Many people struggle to identify what it is they truly want. Contrarily, they have little difficulty identifying what it is they don’t want! Well, all aspirations begin with a dream, so day dreaming about what you want is a good start. Transitioning from a dream to making something happen is often too onerous. Some people, however, actually make a plan, but most fail to take sustained action. Of course, if you’re not really sure what you really want nothing will change anyway.
So, the big question: What do you want?
The purpose of this question is to identify where change, even radical change, may be required so you can feel confident that you can go forward and actually take action to get what you want.
Let me ask you some simple questions.
These questions help to point out how well you tend to respond emotionally to many of the daily events and challenges in your life.
How do you feel right now?
Happy? Sad? Distracted? Bored?
How would you like to feel?
Confident? Focused? Excited?
What mental and emotional strategies do you have available, actually at your fingertips right now, so you can begin to feel the way you ideally want to feel?
How would you like to feel for the rest of the day?
How do you manage to stay in the state that you want?
That’s fine for today, but what about tomorrow?
Clearly, when you want something different, particularly if it is really worthwhile, it probably means you may need to consider the way you think, feel and behave. It sounds straightforward, but it is usually far easier said than done. For example, change is difficult until you first subjectively determine what it is about YOU that needs to change.
To discover this it requires an uncritical observation of your reactions, your responses, to what is happening in your life. This requires acknowledging how situations and circumstances make you feel.
To add to the demands: It requires brutal honesty.
And, yes, ouch!
It can hurt…
The sum total of these reactions defines your “normal” state. This is your unique state of consciousness which attracts all of the circumstances into your life that affects your life, the good and the not so good.
So, the practical starting point is self-observation. Once you understand how you tend to react to situations, you will have key data, and this information reveals your “secret” self. You will now have the cause which creates many of the effects in your life.
This sounds pretty simple, but what do most of us prefer to do instead? Well, we tend to surround ourselves with what we believe is a true image of ourselves. Of course, we are biased!
This conditions what we visualise, what we hear, and how we feel on the inside. And it is supported by our self-talk, our internal dialogue. In other words, we kind of delude ourselves.
There is a definite correlation, a significantly strong connection between what is outer – what you think you see, your sense of reality, and what is inner – your internal state, the way you feel.
It’s your internal state, your emotions, that attracts your outer life. In other words, what you perceive to be true is projected straight back on to you.
What the thinker thinks, the feeler feels. What the thinker thinks, the prover proves. So, for change to take place you must start with yourself. I mean you can only change you, so it is YOU that must change.
Why not spend some quiet, quality time and reflect on your life. What has lead you to this point? This will help you to discover what it is that you want – what you really want. And give yourself permission to think big as part of this exercise. It may be the perfect time for change, quality change. This may require an honest appraisal and some serious work on your system of beliefs.
Here’s food for thought: What are the three most dangerous words in the English language? “I am right!” qualifies rather nicely.
We have become quite satisfied and comfortable with ourselves. And we feel this way even though we dislike many of the circumstances in our lives. It is better known as the “comfort zone”. It’s a nice place to reside but nothing will ever change there!
I started by asking the big question: What do you want?
Then went on to suggest that the practical starting point of real change is self-observation.
It is self-observation that accurately reveals the deceit in all of us. Without doing this real change eludes us, even though we feel dissatisfied.
We feel this way, not knowing the cause of the displeasure does not lie in the situations that displease, but in the very self, the identity we have adopted so readily.
We fail to realise that we behave and respond to what we believe is our true image – how we identify ourselves.
And it’s the way you identify yourself, your unconscious beliefs, not the way you behave, that plays a significant role in your ability to get what you want.
Self-observation reveals this contradiction.
And this needs to be understood before personal transformation has any chance of taking hold.
Just stop for a moment, and notice your inner state.
What are you thinking?
What feelings can you identify?
You know, it is so important to know where you are within your own mind.
Most of us like to think that we are kind and caring, flexible and tolerant, and blessed with other wonderful virtues.
But an uncritical observation to our reactions in life might reveal a slightly different picture.
Perhaps we are not so kind and caring, maybe we are inflexible and not that tolerant.
And it is this sense of self you must first accept and then set about changing.
Fundamental change requires this inner work.
Once you have discovered, by uncritically observing your reactions to life, you have something to aim for, and then change can begin to take place.
So, define how you want to be rather than simply accepting the way you are – your secret self.
This is fundamental to change.
So, take some time and think again.
What do you want?
And how will you know you’ve got it?
Once this aim is clearly defined, then you can take the next step.
Whenever an entirely new set of reactions has entered your life, a change of consciousness has taken place.
You are now different.
It’s always worth revisiting a simple question: For change to happen, is it just enough to focus on what you want?
Well, getting what you want may require radical psychological and emotional surgery to cut into how you currently think and behave.
Let’s discuss what this may mean.
I’ll assume you are now clear about your aim.
You know the kind of change you need to embrace.
You know what you want.
The next step is to become faithful to your aim.
What does this mean?.
Throughout your waking day you should notice every reaction you sense with regard to your aim, how you think, feel and behave.
