Seminar: Perception is reality.
Let’s do a little exercise. Focus on this picture for 30 seconds and count the number of shapes. When you’re ready, read on.
Without looking at the picture again – how many shapes did you find?
Ok, now tell me how many kids were on the bus?
What time was it on the clock?
Unless you’re equipped with an Elliot Alderson kind of brain, able to take in every detail, I’m guessing that your attention was directed where it was pointed. Chances are you may not have even seen that there were kids on the bus. Or even that there was a bus. You saw what you saw and that’s what existed. Your perception is reality – your reality.
This was the opening exercise that Dr. Tal Ben Shahar, noted Harvard professor and positive psychologist, performed when I had the tremendous opportunity to see him give a speech in my former job.
The point of the exercise was to show us, first hand, that our perception of our world is composed exclusively of the things that we choose to point our attention to. We can have a day where there seems to be a series of things that happen to us that we don’t welcome; our coffee spills, our computer crashes, traffic jam, late for dinner. Given how our brain is wired, these things would grab, and hold, our attention. If we weren’t able to, or didn’t purposely, rebalance our thinking by focusing equally on positive moments, it’s likely that the entire day would be deemed “bad”. Literally, that which we focus on becomes our reality.
Like the children sitting on the bus, or the time on the clock, it’s not that there weren’t “good” things around in our day, it’s that we weren’t directing our attention there, or rather we were choosing to stay on the things we didn’t enjoy. Perhaps there was a good laugh to be had a few minutes after the coffee spill. If we were focussed on the effects of the coffee, we may very well have missed it.
I remember one day, in particular, when I lived this first hand. It wasn’t long after I saw the speech with Dr. Shahar and, in my private life, I had recently began the Harvard MBSR online course. I was in a meeting with some people from a major company launching a major global product, let’s call it Acme. The people at Acme had very little experience in brand communication and they were working with my team of brand specialists on a project that carried the name of our company.
The meeting, to me, went terribly. Acme had come up with a plan that we didn’t agree with and they weren’t willing at all to change their mind.
This infuriated me. “How could they not see how wrong they were? (Article for another time!) How could they not see that their plan wouldn’t work? Why weren’t they trusting us to do our job?” I was so angry and anxious that I went to have a massage after work to calm down. However, while I was on the massage table all I could do was relive the meeting moment by moment.
I went over every detail analyzing, indignantly, what they had said. I was busy crafting, with extraordinary precision, what I should have responded. I was so in my head with my attention, I literally couldn’t even feel the massage.
And then it hit me: I DON’T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THIS.
I’m sure that sounds crazy. I mean, of course I didn’t have to think about it. But it was earth shattering. That I could direct my attention to whatever I wanted, was groundbreaking. I could simply not think about it.
Yes, that meeting had gone in a direction that I didn’t want. Yes I was mad, yes I would likely have to find a win-win solution eventually. But there was absolutely no reason that I had to continue to stay mentally in that meeting, other than the fact that I was actively choosing to do so. I was making a very conscious choice to keep myself angry.
The realization was enough to change my mood in that moment and it became a tool that I began to use in my day-to-day life. When I found that I was dwelling on something that made me angry, sad, afraid…whatever feeling that would cause stress or anxiety, I would recognize the thought and then intentionally steer my thoughts elsewhere.
I could at any moment change my thoughts and, as a consequence, change my perception/reality of my life.
And so can you.
Feel stuck in life? Check out my personal development program.
Greatness awaits!
Weekly Thermals: Life goals & spring cleaning.
As humans we can be very goal driven, some of us more than others. At times we can get into our heads that we just need that *one* thing to be happy. The one thing may be a relationship, it may be approval from a certain person, it may be status, it may be external emotional security, it may be more money. But we live our life where the goal is always just one step ahead of us. The perennial carrot in front of the horse.
This pursuit can put us into places where we end up conditioning our behavior – maybe by acting like the person we think they will want, doing a job where we bring our C game because it’s what others expect of us, continually self sabotaging so that we’re never potentially disappointed were we to actually achieve that *one* thing.
