A Miracle A Day

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Discard Your Life And Find The Real You

What is the real you?  What is it that makes up the true you, what belongs to you and only you?  What do you get when you see past the surface, past the anger and fear, "love" and betrayal, hurt, pain, and even agony?  The real you… the deep you, the you that is beyond what the surface you can even imagine.

When you are born, you have no concept of your "self".  As you grow older, you build up a structure, a belief system, a framework of lenses and mental maps through which you see the world.  You are told, and you believe, that this framework is you.  The framework gets covered with experiences and emotions, and even the spaces between the beams of the support structure get filled up eventually.  You go on about your life with the belief that this giant amalgamation is you.

Everyone else around you believes this, too.  Only what they think of as you isn't even the structure you have built up… it's only the surface of that structure, a surface that changes constantly as new experiences, new emotions, and new everything else piles up, sometimes stripping off pieces of the old coverings, but more often simply piling over them, making them part of the inside, and making that structure ever harder to discard.

As you go about, identifying more and more with this framework that you've built, some of it intentional construction, most of it not, you build walls, walling off this portion from that portion.  You do this to protect yourself, to keep yourself from getting hurt, but that's not what they do, it's only what you fool yourself into believing they do.  Because those walls don't keep things out, they keep things in.

That's right… you're building yourself a prison.  A prison inside a structure that is built of the giant ball of stuff that you call your life.  And you not only build this prison, you voluntarily stick yourself inside of it, trapping yourself in with all the pain and injuries that you have suffered over the years.  And to top it off, the prison that you build, and trap yourself inside, can't ever even fulfill the purpose for which you supposedly built it… it can't even keep out new pain!

That's right… you build up this structure of falsehoods, lies told to yourself, walling yourself in to keep out the pain, and it doesn't even work.  The walls only function in one direction… they hold things in.  They hold you in… they limit you to far, far below your true abilities.  They keep the pain that you have experienced close to you, so that it can continually injure you and prevent you from healing.  What do you do when the pain builds, when it gets harder and harder to deal with?  You build more walls, and build the walls you have higher!

The walls that you build for yourself are a prison… but they're also an illusion.  They are part of the framework that you have built up, an integral part as a matter of fact.  But here's the thing:  that framework isn't you.

That's right, all those lenses and perceptions and mental maps, all those experiences and emotions, those hatreds and angers and fears… they aren't you.  They're a tiny little pimple that you've built up on the surface of the real you.  All that stuff that you're trying to protect, the part that hurts, the part that knows pain and fear and suffering… that is only the very smallest fraction of you.  It's like looking at a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, and calling that the ocean.

The real you is vast.  It is deep, and strong, and powerful.  It cannot be hurt by the vagaries of this life, because it is only the tiniest fraction of it that is involved with this life.  Your physical presence, and the structure that you have built up, are merely the tiny portion of it paying attention to what you perceive as your whole life.  And when you identify yourself as that tiny portion, you are giving up the vastness of the real you, like identifying yourself as your pinky.

Your walls you have created are illusions, but they are self-maintained illusions, given the power that you are drawing through your connection to the real you.  Want evidence that what I'm saying is right?  It's very easy to obtain… all you have to do is let down one, just one, of your walls.  You will immediately feel closer to that vastness that is the real you.  And with each wall that you release, you will find yourself closer to that reality.

When you get close, you may be scared by the openness, the sheer open expanse that you feel  drawing nearer.  After all, for all of your life that you can remember, you have lived inside your walls.  You may never have even had a moment's clarity, an opening of the mind's eye to see the vastness around you.  If you HAVE had one of those moments, you may be even more scared, because you have an inkling of what it's like.

It's not an empty vastness, though… you aren't alone.  In fact, when you reach that vastness, you'll find that you are connected to everyone and everything else, with a deepness of connection that the very word connection doesn't seem strong enough to convey the reality of what you feel.  You are a part of everything, and everything is a part of you.

It's sometimes hard to keep this connection to the real you… it's easy to forget and focus back on the surface structure, identifying with that structure that you've built up.  Once you've let the feeling go long enough, in fact, it's hard to remember what it was like… until something triggers it again, and then it all comes rushing back.

There is an old movie called Dune.  They made a newer version of it, too, but I'm talking about the original.  In it, there is a phrase that is repeated a few times:  "The sleeper must awaken."  I have always identified with this phrase… I've always felt like it meant something to me, something more.  I've felt like there was something bigger slumbering inside me.

Lately, as I have read, and learned, and written, and looked inside of me, my awareness has gradually expanded, and the phrase has changed, in my mind, to "The sleeper is awakening."  I felt that bigger thing inside of me stirring from its slumber, starting to uncoil.

