When you’ve hit the depths of despair, often you feel as though life holds nothing for you.  You’re drifting from one dead end job to the next and consumed by money worries.  Your wife may just have left you, your home is about to be repossessed and you’re scared your boss plans to fire you.

During life’s toughest moments, it’s extremely challenging to feel positive about the future, let alone next week or even tomorrow.  Yet some of the greatest visionaries hit rock bottom before finding the will and determination to climb the ladder of happiness, health, wealth and success to make their dreams become reality.  What they all had in common is the fact that they set goals for the future, helping them to create positive mental images of how life can be and give motivation to work towards it.

The secret to all personal transformation is intent. We can only transform ourselves to the degree that our intent is engaged. The good news is that it’s easier to engage our intent than it may seem initially.
The first step is to actually decide that transformation is what you want, and this is not such an easy decision to make as you might think.

Ultimately, each one of us experiences spirituality according to our individual values. In other words, if your highest value is your family and your children, then you’ll feel that your highest calling is to raise a magnificent family. President Kennedy’s mother, Rose, provided an obvious example when she said, “I looked at child rearing not only as a work of love and duty, but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world, and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it.” Raising her children was her spiritual quest.

“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”

Sam Walton, Founder of Wal-Mart

Sam Walton lived a life which displayed everything he believed in. Over the years, especially since Wal-Mart became a publicly traded company on the stock market, Sam’s vision and philosophy have slowly been forgotten. Although Wal-Mart may not offer the greatest customer service today, Sam’s words on the importance of customers to any business are timeless.

The highest spiritual path is life itself. If you know how to live daily life, it all becomes a liberating experience. But first you have to approach life properly, or it can be very confusing. To begin with, you have to realize that you really only have one choice in this life, and it’s not about your career, whom you want to marry, or whether you want to seek God. People tend to burden themselves with so many choices. But, in the end, you can throw it all away and just make one basic, underlying decision: Do you want to be happy, or do you not want to be happy? It’s really that simple. Once you make that choice, your path through life becomes totally clear.