“What am I supposed to do?” is a question I hear a lot in my intuitive practice.

A more challenging question is: “How do I become my best self?” This melds the search for identity and meaning with the practical, emotional, mystical, and, yes, fun aspects of our personal and professional lives.

The best thing? Both questions have the same answer: Get out of your way and get love.

Okay, fine, you say, but how do you do that?

You connect — with yourself, others and the community of all life. Yes, it’s hard work, but it will forever change how you look at the world and your role in it.

Ready? Here are five tips to get you started.

1. Change your mindset. As humans we’re trapped in a mindset we created: it says that we are at the “top of the food chain,” and so in charge. The problem is, the human paradigm of the world is wrong. From my intuitive practice of speaking and working with all life, whether animals, homes, businesses or nature, I know that everything is alive, has a soul, consciousness, responsibility and free choice. Most important: we are equals with all beings. This is the earth paradigm, and it is absolutely the way the planet really works — the only ones who don’t seem to know it are humans.

Meeting all life as equals is liberating: freed from the burden and ego-lock of being in charge, we can discover how the world really works, and how we can work with it. Everything changes — science, technology, medicine, art, politics, religion, culture, our daily lives. How do you live in a world where everything, from our chairs to animals to a volcano, has a job to do — and an attitude?

We can better find our way in the world when we understand the path that other beings take, and how the patterns weave together. It’s easy enough to do: sit down and talk to other beings. For example, ask your home how you can make it more comfortable in its work. When we expand into wonder, awe, respect and collaboration, we learn how our unique talents and abilities mesh with those of all beings, and how we each contribute to the welfare of our living, conscious planet. If we’re open to experience life as it really exists, we’re open to the mystery of the universe itself. Fun happens. Great choices (and conversations) abound.

2. Tap your intuition. Tapping our intuition is no more (or less) a spiritual practice than tapping our other senses. We are incomplete without our intuition. Dig deep to discover your strongest intuitive skill: knowing, seeing, feeling or hearing. Practice with simple things, like choosing dessert or buying a new shirt. As you intuitively learn to make better daily choices, you will enhance your ability to make life-changing ones, from where to live to what work to do. Intuition is our birthright: learning to use it means you’re taking the blinkers off being fully human, enriching your life and all others.

3. Claim your power. Never give your power away. The power sappers can be subtle: “synchronicity” and “what’s meant to be” can be two of them. It’s inspiring to get signs that offer both insight and connection, but sometimes things just happen. Learn from them, but never surrender deeply informed personal choice. Be resourceful, thoughtful, inventive. When you seek outside human opinions, accept only what resonates with your deeper, intuitive self. What is your truth? You, and only you, are the leader of yourself.

4. Get practical. Keep your day job. Taking care of the basics will help you get firmly grounded and balanced in the everyday world. Practicality informs inspiration.

5. Get creative — take time off. Taking a break is not only okay, it’s necessary. Taking time to laugh, play, and explore the world around you refreshes and enlightens you. Honest.

These five tips will help you become your own best self. Of course, they all come down to one: get connected.

While we all want and need to find meaning in our lives, our deepest yearning is for connection to the mystery of life itself. We find it in a healthy, balanced, collaborative relationship with the community of all life. We find it in love.

We start by creating our best selves. By changing our mindset to recognize the equality of all life, fine-tuning our intuition, and becoming strong and practical and creative, we shake off the “should” and free ourselves to love. Love connects us to our essential worthiness: we need to love and be loved, we are worthy of love, and we achieve that by loving ourselves first.

How we carry that into creating fulfilling lives is the mystery we’re here to explore. Have fun with it!

© 2012 Robyn M Fritz

Thank you to New Connexion: Pacific Northwest’s Journal of Conscious Living, for publishing this article on Sept. 17, 2012