Obtaining the Keys to Your Kingdom

I believe that in each man there is a prince and a king. In each woman there is a princess and a queen. Each of them has the ability to obtain the keys to his or her personal kingdom. However, somewhere along the way, society classified us and we got it in our heads that the keys to the kingdom are reserved for a special few.

Believe that and you will be stuck with nothing more than the rabbit's foot key-chain that’s supposed to hold those very keys that you seek. So, how do you find the keys to the kingdom? Let's go through a couple of ideas.

• Courage
  Without a doubt the one of the most important qualities that will enable you to find the keys to your kingdom is courage. This means having the courage to walk away from stability. This means having the courage to keep going when you seem like you won’t make it. This means having the courage to go against the grain, when the world around you throws doubt at you.

• Risk
  It’s an obvious fact that with high risk, comes with high reward. For most of you who read my blog, you know that I spent the last 6 months looking for a job. I found one and two weeks later, I decided to quit because I hated it. That was a big risk, but one I was willing to take. A blogger I had the pleasure to interview recently said “Sometimes you’ll take 2 steps backward to take 20 steps forward.”

Risk and reward have an almost interdependent relationship. If you have been holding back on something, go ahead and take that gamble and let the chips fall where they may. Whether you succeed or fail, you succeed because you improve and learn.

• Your Greatest Strength
  If there’s anything that will allow you to find the keys to your kingdom and open yourself up to the riches that await you, it’s finding your greatest strength. If people in high school knew that I run a self-help blog about positive thinking, they would be shocked considering that I was once likened to Holden Caufield.

Finding your greatest strength is really about riding a wave in the direction that it’s taking you. If you do this, then your effort will be minimal because you are embracing what you do best naturally. If you try to ride in the direction opposite of where it’s going, you’re going to have a short ride and inevitably will have to start all over again. A few days ago I posted a Facebook status to ask my friends “what are my greatest strengths?” and I learned quite a bit. To find your greatest strengths, ask people around you “what do you think I’m good at?” Choose people who have spent the most time around you. They’re best suited to answer that question.

Just realize that everybody deserves to have the keys to his or her kingdom, and obtaining them is just a matter of understanding how they are obtained. I’m sure there are many ways in which these keys can be obtained, but these are just a few simple ideas on how to get there.

Written on 3/11/2010 by Srinivas Rao. Srinivas is a volunteer for the Quality of Life Project. The website shares best practices on getting the most out of life from well known types like Richard Branson and Tom Skerritt to lesser known but equally interesting individuals. The mission of the organization is to help people live more enjoyable, purposeful and contented lives. Srinivas also writes at www.theskooloflife.com.

Photo Credit: Travis Hornung