by Gilbert Ross, Soul Hiker
Have you ever wondered why your life didn’t turn out exactly the way you wanted it to be? I have been there a couple of times myself. One straightforward answer is that things don’t always turn out the way we expect them and that’s perfectly understandable. It stands up to us to adapt to those circumstances we don’t have full control of or accept them and let go of them to continue with our lives.
There are other moments however where we don’t quite take this down very well and peacefully. The idea that our paths have turned away from the life we once imagined haunts our heads from time to time. This can stir up and bubble a lot of feelings of regret, bitterness and resentment which can takes its toll on us over time.
We end up blaming many things inappropriately and at no benefit or consolation. We think that it’s our fault, or somebody else’s fault. We think that the world has turned against us or is conspiring against us. We thing that fate has given us its cold shoulder and let us brawl along against a set of unfavorable circumstances.
We can consciously create the Life we want
I strongly believe that we can consciously direct our life and design it the way we want it to be but before we have to learn to be aware of the underlying patterns of thought or behavior that keep us from doing this.
There are ten basic mistakes that we very easily fall into by default and that are an obstacle to creating the life we want. There may be more than 10 or some people may address the same issue with a different concept but I think the following ten are the main ones and most common:
1. Fatalism The first and most common mistake is the inner belief that we don’t have much of a say in our lives. It’s the idea that all that happens is pre-determined and that we have absolutely no control over it.
The locus of power and control, according to this belief, is shifted from inwards to outwards. Things happen because it is written in our fate, in our genes, in the celestial bodies or in the palm of our hands. We are hence disempowered.
This disempowering belief has long stretching consequences in all the things that we think or do. For starters, it takes away the trust we ought to have in ourselves and in our decisions and actions. Secondly it installs a false sense of responsibility.
Responsibility really is the realization that we have the possibility and the will to positively change our future and that of others. Responsibility is the awareness that we can consciously create our destiny but also the vulnerability of misplacing it.
2. Negativity & self-defeating thoughts This problem comes in many forms and disguises. In general it is the sense that we give more weight to the negative rather than positive aspects of things. This very often distorts our perspective on life.
Another closely related attitude is the self-defeating mode of thinking such as in “Everyone seems to be successful except me because that’s the way it is” or “I don’t think I can do it. It’s not my luck”. These are self-defeating thoughts which impede us from doing something because we ‘instruct’ ourselves that we can’t do it from start even though we have no solid foundation to prove this.
It’s only a belief without rational basis. These beliefs make us see life in a skewed way and not as it really is. It hinders us from really trying let alone succeed.
3. Guilt This is a hard one. We all had some sense of guilt in our lives. Some people though seem to be more enslaved by it than others. There are some who live their lives totally immersed in it.
Guilt is when we believe that some undesirable action we did in the past binds us in the present. It’s when we believe that there is an insolvable part of our past that we regret and that is tying us down even now in the present.
It is tightly linked to a sense of remorse. Whether this sense is real or justified is totally another thing. One thing that is for sure is that guilt is self-created and it immobilizes us. Guilt is very often an illusion and a distortion of reality.
4. Anger This one is really notorious. Anger is a very strong negative emotion. It comes in different grades but they all have one thing in common: They all make us blind to the present circumstances, make us lose rational judgment and create a strong emotional imbalance.
Anger is frowned upon by all religions and spiritual teachings. It is a very natural emotion but the problem comes when it makes us lose sight of ourselves and of others.
5. Envy Envy is very closely tied to belief that we are separate from each other and that we compete with each other in a limited and scarce pool of resources.
Envy is the disoriented belief that other people’s success is taken from ours. It’s also the misguided attitude of translating other people’s achievements into our lacks. This is upside down thinking.
We should first of all focus on our goals and achievement. We should also understand that other people’s success demonstrates that we can be as much successful. Life and the Universe are infinitely abundant. Resources are not scarce as we think.
6. Prejudice No need of any introduction. Prejudice literally means making a judgment of something or someone before having knowledge and understanding of it.
This isn’t always a result of mischief or ignorance. Sometimes the mind needs to make fast decisions and the only way it can retrieve information quickly is by packing it into categories and labels. Very often however we overdo this labeling in many circumstances. We apply it on people and to events even when not necessary.
Prejudice is locking our minds to predefined and limited modes of understanding. It is also an obstacle to creativity.
7. Self-Deprecation Low self-esteem is a common syndrome. It gives us a weak sense of trust and security in ourselves. It makes us vulnerable to the changes and movements in life and to the thoughts and reactions of other people.
It devalues our thoughts and actions which makes us less effective in changing and creating our future.
8. Self-Centeredness This is the realm of the ego. We very often see the world strictly through our own biases, our own needs and our own selfish desires. This makes us self-centered.
Self-centeredness is when we are blind to the needs of others. It is when we are locked into self oriented mindset wherein we think of ourselves as being cut off and separate from the rest. There is the “I and the others” kind of standpoint. It’s about Me, I and mine.
This is ultimately shallow because it fails to see the sacred interconnectedness between things. It also makes us fail to see that we are part of a larger whole and much of our success is dependent on this recognition.
9. Resistance to Change We all have encountered this problem either in ourselves or in people we know. Resistance to change is a very real and persistent obstacle if we want to redesign or transform our lives. In fact it is usually the first obstacle we encounter.
There is often that immediate inner objection when we try to change something in our lives. This is only natural. We like to stay in our comfort zone by default. That is a natural setting in us. It is also natural that change always encounters inertia especially in the beginning.
Being more conscious of this can alleviate a lot of trouble and friction.
10. The Scarcity Mindset I have already touched on this point with relation to envy. In short, this mindset makes us believe that things and opportunities in Life are scarce. This is not entirely our fault. We were brought up to see things in this way.
We were always brought up with certain notions such as “You have to strive hard and compete”, “You have to get there before the rest otherwise you’ll get less”, “life is hard and the means are limited. You have to work hard for it”…and so on.
The scarcity mindset limits us into believing that we can’t always get what we want just because we want it. Resources and opportunities are scarce hence what we want may not always be available and may be highly competed for.
This turns out to be an untrue preconception most of the time. The Universe is infinitely abundant and opportunities are endless if we really believe it.
By changing our mindset from scarcity to abundance, things will start changing in quantum leaps. We will start making more things happen and stumble over much more opportunities just because our mind is more open to those opportunities. We would be expecting them. As the saying goes “opportunity knocks at the door of the prepared”.
Redesigning our Lives = Reorienting our Beliefs
You can create the life that you want without any limits. This is a given truth which none of us gets to know from birth, from school or from any conventional wisdom. There are some successful no-limits persons that seem to know this intuitively or they have come to understand it at some point in their lives.
The fact still is that it’s not common knowledge. Most of all we seem mostly unaware that these common ten traits, which are very often unobserved or taken for granted, are real obstacles to creating the life that we want.
Redesigning our lives is absolutely possible but it would entail, first of all, reorienting some of the foundational beliefs mentioned above.
Recognition of them and the fact that most of them are unreal and self-created is the first big step towards the conscious co-creation of our lives.
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