First, for those of you reading, forgive me for the time that's gone by. A few weeks ago, I sat at my computer, intent on writing Step 5. In those beginning moments of writing, when I'm accustomed to centering myself and gathering my thoughts, I instead experienced a complete and total paralysis. It was not writer's block; it was much bigger than that. I would perhaps call it life block. Unexpectedly, and with no warning, I felt an overwhelming frustration. It was an all-encompassing, mind-halting, horrible feeling. I knew what I wanted to say, but quite literally could not convince my mind to join me in the task of writing. As I recall it now, I remember thinking that the feeling must have been something like what a person with chronic ADD feels. I simply could not focus, and I began to feel frantic. After about an hour of this struggle, I gave in. Step 5 was not going to be written that day.
I then took a step back from this blog, accepting that something in my own life must need attention before I could write the next step in achieving a life of personal power. I was unclear about the details, but knew I was not in the position to be offering any sort of guiding thought; there was a realization I needed to come to.
Step 5 is about getting clear on what it is we actually want. Many self improvement philosophies contain this concept. They pretty much all repeat that, in order to create the happiness, relationships, and success you desire, you must get crystal clear about what exactly it is that you want. Until you've done this, you're providing the universe with mixed messages, and strong results cannot be delivered in such an environment.
Initially, when I sat to write Step 5 a few weeks ago, my intent was to capsulize my own take on this concept, phrase it in a way that I thought would be most useful, and send it out there for you all to read. What I did not consider, though - and perhaps I was to a certain extent in my own place of denial - was that I've been struggling greatly with this concept recently in my own personal life.
I realized just last night (so this is fresh off the press, my friends), that there is a reason why the idea of needing to get clear on what we want invites a huge amount of fear for many people. I can only tell you what I've experienced, but I'm wagering a guess that there are many, many people out there who can relate.
For me, the idea of getting clear on what exactly it is that I want seems to close a part of me. It's as though I physically feel limitation, and yet cannot pin point why. Last night, I found myself giving this some serious thought. I've accepted for years that I must get clear on what I want before I can get it, so why did the process of determining the specifics make me feel claustrophobic? That's when I realized an underlying assumption I had been making. I realized that, within the process of clearly naming what it was that I wanted, I felt the need to determine what it was exactly that I wanted for the rest of my life.
Can you imagine the pressure? In the middle of trying to specify what I wanted the next months or year of my life to look like, I felt locked in a crazy world of labyrinths all leading to different possible futures. Needless to say, in this atmosphere, nothing but insanity ensues. We can't help but think: "What if I choose the wrong thing? What if doing this now will not lead to what I want to be doing five years from now? Or thirty years from now? I need to figure out what I want to be doing thirty years from now in order to know what I should be wanting to do now! " I'm sorry, but in the words of Frank Berone from Everybody Loves Raymond, "Holy Crap!!!"
The notion that we should know what we want the rest of our lives to look like is absurd and in fact limiting in its own way, and yet, at the end of the day, we all feel this pressure. I felt it immensely. But I see something much more clearly now, and I hope traveling this odd blog entry with me will help you see it too. What I realized last night is this: If we were able to sit here, right now, and determine exactly, with crystal clear clarity, what we wanted the rest of our life to look like, there would be no point in living it.
Truthfully, my friends, I cannot imagine a more stagnant life than one I planned out for myself one day in September 2010. First of all, why would I do that to myself? Why would I hold myself hostage for the rest of my life to the person I was at thirty-one years old? Why would I stunt my growth and close myself off to possibilities that don't even exist yet? I'm getting this comical vision of myself at age fifty or sixty saying, "Hello, possibility. You look awfully great but you see, I'm living the life I planned out for myself a few decades ago, so take care, bye-bye now!"
Secondly, even if I wanted to consciously choose such an absurd path, I literally don't think it would be possible. It is human nature to evolve, and evolution directly determines desire. We cannot know we want something until we've been introduced to it. So, deciding right now, today, what we want for the rest of our life presupposes that every single thing we will be introduced to from here forward, we will not want. Every single new idea or invention will hold no temptation. Every single new person we meet will not be significant. This is not possible. Not if your heart is beating. Also, life would have absolutely no luster. I would dare call this sort of life "lifeless," which kind of defeats the point, doesn't it?
So, with all of this rambling in mind, I'd just like to say that, while it is important to reach for a certain amount of clarity in life, there is never a need to feel bound. Be kind to yourself, both present and future. Respect the path you're traveling. Know that it's leading you where you want to go, even as the itinerary changes. Instead of stressing yourself out trying to predict every color and brush stroke on your life's canvas, trust that you will have a blast painting in each detail as you get there.