Tonight, as I was talking to my wife to help her relax, something clicked.  Sometimes the greatest words of wisdom come when the conscious mind gets the hell out of the way and lets things flow from far deeper inside.  Suddenly, that thing that had slowly been awakening came aware.  The sleeper has awoken.

This connection, this deeper you, is your connection to God, to the awareness that created, and contains, and in a way is, the universe.  But it is being "consciously" (too small a term, I think) aware of that connection, not in some sort of vague "God created the Heavens and the Earth" kind of way.  It is an intimate and strong connection, a direct connection.  It is deep, wordless communication flowing back and forth, much of which, to this point at least, seems to be more of an "I am here" message and an "I know" response flowing from each direction.

This vastness is inside each of us… in fact, it IS each of us.  We are not the limited lives reflected in the world we live in, we are not even the conscious part of our minds… we are far more than that.  But in order to find our true selves, we must first give up the structure that have built up, that we have defined as "us"… and that's probably the hardest thing in the world to do.  That last wall, the one that separates us from our true selves, the one that is the foundation of support for our whole framework of our lives, is really, really hard to let go.  It is giving up the "you" that you have always known, for a great unknown.

Do not be afraid.  The whole world will change before your eyes, leaving nothing unaltered.  Once you let go of that last wall, and the fear, there will be no doubt, however.

It's worth it. 

 

Author

September 28th

Awareness, Beliefs, Body/Mind Relationship, Communication, Conscience, Energy, Expectations, Fear, Feed Your Mind, Free Will, Growth, Healing, Internal Quiet, Learning, Motivation, Patterns, Relationships

Two Ways To Make Yourself Smarter Through Writing

Make Yourself Smarter

Would you like to both appear, and actually be, smarter?  There are many techniques out there that can help you to learn this or that easier, or improve your memory, but it's not quite so common to find techniques that allow you to increase your general ability to acquire and apply knowledge across the board.

If you're looking for such a way, or weren't particularly looking, but you're interested now that I caught your attention, continue reading this article.  I have two such methods for you that both involve writing.  Not only will they both help you to acquire, categorize, and interconnect knowledge, but because they involve writing, they will also improve your vocabulary (especially if you make that one of your goals while applying the techniques), which makes you sound (appear) smarter.

Alright, so let's get started… here is the first way to make yourself smarter: 

Write About A Random Topic

Our first technique is to pick, or even better, have someone else pick for you, a random topic and write at least a page about it.  If you want to get the most out of this method, write three to five pages about the topic.  Write it as if you were writing it for someone else to read, not just for yourself, and it's even better if you do let someone else read it, as they can give you feedback to improve your writing.  It can be whatever kind of writing you want… you can explain the topic, research it, introduce it, write fiction about it… whatever you want, they all work.

It doesn't really matter whether you know anything about the topic or not.  If you do know something about the topic, then writing will help you to refine your knowledge and make it more concrete and easy to call to your conscious mind.  If you write about a topic that you don't know much about, you will obviously have to learn something about it in order to write about it. 

As you write more about things you know, you are practicing your skills of making information you already have usable and easy to recall.  This makes it easier and easier to do this with any other topics as well… it's a general skill that you learn, not just applicable to the specific topics that you write about.

When you write about things you don't know you practice you skills involved in learning, categorizing, and applying new knowledge.  Again, as above, this is a general skill which will improve your ability to do these three things with any new knowledge, not just a specific topic, and not even just when it comes to writing.

So, now on to the second way to make yourself smarter: 

Connect Two Unrelated Topics

Our second technique is slightly more complicated, and really puts your mind to work.  It works by picking two apparently unrelated topics, and finding a way to relate them.  This can be anything… you can pick two random nouns from the dictionary, or as above, have someone else pick the two things for you.  In fact, if you're really feeling adventurous, and wanting to push the envelope on this method, you can use more than two topics… but don't use too many, or the relations you draw between the topics lose their depth.

As above, this works best if you write it as if you were writing it for someone else, and actually allowing someone else to read it can result in feedback that improves your writing.  It can also be any type of writing you want, but in this method you really need to write more than one page to get the full benefit.  You can use up one page just introducing the two subjects, and you really want to give the connection between them some depth, as this is what makes this technique work.

This second technique teaches you how to see connections between two seemingly unrelated things.  This is vital to pushing your intelligence to higher levels… being able to see the relationships between things where it's not obvious is what separates the smart people from the average people.  It helps you to see more and more patterns in the world around you, and recognizing these patterns quickly and usefully is what intelligence is all about.  Everything in the world, the universe, is related… there is a pattern that contains any two subjects, and of course there is the pattern that IS the universe.

Your ability and skills in the area of recognizing patterns will be stretched farther (and thus grow more) as the topics you use are less related.  That means that if your two topics are monkeys and bananas, you're not stretching much, and won't get much.  If you relate bananas and an allen wrench, that might be a bit more of a stretch, and thus you gain more.

