Archive for Self Discovery
What perceptual lens is creating your life – PART II
Posted by: | Comments
In life you interpret your experiences by processing events in order to give them meaning. Do your cookies of interpretation belong to you or someone else?
Our perceptions flow from the way we choose to feel about any life event, which means that our perceptions and feelings become one and the same.
Scenario: You’re all alone in your house. It’s late at night and you hear a creak on the stairs as you lay in bed. The sound instantly fills you with a feeling of dread and anxiety. A feeling attributed to the memory of the three-year-old you when your brother snuck up the stairs late at night and jumped out of the darkness to scare you as you lay helpless in your cot.
A key point to remember is that your current interpretation (perception) of what something (in this instance, a creak on the stairs) means which flows from sensory stimulation (feeling) is primarily based on a memory of that experience.
Put simply, your memories are memories of memories of memories. In the example of the creaking stairs, you’ve isolated in time a feeling of being scared witless, and wrapped it around the experience of your brother jumping out of the darkness.
You have, in other words, chosen to forget or delete all the surrounding circumstances of that experience; like your mother comforting you and making the world feel safe again or your brother being scolded and sent off to bed and the fact that you got cookies and he didn’t.
Perception is the process of translating the senses (sight, touch, feel, taste and smell) into comprehensible experience. And because you don’t witness the process of translating your senses into perception, your interpretations can never be confirmed or denied.
Validating or falsifying the perceptions you hold isn’t particularly important. What is relevant is the awareness that any and all of the perceptual filters you use – based on your unique interpretation of the meaning of events – is only one way to look at life experiences.
Ask yourself: Do the perception(s) I hold about myself and others help me live the life I want to create?
If the answer to that question is NO then you need to shift the perception(s) which prevent you from fully engaging in the creative flow of your unique and meaningful life.
Your perceptions construct the world and your life as you know it. Change your perceptions and your change your life!
When you hold a perception about the way the world works, you tend to gather information which supports your viewpoint.
Your perception, therefore, acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Your perceptions underpin the stories you tell yourself about who you are but mostly who you are not. They are the foundation of how you believe life should be lived.
Question: Is there anything that you perceived/perceive as real that became real but didn’t give you the life you wanted?
I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts about the content of this blog. Until we meet again, have a extraordinary life!
This is a continuation of the previous excerpt from my book Pack Light & Move Towards Your Ideal Life! You can order the book on: http://www.manifestingyourabundance.com/blog/store/
Your life at this moment – a cookie thief lens
Posted by: | Comments
Events tend to turn out as we thought they would. Not because of our great ability for insight but because our behaviour supports the achievement of the perceptions and views we hold.
Imagine the scene. A travel-weary woman sits just after midnight, in the grey dreariness of a busy airport, waiting for her delayed flight home.
Getting up she aimlessly meanders into the sterile atmosphere of the airport shop looking for something to distract her from the long night ahead. Finding nothing she grabs a bag of cookies and saunters back to her seat and picks up where she left off in her book.
She passes the time reading, munching, watching the clock and getting exceedingly agitated by the man sitting next to her who is, unashamedly, extracting and consuming the cookies from her bag.
He continues doing so until there is only one cookie left, which he lifts from its cellophane confines, breaks it in half, and offers her one half while he pops the other into his mouth.
She is too dumbfounded to speak. How could anyone be so blatant in their ignorance? Why he never even said thank you for eating over half of her midnight snack.
Thankfully, her flight is called just as the man wipes the remaining cookie crumbs from his face. With as much aplomb as she can muster she sweeps to her feet without a backward glance or acknowledging his parting ”safe journey”.
Still fuming the woman sinks into her airplane seat and begins to extract the, now almost finished, book from her bag.
Confusion immediately washes across her mind and face. There in the recesses of her bag lay an unopened bag of cookies. Disbelief swiftly follows her confusion.
If her bag of cookies are still unopened then who’s had she eaten?
Oh God, it finally dawns on her.
She’d been eating the man’s cookies all along. And he’d been gracious enough to share his cookies without seeing one ounce of gratitude from her. It had been she not he who had been the ignorant, ungracious one. Based on The CookieThief by Valerie Cox
What lens is creating your life?
