Day 2: How the Virtue Will Change Your Entire Life
O SON OF BEING! With the hands of power I made thee and with the fingers of strength I created thee; and within thee have I placed the essence of My light. Be thou content with it and seek naught else, for My work is perfect and My command is binding. Question it not, nor have a doubt thereof. Baha’u’llah
The advantage of choosing a process or virtue for your focus of change this year is that virtues and processes are automatically generalized to all parts of your life, not just the one that may be giving you the most problem. When you learn how to have endurance, for instance, you can stay positive for long periods of time with any project. However, it is my experience that the mind often needs some help in the process of generalization.
The activity today is to make a list of the various parts of your life and then describe how the virtue will assist you in each one. Of course the more you understand what the energy of the virtue is the easier this will be. The divine world is their to assist you so it is very helpful to have a daily prayer asking for assistance in learning about and applying the energy to your life. God does not just handover to anyone a particular energy. You can’t go to your place of worship and expect that you will suddenly become a new person.
We have been given a free will and an ability to make efforts. These are gifts that are aspects of every human being. God expects us to use them because that is our nobility, but the divine world is also there to support and guide us along the way if we reach out to it. The communication from the spiritual dimension never stops flowing. For instance, something like world peace is not going to be delivered on a silver platter one day to us. We have to learn our way to it. A lot of people make the argument that God let such terrible tragedies happen in the 20th Century, but He has always done His part which is guidance and support. The problem for us is that we often don’t listen to the guidance. We do not have world peace right now because we don’t follow the guidance. Ask for help, listen for it, and then make lots of efforts and your world will change.
Get out some paper or use your computer and make the list.
Happy changing today.
Richard Hastings is an expert in change work and dream work and author of Dreams for Peace. He is a 
Dreams For Peace 
Hi Richard,
When you first posted this in 2013 I did the program with surprising results. I will have to go back to my notes to see for sure what virtue I chose back then on Day One but I think it was “Peacefulness”. The strategies you suggest here, when applied consistently and with courage, brought me to some inner goals I was going for.
I fit into the category you mention of individuals whose negative emotions used to tend to run away with me and I did take your advice and find many great supporters through the process of transformation including practitioners of Reiki, Body Talk, Non-Violent Communication, The Virtues Project, and of course good ol’ “talk therapy”.
This year, the “big issue” I resolved to tackle is the issue appearing in my re-occurring dreams since childhood in that someone I trusted drove a car of people into a lake. This fear shows up in my day-to-day life as the fear that someone I trust will take over a situation, environment, and turn everyone against me so that I am left without anything, feeling devastated.
So I’m going back to your Transformation Program to work with this issue this year.
The positive opposite of being devastated is being uplifted, and the practice of this might be transcendence, or being able to uplift or give hope to others. I found on the list you posted the virtues of “excellence” and even though I don’t feel ready to consider that I might be excellent at anything I just think that if I was an excellent driver of my own car in life that would be the best way to prevent someone else from taking the wheel. Would you agree that this would be a good virtue to go for in transforming this fear?
There are a number of big messes, issues and challenges I’m facing today that I will just consider “excellence” in my approach. When I think of this I feel as though there is enough time, resources, energy, clarity, faith, trust, capacity and skill to approach each challenge. So it does feel like it fits.
I will begin today saying the virtue to myself when I am challenged.
Thank you for your sharing of this Transformation Program. I know it works.
Excellent
Okay, I’ve made my list! My virtue to work on is orderliness, something sorely lacking in many areas of my life right now.