Again, fictional stories also work for training these skills, though you might not get the added benefit of learning more about the topics as you would if you did another form of writing.

Shared Benefits

There's another useful thing that you can get out of using these techniques… if you have someone else who is reading your results, you are likely to be helping them improve their intelligence, as well.  Their vocabulary should be expanding as yours does, and they, too, get to see connections between things they hadn't previously recognized as being related.  Their benefits will be smaller than yours, because you are having to find those connections, while they are having them shown to them, but they will still benefit.

Make Either Technique More Effective

There are a few things that can make both techniques more effective.  One of these things is to have someone else suggest your topics.  This keeps you from going easy on yourself when you're feeling less motivated, and is likely to push you even more outside of your comfort zone.  Another one is to have someone else, or several someone else's, read your end product.  At least one of these people is likely to be the one who suggested the topics, but it's always good to include someone else, because they won't have any preconceptions based on knowing before reading what the topics were.

Another thing that makes both techniques more effective is to do it with a partner and suggest topics to each other, with a set time to finish your writing.  After that time, which should be as short as possible without causing undue stress on either of you, you should give each other what you wrote, read the other person's writing, and then talk about it.  This gives you added motivation to keep it up, added benefits from reading the other person's writing, and can make it more fun, as your suggestions for topics can mean something to you, and even if they don't before you write about them, they may have added meaning for both of you afterwards.

Summary 

So… there you go.  Want to be smarter, and make it apparent to other people as well?  Practice one, or better yet both, of the techniques above.  Make it work even better by finding a partner, or even a network (ie more than just you and one other person).  Speaking of which, I'm interested in finding a partner or network for doing this myself… anyone interested?

Author

September 28th

Awareness, Communication, Feed Your Mind, Growth, Learning, Patterns

A Potentially Fatal Mistake

Depression

A potentially fatal mistake… scary headline, isn't it?  It's the truth though, and I speak of this from personal experience.  There is a mistake being perpetuated throughout the country, but particularly (from what I observe) in the education system that may be preventing us from saving lives.

What is this mistake?  It's assuming and believing that it is low self-esteem that leads to depression, and that raising self-esteem can get rid of depression.

Low self-esteem doesn't cause depression… low self-worth does.  And no, they are NOT the same thing.  Meriam-Webster defines self-esteem as "a confidence and satisfaction in oneself".  You can have self-confidence without self-worth… you can believe that you are good at something, without believing that it makes you worth anything.

I speak from personal experience.  I have never had a problem with self-confidence.  I have, and I may sound conceited here, always known that I was smart and at least average in the looks department.  Any mental endeavour tends to come easily for me (except remembering people's names… one of these days I'm going to get around to fixing that).  So my self-confidence was fine.

The problem is that I didn't think I was worth anything.  It didn't matter if I was smart, even if I were a genius, the smartest person in the world, and it wouldn't have mattered if I was the most handsome man to walk the earth.  I didn't think that meant anything for me… it contributed nothing to my self-worth.

If you don't believe that you are worth anything, then you don't believe that you contribute anything to others, either.  You end up with little or no incentive to do anything, or even to live.  You can have untold amounts of confidence in your abilities, but without a belief that you are worth something, it doesn't mean anything.

Low self-confidence is a good indicator of low self-worth.  It's difficult to have anything other than low self-worth if you have no confidence in yourself.  That doesn't mean that the opposite is true, however… you can't assume that someone with high self-confidence has good self-worth, also.  That also means that raising someone's self-esteem, as they put so much emphasis on today, doesn't necessarily (and really, it's not even all that LIKELY) raise the real key, their self-worth.

Since the true cause of depression here is low self-worth, not low self-esteem, the emphasis on self-esteem in the education system is misplaced.  What makes it even more misplaced, however, is that you can't give someone self-esteem… they have to earn it.  And that's why some people think that it's self-esteem that's the issue… what you do that you feel earns you self-esteem can, at the same time, help you to feel you have worth.  If you feel like you are doing something worthy of greater of self-esteem, you may feel that a little bit of that "worthy" rubs off on you.

Mistaking the cause of depression, and the cure, can lead to attempting the wrong treatment.  If you use the wrong treatment, you are unlikely to cure the problem… and with depression, that can be fatal. 

By the way, I'm making a request with this article, as an experiment… if you like it please vote for it on Reddit (you can click here), in addition to whatever thing you normally use. 

Author

September 20th

Awareness, Beliefs, Learning

The Difference Between Intelligence And Education

War And Peace

There is much confusion in the world about education and intelligence.  Education is knowledge acquired in formal learning environments, such as school.  Intelligence is that actual ability to learn, to acquire, assimilate, and use new knowledge.

