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My apologies for the gap in posts. May you find this one worth the wait.
When going for a goal, you want to have your environment conducive towards success. This counts both for the area around you as well as your inner space. Lighting, clutter, distractions both pleasant and otherwise will take a driving enthusiasm for an achievement and whittle it away to nothing. The same can be said for resistance, sabotaging self-talk, mental “land mines” and limiting beliefs. To be at your best, you will want to “stack the deck” in your favor.
The world around you
There are plenty of resources out there for organizing your space, and going into the principles of Feng Shui, but I will not go into that here. Instead I’m going to suggest a few guidelines and then turn you loose to see what works.
Get rid of clutter. Sounds trite and tired, and it is an oldie, but this rule is golden. The less stuff you have taking up desk space and crowding your vision, the better you can focus. If, like me, you are a pack rat, then go on an organizing binge. Go out and get organizational units. Bookshelves, bins, whatever. Organize your collection of stuff into that organizational unit (or units). Don’t stop until it’s done. Then step back, and take a few moments to look inside and see if you aren’t feeling a little…lighter. You will find that you can function much better without stuff cluttering up your life. I’m not saying that your area should be a barren Spartan wasteland. The aim is not to deprive yourself, but to set up an environment where you can bring your talents to bear.
Along those lines, remember that a little ambiance does wonders. Would you rather go to a doctors office that is cold, stark white, and whose only noise is that of equipment being moved around? I wouldn’t. The same is true of your space. I am using desks in this analogy, because it is a handy example. In truth, you can apply this to wherever you spend your time or do your work. Try adding some splashes of color. Try out some music. Make sure that this music has happy connotations for you. Music that you appreciate yet can make you depressed probably shouldn’t be there. Make sure that the space is comfortable to be in. Remember that no matter what you do, you operate best when you are in a relaxed mental state and having fun. As such, try to go for a synergy of focus and relaxation. Fill the “fun” part of the equation in how you go about accomplishing your goal.
Keep negative folks out. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Naysayers and other such well-intentioned-but-negative people can bring you down faster then you realize. You want your space to be a sanctum. A happy place that you look forward to visiting and using. If you habitually allow a negative person to be there, that will suck the happiness right out. Once again, use what feels right for you.
The world within you
Unsurprisingly, it is also of paramount importance to make sure that your inner world is likewise focused, yet relaxed. If you are encountering resistance, the first thing to do is remember that this resistance is well-intentioned. Try to work with your inner mind. Imagine having a conversation with your feelings of resistance. What does it say? If you can, try to come to some kind of accord or agreement. Other times, you will need to simply plunge ahead. Don’t plunge into anything automatically self-destructive, but if you rationally have a limited risk with massive reward potential, then go for it!
One that I had problems with for a long time are what I refer to as “land mines“. These can and for me, usually were, memories that would jump up and scream for your mental attention, often at inopportune times. The usual themes are anger, fear, embarrassment, frustration, regret, inadequacy, despair, etc. They can derail your mental/emotional efforts towards improvement if left unchecked. The first thing to do when you hit one of these is to stop and - you guessed it - check your internal state. Can you tell what brought this on? What effect has it had on you? Is there any “damage” caused by it? If so, how easy is it to repair?. Now, you will want to go back to the “land mine” itself. Usually, it shows up either as an image, a sound, or a tactile feeling. In any event, you will want to find out which one it is. Once you have an idea of the details of how it is presented in your mind, it’s time to have some fun. I’m going to use visual imagery mostly, since that is what I use. For auditory people, factors might be volume, reverberation, “distance”, pitch, etc. For tactile people, there might be temperature, pressure, expansiveness (how much space does this tactile sensation take up?) direction, and so on. Imagine you are trying to explain it to someone who knows nothing about it. The more details the better. It may feel as if it’s trying to slip away from you. Don’t be fooled. It’s in your mind, and it’s claim-to-fame is hovering right at the edge of the mind and springing up to slap you in the face. It’s not getting too far. Once you have the details, you can start playing with them. For example: I tried taking my images and using a mental white paintbrush to paint a “no” sign on the image, and that helped, but didn’t do as much as I would have liked. Other things you can do, are decrease the brightness, the contrast, the color, just like on your TV. If you enjoy a bit of humor (and I find that being able to laugh at it makes the whole process massively more effective), you can put it in a picture frame and take a wrecking ball to it, shattering it. Then grind the pieces and throw them away. Other goodies along the same lines: Put the image on Acme Rocket Skates and run it right into a brick wall. TNT is pretty good, as is the cartoon anvil. For the voice, imagine if it had just inhaled helium from a balloon. This may sound like you are trying to defeat a Boggart from the Harry Potter universe, but there’s an element of truth to that. If you can laugh at these land mines, they won’t be bothering you. You may find that you need to forgive in order to make some go away. I have not really yet touched on the importance of forgiveness. One of my favorite forgiveness quotes is this:
“It really doesn’t matter if the person who hurt you deserves to be forgiven. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. You have things to do and you want to move on.” - Real Live Preacher weblog.
