Whether in a period of economic uncertainty or not, there are certain kinds of people who are never short on opportunities. Whether getting promotions or attracting new business for their own enterprise, these souls seem to be impervious to setbacks (at least, in the long term).

These cherished souls, we might say, are irreplaceable. There are irreplaceable employees, employers, small business owners, vendors, suppliers, colleagues, and even customers.

Seven Qualities of Irreplaceable People

What are the qualities that make individuals so desirable that a company or client can’t do without them? What makes someone irreplaceable?

Irreplaceable people:

1. Constantly acquire knowledge and refine their skills. They are committed to personal and professional growth; they understand that there is always more to learn and that every field is subject to constant change.
2. Focus on creating value for their company or their clients. They thrive on finding new or better ways to contribute to those they serve.
3. Find ways to solve problems. You’ll never hear an irreplaceable person say, “It can’t be done.” Instead they’ll say something like, “Let me think on that and get back to you.”
4. Have high integrity and the attitude of willingness to serve. You’ll never see an irreplaceable person acting entitled or playing the role of a victim.
5. Innovate. They constantly look for new ways of doing things. Steve Jobs developed a culture of innovation at Apple by insisting on daily innovation.
6. Take responsibility for what happens—no matter whether they feel they are responsible or not. And therein lies their power and ability to foster growth.
7. Adapt to change. As change is a constant in business as in life, irreplaceable people have a natural ability or willingness to bend like a willow instead of breaking like an oak.

Those who adopt this overall attitude never have to worry about their employment—at least, not for long. True creators attract opportunities because they are such valuable assets and tend to be in short supply.

But there’s an even better reason to adopt these seven qualities: They bring greater levels of fulfillment and meaning to your work. And that’s reason enough.

Last week we saw that when bad stuff strikes, the first step is to take responsibility. This week, let’s examine why this is so.

Why should we take responsibility for what happens to us whether we believe we were involved in manifesting the “bad” events or not?

Philosophically, you either believe that you’re at the affect of circumstance—that life is random chance and that God does indeed play dice—OR you come to believe that there is inherent order beyond our perception (although on rare occasion we may get a glimpse of it).

If you believe in the former (random chance) then you have little power—you are at the affect and there’s nothing you can do about it so don’t bother trying. If you believe in the latter (intrinsic order, divine justice) then you have power: the power to make changes, to grow, to let go of false belief systems, to adopt higher understandings.

One path brings fear and anxiety; the other brings acceptance. One path narrows our perceived choices; the other provides ever-growing possibilities for transformation.

Taking Full Responsibility

So what does it mean to take responsibility?

Realizing that we’re manifesting everything in our life (consciously or unconsciously)—attracting what we perceive to be desirable and undesirable—we now have the power to change. Taking full responsibility, we maximize our opportunities for growth. Every time we deny responsibility, projecting it outside of ourselves, we limit our growth.

This is true for every area of your life: You are where you are financially, for example, because of you—your resistance or lack thereof, the quality of your decisions, your level of education and creativity, and so on. You are where you are—professionally, in your relationships, emotionally, psychologically, physically, and so on—because of your own decisions. With the acceptance of this (and we all have an inherent resistance to it) comes a profound level of empowerment.

Responsibility in Action

As soon as an unpleasant event (the bad stuff) occurs, ask yourself: What am I doing to manifest or attract this? What within me is bringing about these events?

Note that these questions are not asked from a place of self-blame or guilt. Mistakes are par for the course and the primary mistake is almost always ignorance (and karma too). If we don’t continue to question—to find ways to development in multiple areas of life—we tend to remain in ignorance.

Then, having put forth these all-important questions, be patient. Stay quiet. Listen to your intuition. Pay attention to your dreams. Consult a mentor. Pray. The insights will come.

There’s little we can say with absolute certainty other than: stuff happens.