We are taught from the time we first enter school to judge someone's intelligence by their education and their performance in such formal environments, also known as "book smarts".  This is taught by words, actions, and attitudes, from both teachers and, later on, other students.  This concept that education equals intelligence is pushed on us so hard that few people ever get totally past it, even as they grow older.

You Can Be Highly Intelligent Without Being Highly Educated

Two of the most intelligent people I've ever met did very poorly in school.  One graduated, but just barely, and the other never finished high school.  When it comes to learning anything that they don't associate with school, they learn fast… much, much faster than normal.

People of well above average intelligence sometimes do poorly in school due to boredom.  They sit there in classes designed for the lowest common denominator which don't provide enough stimulation for them, so they become bored and stop paying attention.  They are distracted by the smallest things.  People of less intelligence, on the  other hand may have more of their mind occupied by the class, and thus be less prone to boredom.  They are also more likely to be aware that they need to work hard and study in order to do well, where smart people may feel that it's easy and not study even when they DO need it.

You Can Be Highly Educated Without Being Highly Intelligent

On the other hand, I have met people with advanced degrees, including doctorates, who are of no more than average intelligence.  This is not a bad thing… they have shown that they are willing to put in the time and effort to master something that does not come easy to them.  It does also show, however, that higher education is not proof of higher intelligence.

There are also certainly professions which require extensive training (education), but not extremely high intelligence.  Your average family practictioner, for example, can operate just fine without needing to have a genius IQ.  He is following established procedures, prescribing standard medications for conditions diagnosed by standardized methods.  He needs the education to teach him those standards, but he is not creating the standards, just following them… so having average intelligence is not a big deal at all.

Conclusion

Education is not equal to intelligence, though it is often used as an external measure of it.  Certain types of education can give you a pretty good idea that someone is at least of certain minimum intelligence (you can't actually be dumb and have an advanced degree in mathematics), but they don't provide a measure of how far beyond that minimum they are, and a lack of education says absolutely nothing about their intelligence.

And, by the way, neither education nor intelligence prevent you from doing stupid things.  As far as I know, nothing in the world stops that. 

Author

September 19th

Feed Your Mind, Learning

The Secret Killer Of Relationships

Bleading Heart

Some people have a great relationship that lasts all their lives.  Other people never seem to have a relationship that lasts more than a few months.  Somewhere inbetween are the people that have a great relationship that slowly fades away.  What is it that kills this last kind of relationship?

You may have heard of the seven year itch.  It's a cultural reference to the fact that after a few years, and seven is NOT a magic number, a relationship is no longer as exciting as it once was.  In fact, this can, and does, happen after a few months… but there is another drop in excitement, after this initial one, when you have been together for a few years.  So why does this happen?

The initial drop in excitement, after a few months, is very nearly inevitable… that initial excitement is due, in large part, to the newness of the relationship.  You are discovering all sorts of new things about this person who is so important in your life, thinking about them constantly.  They are never far from your mind.

Once you learn the basics of who they are, which takes a few months usually, the excitement drops.  You can then, if your relationship has decent foundations, maintain the new level of interest and excitement for a few years, at which point you know far more than the basics… in fact, you may feel like you know pretty much everything about your significant other (chances are pretty high that you don't, but that's a topic in itself).  So, once you arrive at this point, the excitement level drops again.  That's when the seven year itch kicks in to high gear.

Both of these drops in excitement have something in common.  Both of them occur when you feel like there isn't as much left to learn about the person.  This is NOT, however, the actual cause of the drop in excitement (or the drop in closeness that often accompanies the drop in excitement).  It is only a more visible part of a deeper issue.

The real killer of good relationships, and one that often keeps them from cementing in the first place, is your partner dropping out of your conscious awareness.  When you reach that first point, where you feel like you know the basics of who they are, you stop thinking about them quite as much.  You stop thinking, or at least stop thinking it as often, "I wonder what she'd think about this?" or "I wonder what she's doing right now?".  Then you hit that second drop when you feel like you know your significant other very well, and you feel like you can actually answer the questions in the previous sentence with a fair degree of certainty.

The killer of good relationships is familiarity.  When something becomes familiar, our conscious mind tends to start handing it off to the subconscious to deal with.  You can choose otherwise, but it has to be an active choice… the default is to pass it on and stop being aware of it.  This includes people and our relationships with them.  When you stop being aware of someone, you stop thinking about them, you stop giving them (and their happiness) your attention, and things deteriorate from there.  And once this happens, you look at your relationship, when it comes to your awareness, and realize how far it is from what it once was.  That makes you want to think about it even less, because it makes you feel bad (sadness, guilt, anger maybe… mental anguish).  So it becomes a vicious cycle that takes a conscious effort to break.

