Choosing our reality

attribution: Jon Bragg

This blog is a reaction to Day 18 of Mind Alchemy “My reality is not your reality”. Steven made an excellent analogy in his post regarding the movie “The Matrix”. It is a film I chose to watch in it fullness only a couple of weeks ago.

When I have experienced an emotion, I generally think of it as something that that I passively receive. I've been challenged today in Mind Alchemy to.... lets see …... I'll describe it as “change the polarity” of the process.

I've read quite a bit relating to this subject recently. Today's exercise of running a movie in our minds of passed experiences for a specific process brought in a lot of emotion that felt uncomfortable. When it is uncomfortable, it feels like I am passively receiving it. Gradually, as I worked through the process, that feeling of discomfort lessened a little.

Running these movies about old experiences has for me had quite a negative effect in the past. I find the discomfort difficult to handle. It has pulled me down into depression when I think back to those episodes. The more I fought to reject these “movies” the more they came. I now realise that there is a reason for this. Click here to read the rest.

A formula for progress

Following what I have written over previous days days, I've been developing the concept of how to progress through our outcomes.

There are times when we see apparent successes that people achieve, however, there they can be false. They only appear as true to satisfy the parameters that have been set.

For instance: yesterday I wrote about the success of the runner Usain Bolt. I can remember back in 1988 that Ben Johnson appeared to smash the 100 metres world record, only to discover that he had cheated by using banned substances to attempt to achieve that outcome. This is what I describe as a false outcome.

Very often in politics and business we see outcomes that appear to achieve good results, only to discover that statistics have been manipulated to achieve an outcome that looks far better than it is in reality.

I had a job some years ago where I saw this directly in action in order for a business to retain a contract that in... click here to read the rest.

Are you a Perfectionist

photo credit: az1172
I've been thinking more about this subject recently. A few years ago I described myself as a perfectionist (or at least an aspiring perfectionist) and I thought it somewhat noble. I discovered that there are great dangers in this attitude to life. The whole concept is..... click here to read the rest

Do you have Tenacity?

photo credit: SmithGreg

This is something I believe I have.

I was quite surprised when looking this word up at the synonyms there are for it.

Application, backbone, courage, determination, doggedness, grit, heart, fortitude... there are many more, but these are one that struck me.

When challenged, there is the constant temptation to give up and fall foul of......... click here to read the rest

What about Integrity?

photo credit: m.gifford

Dictionary.com reference definition

Integrity

1. adherence to moral principals, honesty

2. the quality of being unimpaired; soundness

3. unity; wholeness

I'll state how it is today. I've had a challenging day and that has not happened for a while.

The way I work with people when they have a challenging day for whatever reason is to encourage them to hold on to their integrity. Ultimately, that approach has saved me in so many ways and I firmly believe it will do so again. Believe me I speak from considerable experience.

There are so many times through our live......... Click here to read the rest

It is Valentines day. How about "Agape?"

photo credit: Jorbasa

How do you respond when someone leave you with a message "Love" with a few crosses?

I've often done this when writing email type messages to friends. On one occasion, a dear friend was a little concerned. I think that she maybe thought I was making amorous overtures to her!

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I've now moved  my blog to Wordpress under a new domain. I will continue to post a leader of my blog on here for a while to come with a link to the full post at my new site (which is faster!) Click here to read the rest.

Letting go your Outcomes - The pinball effect

Picture courtesy of The Smithsonian institution http://www.flickr.com/photos/smithsonian/2940633609/

Check out an interesting blog on this Cassiopeia
 
Day 12 of Mind Alchemy and the discussion is around letting go.

On the surface of it, this concept seems somewhat against what we want to achieve, however it is about balance and using energy appropriately. It is also about allowing space to grow. There are many metaphors to explain this.


As a young lad I loved to go into amusement arcades and play the many games. I was attracted by the flashing lights and sounds. It was the excitement and atmosphere that was so attractive to me. Long before we had personal computers, I'd throw my 10 pence coins into computer games. 

Playing pinball was always a game I loved. The challenge of betting more lights up and scoring higher. Getting extra balls and replays. Sometimes the game would be frustrating. I'd so want to achieve that high score, but the balls would simply tumble down the centre or side channels all too quickly. The tension and angst I'd feel would have me putting coin after coin into the machine. 

Some days, I'd look at my watch and know I needed to be somewhere. Playing around in the arcade was just killing time. Playing that last game, I'd be relaxed, not worried about the outcome. And yes, you guessed it because I know you have had similar experiences. All of a sudden a multitude of extra balls come along and the score goes up, the lights flash and many replays occur! The times I've just had to leave!

The point of this is being relaxed and not crushing the goal or outcome. I'm convinced there is some sort of law of the universe that comes in to play here. 

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Another more profound example occurred for me a few years ago when I tried running my own business in network marketing. I got so much into the hype of what I was doing, I smashed it to pieces and burned out. I was ill for some months after that and it took a long long time to recover. 

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To that end, there is the day 5 exercise of Mind Alchemy that I have yet to finish. I will do it. Possibly later today. I'm aware that it would be foolish of me to put myself under too much pressure. I'm comfortable with having done most of it and maybe I've done enough of it to have the desired effect. I'll only know that when I go back to it. 
I've learned to trust in my gut feeling or intuition on these matters.