Ted Larkins - The Get To Principle: How to Get Happy, Get Going, and Get To It in Life

Youre born and then you die, and in between, you Get To do this thing called life!

Im excited . I get to write this book. Through writing, I get to share not only ideas that have percolated in my mind for years but also ideas that have yet to emerge from this unfolding, yet-to-be-experienced life. I get to be who I have become and become even more through writing. I also get to be part of who you are becoming as you read this. These words are part of the evolving you, and you get to accept, reject, and ponder the concepts and images these words convey. Every moment is like that. Every breath, every sip of water, every interaction, every moment, good or bad, becoming who you are. You get to take part in the universal urge to create and become something better than you are now by becoming the best you can be. Oh yeah, we get to , all right!

OK, OK, I went a little overboard with the Get Tos in that opening paragraph. I promise thats not what this book is all about. Yes, youre going to Get To throughout these pages. But this isnt your average self-help book that scratches the surface of the human experience and creates a temporary respite from the challenges of life with some cute, catchy phrase. The Get To Principle is a jumping-off point into a mindset, a way of being that supports you in creating who you are destined to be in your life. It can be magical. And I dont mean magical as in creating things out of thin air, but rather as in building up who you are so that things you want come into your life almost magically.

The Get To Principle , when embraced, will lead to a deeper knowing of yourself, a look inward that creates what you have on the outside and creates lasting change. The early-twentieth-century writer James Allen wrote, It matters everything what you are within, for everything without will be mirrored and colored accordingly.

Although many of the concepts around Get To are simple, they can have a positive effect on all areas of your life. As an executive coach and corporate trainer, I assist all levels of management in applying Get To in order to look into who they are so that real change can happen in the workplace. Youll see in part 3 how you can apply some of the Get To practices in your company. I use Get To with my family, which allows for deeper and happier communication between us. Yes, even with my teenagers! And of course, personally, its changed how I live my life as I awaken to what I truly want to experience. By the end of our journey here, I hope you feel the same.

Our lives are filled with commitments, obligations, responsibilities, and to-do lists that read like novels. How about your to-do list? Is it like a telephone book and youre on A ? For many of us, as soon as we wake up, often with hearts racing in panic for the coming day, its an insanity of running from one thing to another, sure that each one is as important as the one before. Time is passing, and we complain that we just cant slow it down.

Are you ready for a change? Get To is a way out, a lifeline to getting back to sane. It is a simple but profound, challenging but fun way to live life.

Heres the thing about the Get To Principle: weve forgotten that each moment alive on the planet as a human is a miracle. Our bodies are bundles of energy made up of over fifty trillion cells. Each cell contains over three feet of DNA. This DNA stretched out would wrap around the earth two million times. These human bodies that we call ourselves are wonders of energy and complex systems that work every second of the day from birth to death, keeping us alive. They are the most advanced structures in the known universe and amazing flows of energy that our five (six if you quiet your mind enough) senses turn into this experience we call life.

But in the midst of everyday life, bills to pay, children and aging parents to take care of, relationships to navigate, and bodies to keep healthy, how do we tap into that feeling, the knowing that we are so lucky, blessed, or simply fortunate to have these moment-to-moment experiences? How do we access the understanding that our abilities to be aware were even having these experiences are monumental achievements of consciousness? And most important, how do we create and have meaning and joy in our everyday lives?

Our lives are filled with uncertainties that, if feared, lead to resisting what is happening and missing all the glory of the present moment. People are searching for relief from the burdens of everyday life, looking for the clarity of living more fully but rarely finding it. We feel that we are victims of our lives and often have grief that never seems to go away. Many of us are disgruntled with the confusing and often contradictory messages of our religions and the various new age and spiritual teachings, and we have given up hope. Using the Get To Principle changes all that.

I share what I share so that people can experience aliveness, right in this moment. I share because in doing so, I remember to wake up and truly live. In an obscure but powerful book on understanding human potential, You Are the Adventure , J. Allen Boone says that within each of us is a never-satisfied hunger for greater freedom of being and expression, and with it an almost constant urge to find new ways to get more out of life, ways that will be more productive and satisfying than those offered by the material senses.

Dont get me wrong, I like comforts and luxuries as much as the next person. But when having nice things is not the goal, when sitting quietly listening to the wind in the trees or watching a sunset is more important than what is on the cell phone screen, life takes on a whole new meaning.

How about you? What do you want in life?