By observing your reactions to the daily events in your life, you will be able to identify whether you are indeed faithful to your aim.
There will be give away moments.
If you are faithful to your ideal, your reactions will conform to your aim, they will be complementary, you will identify yourself with your aim, you will think from your aim and everything about you will be geared towards your aim.
The end result?
You are taking a huge leap towards getting what you want.
The next step is to practice separation.
You need to set about the task of entering the state or states you want.
You need to be able to move psychologically and emotionally from where you are to where you desire to be.
You need to operate from a psychological, emotional and physiological state of excellence.
The purpose of practicing separation is to distance yourself from your present reactions to how your life is.
You want to be able attach yourself wholeheartedly to your aim.
This inner separation is developed by practice and commitment.
Once you are committed things begin to happen, things begin to change.
The door is now open. You will be able to see your aim.
At first it may seem you have little power to separate yourself from your undesirable inner states.
This is because you have always taken every mood, every reaction, as being perfectly normal, perfectly natural.
This is the way you have begun to form your identify.
Thinking and emotional habits are formed overtime and your behaviour becomes, well, rather predictable.
You have programmed yourself and done a first class job.
Think about the ideal state you need to be in to get your aim, to get your goal.
And practice getting into that state.
Step into each of those states.
Stand, walk, talk, think, breathe as if you are in that state.
Then move on to the next state.
Notice that it gets much easier to do this.
You now are in a position to clearly recognise what you want and need to change.
You want something worthwhile, something that can transform your life.
Let’s do a review of the action steps that you will take.
This is where you are:
You know what you want.
Your aim is clear.
You have decided to observe your reactions to all of the events in your life, to make sure you are 100% faithful to your aim.
You have started to practice separation from your current, habitual states, those negative states that cause you to believe you cannot aim extraordinarily high.
You are beginning to operate from a psychological, emotional and physiological state of excellence.
In fact, you realise you are at liberty to let go of any undesirable states.
You now know how to recognise how you respond to most events.
You know you do not need to go round and round in circles with the same problems each and every day.
This belongs to the past.
You have chosen to let go.
You now see problems as inner states and not as outer situations.
Why did you choose this process?
Because you know that change, meaningful, life transforming change, rarely happens.
You decided to do something about it.
You are different.
You created one single challenging aim.
Then you began the process, the change process, of self-observation, where all real change must start.
You are determined to get what you want.
You will practice and continue to practice separating yourself from all of your negative states.
You are psychologically, emotionally and physiologically attached to your aim.
You are doing this by assuming the feelings of already having your aim fulfilled.
You can see yourself getting your aim.
There it is!
It looks good!
You are brave enough to practice separating yourself from all of your negative thoughts and moods even in the middle of any trouble, concern or problem, that may arise, well will arise to knock you off balance and out of the game.
You will not allow this to happen.
This takes discipline, courage and commitment.
But you have this.
You have decided to take action to continue on this journey in a disciplined, thoughtful and winning way for a minimum of 60 days.
Why so long?
Because you know your unconscious mind will challenge you, people will test you, and life itself will certainly try to stop you, but by being faithful to your aim you will get it.
You will get what you want.
And let’s face it.
You always get more of what you focus on.
It is inevitable.
You will get what you want.
You realise that you cannot be different from what you are unless you practice separating yourself from your present reactions.
You have identified yourself completely with your aim.
Those negative states, moods and thoughts are beginning to belong to the past.
Your aim is clear.
You can see it, hear it, and feel it.
The door is open. You know what you need to do, you know the action steps that are required.
You are operating from a psychological, emotional and physiological state of excellence.
Everything is ready, it is primed for you to go and get your aim.
Remember, you have many faces, many skills, many talents, and many terrific attributes, so why not to put them to use?
Just go ahead and give yourself permission to get what you want.
Your aim is now perfectly clear.
You know the action steps required.
You can plan it, now go ahead and fulfil your dreams.
Another big question: How can you transform something totally chaotic into something close to perfection?
The theory of probability states that it is possible to predict with almost remarkable precision that the overall result of a large number of separate, individual events is predictable.
Some kind of order is produced out of something totally chaotic.
In other words, a large number of uncertain events can end in something certain.
How is this possible, and how can such a mathematical fact be used to change your life?
Let’s discuss this rather strange phenomenon.
In particular, how it can be used to drive phenomenal results.
There are some staggering statistics that verify this scientific fact.
For example, the number of dogs biting people in New York is about the same each year.
Great, so how do the dogs seem to know when to stop biting?
It’s a mystery, but shows the paradoxical nature of probability.
There is some form of mysterious force at play here.
A force even scientists can’t properly explain.
Of course, the laws of probability and the law of large numbers can be explained, but the result is still a paradox.
Certainty out of uncertainty is tricky to explain let alone understood.
If the cause cannot be explained the effects can be accepted because it can be proven.
If a series of unpredictable events results in a predictable result, what is there to prevent you from looking at your life right now and turning your results upside down?
And at any moment you choose.
If you have been getting ordinary results, what is there to prevent you from connecting all of these disappointing events and transforming them into something extraordinary?