Stuff happens to all of us. Sometimes good, often times not so good. Trying to only have good stuff is a sure way to be miserable as the bad stuff will surely come—it’s a fact of life. As author Andy Andrews says, “We’re either in a crisis, coming out of a crisis, or heading for a crisis.”

So if we can accept that a unique blend of good stuff and bad stuff is intrinsic to life, what can we do to “smooth out” the ride so that the bad stuff doesn’t consume our attention? Put simply, what should we do when bad stuff happens?

We have two options when bad stuff strikes: we can blame others and play the role of victim OR we can take responsibility for the bad stuff.

The benefit to playing the victim role, as most of us know, is that we don’t have to consciously feel shame or guilt. Blaming others and therefore absolving ourselves, we neatly tuck away all those nasty, painful feelings that could be directed at ourselves. A martyr of circumstance, the world may be against us, but at least the bad stuff isn’t our fault.

Now to our second option: we take responsibility for the bad stuff. Taking responsibility doesn’t mean we become self-loathing, hurting our self-esteem; it simply means that we take ownership of what happens to us—whether we’re aware of what we did or not.

Four Steps to Transcending the Bad Stuff

That’s Step 1: Accept responsibility for the bad stuff. Step 2: Address the negative emotions arising around the bad stuff. There are numerous ways to discharge negative emotions: meditation, breathing exercises, releasing, EFT, and so on. After getting in an argument with a friend, don’t waste time trying to analyze the argument when you’re simmering with anger or upset. As we’ve said before, negative emotions hinder our executive function: we can’t operate rationally and access intuition when we’re subsumed with negative emotions.

Once we’ve discharged the negative emotion (through acceptance or letting it go), we’re ready for Step 3: Examine the experience for life lessons. What did the experience teach us? How might we act, behave, or think differently if the situation presented itself again? (If you skipped Step 2, this line of questioning will be fruitless.)

And, finally, Step 4: Let it go. Move on. Good stuff, bad stuff: Allow it to all be as it is. Let go of trying to change it. This stance brings peace and equanimity. It facilitates growth and maturation. There’s no value in carrying the memory of bad stuff around with you like luggage. Travel light and liberate your life adventure.

The idea of the heavenly evokes images of white clouds, bright lights, choirs of angels in flowing white gowns, and harp music chiming in the background.

To many, the goal of spiritual work is unconditional love, joy, and peace. The hidden assumption is that we should exhibit these qualities the moment we step foot on a spiritual path.

Many, however, find the opposite is so: the moment we commit to “spiritual work” we experience increased pain and suffering, a torrent of negative emotions flowing from multiple, sometimes hidden, directions. Striving for positive emotions (like compassion) often bring it’s opposite (like anger). Many have discovered that the more loving they try to be toward others, the more reasons they find not to be loving.

While this might deter some potential seekers from the Path, it’s actually meant to encourage. It’s common to think that spiritual work is pleasant all the time; it’s also common to discover that this isn’t so (after all, it’s called spiritual work for a reason). Continuing on one’s Path after this discovery is the mark of the devoted seeker.

Cloud Removal as a Path to Transcendence

Numerous spiritual teachers like David R. Hawkins say that the sun is always shining; we need only remove the clouds. The clouds represent our psychological and spiritual work. The sun is the Light that we are (the Self, with a capital “S”), only realizable when the clouds are removed. Our clouds are many: negative emotions, poor habits and tendencies, false identifications, addiction to our minds and thinking, and so on.

Examining, understanding, and dissolving these clouds represent the core of serious psycho-spiritual work. That’s why it’s work. Once this is accepted as given, we can approach our darker side with courage, forbearance, and patience. Then, situations that trigger our negative emotions, for example, become opportunities to develop instead of reasons to feel bad about ourselves, getting discouraged about our “lack of progress.”

The problem comes not when we’re experiencing negative emotions, it’s when we’re not aware of our emotions and are projecting them onto others.

