Knowing Life Can Be Easy

“Life is what you think it is, and gives you what you dare to dream it will.” - Anon

One of the aspects of the human condition that I find fascinating is the way that we overcome the challenges in our lives tends to be consistent with how easy or difficult we first imagine those challenges to be. We pre-empt the obstacles that are like to present difficulties, and run a mental rehearsal of our ability to deal with them. Of course, this is a very handy skill to have if you use that rehearsal time wisely, to solve any potential problems before they occur. But if it conjures up images of you getting stuck and frustrated then that is likely to act as precursor for you getting stuck and frustrated in reality.

Barry Kaufman (founder of the Option Institute) once said, “The eye sees what it brings to seeing”, and I think that sums things up perfectly. The moment we predict something is going to be hard, we engage in a search for all the evidence we can find to back-up our assumption. - “I believe life is a struggle, and just to prove it here I am struggling”

So here is a nice little exercise to get your brain accessing the parts of your wisdom that make triumphing over challenges seem effortless.

Exercise:

1, Think about a specific challenge you have that you feel is preventing you to achieving the kind of results you want. Make a statement out of it. Examples:

“It is going to be difficult to learn this new skill.”
“I’m no good at managing money.”
“People are not interested in what I have to say”.

2, Turn that statement around so that it has an opposite meaning. Play around with a few opposites until you find one that feels right and you want to work with. E.g. for some people it might be, “Learning this new skill is going to be a breeze.” For others it might be “Learning is a natural part of who I am”

3, Add this sentence starter onto the end of your statement:

“And I know that’s true because…”

4, Finish that sentence with as many ‘real’ pieces of evidence as you can think of. I’d suggest at least five, but encourage you to keep going and going.

“Learning this new skill is going to be a breeze, and I know that’s true because….

… skilfulness has more to do with practice than talent”
… I’ve seen other people doing it well, so I know it is very possible for me too”
… there is an abundance of people who will help me if I ask”
… I am willing to keep going with enthusiasm”
… there are many skills I can do easily now that I once found challenging”

Namaste

Paul

Mastering the Present Moment

"Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be” – Eckart Tolle

What do you think of when you think about your future? And when you do think about it, which I’m sure you do from time to time, how you feel? Do you feel happy, excited, and joyous? Or do you feel uninspired, a bit nervous, or even scared?

The reason I ask is because, to an overwhelming degree, it has been my experience that when people don’t feel good about their future the reason for that is two fold:

1) They reflect on their negative memories and feelings from the past and anticipate that it is those memories and feelings that will determine the quality of their experience in the future, and

2) They then create uninspiring or scary pictures in their mind’s eye of just how bad they think the future is going to be for them.

On the other hand when people do feel good about their life ahead that also comes down to two factors. They create compelling movies in their mind of them experiencing their lives in ways that fill them with joy and, more importantly, they are genuinely bought into the realisation that the past does not equal the future.

I’ve yet to meet a living soul who hasn’t had to encounter painful events in their life, or had to overcome difficulties, or deal with the frustration of things not turning out the way they had hoped. I’m convinced that if you were to walk up to any stranger in the street and say to them “I’m really sorry to hear about your problems”, they’d look at you with an amazed expression and say “How did you know?”

So if everybody’s history is littered with memories of the challenges they’ve faced, how is it that some get to anticipate their future more positively than others? It is because the way you feel about your future at any given moment has less to do with what you’ve actually been through in the past and more to do with the quality of the thoughts you’re having in the present about what the past and future means to you.

I have met with and coached many people who have been frightened about what they think their future had in store for them, and in every case the starting point for turning it all around has been one remarkably simple realisation.

People are never scared of what they think they are scared of, they are only scared of what they think.

Here’s why. The relationship between reality (the one that actually happens) and the reality that we make-up in our minds has been one that has confused us since the moment our brains became evolved enough to ponder such meaty topic as the past and future. Somewhere along the line we got it into our heads that the act of thinking a thought makes it true. That’s why when you imagine yourself suffering in the future, say, failing at important tasks, being unhappy in your career, or not achieving what you want out of life, you start to get an uneasy feeling right away. The nervous system takes what ever you think about – past, present or future - and acts on it as if it’s a factual event taking place right now. Of course the problem with this is that most people tend not to challenge the things they feel to be fact, so left unchecked those thoughts get free reign of the imagination and monopolise they way you feel about life.

In those moments when you think about the future it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that it has already been determined in accordance with the kind of thoughts you are having about it. But the future doesn’t exist, it never has. All you have is this very moment, now. The future can never arrive because it is not coming from anywhere. What you think of as the future is just a clear empty space into which the Now can evolve, and that empty space is pure potentiality. So the question is not, “What do I want to have happen in the future?” it’s, “What do I want this very moment to evolve into?” and “How do I want it to keep evolving so that this very moment is the best kind of moment I could hope to experience?”.