This is an excerpt from Pack Light and Move Towards Your Ideal Life available at: http://www.manifestingyourabundance.com/blog/store/
In the next blog we’ll continue looking at this theme. Until then have a brilliant time!
Mining the nuggets of your life – Part II
Posted by: | Comments
Like a thermostat responding to environmental conditions, living life by skimming its surface will not help you become the best version of yourself and create the life you want. Unless, of course, skimming without really ever tasting the fullness of life is your conscious intention.
Part of creating the life you want includes focused learning by mining the nuggets buried within each and every life experience.
Living life from the perspective of skimming will, at best, allow only a state of reaction to your often embedded and unexplored perceptions about the world.
However, by mining the nuggets you allow yourself the opportunity to continually reframe your relationship to yourself and others. Furthermore, you will begin to make sense of what is working and not working in experiencing your life fully.
Simply put, living a conscious, focused life in which you view and review your currently held assumptions will help you re-form your patterns of feeling, thinking and doing. This will enable you to create the life you truly desire.
So, be sure to wipe your feet after you clean the hearth; you missed a spot there, be careful not to dip your shoulders so low you spill the water – mine the nuggets.
This is a continuation of the previous excerpt from my book Pack Light & Move Towards Your Ideal Life! You can order the book on: http://www.manifestingyourabundance.com/blog/store/
Until the next time live your life in passionate, purposeful action!
Mining the nuggets of your life
Posted by: | Comments
“It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.” C. W. Leadbeater
A young monk asked the Master, ”How does one become a Master?”
The master said, “You may stay and learn, but there is one condition – you may ask no questions except for once a year.”
The other condition was that monk had to tend the Master’s hearth and home.
The monk agreed. For one year the monk tended the fire and cooked the meals, then one day he said, “Master it is time to ask the question.”
“Ask,” said the master.
“How does one become a Master?”
The Master said, “Be sure to wipe your feet after you clean the hearth.”
The years went by. Each year the monk asked the same question, “How does one become a Master?”
One year the Master replied, “You missed a spot when you scrubbed the wall; do not let that happen again.” Another year his answer was “Make sure you get all the spots on the windows when you clean them.”
Ten years went by, and the monk walked up the stone steps carrying a yoke of water. “Master,” he said, “It is once again time to ask the question.”
“Go ahead and ask,” said the Master.
“How do I become a Master?”
“Be careful not to dip your shoulder coming up the steps or you will spill the water.”
In that moment the answer had meaning for the monk. In that moment he became a Master.
Your efforts to consciously reflect on and gain insight from your presently held assumptions / perceptions will give you a greater chance of seeing patterns in your feeling, thinking and doing, which hamper creating the life you desire.
No one can give you an instant shortcut to learning. Learning comes from exploration and discovery.
Are you ready to explore your life?
This is an excerpt from my book Pack Light & Move Towards Your Ideal Life! You can order the book on: http://www.manifestingyourabundance.com/blog/store/
Until the next time take care and continue to step into the life you were meant to lead!
Don’t you just hate it when someone says “Lighten Up – just chill, it’ll be OK!
Posted by: | Comments
Following along with the last blog’s theme of laughter and how beneficial it is to our mental, emotional and spiritual state this blog explores the art of lightening up.
Some time ago there were a series of major upheavals to the a relative period of calm flow in my life. Looking from the outside-in and often from the inside-out these challenges seemed catastrophic on a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual level. The place I’d considered home was mine no longer. A primary relationship that I’d thought solid imploded, shattering the veneer of what I believed it to be. Savings were dwindling fast and I’d no idea how I was going create alternative streams of income.
The outcome of a conversation with a well-intentioned friend, as I was demonstrating a less than evolved emotional response to what was occurring, was them saying “lighten up –just chill, it’ll be OK”.
“Yeah right”, I silently screamed as I continued to flip-out!
All the old subconscious programs, believed discarded forever, began to feverously clatter along familiar and deeply rutted tracks.
- How am I ever going to rebound from this? How will I survive?
