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self evolving
Who Are You In Your Head?
Nov 3rd
In light of the recent holiday (Halloween), where you got to dress up and go masquerading around as whoever you pleased, I’ve been thinking about how we often wish we could be someone else.
I recently wrote about the importance of beliefs, and today’s topic is a big one: Other people tend to see you, as you see yourself.
Try this out, just for fun, and see if it doesn’t help you. Find a character from a movie, someone that you can watch and listen to. Pick somebody who has what you want in your life (whether it be success, confidence, integrity, money… whatever). Then Study this character… memorize the way they walk and move, the way they talk. Their facial expressions and body language.
Then for five minutes a day, when you’re alone, in front of the mirror, Be that person. Talk like them, move like them, act like them. Really make the character your own. See yourself in their location, see the people that would be surrounding this person, and pretend that they are surrounding you. Interact with these imaginary people… what would you say? what would you talk about as this new you?
Change the way you see yourself for the better. When you’re in that situation where you would normally freeze up and go into failure mode, ask yourself, “what would (your character’s name here) do?”
I’ll let you in on another little secret I’ve found: You’re brain can’t tell the difference between something you imagine happens and what really happens.
Both things are equally real to your brain. Take dreams for example. If something happens in a dream, like a friend dying, or you getting a promotion… when you wake up, supposing you’ve remembered your dream, then your brain treats those memories as actually having happened. So you wake from the dream of your friend dying with a pounding heart and an aching chest, just as you would have if your friend had actually died. And you wake from the promotion dream with the same exhilaration and expectation of a person who actually did just get a promotion.
Take Advantage Of Your Imagination
Use this to your advantage… don’t wait for a good dream that you actually remember when you wake up. Make up your own dreams while you’re already awake. It’s how we learned as kids too. We called it make believe, or pretending. See yourself as the best you possible. And when you need some help, switch into your alter ego and pretend, until you’re no longer pretending.
Tough Love & An Honest Look In The Mirror
Oct 31st
One of the most difficult things to do in life is to be honest with yourself. Seeing yourself for who you really are is a tough thing… most people are too lenient, while others jump off the deep end and pile so much guilt and shame on top of themselves that they can’t lift a finger to move.
Let’s face it though, you don’t have a money problem, or a relationship problem, or a health problem… You have a YOU problem. The first step toward any improvement in life is taking response-ability for where you are in life. You got there all by yourself, no one did it for you, and hopefully where you are is a great place, but chances are it’s not. Stop playing the victim. Victim mentality invites more situations into your life in which you can be the victim. Is that really what you want?
Everything in life gets better when you get better, and nothing in life gets better until you get better.
It’s like having a dis-ease. Life sucks when you’re sick… You feel awful, things are too loud, everybody is annoying, including yourself — it’s just not fun. Then when you get well, everything in life gets better, it’s all brand new. The world is a cheerful place again, but until you get better, nothing else does either.
This is where most people are. They’re sick but they aren’t even aware of it. Don’t be one of the victims. Take responsibility and begin to heal from the sickness. Everything in your life will get better as you get better. It will be a little scary at first, hell, it might be a lot scary, but it’s Halloween today right?
Try something new if you don’t like where your life is, or how you are. In order to get what you’ve never gotten and have what you’ve never had, you will have to do something that you’ve never done before. If what you’ve done in your life so far has led you to a place that you no longer wish to stay in, then do something differently! And Happy Halloween!
Lessons Not Learned
Oct 28th
The beautiful thing about the way the Universe works, is that, 1) It’s all bigger than we are, and 2) It’s all automated, so we don’t have to do anything for it to work. The world works according to unseen laws and principles… some of them scientific, some spiritual.
Today, in reading, I was reminded that Life is the greatest teacher of all. There’s simply no substitute for life experience. Borrowed wisdom is rarely appreciated or listened to. Since I was a young boy, I’ve always had to learn my lessons the hard way. Often insisting on doing something my way, until the pain of my way was just too much to bear any longer.
It took me about twenty years, but I finally learned the lesson: Lessons not learned, will be repeated.
Looking back I see this rule applied to my life in a dozen different places, but the ones that hurt the most were the relationship lessons that I refused to learn the first time around. Often not even recognizing that I needed to learn anything at all… I used to just think that it was somebody else’s fault, or fate… anything that would allow me not to take responsibility. One of the lessons learned was to respect myself and to stop holding on to things I had no control over (like other people). There were lots of lessons like that, all rolled into just a few relationships.
I can see now how I should have learned the lessons the first time around, when they were presented to me in friendships that needed to be cleaned out of my life, but apparently my way was better, and it took until I had almost gotten engaged to a girl before some of those lessons were learned the painful way.
Most lessons in life usually start out being taught gently. In our busy, hectic, ego-controlled lifestyles however we rarely seem to hear the still small voice gently teaching us the better Way. The Universe is much like my father was, he would start out asking me to do something… pick up my room, or mow the lawn, or something… and I would say ok, and then go about whatever it was that I wanted to do as soon as he’d left. It wouldn’t take very long before that normal voice, asking me to do something, was now fully raised and projected at me, and the consequences of not doing what I was originally advised to do were suddenly painful. Like I said before though, I had to learn the hard way back then. It’s funny to me now, but around my teen years I actually prided myself on having to learn the hard way! I guess the lessons just weren’t painful enough yet for me to listen.
With every situation in life though, there is a lesson you want to learn from it… that’s why it’s in your life at all. Instead of pointing fingers or trying to analyze what caused this in your life, try asking yourself, “What am I trying to learn from this?” Begin to seek out the lessons in your life and learn them, and stop the cycle of screw up, rinse, and repeat. There will always be another lesson to learn, but it won’t be the same lesson… you will be able to grow and move on. You will be able to restore the flow to your river of life that has been dammed up by this particular lesson.
Good luck, and don’t be scared to ask for help along the Way 