We might say that events that trigger our darker side are vital to our spiritual progress. Through every upset—every time life throws us something unexpected and unpleasant—we can feel grateful for the opportunity to grow, to remove more clouds.

So instead of offering you a safe and smooth ride through life, perhaps today I’ll wish you a bumpy, hazardous journey on your spiritual quest. Buckle up!

Think of your ego as your self-image. Your self-image is how you see yourself—your appearance, abilities, and personality.

Parts of our self-image we like; other parts we don’t. To avoid dealing with the parts we don’t like—our moral defects or shortcomings (our fears, selfishness, and judgments about others), instincts, and weaknesses—we repress them. By repressing these undesirable aspects of ourselves, we become unconscious to them.

But like when we sweep dust under a rug, the repressed aspects are still present, only we can’t see that they belong to us. Instead, we project these undesirable aspects onto others: we see the undesirable trait outside of us, projecting the trait onto other people.

This is why projection, in psychoanalysis, is considered one of the ego’s defense mechanisms: To protect itself when the ego doesn’t know how to deal with parts of itself—ugly parts, if you will—it simply pushes them out of consciousness (repression) and then projects them outside of it (projection). Once projected, the ego no longer has to deal with the defect.

All of our undesirable traits—anything we fear will damage our self-image—gets repressed out of consciousness. Carl Jung labeled this composite of repressed qualities our shadow. Our shadow is all the nastiness (part of our full humanness) we have within us, but can’t accept. When we have a strong negative reaction to something someone does or says, it’s likely that we’re “projecting our shadow” onto them. If we weren’t projecting our shadow, we probably wouldn’t be having such a strong reaction.

Contacting the Shadow

To development psychologically, then, requires us to contact our shadow: to get to know it, understand it, and accept it as a part of what we are.

With integrity, we begin to take note any time we’re having negative reactions to others. When someone angers us, for example, we can determine what qualities we see in the other person that is activating us. Let’s say a neighbor is being unkind. We can ask ourselves: What aspect of ourselves is unkind?

We accept our shadow by bringing it into conscious awareness and no longer repressing or projecting it onto others. (This, of course, doesn’t mean that your neighbor wasn’t unkind. He may very well be, but if you weren’t repressing your own unkindness or some other attribute you saw in him, you wouldn’t become so emotionally activated by him.)

Another way of contacting the shadow is through the 12-Step Program, which has shadow work built into Step 4: “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” This step requires us to examine our defects and shortcomings in a benign, compassionate way.

Through the course of our shadow work, life becomes more benign, more peaceful. We no longer ruminate about issues, harbor resentments, or toil with negative emotions. It’s a fair price to pay for the uncomfortable, often painful, work involved in meeting our shadow (and it is indeed work). But the long term benefits for our soul are beyond measure.

We can approach growth in life and business in two primary directions: improve areas of weakness or capitalize on our strengths. The former makes us well rounded; the latter expands the depth of our knowledge and skills.

The Wheel of Life

To illustrate, recall the Wheel of Life, a powerful coaching tool that highlights the key areas of our life: health, family, finances, relationships, emotions, spirituality, work, personal growth, and so on. The Wheel puts each category on common ground and demands that we pay attention to each category. Thus, if we’re excelling in our work and finances, but are ignoring our health and relationships, the Wheel directs our attention to the areas that are disharmonizing our life. (When we neglect any major area we eventually find ourselves in crisis.)

The Wheel of Life can also be used to embrace our strengths: areas of natural talents and abilities that bring us fulfillment and often make us more marketable in our field.

Going for depth—improving, refining, and transforming our current strengths—puts us on the road toward excellence, mastery, and self-actualization. And we should accept no less from ourselves.

Although it would be convenient to choose one direction—to improve our weaknesses OR focus on our strengths—wisdom dictates that both initiatives are necessary for a life of growth, integration, and wholeness.