Sometimes the person you have to forgive is yourself, and that can be a tough challenge. But consider: You are here and reading this now because you want better for your life. Therefore, you must believe that the person you are looking to improve (yourself) can and will improve. Are you therefore not practically obligated to forgive? You are going to be looking yourself in the mirror your entire life on this world. Take this time to make friends with the person looking back at you.
The unspoken party in this lineup of things to clear out are the limiting beliefs. You’ve heard them. “Oh, I can’t do that”, “I’m not that smart”, “That is too hard”, “I’m not strong/smart/pretty/handsome/skilled/wise/good enough”. What a pile of garbage! The first step in dealing with limiting beliefs is to recognize them for what they are. This tech has a prerequisite of courage. If you are not prepared to take a look at yourself and get rid of these beliefs, it’s going to make identifying them all the harder. When you are thinking of something that you want, pay attention to the beliefs that come into play. For the moment, set aside whether or not they are rational. Do these beliefs describe you as being limited? Then it probably is a limiting belief. Yes, that includes “I can’t afford that”. That’s a classic. The question is not whether or not you can afford something, but how you are going to afford it. You would be able to afford it if you had greater income, or if you could find a better price for it, or if you could restructure the deal to give you greater power.
Now that you have identified a limiting belief, it is time to move on to phase 2: Decide not to believe it. Many people seem to get wrapped up in their beliefs so tightly that they seem to identify with them. Beliefs are not who you are, but merely part of the mental environment you happen to occupy now. Kinda out-there, but try this on for size: Try working from the perspective that you are not your body. You have a body, and it does more-or-less what you tell it to, but the body is not you. The same can be said of your mind. Your beliefs, thoughts, all of that is closer, but that is not who you are. As such, you have the prerogative and the ability to change your beliefs if you so decide. I know, the idea of removing a belief can be scary, especially if you have not done so deliberately before. One that that will help is to have a replacement belief standing by. One that is in the same subject, but which is more empowering. If your belief was that you can’t afford what you need, your new belief might be put into words as “I always have the money and resources I require”. Of course that’s just one example of what can be used. The point is to remove what limits you and replace it with what lifts you up. We’ll tackle that next.
Which brings us to phase 3: making the switch. There are actually a couple ways that this can be done. First and foremost, there’s the low-level techs: Meditation, affirmations, and careful monitoring of your internal state. I suggest using these on a more-or-less ongoing basis anyway, so if you are, then incorporate the change in belief into them. For affirmations, you will of course not be focusing on the limiting belief, but instead “over-writing” it with a more beneficial and empowering belief. If meditating, open a dialog with you inner mind and go through the same process. In much the same way I described dealing with the land mines, you can ask your inner mind to show you the belief. From here you can play with it until you find it’s weak spot. Don’t demolish it until you have found that one key feature that makes it so powerful in your mind. Once that is done, bring in your new belief. It will be in the same sensory category as the old one - if the old one is an image, the new one will be too. Use the key trait of the old belief to render it powerless, and at the same time use the key trait to bring the new belief into a position of power. Make sure that the effect is clear. If you don’t feel like the new belief is all that strong, keep working at it until you feel it’s right. If push comes to shove and you can’t seem to get it, you can reverse the process and bring the old belief back to power for now, and study it some more.
Bear in mind, that beliefs are linked, and by changing one, you can cause a ripple effect. This will probably be a good thing, but you may be in for some surprises until things settle down. Most of them will probably be positive, but you may run into conflicts in your belief structure. One belief conflicts with another. Let’s go back to the money belief. If you believe that you always have the money you require, and that money is inherently evil, that’s going to cause some problems. Eventually, you will have to make a choice for your own sanity: Revert to your old belief system, or enact a belief that money is a tool that can be used for good or evil like any other. As always, the choice is yours.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Paraliminals. I have tried out various external products for reshaping the inner environment to suit my needs, but the Paraliminals blow them all out of the water. Once again, there’s no substitute for being self-aware, but these can be a big boost. If the affirmations don’t seem to do it for you, and the meditation and Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques I laid out don’t seem to do it, try out the Paraliminals. (Obviously, I would suggest Belief for this one). They have a 30 day money back guarantee, so if it doesn’t work for you, there’s no big risk.
It’s all about you
Coming back to the purpose of all these techs, by removing the junk and clutter in your world, you are more open to not only enjoying your environment more, but carrying out your Will. When you are not bogged down in papers and land mines and not having to slog through in order to perform even the simplest tasks, you begin to start acting out of who you are deep inside. One of my beliefs is that each of us had our reasons for coming here. By removing these restrictions, you can unfold and become the person that you truly deep-down wish to be and are inside.