I’m guessing you’ve already noticed that in own life it is so much easier to make decisions and take action at the times when you can actually be there to make a decision or take some action. It’s always in the present moment. So often we spend time evaluating decisions from the past or anticipating decisions we might need to make in the future, but when it all comes down to it, it only ever happened, or will happen, in the Now. As Erkart Tolle said, “Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.”

So, if you ever get a bad feeling about the future and you then realise that the future doesn’t actually exist, that just leaves you as a person quietly thinking a thought in the present moment - Nothing more, nothing less. Every thought you’ve ever had took place in the present moment, and a thought, in and of itself, is absolutely harmless. It’s only when you breathe life into it by responding as if it represents actual reality that it can have the potential to cause you suffering.

After a while most people are able to see, or at least understand the idea that the future is not what we usually think of it as being in our heads. After all, intellectually we know that the future hasn’t happened yet, so how could we possibly know how things are really going to turn out? What can be more of a mind bender though is the idea that the past doesn’t exist either. That one really catches people out! “But surely the past must exist, we’ve been through it haven’t we? We’ve had the physical experience of it and can remember it clearly.” That may be true, but when all of those things in ‘the past’ happened, when did they actually take place? In the present moment. There has been no disconnect between that present moment and the one you are experiencing right now. You didn’t leave it behind, you brought it with you!

Right now you may be thinking that I’ve lost the plot, or you might even be wondering, “So what? Why is this significant?” Well the reason that it is significant is because when we believe that our past still somehow exists, it also encourages us to believe that all the hurt and pain we’ve experienced also still exists, but is out of our reach; crystallized in time gone by. If we think that pain still exists in the past but we can’t reach it, then we become more inclined to feel held ransom to it effects.

But even when you think about the past and get that realistic sense that its echo lingers on and that it is following you around, that isn’t the past. That is just a process of thought that is taking place in the present moment. It is nothing more than electricity jumping between neurons in your brain, in the Now. It’s not the past that hurts; it is what you do in the present moment to make a mental reconstruction of old painful experiences that allows the same old feelings to stay with you.

I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t think that we have a past or a future, just that we need be clear that the past and future are just concepts that can only exist when we think about them in the present moment. When you live in the knowledge that everything you’ll get to experience in your entire lifetime happens in the continuation of the now, that’s when you can make some real quality decisions about what you want you life to be about. Not later, right here in this very moment.

One of my all time heroes Byron Katie said “Isn’t the past kind? It’s always over.” What she meant by that is the very instant an event takes place it’s already gone, and can only live on as a memory trace in the mind. So if someone was to come and slap me around the face, while that’s not one of my favourite experiences, almost immediately it’s over. Sure, I’ll make an instant creation of it in my mind and replay it like its happening again and again; I may even take some further action, but the point is that what ever I do or feel next is only related to my thoughts in the present moment about what I remember taking place. It’s not what happened to me that determines the quality of how I feel, but what I do with it inside. Which brings me onto one of the most important lessons I believe anyone can learn if they are seeking true happiness and peace in their life.

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional – but you have to provide that yourself.

We all have to go through painful events - that’s just part of life. We fall on hard times, we lose people close to us, we get betrayed, and we find ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the pain that is associated with those events needs to be dealt in what ever way is appropriate, because it creates change for us. The way we clear a space for ourselves to adapt to the change is to feel things like sadness, anger, disappointment, frustration… but those emotions are only designed to be temporary states that serve their purpose. Once we’ve processed those raw emotions, then we can re-stabilise and get on with the rest of our lives. The reason suffering is optional is because it requires you to have to build a bigger story about why everything is so terrible and to imagine wider unpleasant consequences. The lingering emotions are no longer to do with the actual events themselves, but a response to the quality of thoughts you’ve added into the mix yourself to spice things up a bit.

I remember about six months after my mum died I was feeling pretty sorry for myself about all the things that I’d lose out on because she isn’t around anymore. My kids would never get to know their Grandmother, she won’t see me getting married, Christmas will never be the same again, etc… But I realised that the major cause of my bad feeling at that time wasn’t that my mum had died, but that I was allowing myself to create unpleasant life like scenarios in my imagination that gave me compelling reasons for why it was necessary to be even more upset. When I was willing let go of my suffering and the story about what it all meant, that just left me with the sadness that she is gone. The sadness I could do something with; it allowed me just to grieve, which is all I really needed to do.

The wonderful thing about knowing that your life only ever happens in the present moment is that it opens you up to this perpetual opportunity of choosing how you want to feel. Regardless of what you’ve thought about your past or future up until now, the only questions you need to answer are “So how do I want to be feeling about my life right now?” and “What would I love to do next?”