Four Steps to Foster Growth in Both Directions

First, be sure to carefully construct your personal Wheel of Life by identifying the major categories relevant to you. The categories mentioned above are a good place to start.

Second, rate how you’re doing in each area on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being poor and 10 being excellent. Be honest.

Third, identify your three weakest areas defined by your lowest three scores. Determine two or three action steps you can take within the next 48 hours.

Fourth, looking at your top three areas, do the same thing: determine what steps you can take to make improvements and facilitate growth in your strongest areas.

Improving our weaknesses brings greater balance and equanimity to our lives. Capitalizing on our strengths brings greater joy and meaning. Both are important initiatives for a fruitful life journey.

In a culture of excess, we can all benefit from learning the value of economy—economy of effort, time, and resources.

Valuing economy doesn’t mean being frugal. It means being wise, as we have limited energy, time, and resources at our disposal. The less awareness we have about economy, the more fragmented our lives tend to become.

If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you already value economy, as it’s a recurrent theme. Valuing economy translates into mastering the 80/20 principle, using time blocks, unplugging, valuing simplicity, adopting dying virtues, letting go of busyness, and staying results focused while on a task.

Personally, I strongly value economy of effort, time, and resources. I’m constantly on the lookout for ways to free up time to make room for what’s important.

Below are a few strategies and services I’ve found to be beneficial in reserving time for what’s important instead of responding to the busyness of the moment. Some of these ideas may seem extreme or odd to some readers; perhaps they are, but I’m always amazed at the habitual activities people do unconsciously; we rarely invest time in evaluating whether or not our actions are necessary, productive, or beneficial.

If you’re committed to creating more time for what’s meaningful to you, learn to scrutinize your daily routine. Assume there’s a way to reduce your sense of busyness so you can get on with real living.

Helpful Strategies for Creating More Time

Limit Email Usage: If you’re checking email continuously throughout the day, you’re wasting a great deal of time. Many people keep their email programs open and their cell phones on throughout the day—it’s the surest way to promote inefficiency and time wasting coupled with a lack of creativity.

The human mind simply does not focus and function well amidst continual distraction. We are not effective at multitasking. Batch your email in blocks of time instead of responding to each new “ding” as it enters your inbox. Similarly, if you’re using automated billing (e-billing takes care of your credit card and other bills automatically so you never incur late fees), there’s little reason to open your snail mail every day when you get home. It’s one more thing we unconsciously do to fill up our day—one more meaningless activity. Batch your mail; open it once a month or whatever is appropriate for you.

Restrict Social Media Usage: Yes, I said it: restrict social media usage (or avoid it whenever possible). Social forces are strong and resisting their influence can be difficult, but services like Facebook and Twitter (and thousands of others), while beneficial to a certain degree, are serious time wasters, often only establishing loose connections and the illusion of meaning at best. Ask yourself: Is reading “updates” really the best investment of my time? On your deathbed, will you think, I wish I spent more time reading updates and staying connected with people on Facebook and Twitter.

Limit Internet Usage: The Internet can be a valuable tool—a reservoir of useful information and time saving resources. But, as many have discovered, it can very easily suck away our time. Suffering from infolust, many of us have become addicted to checking weather, headline news, blogs, stock quotes, email, texts, social network updates, sports scores, and a barrage of other forms of constantly changing data. Noticing this tendency within us can be very revealing.

Batch Tasks: Certain tasks, like running errands, can be bunched together to save time. For example, how often do you go food shopping? If it’s more than once or twice each week, you’re probably going too often. Keep a detailed shopping list; become diligent about updating it when you’re running low on essential items. This advice might sound obsessive-compulsive, but every extra trip to the store wastes time, accumulating to several lost days out of a year.