You can recapture the excitement, though, and the depth and closeness of the relationship.  All you have to do is start thinking about her more often (and getting her to think of you!).  There are lots of ways to do this, but the biggest one is to do something different.  Something you haven't done before, or haven't done for a long time.  Or maybe even something that you have done, but you've never done together before.  You can also come up with surprises (little ones… don't scare the snot out of her) to make her think of you… leaving her a note, making her something, going shopping with her specifically to buy her something (it doesn't always have to be about you!).  The more unusual, the more new it is, the more she will think about it, and since it was from (or with) you, the more she will think about you.  And you will obviously be thinking of her, because you'll be planning out what you can do next.

So… if your relationship isn't what it once was, don't give up on it.  Instead, think of things that you can do for your significant other, or better yet, things you can do WITH your significant other.  Go to a new restaurant together, go to the place where you first met, go have a picnic in the park (or on the beach… depending on where you live).  Do something you don't normally do… and start doing it more often.  But don't make a habit of it, do it consciously! 

Oh, and you might want to read The Very Simple Secret To A Happy Marriage (it applies to any long term relationship, not just marriage). 

 

Author

September 14th

Awareness, Learning, Relationships, Subconscious

Are You Anchored Or Adrift?

Anchor

Do you know who you are, what you believe, and why you believe it?  Are you aware… do you look around and choose a path for yourself, or do you just blindly follow the path laid out for you by others?  People who fit the first description are anchored, while people who fit the second are adrift.

People who are anchored know who they are.  They know what they believe and why they believe it.  They are aware of their own ability to choose their path consciously, and do not simply follow what others have done before or direct them to do now.

Those who are adrift, on the other hand, are mostly who other people tell them they are.  They shift with the wind, accepting and following the last input they received, never (or rarely) asserting their own power of choice.  Sometimes they try to place a limit on who can affect them this way, keeping it to only those they consider authorities or experts in the field, but this often a false front, with them allowing all who give the appearance of authority, or even just certainty, the ability to decide who they will be and what they will do.

You probably know examples of each type.  You can probably even think of examples of a "type of person" who is expected to be anchored, but in reality is adrift, like a preacher, a teacher, or other authority figure.  The sad part is that other people who are adrift rely on these people who are "supposed to be" anchored, but in reality are not, to give them direction in their own lives.

At this point, some of you may be thinking that the people I'm referring to as anchored are probably close-minded.  If you're thinking that, you are wrong.  People who are anchored have no need to reject the opinions and beliefs of others without considering them.  They know who they are and why they believe what they believe well enough that other people's beliefs are not threatening.  Close-minded people are actually adrift, rejecting the input of others without considering it because they lack confidence in their own beliefs.

Fortunately for the majority of people who are adrift, it is totally possible to become anchored.  Totally possible and totally easy are not, however, the same thing.  If you want to become anchored, you need to take a few steps, and while they are simple to understand, they are not without effort, and likely not without pain.

  1. Learn To See Your Own Beliefs

    If you want to be anchored, you must be aware of what you believe.  That means consciously aware, and able to articulate what it is that you believe.  If you cannot say what you believe, you certainly can't understand why you believe it, and so it is likely that you believe it because someone else told you it was so.  Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean your belief is incorrect… it just means that it's not truly YOUR belief, it is someone else's belief where you are acting as if it is your own.

    If you need help getting started, you can try a series I wrote a while back:

     

  2. Choose Which Beliefs You Want

    Once you have learned how to see your beliefs, you must choose, for each one, whether to keep it and make it your own or discard it as not being congruent with who you want to be.  This process also helps you to resolve conflicting beliefs that can be the source of much, if not most, of the stress in your life.  Each belief you choose to keep is now able to become your own, and part of who you are, not just part of a persona.

  3.  Understand The Why Of Each Belief

    Once you have chosen to keep a belief, and indeed even while you are considering whether or not to do so, you will need to examine it.  You should find out the details, EXACTLY what is involved in the belief, what type of circumstances it applies to, and most importantly of all, WHY you believe it.  If you cannot say why you have a belief, then it is not yours yet… it is still a part of the persona you are projecting, not who you truly are.  Once you are aware of a belief, choose to keep it, and can explain why you believe it, you can claim it as your own, a part of your true self, your core.

  4. Align Your Outside With Your Inside

    Now that you understand which beliefs are a part of you and which are part of a persona, you can reject that persona.  You have enough knowledge of your self that you no longer need the affirmations of others to feel worthy.  In fact, your self-worth (which is NOT the same thing as self-esteem… in fact, there is enough of a difference that I will probably write an entire article on it in the future) will be stable, neither ridiculously high nor ridiculously low.  It will simply be enough to be who you are, and allow others to be who they are, and draw shared enjoyment where you can.