So that’s your homework for today. If the past is gone and the future is just a clear open space of pure potentiality, what do you need to be doing or planning for in this very moment to make Now evolve into something amazing?

I’ll leave you with this quote from The French writer Antoine de Saint Exupéry: “As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it”

Podcast: The Secret To Making Great Decisions

Having Hindsight Ahead of Time

There seems to be an unwritten rule that states if you are going to be taken seriously in the field of personal development as a therapist, coach or trainer, then you have to have been completely screwed up at least once in your life!

Well, I’m not convinced that this is absolutely necessary but, to be on the safe, you might be glad to know that, yes, life hasn’t always been as rosy for me as it is right now. Not that you’d be glad that I was miserable (I hope), but that I can speak from experience about pulling myself up by the bootstraps to create a life that far exceeds any level of happiness I had previously thought possible.

I’ll bore you with the details another time, but I well remember a period in my life when I was broke, alone, with no fixed address, completely depressed and filled with thoughts of ending it all. I really couldn’t see a way out of the dark hole I was in; my problems seemed to suffocate me like a heavy black curtain. But the most significant thing about this whole episode is that, looking back now, I wouldn’t change a second of it.

If it wasn’t for that time and all the experiences that went along with it I definitely would not be sat here writing this for you now.

I have nothing but gratitude for the opportunity I was given to face up to life’s challenges and to grow beyond measure. But did I know at the time that I’d be looking back now with a smile on my face and a deep sense of richness and lust for life? Of course not.

Back then my issues seemed too big to peer over; they were all-encompassing. The question I asked myself was “why is this happening?” rather than “what am I learning?” Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and it teaches us time and time again that there are hidden lessons in our suffering.

I know it’s an old cliché but what doesn’t kill you certainly does make you stronger, because of what you learn. When the light is cast on those secret inner strengths you have it is impossible to poke them back under the surface and pretend that they are not there, because they instantly form an important part of a newer more evolved you. They become tools for your toolbox that can be selected and used whenever you need them again in the future. The knowledge that you have those tools is what gives you that sense of certainty that if you had to face the same situation again you’d be ok.

If only we could recognise the lessons we are being taught at the time of going through those rough patches. Well, what’s to stop us?

Time is a very funny thing, if for no other reason than that it is entirely a figment of our imagination. That being the case, we are as affected by our thoughts of time as we are by the actual experience of time, and this can be very useful indeed.

It means we have the ability to project our thoughts out into the future and imagine what it would be like to look back at this moment (now) as an older and wiser version of ourselves. How cool is that?

It’s amazing what changes can happen to your perception of a problem when you know how to shift your thinking to an entirely different position.

Much of the work I do with people is based on the simple principle that the human mind cannot tell the difference between an actual event and one that is vividly imagined. By thinking of yourself from a future stand point, having already come through the other side of what you are currently experiencing, your mind has to go through the process of coding that thought as an actual experience; a memory of the future! A memory in which you are able to clearly see how a current challenge will have helped you to grow and develop into a stronger, wiser version of you.

Most of the problems we face in life are not what we think they are. Most of our problems stem from us not being able to see that we are growing. Growing simply means learning something we didn’t know before.

When you hold onto the notion that “right here, right now” (which is all we ever have) is only a lesson for making the future better than today, you have to conclude that, you know what? You’re going to be ok.

Today’s Homework:

You don’t have to be going through any particular difficulty in your life to have a great time doing this exercise, but if you are, then you might want to give this your full attention o)

1, Take a moment to close your eyes and let yourself relax.

2, Imagine that you can float out of your body and travel off into the future where you re-enter the body of your older, wiser self.

3, Realize that as you look back you are really happy and satisfied with the life you have led. You acknowledge that it has not always been plain sailing but that the challenges you have met along the way have been the source of your strength and have provided the positive lessons you need to master.

4, As the future you, think back to the time you are ‘visiting’ from and understand why that was such an important period for you and your development. Think of at least three ways in which you are better off because of it (even though you may not have recognised it that the time!!). E.g. “Ah yes, I remember that time. I’m grateful for losing my job back then because it made me evaluate what is really important to me. I got to develop a much healthier attitude towards money which set me on a whole new path that has allowed me to be a better more positive expression of the real me.”

5, Stay with it for as long as you need to and when you’ve got a good feeling about how that challenge needed to happen in the way it did in order to contribute to the bigger, more positive picture of your life, rise out of the future you and float back in time to rejoin yourself in the present moment.

6, Holding onto that deeper sense of inner knowing, get on with the rest of your day with the realization that you’re living the lessons you need to learn for your amazing future.


Warm wishes

Paul
www.life-happens.co.uk