Helpful Services for Leveraging Your Time

E-Billing: Set up recurring monthly bills for automated billing either through your bank or credit card company. You’ll never have to worry about late fees and you’ll avoid the urgency to open your snail mail as soon as it arrives (see above). I see very little reason to spending valuable time opening bills, writing checks, and mailing them to your service providers each month. If you calculate the cumulative time you spend paying bills each year, you’ll better appreciate the benefits of automated billings. Use a free service like Mint.com to aggregate your financial obligations so you can see all your transactions in one convenient place.

Phone Guardians: Who says you need to be available for unscheduled business calls? Every unscheduled call is a disruption that fragments your time, cuts your flow, and reduces your creativity. (If you’re just starting out in your vocation, of course, take the calls.) Use email to schedule calls whenever possible; it saves a tremendous amount of time. CallerID is a blessing to weed out distracting conversations (when you’re in “work mode”), as is Google’s Voice service that helps you route, record, and receive calls. You can also shut off your ringer when you don’t want to be disturbed. (Despite what some believe, the world will still survive without your availability for a few hours—or even a few days.)

E-Shopping: I honestly don’t know how other e-tailers can compete with Amazon.com. Amazon.com has brought new meaning to “convenient shopping.” With their Amazon Prime program, you can get most items Amazon offers delivered to your door within 48 hours—with free shipping. And with their Subscribe and Save program, you can get many of your household essentials (including tissues, paper towels, and supplements) sent to you automatically at various time intervals and at additional discounts.

There are many other strategies and services available, but this post is already running long. Feel free to post your ways of simplifying and saving time in the comment section below (or click here if you’re not reading this on the site).

Albert Schweitzer observed that we are becoming slaves to technology—and that was before World War I. Many contemporary philosophers have observed that cultures without meaning have no choice but to fall prey to technology, looking to technology for the answers to life’s questions. While technology may offer certain conveniences, it doesn’t bring meaning or purpose into our lives.

In many ways, technology has become our master, while we have become its slave. If you doubt this, consider what you do in your free moments: do you relax into the moment or do you check your email, respond to a text, or read an update in a frenetic effort to stay current (fueled by a subconscious fear of falling behind)?

Watch what passengers do the moment a plane lands. Watch what executives do the moment a meeting ends (and often during the meeting). Watch what consumers do the moment they exit a movie theater. We gaze at a back-lit screen held comfortably in our hands. Our technology has trained us: we are its servant; it is our master.

The fundamental issue isn’t with technology itself. As Bolivar J. Bueno points out in Why We Talk, communication is a biological imperative. Therefore, as a means of communication, technology is merely facilitating an innate drive within us.

But when left unchecked—unexamined—this biological drive can consume us. By triggering a constant stream of emotion and thought, technology can rob us of the present moment.

Our primary concern, then, isn’t with technology since it’s our minds that become enslaved to technology, not us. But are we slaves to our minds? When our perpetual thinking rules us—instead of us accessing our thinking mind when needed—we are at the mercy of our animal instincts, habits, and tendencies. Remember: to our animal brain, the drive to stay busy trumps the intention of experiencing the freedom and joy of the present moment.

As long as our inner animal is in command, technology will continue to dominate us.

The Way Out of Our Attachments to Technology

The first step to freeing ourselves from technology is awareness—becoming aware of our tendencies to stay perpetually busy, always thinking, always needing to “figure it out,” always being consumed by the seduction of new information.

The second step is to foster compassion. With compassion for ourselves and others, we begin to see that we inherited our propensities for constant busyness so there’s no need to feel bad about it. Guilt and shame only hinder us from creating positive change.

Third, carve out space for what the Hindus call sadhana or inner practice. Set parameters (time blocks) for facilitating contemplation, meditation, and reflection. Learn to quiet the mind so that you can expand and deepen your awareness of your habits, behaviors, and motivations.

With this heightened awareness of your habits, behaviors, and motivations, you’re no longer enslaved to the effects of the mind’s incessant thinking or its compulsion for technology. Technology, then, becomes an asset you leverage when appropriate, but otherwise set aside.