  5. Be Aware

    This is the last element on the list, but in reality it shows up earlier in the mix.  The thing is, it may show up anywhere on the list… it may be when you first start, when you realize that you can, in fact, choose what you believe, or any other time in this process.  It is at least virtually impossible, and probably actually impossible, to complete the steps above without becoming aware.  So what does it mean to "Be Aware"?  It means knowing, understanding, and accepting that you have the power to control who you are and how you respond to any situation.  It means accepting responsibility for your own actions… ALL of them.  It means, more than anything else, being aware that you are free, that no one can force you to do anything you choose not to do.  They can force your body to do certain things, but you are not your body, and that real you is completely, 100%, irrevocably free.

When you have followed each of the steps above, which are not always strictly done in the order listed, especially #5, you will find yourself anchored amongst a sea of people adrift.  This gives you many advantages, too many to be listed here, but I will list one benefit:  peace.  Peace comes with awareness.  When you know that you are free, that you are who you choose to be, and not who you choose not to be, peace is unavoidable.  It is only when you try to deny this freedom, and the responsibility that comes with it, that peace ever departs.

And that is a huge difference, and a huge benefit, in and of itself. 

Author

September 11th

Awareness, Beliefs, Feed Your Mind, Free Will, Learning

Believe It Or Not, Your Beliefs Affect The Physical World

Candles

Do you believe in God?  Do you believe that there is no sense in believing in God because it makes no difference in the world we live in?  It really doesn't matter which of these two you believe, your very belief in that thing (or any other thing you believe) will affect the world around you.

I'm not talking about anything mystical.  I'm not talking about the incredibly popular "Law of Attraction".  You can, without accepting ANY mysticisim at all, be absolutely certain that what you DO believe affects the world around you, and that the depth of the belief affects how much impact it has on the world outside of you.

I can make that statement with utmost confidence because of how it affects the world around you.  Here it is, in plain language:  Any belief that you hold affects the world around you because it affects the actions you choose to take and your response to circumstances that relate to it.

The depth of your belief plays into this because it affects how strongly your response (or action) is influenced by that belief.  Lightly held beliefs may have very little effect… your belief that blue is the best color is probably lightly held, and won't really affect much, other than possibly your choice of clothing or decorations.  Your belief in God, or your belief that he either doesn't exist or is irrelevant, is likely to be much more deeply held, and thus has more power to affect your actions and responses.

Your beliefs regarding money are an easy way to show how beliefs affect the physical world.  If you believe that money is out there for the taking, that all you have to do is reach out and grab it, then you will look for, and find, opportunities to do so, and you will not let a little risk stop you.  If you believe that all you can do is try to save money, because the risk of stepping outside your comfort zone is too great, then you will pass even good opportunities by, if you see them at all, with your focus being so directed on how to save money instead of how to make more.

All of your beliefs affect you in the same way, though most are not so easily visible.  They also affect the world around you when other people observe you acting upon them, especially if you have children or younger siblings.  When they see you act on your belief, they may very well pick up on that belief, since they look at you as an authority, a way to learn how they should be dealing with the world.

Other people may react negatively, especially if they hold conflicting beliefs.  As evidence, witness the conflicts between people who believe in different religions, or the conflict between people who believe in God and those who do not.  While the first is more likely, according to history, to result in physical violence, the latter is, as far as I can tell, at least as likely to start violent arguments in the modern world (at least in the United States, which, though I have lived in two other countries, is still by far my strongest basis for understanding the modern world). 

People who react to your beliefs, either positively or negatively, can affect you and the world around you.  They may be your future boss (or client), or they may turn someone else against you.  They may, at the extremes, be the person you marry at the positive extreme , or choose to kill you because of your beliefs.   While either of these two are, as stated extremes, and unlikely to happen in practice, there are a range of lesser possibilities that become more and more likely as they go down the scale.

So… even your belief that beliefs can't affect the real world affects the real world.  And there's nothing mystical about it.

You might want to look at evaluating your beliefs and deciding which ones to keep as is, which ones to alter, and which ones to remove.  If you are interested, I have written a series of articles that may help:

Author

September 11th

Awareness, Beliefs, Learning, Relationships

Lessons On How To Be A Man From The Princess Bride

Princess Bride DVD 

The movie "The Princess Bride" (Amazon affiliate link) is a comedy, though you would never know it from the preview available on the DVD.  In spite of this, the movie also demonstrates very effectively many of the qualities of a good man through the character of Wesley.  Wesley pretty much shows all the attributes of a good man:  He has honor, integrity, faithfulness, charity, persistence… let me list some examples.

Wesley falls in love with Buttercup at the beginning of the movie.  He does what he can to be near her, but doesn't pressure her at all, and one day she finds she loves him, too.

Throughout the entire movie, Wesley never gives up.  He is kidnapped by pirates, kept away from his love for years, yet he persists.  He makes the best of that time, learning valuable new skills, but always keeping his focus on returning to his love. 