Certainty is most definitely a gift, but the danger that follows is in thinking we should do nothing if we are not certain. If there is something you want, right now, today, DO IT. Don't get caught up in whether or not it fits in to some foggy, distant plan. Things have a way of fitting. Experiences come together in myriad ways, providing ever new and more exciting opportunities. My guess is, when we are all old and looking back on our lives, we won't regret one single instance when we decided to "go for it." In fact, it's kind of fun to think about a life as a series of "go for it" moments. What will your next one be? I implore you, for the sake of your happiness and the happiness of those who love you - don't get stuck in a two-dimensional picture of what you think your life should look like. Go out and live it. You might just amaze yourself.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
Becoming Powerful YOU: Step 4
There is a well-hidden treasure trove burried within the journey of discovering our own personal power. Unearthing it, I assure you, is a life-changing event. It is found when we take a look at certain aspects of life that, left unexamined, seem completely mysterious. Since these aspects of life have no obvious function or purpose, we often take the option of letting them run on auto-pilot. We haven't taken the time to notice their impact on our day-to-day life, so we go about living in the dark of what are actually powerful forces that drive many of our actions.
The most significant of these mysterious forces is our beliefs. We don't often - if ever - think about it, but every single action we take begins with a belief. We get into our car and drive to work in the morning because we believe we will have a safe journey. We lie in bed at night and drift off to sleep because we believe that we will wake up the following morning. We call a friend and make plans because we believe we will enjoy the visit.
In Step 3, we talked about the practice of self-vigilance, which allows us to witness our thought process from a place of deep connection with our inner, most genuine selves. If you've tried this practice, you'll surely have had some surprising revelations! By taking a step back and creating a gap between our true self (our inner "I") and our thoughts, we begin to realize the vast variety and quantity of thoughts that stream through our mind. Most likely, you'll also have noticed that far more of those thoughts than you would have predicted are negative and/or self-deprecating.
This point of realization is where we enter the arena of belief. A belief, simply put, is a practiced thought. We've thought the thought enough times that we've determined it to be undeniably true, and it is added to our list of belief statements. Usually, we've thought the thought as many times as we have because of life circumstances - i.e. we've driven our car to work safely enough times that we no longer merely think we will arrive safely, we believe we will. Of course, it is easy to see with this example that a belief is not a guarantee. Life may have shown us that it is reasonable to expect a safe travel to work, but there is always the slight chance that we will get into an accident. This is a risk we are willing to take; it is small enough that it does not alter our belief.
What, then, about the beliefs we hold about ourselves? Or others? Or money? Or love? Or health? A belief is nothing more than a practiced thought. I invite you to choose a belief you hold about any of these topics and really sit with it for a minute.
No, seriously. Pick one. It might not be as easy as it sounds. You might need to focus on a topic for a moment. Don't worry. Consciously follow your train of thought and you'll find one.
Where does this belief come from? What life experiences have formed it? And - here's the real zinger - how does this belief fuel your present and future decisions? Does it allow you to enjoy your life, perhaps even passionately? Or does it hold you back in some way? Does it encourage growth and/or any version of success you'd like to have? Or does it keep you in a place you consider mediocre? Does it foster positive interaction with other people? Or does it tend to lead to disappointment? Does it make you feel fearless? Or fearful?
In the same way that thoughts are not inherently bad, beliefs are not inherently bad. They are, however, often inherently flawed. Beliefs, like thoughts, are tools that act as the creating force behind our actions. The difference between a thought and a belief is as follows: A thought arises spontaneously, leaving us the choice to accept or deny it. A belief is molded over time, made up of thoughts we have already decided to accept. Therefore, there is a consciousness, and should be a level of ownership associated with a belief.
Why, then, do we so often hold such negative, limiting beliefs? Friends, this whole business of belief can get pretty messy when we remember that, without the practice of self-vigilance, we have been blindly and unconsciously accepting thoughts all of our life! We build our beliefs out of thoughts we've previously collected. If we were collecting those thoughts without paying attention to whether we really wanted to call them our own, then we are building beliefs out of foreign, unknowable, and perhaps even damaged materials! The building blocks of our beliefs are ours and ours only. So, it naturally follows that, if we have been forming beliefs all of our life out of thoughts we have not fully examined, we are walking around with all sorts of misshapen, poorly structured beliefs that do not represent who we really are. Our beliefs are flawed - not because they are wrong, but simply because they do not reflect our true nature.
