order and slow down any action you take.

In short, a dark forest.

All seasoned with a sense of dissatisfaction, perhaps mixed with a pinch of tiredness and anxiety, this is because you realize that time continues to flow unstoppable, but your life, on the other hand, does not move half a millimeter. Fire ?!

What can we do when we find ourselves in the midst of this "dark forest“? Where can we start for to clarify our life?

In the past I have already suggested several practical strategies for ...

• find your way,
• to understand what do you want to be o, in generale,
• have a clearer idea of what do you want to do in life.

What I want to propose to you today, however, is a different method than usual, a method through which we will go deeper, a method that I would dare to define… divine! ;-)

Curious? Follow me.

Clarify with the Divine Comedy

“In the middle of the journey of our life
I found myself in a dark forest
because the right way was lost. "

Do you remember the Divine Comedy? Don't worry, no questions: I don't need to go back to the high school anthology!

In addition to being the most famous work of Italian literature, the Divine Comedy is the story of the journey of a man who, "in the middle of the journey" of life, it no longer finds (its) way.

A dark forest surrounds it, with its frightening tangle.

But behind the authoritative and wise guidance of Virgilio and inspired by love for Beatrice, passing through the circles of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, Dante discovers the greatest truths, finds answers to his questions and his vision gradually becomes more lucid e light.

The Divine Comedy is sublime poetry, but also profound philosophy, search of the fundamental meanings of the human journey.

So I thought I'd offer you a "journey" that traces Dante's stages and helps you to clarify where you want to go in your life :)

For each of the three songs, you will find a series of questions to answer.

These questions, together with the expressive writing exercises of the Free Pre-Course of # 365 - An Epic Year, they will be like focal lenses with which you will develop crystal clear vision for the new year (and beyond).

NOTE: I recommend that you answer these questions in writing, using paper and pen, so that you can then look at your reflections as a whole. And please: write your answers on instinct, without being too rational to rationalize.

Let me start by saying that not all questions necessarily suit you and your specific situation, but it is enough that only one asks you. snap a spark inside because this post was worth your time.

If it's all clear let's start rediscover the meaning of our life going down among the groups of the damned ...

 

Imagine our HELL to find the way to our paradise

The first place that Dante must visit is the reign of evil and to the eternal torments.

There he knows the pains of the damned and the sins that have led them to experience endless pains among the flames, the ice and the grip of the devils. Hell is therefore the representation of our worst sufferings, it is all that of terrible it can happen to us.

To resume the control of our life we ​​will start from our personal hell.

By reflecting on what we hate, on what scares us and on what is wrong with our life, we can in fact guess precisely what we love, what we want to achieve and what attracts us.

So answer these questions:

1. If you are not going to change anything in your life, what is the worst scenario where are you likely to find yourself in a few years?
2. What are the bad habits that are negatively affecting you?
3. What are yours worst fears?
4. What is it you don't like about world and people that surround you? What can you do to improve it?
5. What are you for willing to suffer? What are those passions o outdoor that you love so much that you would even go through hell to cultivate them?
6. If I should lose all your loved ones, if you were completely alone, what would you do?
7. in darkest moments of your life, what is it that has allowed you to resist and rise again?

Mind you, the purpose of this first part of our "journey" is certainly not to make you depress or despair. As mentioned, sometimes we need to imagine the worst and explore the darkest parts of our existence, to find the light and head towards it with newfound hope.

Once we have gone through our personal hell, we will in fact be ready to enter purgatory.

Learn to accept the expectation of PURGATORY

In Purgatory the souls who must atone their faults spend an indefinite time before they can go up to Heaven.

If we think of our earthly existence, Purgatory is none other than that a succession of days, one identical to the other, which characterizes most of our life.

We tend to underestimate these periods of waiting and ... "accumulation". Yet they represent the soil in which they sprout lush plants o weeds.

Clarifying our life therefore means understanding how we are willing to invest these long periods. Here is the list of useful questions to reflect on this stage of our Dante's journey:

1. Imagine finding yourself in a place where you will have to spend years and years of your life. It is a neutral place, but where you must necessarily stay and wait before your big opportunity: how would you make the most of this time? What activities would you dedicate yourself to so that it is not wasted? Whose company would you like to alleviate the boredom of waiting?
2. Which activities make you lose track of time?
3. If I didn't have a time limit, what would you dedicate yourself to?
4. Given that we are all drawn to the end result, what is a goal you would love to chase and of which you would enjoy the trip?
5. If you find yourself on a desert island (or in Purgatory), without cellular signal and Wi-Fi, how would you give meaning and value to your time?
6. What is a sector, an area or a subject, which you could studying indefinitely?
7. To which people and to which causes would you be willing to donate an important slice of your time?

If we are able to invest wisely (in goals, projects and activities) the time we will spend in ours Purgatory, this will pave the way for ours XNUMX. Paradiso.

"Passion is the result of action, not its cause."

Cal Newport.

Rediscover the meaning of life in the Grace of our Paradise

After observing the damned and visiting the penitent spirits of Purgatory, Dante arrives in the place of eternal bliss, fullness and enthusiasm where souls can contemplate God and live in Grace. The Blessed live in skies that become ever brighter and clearer.

Returning to our metaphor, Grace (which, prosaically, is also called flow or flow) is an extraordinarily effective compass for helping us to clarify and to orientation our life.

In general, learning to interpret our emotions, knowing how to read them and knowing how to listen to each other better, is a useful way to find our way. In this regard, I therefore propose the last series of questions:

1. What is it that makes you feel good, takes you to seventh heaven, does it light you up?
2. Which activities, instead of getting tired, give you back a feeling of energy and warmth (also physical) when do you perform them?
3. If you had all the riches in this world and didn't have to worry about money, what activities would you continue to do?
4. What activities they make you feel grateful?
5. What would it allow you to cultivate more beauty in your life?
6. If I could choose 5 people to attend more to grow and improve, who would they be?
7. What projects help you develop yours fantasy and yours creativeness?

Heaven on earth you can find it in what you do with joy and pleasure, in what makes you feel fulfilled and appreciated, in what makes you grow and gives you positive energy.

Of course, even these apparently "perfect" activities will require ringworm, commitment and determination, but when we have clarified our life and we know we are finally on the right path, the inevitable sacrifices are experienced as challenges and not as impositions.

But aren't we perhaps forgetting someone ?!

… And Beatrice?

I hope that at least one of the 21 questions I have asked you to help you clarify your life has aroused in you a different point of view, A 'unexpected insight or anidea that you have finally managed to focus.

This first spark will be your GPS, your lighthouse, your ... Beatrice.

Don't let her die amidst the thousands of distractions of the day.

Keep cultivating it, revive it, until you can detonate the focus of change.

If you wish, then, we can continue this work of "clearing the fog" together.