Eventually he manages to find her, and follows her, having to get past a challenge of skill (the duel), a physical challenge (the wrestling with Andre the Giant), and a mental challenge.  In each case, he sets his focus on his current challenge, and bests someone who is of considerable ability in the area.  He also shows compassion for those he defeated, if they showed any themselves.

Through all this he never gives up.  When he rescues Buttercup, he doesn't instantly reveal who he is, but challenges her own integrity.  When she shoves him away, after showing that her integrity is intact, he reveals himself.  They then try to escape through the fire swamp, where Buttercup falls into a sand trap.  Wesley dives right in after her, once again showing his honor and faithfulness.  After that, they continue through the fire swamp, where Wesley is fairly badly injured rescuing Buttercup once again.  In spite of that he persists and they make it through.

When they exit, they are confronted by Prince Humperdink and his men.  In spite of being wounded and horribly outnumbered, Wesley once again shows his honor and steps up to defend his love and their newly regained relationship.  Buttercup can't stand the thought of losing him again and surrenders without asking him first, thinking she will save his life.  Wesley knows better, but to save her from having to see him die, he plays along, another example of his compassion.

Wesley ends up in a torture chamber, run by the Prince's henchman and his henchman.  They torture him a bit, until the Prince come in a huff and sets the device's torture level as high as it can go… Wesley's screams are heard by the swordsman and giant that he fought earlier, where they are recognized as "the sound of ultimate suffering".  Inigo, the swordsman, instantly knows that is Wesley because the sound doesn't come from him being tortured to death, but from him knowing that "his true love marries another tonight".

After he is revived, Wesley immediately starts seeking to once again return to his love, in spite of the fact that he can't move.  He just never lets up… throughout the whole movie, he shows all the attributes of a good man.  He is a great example of how a man should behave, at least from what we see in the movie (I'm not endorsing piracy here).

Almost all of the other characters in the movie show both good and bad sides, just as in real life.  Even Wesley is reported to do something not really acceptable… he is the Dread Pirate Roberts, who takes no prisoners, but that bad thing doesn't make an appearance in the movie.  All of the other characters have their flaws shown.  The swordsman and the strong man both give Wesley a fighting chance… but they're still willing to kill him for money, and only revive him later so that the swordsman can pursue his vengeance.  Miracle Max helps, but only when it is advantageous to him.  Buttercup gives up the fight, promising to marry someone other than her love, though it IS to save her love's life.  Prince Humperdink, the Count, the albino, and the man behind the kidnapping at the beginning show no real positive sides, although the albino is such a shallow character that he really never has a chance. 

Author

September 7th

How To Be A, Learning

The Subconscious Mind In Control (AKA Habits)

What Habits Are 

"Habit" is a word for an area where your subconscious mind controls your actions in the absence of input from your conscious mind.  Most of your every day life is controlled by habits… you have a habit of breathing, sleeping, waking, etc.  When most people talk about habits, though, they are referring to ones where you are aware of the habit but still relinquish control to your subconscious.  Smoking, drinking, gambling… these are things where the decision to do it is made by your subconscious, and your conscious mind, while aware of what you are doing, is nothing but an observer.

There are two things you should know when looking at habits from this viewpoint.  The first is that if your conscious mind involves itself, becoming more than an observer, it can break (or change) that habit.  The second is that even if you do decide to make a change, but don't give regular attention to maintaining the change, you will allow that area to slip back to your subconscious mind's control.  If you have established enough of a different pattern, that won't matter, because the subconscious will continue along the new pattern, but if you slip before that new pattern is set, your subconscious will go back to its old ways, and your habit will return.

Now let's get something straight… not all habits are bad.  Taking a shower every day is a good habit, as are brushing your teeth, chewing with your mouth closed, and exercising.  Smoking can even be looked at as a good habit, if the benefits outweight the costs… it's just that the costs for smoking are cumulative, and quite high over the long term, where the benefits are NOT cumulative, and only valuable over a very short term.  So one person may consider something a bad habit, where another might consider the same thing neutral or even good.

How Habits Form

You form habits by repeating the same response, or a very similar response, to the same, or very similar circumstances.  You form your habit of breathing by exhaling when your lungs are empty of oxygen and inhaling when they are empty of air.  You form your habit of smoking by picking up a cigarette in certain situations, which can then expand if you start doing so in more situations.  Doing something one time is seldom enough to form a habit… it usually requires tens, hundreds, or even thousands of repetitions.

Performing the same action in response to non-similar circumstances can peripherally reinforce a habit that is forming, but the impact is small.  That is, if you have a habit of smoking first thing in the morning, and you smoke one at lunch time, that isn't really enough to expand the habit to smoking at lunch, and if you have smoked a few in the morning, then smoke one at lunch, it is unlikely to cement the habit of smoking in the morning, either.

How Habits Change

There are two kinds of change that can happen with a habit… replacement and removal.  Replacing a habit is FAR easier than removing it.