Here is the treasure trove: Your beliefs are yours and they are powerfully moving you through every moment of your life. If you are willing to pay attention to your thoughts, to accept only those that serve you and mold new beliefs that truly define who you are, you will begin to experience unprecedented levels of power over your personal self. It is not even necessary to dismantle your old, flawed beliefs. With your new, more conscious, more stable ones in tow, the old beliefs will, quite quickly and uneventfully, crumble. They will crumble. So don't even focus there. Just start building, my friends. Take every thought that moves you, every thought that makes you smile, every thought that rings a note that resonates in your heart, and start building.
The most significant of these mysterious forces is our beliefs. We don't often - if ever - think about it, but every single action we take begins with a belief. We get into our car and drive to work in the morning because we believe we will have a safe journey. We lie in bed at night and drift off to sleep because we believe that we will wake up the following morning. We call a friend and make plans because we believe we will enjoy the visit.
In Step 3, we talked about the practice of self-vigilance, which allows us to witness our thought process from a place of deep connection with our inner, most genuine selves. If you've tried this practice, you'll surely have had some surprising revelations! By taking a step back and creating a gap between our true self (our inner "I") and our thoughts, we begin to realize the vast variety and quantity of thoughts that stream through our mind. Most likely, you'll also have noticed that far more of those thoughts than you would have predicted are negative and/or self-deprecating.
This point of realization is where we enter the arena of belief. A belief, simply put, is a practiced thought. We've thought the thought enough times that we've determined it to be undeniably true, and it is added to our list of belief statements. Usually, we've thought the thought as many times as we have because of life circumstances - i.e. we've driven our car to work safely enough times that we no longer merely think we will arrive safely, we believe we will. Of course, it is easy to see with this example that a belief is not a guarantee. Life may have shown us that it is reasonable to expect a safe travel to work, but there is always the slight chance that we will get into an accident. This is a risk we are willing to take; it is small enough that it does not alter our belief.
What, then, about the beliefs we hold about ourselves? Or others? Or money? Or love? Or health? A belief is nothing more than a practiced thought. I invite you to choose a belief you hold about any of these topics and really sit with it for a minute.
No, seriously. Pick one. It might not be as easy as it sounds. You might need to focus on a topic for a moment. Don't worry. Consciously follow your train of thought and you'll find one.
Where does this belief come from? What life experiences have formed it? And - here's the real zinger - how does this belief fuel your present and future decisions? Does it allow you to enjoy your life, perhaps even passionately? Or does it hold you back in some way? Does it encourage growth and/or any version of success you'd like to have? Or does it keep you in a place you consider mediocre? Does it foster positive interaction with other people? Or does it tend to lead to disappointment? Does it make you feel fearless? Or fearful?
In the same way that thoughts are not inherently bad, beliefs are not inherently bad. They are, however, often inherently flawed. Beliefs, like thoughts, are tools that act as the creating force behind our actions. The difference between a thought and a belief is as follows: A thought arises spontaneously, leaving us the choice to accept or deny it. A belief is molded over time, made up of thoughts we have already decided to accept. Therefore, there is a consciousness, and should be a level of ownership associated with a belief.
Why, then, do we so often hold such negative, limiting beliefs? Friends, this whole business of belief can get pretty messy when we remember that, without the practice of self-vigilance, we have been blindly and unconsciously accepting thoughts all of our life! We build our beliefs out of thoughts we've previously collected. If we were collecting those thoughts without paying attention to whether we really wanted to call them our own, then we are building beliefs out of foreign, unknowable, and perhaps even damaged materials! The building blocks of our beliefs are ours and ours only. So, it naturally follows that, if we have been forming beliefs all of our life out of thoughts we have not fully examined, we are walking around with all sorts of misshapen, poorly structured beliefs that do not represent who we really are. Our beliefs are flawed - not because they are wrong, but simply because they do not reflect our true nature.
Here is the treasure trove: Your beliefs are yours and they are powerfully moving you through every moment of your life. If you are willing to pay attention to your thoughts, to accept only those that serve you and mold new beliefs that truly define who you are, you will begin to experience unprecedented levels of power over your personal self. It is not even necessary to dismantle your old, flawed beliefs. With your new, more conscious, more stable ones in tow, the old beliefs will, quite quickly and uneventfully, crumble. They will crumble. So don't even focus there. Just start building, my friends. Take every thought that moves you, every thought that makes you smile, every thought that rings a note that resonates in your heart, and start building.
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