CONTRAST & CHOICE IS EVERYWHERE – SEEK IT OUT

It is amazing how much duality there is in life.

Think of positive and negative reviews at your local restaurant, whatever type of news you are looking for, you will find it.

At any moment in time, you can argue from either side of any issue and win – especially, if you are arguing with yourself – lol.

All you need to do is choose which side to invest in – the one that works for you or against you; the one that shuts you down and keeps you stuck, or the one that releases your wisdom to lead you to a great life.

For many people, it’s scary to think that we possess all the power to make that choice.

We also possess the power to defend our beliefs; even those that don’t serve us well.

Soon after I started coaching, I suggested to a client that his life could potentially reflect fun and be fun. He looked at me as if i had insulted every last cell in his body and he retorted by telling me that he felt we could not move forward together in a coach and client relationship.

He quite literally fired me on the spot before we had even begun!

Before we parted ways he said, “I am a serious person. Life is serious.”

My vision for this man had been so contrary to his entire belief system that his belief system itself went into shock and quite simply could not accept it. His reaction is a great example of how we often cling so tightly to our beliefs, despite their possible negative effect on our life, that we can’t see it to be any other way.

And I have also now grown to understand that when people feel that their identity is being attacked they will defend it to no end. Listen carefully, when you hear, “I am” in front of anyone’s belief system because it will be the sign for you to know they are accessing a part of their identity that they will usually stand for, fight for and honour.

I tend not to go there with people, unless they have had enough of that side of their identity and are ready and willing to change it.

When you’ve been married to and carrying around a set of beliefs for a long time, it is as if those beliefs are as familiar to your brain as a riverbed you may navigate year after year on your kayaking adventure holiday.

Your familiarity with that riverbed makes travel for that particular set of beliefs easier and easier. The beliefs flow through by habit, and they flow faster and faster over time, deepening the riverbed the more it continues to flow. Therefore, when it’s time to reprogram your brain to work for you it’s as if you must portage, which involves picking up  your kayak from one navigable river to move onto another.

For you, it means moving your thoughts to a more navigable belief system, one where you will find safe passage to the life you wish to lead.

Certain things in my own life over time have certainly worn a very familiar route in my mind. I can remember two distinct times in my life, the first was the first time in my life I openly admitted to myself when I was eleven, and then expressed this with others at the age of fifteen that I had been sexually abused for twelve years of my life by my step-father, between the ages of three to fifteen. And the other was well into my second diagnosis with cervical cancer, which was followed by the label of being told I only had six months to live – at the time I was twenty-six. My journey with cancer accompanied me for eight years of my life, three times in remission, before I was finally able to set it free.

Depression and not valuing myself for periods of time throughout both of these periods of life created riverbeds in my life that at the time felt like deep valleys that could not be reached by foot. I felt they were untraversable by me or anyone for that matter, I had no care in the world as to whether i would actually live or die.

My mind grew accustomed to and knew these riverbeds extremely well. With the slightest trigger, all my energy would flow down that familiar stream of fear and anxiety.

By drawing focus to and understanding my thoughts in these moments, I bit by bit, began to reprogram my thinking and invested the time into understanding the beliefs I had going on. In my own way, I learned how to portage. I learned to pick up my kayak and go to a different river. It has taken me years to make the riverbeds of wiser choices as navigable as those riverbeds of depression and lack of self worth, value and love, but finally I have been able to find a great sense of balance within them now. I have found there are now many riverbeds in which traverse and they now lead to an abundant place of possibility and choice.

Small events that would normally trigger and release those feelings with the same intensity and destruction as before have become blips on the radar and I now acknowledge them for what they bring rather than fighting them.

Your mental habits may not be as deeply entrenched as mine were.

And you most certainly don’t have to have experienced such enduring situations of pain for them to show up in your life.

My point here is to encourage you to listen to your wisdom instead of your limiting thoughts and beliefs. And believe me when I say that reprogramming your thinking and training your brain is the most powerful thing you can ever learn to do for yourself.

Once you decide to choose a more productive thought, taking action is never far behind it, and once you take the action you will see, because of the imprint that it creates for you, that there us always a more navigable riverbed in your mind.

The positive results you obtain through action will cement in your mind that your new expanding beliefs are true.