When you replace a habit, what you do is change which action is fired when certain circumstances trigger a habit response from your subconscious.  Basically, you have trained your subconscious to fire off a habit when certain circumstances arise.  Replacing a habit simply points that trigger at a different habit, such as chewing gum instead of smoking.  That's relatively easy, because all you're doing is choosing a different habit to fire, rather than trying to change the whole subconscious pattern of responding to those circumstances with a a habit.

Removing a habit is the other side of that coin… it is conditioning the subconscious to STOP responding to a certain set of circumstances by firing a habit trigger.  This is mostly done by altering the way you perceive the set of circumstances.  If you want to remove a habit of swearing, for example, you could train your subconscious to look at the circumstances where you would normally swear through a filter of "What if my baby was here?".  Even this doesn't actually remove the habit trigger, though… it simply keeps your subconscious from seeing the set of circumstances that trigger it.

That last is why people who form a habit of smoking, then quit, can one day pick it up right where they left off.  They changed their perception of the circumstances for the time where they quit, but then their perception goes back to, or close enough to, the old set that fire off that trigger.  Abra cadabra… your habit is back!

The ability for "removed" habits to return is one more reason why replacing habits is more effective… even if that set of circumstances arises, it fires off the replacement habit, not the original.  I haven't really looked into replacement FOLLOWED by removal… that might be a relatively effective technique, so that even if you backslide it's only to the replacement habit, not the original.

Conclusion

The reality is that if you want to alter a habit, the first thing you must do it become consciously aware of it.  After you become aware, you have to make a conscious decision to change, and you'd better have motivation for the change, too (and internal sources of motivation are by far the strongest, most persistent sort).  Then you can work on replacing the habit or removing the habit trigger.

Don't expect instant results when trying to change habits.  Chances are pretty good that you'll have a fight on your hands for at least two weeks… often much longer.  Just keep your focus on now, on the progress you have already made, the changes that you already have, not on the permanent change that is your goal… it'll make it much easier to stick with it.

Other Articles You Might Like

 

 

PS – This post was written in response to Jenny and Erin's self development writing challenge.

Author

September 6th

Awareness, Growth, Learning, Motivation, Patterns, Perseverance, Subconscious

RSS Readers – The New Newspaper?

Morning Paper

An RSS reader, once set up, is much like a newspaper targeted specifically at your interests.  It's nice, in the morning, to sit down and read a bit about a few different topics, find out what's going on in your areas of interest, and maybe learn something new.  It's even nicer when you don't have to weed through other things which don't even slightly interest you in order to find those bits that do.

That's what an RSS reader does… it provides you with updates to "feeds" of information that interest you, without any extra "junk" (one man's junk is another man's treasure) to waste your time.  It allows you to efficiently remain up to date in your chosen areas without having to visit dozens of websites to see if they've updated their content.

Of course, you can "subscribe", or request updates be sent to your reader of choice, to general news feeds, and get the same sort of articles that would be in a standard newspaper, although without an editor deciding which ones deserve the front page.  But if you're only interested in one section of the paper, say sports, you can subscribe to feeds that only pass along sports news.  Or if sports aren't your style, you can subscribe to financial news, tech news, or any other kind of news.

But where RSS readers have an advantage over newspapers is the fact that you can also subscribe to feeds offering articles on self development (a little plug for my own niche… hope you don't mind), gardening, bird watching, or any other subject of interest shared with too few people to make it into a newspaper on a regular basis.  You can, essentially, build your own daily newspaper.

Newspapers do have an advantage over RSS in one area, though.  Any given newspaper is likely to be read by far more people than a given set of RSS feeds.  That means there is more of a social aspect… you can discuss the articles in the paper with others who have read them. 

This advantage of newspapers is only fleeting, however, because while the "set" of articles is shared among readers, any individual RSS feed (and the articles it contains) can have anywhere from a handful to hundreds of thousands of subscribers… and they are all interested in the same topic.  That's quite an advantage for socializing… anyone else that you find, through whatever means, that reads that same feed shares at least one interest with you.

And the even stronger advantage for social interaction is that you can generally click on any given article to go to that website, and on that website there is a very good chance that they have the ability to leave comments, thus giving you a way to communicate with those other people who share this one (at least) interest with you.

So… articles only on subjects that interest you, which interests you can change at any time (unsubscribe from a feed and/or subscribe to a new one), the ability to get articles on a vastly more wide array of subjects, and the ability to interact with others who you KNOW share at least one interest with you… RSS readers seem likely to, at some point, replace physical newspapers (you can always subscribe to your local paper's RSS feed) as a means to keep current on whatever your topics of interest.

And once someone invents (or popularizes) some way of sharing your entire set of feeds, that takes away the one social advantage that newspapers have left… that people have a good idea which other articles someone might have read. 

Author

August 29th

Communication, Learning, Off Topic

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