Boggles - Mindfulness Videos Articles and Tips

Coaching Videos & Tips - December 19 2019 No.632

SOMETHING BIG AND BOLD

People think it's too ridiculous, too fantastical!  That's the initial reaction I often get when I first tell my clients that they can achieve anythng to which they "set their mind".  But the science is cast-iron, the evidence is clear.  The only one standing in your way of going where you want to go is you... get out of your own way.

And, if you need a little nudge in the direction (of getting out of your own way) you'll find plenty to help in  The Archive!

 

Today's Quick Tip

We're hearing into the Christmas break - there is no The Mind Boggles next week - so you need to be appropriately equipped for this time of the year when we most often get the opportunity for reflection, to take stock.

As you reflect on the year just ending and that about to begin, discard the usual useless thoughts that plague us all when we come to consider the kind of life we really want.

Stop the following thoughts in their tracks: "The evidence of my life experience up to now suggests nothing much will change"; "The kind of life I would like is unrealistic"; "I don't deserve success or happiness"; "I'd feel guilty being happy when so many people are miserable".

I could go on and on but there's just one key thing you need to know right now.  The foregoing notions are all simply useless thoughts.  Stop thinking them.

Whether you know it or not or whether you play a deliberate part in it or not, the science is crystal clear - you are the creator of your own world... hence the importance of today's Quick Tip.  In entertaining any of the useless or destructive thoughts I've alluded to, you are choosing the ingredients for today's drama that you and I call life. 

"Choosing" is, perhaps, too strong a word for it - for, for the most part, the normally-minded person makes his or her choices automatically.  And, from an evolutionary perspective, it always pays to choose a negative over a positive thought... but that's just the way evolution has wired you.

For the normally-minded, one day is much like another as a result of this automated choosing.  The normally-minded person keeps choosing thougths from the same pool of thoughts that enable them make it from one day to the next - with little ever materially changing. 

The point is that nothing ever materially changes because the normally-minded continually and automatically choose the same ingredients and wonder why they end up continually eating the same stale cake!  It is important that you break this cycle - choosing different ingredients will, inevitably, result in a different cake.

Understand this: you can choose any ingredients - you are not restricted (except, perhaps, by physcial limitations... I'm not going to be the next heavyweight world boxing champion!).  And that's all you have to do.  Once you have your ingredients, the results are assured.

You need to carefully select which thoughts you entertain and which you let pass on by.  And, in particular, as we come up to the holdays where we'll all take time to reflect, you need to ensure that you don't let any of the normal limiting thoughts restrict your choice of ingredients... you can choose anything you want.

Just back from a few days' break in Nice. Each morning, we marvelled at en elderly couple who were bouncing up to the breakfast buffet so frequently that they genuinely looked like they were operating on springs.  Fair play to them we thought as we saw them later on walking along the seafront - wonderful to see people powered by such vim and vigour.

Come the end of our short break, as we boarded our flight home, the queue at the gate was moved aside as a passenger needing special assistance was boarded first... the lady who had been bounding up to the breakfast buffet looked pale and frail. We couldn't believe the transformation as we watched her being helped from her wheelchair, sporting a walking stick.

And, as we arrived in Geneva and watched the normal mad rush of people pushing each other to get off the plane, we marvelled at our elderly friend... Arnold Schwarzenegger would have been proud.  Like an indestructible Terminator, she sprang to her feet, her partner actually spearing a fellow passenger with the walking stick so that they could get off the plane first.

A walking stick and a hard neck... invaluable travel accessories for those with an aversion to queuing!

   

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