- For goodness sake get a grip woman.
- You should bloody well know how to overcome this.
- You’re a hypocrite. You walk beside others supporting them as they go through the challenges of life and you can’t handle this.
- What’s wrong with you?
After a multiple series of less than en-lightened moments a couple of brighter, less intensely heated thoughts began to surface.
- The blue funk that I’d chosen to perpetuate wasn’t getting me anywhere; well nowhere I wanted to actually be.
- I needed to get a clearer perspective on what had transpired, where I was and where I was going.
Eventually I began to untwist from the foetal contortion of the mental and emotional state in which I’d placed myself.
I started to understand that not only the language I’d been using to describe those events but the self-deflating images I held of myself, in relation to them, were far from self-serving. Well, that’s not exactly true. They were extremely self-serving if I wanted to become a victim of those circumstances. However, they’d never serve me in moving towards where I wanted to be.
I’d allowed the current events of life to deliver a hefty blow to my ego’s self-image of a loving and loved, evolved individual who could handle whatever came her way.
In a moment of clarity I saw that even the word ‘rebound’ which I invariably used when describing the process of recovering from adverse life events was a double-edged sword. Although the word rebound means recovery it also denotes bouncing back after hitting or colliding with something. I began to think about how instead of colliding (like some out-of-control bumper car driver at an amusement park) with these current events I might bring myself to flow in their stream, see where they took me and what I could learn from the journey.
What were some of the nuggets of learning and remembering that enabled me to shed light on fevered moments of self-denial and self-incrimination. As I began to realign my focus and perspective to ones that I believe help us to recognize and realize our greatest potential I saw that in times of challenge it is essential to:
Cut ourselves some slack: Simply meaning the purpose of life is life itself which includes the process of realigning how we relate to all that occurs during that life… the good the bad and the ugly. Learning isn’t an endgame it’s a process. If we don’t perfect the learning all at once…. so what! Guaranteed we’ll get another opportunity.
Practice non-judgemental acceptance: Accept how we contributed to the creation of the adversity without blame (towards any of the individuals involved – including ourselves), shame or guilt and move on knowing what will work better if a similar situation presents itself again.
Hone our appreciation muscle: Appreciating and being grateful for the gifts we do have in our lives. This will be different for all of us, depending on where we find ourselves at any moment in time.
- In the situation I described I began to be grateful for all the family and friends I did have who were willing to support and encourage me.
- I began to be grateful for the fact that I had savings rather than seeing them quickly diminishing.
- I started to refocus on appreciating all the resources I had to begin again and create what I wanted in my life.
- And eventually I also saw and was grateful that this challenge was an opportunity to grow beyond the picture of a perfect life that had to some extent defined and confined me.
“We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same.” Carlos Castaneda
Acknowledge this too shall pass: Acknowledge that in the whole scope of life, painful though any experience may be, it too shall pass. And in that passing we’ve the wonderful choice to evolve, learn, develop and grow into all that we are.
Re-craft the story of our lives: Take the opportunity of learning to re-craft, redesign, re-energize where the story of our life is going.
Surround ourselves with individuals who believe in us: There is a saying that ‘we have to do it on our own, but we don’t have to do it alone’! Although diversity and challenge is the breeding ground for growth, learning and recognizing and evolving into the person we were always meant to be it’s also key to have some cheerleaders on the side-lines of our lives. That doesn’t mean that our true friends won’t support us through challenge on occasion. It simply means that their intention and focus will be on us and not on themselves.
Be a true friend and support to others: Create reciprocal supportive and challenging friendships. Relationships, in which, like the individuals that truly support us, our intention and focus is on them not ourselves.
Take action: Take incremental or giant focused steps towards fashioning the life we do want going forward. The thing is to take intentional steps – no matter how big!
Do I always remember to intentionally focus on becoming all that I am through the above perspectives? Heck no. However, more often than not I now choose to:
- Chill my fevered chatter
- Shine the light on and be grateful for the learning
- Take action in moving towards lightening and lighting up!
When I forget I also realize there will be many other opportunities for me to do just that.
I’d love to know your thoughts on this blog.
Until next time, take care.