If you think about the image of the carrot in front of the horse, the game is pretty clear. The horse never wins. He keeps moving forward but the goal keeps moving one step ahead of him. I just need…forever a step away. As we move into the heart of spring time (north hemisphere focus here), let’s remember that this is an amazing time of rebirth. The birds are back, the sun is back, the flowers are blooming again. There is so much new life to enjoy and participate in.
One of the great traditions of spring is the spring cleaning. Where we go into the corners of the house that have been dormant for the winter, we brush out the dust, take stock of what we need and don’t need. We inadvertently come to terms with the changes that have happened over the past season and how they affect our current state of life.
I would like to invite you to do a couple of things this week. The first is an emotional spring cleaning. Take a second to really take stock of the things that have moved and shifted in your own life for the past six months. What have you let go of, what have you learned, what makes you happy, what’s really weighing you down. We move so quickly and frequently so unconsciously, that we never take a moment to give ourselves our own recognition. Recognition for the steps we took closer to our goals, recognition for the things that we let fall away because they were no longer beneficial, thoughts we’ve planted that can some day bloom into beautiful gardens.
In order to do this we must also take our blinders off as we look forward. This means not only praising ourselves for our evolution, but removing the self-deception about where we’re keeping ourselves stuck. You don’t have to fix it today. But it can’t be fixed until you see it. Where are the conditionings of your “I just need…” getting you into lose/lose situations. Where are you lying to others, and yourself, about how you’re showing up? Where are you chasing an impossible happy? And where are you ignoring the happy you already have because you’re focused on the goal?
And then once we’ve done this, I would like you to take one day, one week, or even one hour, where all you do is focus on the happiness. Treat yourself to things that make you happy, focus on the people, the places, the colors, the activities, the tastes, the smells that remind you that life really doesn’t suck. That it’s a rich experience that comes in all shapes and sizes. And if we allow ourselves every now and then to stop and smell the roses, we may just find that actually everything is coming up roses.
🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹
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Greatness awaits!
Weekly Thermals: Life Lessons
There comes a time in all of our lives where it’s time to put up or shut up. When we stand in the middle of the room looking for the adult in the room and we realize that, this time, it’s going to have to be us. When we’ve run ourselves through the same gauntlet a hundred times, we don’t even feel the pain anymore we just do it out of habit. We may even stop as we allow ourselves to drown long enough to notice…I don’t even know why I’m doing this. And then the moment hits. That just utter exhaustion and boredom. Where your escapism is too thinly veiled to believe anymore. Where you’ve done enough work on yourself to know that you’re just playing yourself. And you think it’s time to change your life. Suddenly becomes time to step into the role. The role of you.
Reluctantly you decide to release the wounded teenagers clothing you’ve been wearing for years, the one that allows you to react and not respond, the one that makes everything everyone else’s fault, where you’re the victim of a heartless universe. Even as you repeat every excuse you’ve ever clung to, the moment comes when you realise that it’s just not fucking true. You’re the boss. You’re the master. Your life is yours. Your choices are yours.
Those shitty boyfriends you keep picking are you running away from what you want. That finish line that you never allow yourself to cross is just your horrible fear of actually getting what you want.
Adulting is an ugly business. It’s ugly because the process of getting there looks like making a sausage. It’s brutal, it’s carnal, and it rips out everything you’ve had inside into little pieces so that it can transform it into something else.
Welcome to the current cultural zeitgeist. With every deflection of thought, of energy, of power, we continue to perpetuate a myth that we are cogs in the wheel. We are not. We are the conductor.
If you feel pushed, pulled, drowned, fogged, helpless, or hopeless understand that what you are looking for to save you is already in you. Take the power, the energy, the love you are pouring towards the outside world and pour it into yourself. You must have your oxygen mask on before you can help others.
The time has come to step into your power. Take the reigns of your life. Take the reigns of your journey. You may be aware that you have tremendous potential. But just because you have a Ferrari in the garage doesn’t make you a Formula 1 Winner.
There is much to be discovered, explored and achieved. Energy to be applied, trials and errors as we walk towards the incarnation of our destiny. Go fall down seven and get back up eight. The life you want is waiting for you to claim it. Right now. I mean….Right. Now.
Feel stuck in life? Check out my personal development program.
Greatness awaits!