Time blocks are scheduled intervals of time for doing what’s important to you. Time blocks can be used for:

• Creative projects like writing
• Reflective time for meditation or contemplation
• Reading
• Quality time with friends and family
• Or anything else that’s important to us.

Time blocks are a creative person’s salvation in a world of perpetual busyness.

Time blocks only work, however, when we honor this time as sacred.

Respect the Time You Schedule for Yourself

Ever notice how when someone makes an appointment with us, we honor that appointment above all else? Yet, when we make an appointment with ourselves, we are likely to change or break the appointment in a moment’s notice, at the whim and caprice of another or the demands of the moment.

Why is this often the case? Are other people’s needs more important than our own?

What if the appointments we make with ourselves were just as important, if not more important, than the appointments we make with others? If that were so, would it still be easy to neglect our own endeavors in favor of other’s demands (and “other’s demands” could be our own businesses, if we’re self-employed)?  Or would we find a way to honor our appointments with ourselves at all costs?

The worst thing we can do is make an appointment with ourselves and not keep it. Better to not make the appointment at all than to make it and not honor it.

If someone makes an appointment with us and doesn’t keep it—and does this over and over again—what might we think about this person’s character? Similarly, what message do we send to ourselves when we make a personal commitment and we repeatedly don’t keep it? How might it subconsciously affect our self-image?

The lesson: be very careful in making appointments or scheduling time for yourself. Take this scheduling process seriously and commit to it only if you’re certain that you’re willing to honor that time.

Adopt the Habit of Making Time for Yourself

The tension you may experience with keeping time for yourself will dissipate with practice. This structuring of personal time might seem rigid at first, but that’s only because you’re developing a new habit—a habit of establishing creative time for yourself on a consistent basis.

Once this habit is adopted, it becomes a natural part of who you are; you will no longer be apologetic about your creative time, nor will you need to negotiate with yourself or others. You’ll simply be grateful that you have time for what matters most to you.

Who’s your primary relationship with? Is it with your spouse? Your soul mate? Your best friend? Your kids? A parent? A dog or cat?

Without exception, your primary relationship must be with yourself. This isn’t egocentric, narcissistic, or self-centered; it’s good common sense. Why? When you first explore yourself—who and what you are, why you are here, what’s the meaning of life and death—your other relationships will have profoundly greater depth and meaning.

Know Thyself

“Know thyself” isn’t simply a quotable dictum from poets and philosophers. Brilliant minds from Socrates to Shakespeare understood that knowing oneself is the prime directive—the focal point of authentic spiritual work. It’s the work of recovery through 12-Step programs (especially Step 4, taking a “fearless moral inventory”) and the cornerstone of teachings on self-inquiry like Ramana Maharshi’s favorite question he offered to his students: “Who am I?”

The question of who we are is not to be taken lightly. Self-discovery requires focused attention, curiosity, and earnestness. Casually pondering the question while driving or when walking through the woods might be a good place to start,  however, eventually the question must permeate our very being.

When our focus is always on others instead of ourselves, we’re probably in co-dependent relationships. It’s all too easy to get caught up in someone else’s life instead of working on our own. While we often think we’re being selfless or caring of the needs of others by focusing on them, with closer examination, we often discover that, in truth, we’re trying to control the other person.

Be Mindful of Projection

Projecting our own problems onto others is the ego’s classic defense mechanism. As long as the problem is “out there,” we don’t have to deal with it internally. Some people go their entire lives projecting their problems onto others; sadly, these people deny themselves the transformation that occurs when we take full responsibility for our own lives.

The more we come to know ourselves, the more we awaken to what we really are, the more equanimity and peace will reside within us. This equanimity pays dividends in all of our relationships (especially the challenging ones).

And if you answered “God” to the question of whom your primary relationship is with, that’s a good answer too. Our connection with a Higher Power is strengthened when we know what we are first; then we can honor that Higher Power with genuine fervor and reverence.