Saturday, January 29, 2011

Your Life Will Stop Sucking When You Do

Do you ever have days where it feels as though the whole world’s against you?
Is it getting to the point where it seems you’ll never have an ultimate relationship or career, much less an amazing life? Does it seem as if you have a “type” regarding relationships and you continue meeting people who don’t get, love or respect you?
You are not alone.

Everyone has a bad day, or has experienced more than one crappy relationship.  But if you find yourself in Ground Hog Day deja vu, with the same feeling surfacing no matter what situation you’re in, you must look at the common denominator—you.
If you want to gain control of your life and build the confidence you need, have the life you deserve by getting YOU out of YOUR way.

Your Perception Is Your Reality.  When drama flares up and problems arise, do you blame someone or something, or do you gravitate toward solutions?  You might find yourself doing a bit of both depending on the situation.  In either case, your reaction is tied to your perception of what happened. Too often, you might find yourself blaming a person or circumstance for the aggravation. The reality is, no matter what the trigger, familiars often equal a pattern. To build your confidence and take control of your life, it’s mission critical to recognize how your central processing unit programmed from early childhood actual works.

Are You A Mac or A PC? Your internal CPU is built in the language of your beliefs and experiences, which by default determine the contextual filters you apply to situations. Just like data management programs such as Word, Excel or PowerPoint, you process data to apply meaning to every situation. You build confidence in your ability to process information when you see situations from multiple perspectives. Focusing on changing everything but the internal meaning and importance you place on the issue will not serve you. It doesn't matter at all WHY it’s happening or who is doing it—the lesson is in how you process it.  Focus on changing how you feel about what happened; not on ensuring what happened never happens again.

Suffering Is Not In The Fact, It’s In The Perception Of The Fact. Imagine you ask your best friend to dinner and she declines because she says she’s too tired.  That weekend, you go to the mall by yourself and you see your best friend laughing it up with another person.  Devastated, you go home feeling left out and rejected, even plotting how you might end the friendship.  Two days later, she casually mentions that her sister who she hasn't seen in years dropped in unexpectedly and dragged her out to dinner on Friday night.  Instantly you feel your gloom lift, you realize she’s not a two-faced liar who needs to sleep with one eye open, and the dark cloud hanging over your head evaporates.

Did the facts change?  Or did your perception change? Once you understand you are not a victim of situations and can control the meaning or importance you place on them, you will be well on your way to becoming more confident every day.

Be The Change You Want To See In The World. If you become aware that you are the common denominator in every situation, you will be more focused on fine-tuning your filers, and less focused on changing the people pushing YOUR buttons.  By limiting the amount of power you give to each of these buttons, you will become immune to other people trying to move their issues and perceptions into something YOU need to solve. Know who you are and own it. If you are sensitive and easily get your feelings hurt, curb those feelings by placing less meaning on what people think about you, and more with how you feel about yourself.  See each confrontation as an opportunity to strengthen your resolve and maintain your frequency.  If you wake up on top of the world, stay there by compartmentalizing how you feel and how they feel. This isn’t going to be easy, but it’s worth it.  Try to inspire those around you by acknowledging and appreciating how they feel, but set boundaries by using statements such as… “I’m sorry you are feeling as if you aren’t important to me, but it’s not true.  Is there something I can say or do to make you feel better?”
And if you are triggered, be aware of your perception and focus on that, not what they actually did or said, by simply saying… “I realize this is my own stuff, but right now I feel unheard and unimportant; do you think we could start this conversation over?”

The best way for you to change your life, is for you to change the lens you use to view your world.  Few people have a personal vendetta against other people, you included.  So when your day starts to suck, see how you are contributing to it by getting to the root cause:  your perception and your reaction.

4 comments:

  1. Best words in here, nice post

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi there! I Came across your blog through NaBloPoMo and am loving all your helpful tips! Thanks for sharing :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. people like to complain about things and not do anything about it, which goes hand in hand with what you're saying. at the end of the day, it all boils down to the individual. are they going to keep thinking that their life sucks, or do something about it?

    ReplyDelete