After all, dogs can do it, so why not me and you?
So, order from disorder is inexplicable.
But it happens.
All the time, without fail.
There are all kinds of energies in the universe.
For example, kinetic, potential, thermal, electrical, nuclear, and they can all be converted from one form to another.
Perhaps parapsychological phenomena of all kinds including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, synchronicity, and so on, all exist.
They may well be beyond our understanding.
So, what’s new?
I don’t even know why the sky is blue!
But it is.
The brain acts like a filtering system.
It seems to want to protect us from unwanted signals, so we delete, distort and generalise the information we receive.
This becomes a habit.
Poor results are the effect.
Why not allow your rational mind to accept wildly different information to filter through?
Change your thinking and you will begin to create a different kind of order from your own chaos.
So, start to think differently.
Do things in a different way.
Make it a habit.
Get at cause for everything in your life.
The effects will startle you.
Allow your senses to visualise and feel what it is like to succeed outrageously.
Be a different you.
This will quickly alter how you behave.
Brilliant results could swiftly follow.
Now let’s chat about something we are all familiar with – Problems!
Have you ever felt like putting your hands over your ears and screaming?
Like a piece of slippery soap some solutions are hard to nail down.
How can you make order emerge from chaos?
In the previous video in this series I mentioned that the theory of probability states that it is possible to predict with almost remarkable precision that the overall result of a large number of separate, individual events is predictable.
So, some kind of order emerges out of something totally random.
How can this scientific fact be used to change your results?
Let’s explore how to use this rather weird phenomenon.
Every thought you have sets off a whole bunch of neurons.
Off they go travelling at the speed of light along well-trodden neural pathways.
They’re well-trodden because most of the thoughts we have today are much the same as yesterday, and the day before.
After all, as you know we are creatures of habit.
And when I say “sets off” I actually mean the neurons literally explode into action.
This is an incredibly amazing and dynamic process.
But once you challenge yourself, you can inspire and transform your results.
What would happen if tomorrow you created a set of new, original or positive thoughts on something that you would like to make happen?
You would create new neural pathways.
This, if repeated, would produce a whole new way of thinking about the subject.
As stated, the brain acts like a filtering system.
It seems to want to protect us from unwanted signals, so we delete, distort the information we receive to preserve our generalisations.
This becomes a habit.
Bad habits produce poor results.
This is the effect.
Why not alter your generalisations?
Why not allow your rational mind to accept wildly different information to filter through?
Get rid of the sentry guarding the information it allows through.
Next thing you know you will come up any number of initiatives that will make the goal much more achievable. You are eventually likely to produce something breathtaking.
Perhaps it’s time to go for it!
Allow your senses to visualise and feel what it is like to succeed outrageously.
Be a different you.
It’s there anyway!
This will quickly alter how you behave.
Surprisingly, awesome results can swiftly follow.
Right! Now! Consider this:
Should I develop my strengths and make them even stronger, or do something about my weaknesses?
What about you?
To get outstanding results in any area of your life you are probably going to need a few skills that you can use to develop any opportunity that is available.
Of course, it could well be that your strengths are being eroded by one or more weaknesses.
Sometimes you may even feel like turning a blind eye to these pesky blighters.
But they don’t go away, do they?
These characteristics are likely to hold you back.
IF YOU LET THEM!
Here’s a thought, why not look at a few simple questions and identify what it is you could look at to improve your performance?
The questions are listed a little later.
Have a go and then take some time to determine where you could focus your attention.
I believe the one overriding characteristic that overshadows every other personal attribute is confidence.
Confidence in yourself and your ability to get something done.
Given you have genuine confidence very little can stop you.
What do you think?
Now it seems to me that scientists, more specifically physicists, have been working on a theory of everything forever.
The theory once created, tested and understood would explain all of this phenomena we are surrounded by.
It appears the likelihood of this happening is just a bit doubtful.
There always seems to be something that simply can’t be explained away.
Some things can’t be proven; they must be taken on faith.
I suspect many of your beliefs you have about yourself could well be just as doubtful.
You’ve been told something a few times and now you’ve convinced yourself it must be true.
But is it?
What you believe about yourself creates the confidence you will have about your ability to get what you want.
There are degrees of beliefs and there are degrees of uncertainty.
It is worthwhile exploring the degree of uncertainty you could have accepted about your own special talents.
Here’s a bit of a gamble I’m going to take:
I bet you are above average in skills.
I bet you are above average in intelligence.
I bet you have untapped qualities.
I could expand on this and say I bet you could improve your results in any area of your life you chose to focus on.
Am I right?
Maybe thinking along conventional lines isn’t helping.
Why not make a decision about yourself that can quickly affect your ability to succeed?
Just look at the few questions.
Give yourself the benefit of the doubt when you score yourself.
After you finish you may be in a position to future pace yourself in any area and set about developing a strength or overcoming a weakness.
You may want to consider other areas.
Let me know how you go.
Take confidence, commitment, concentration, resilience, goal setting, and coping with pressure as a starting point.
Take a look.
Make a decision to challenge yourself.
There’s nothing to stop you from succeeding if you make the decision and give it a red hot go.