Get the Life You Love
The people in a circle express their hopes: To get
out of a career rut. To have great sex and travel a
lot like hummingbirds do. To overcome fears and
obstacles. To respond to their own needs for once.
To work through a breakup, a death, a job loss, a
major disappointment. To live their best life.
These intrepid explorers have shown up at Get the Life
You Love in my fifth year of leading this popular
class at Emory University's Center for Lifelong
Learning, and they're ready to journey on.
Here's the irony: Originally the class was named Art
of Positive Change. People still showed up, but not
as many. We discovered that everyone wants to get
the life they love, but few people want to change a
thing about their lives to get it.
It's a
common complaint: Everybody wants to get to heaven,
but nobody wants to die!
The great news is,
change is so simple, and the key to the kingdom is
right within your grasp.
All you have to do
to change your life is to change your mind. Yes,
that's it. That simple: When you change your
thinking, you change your life.
It is not the circumstances of our lives that make
us what we are, but the way we perceive them. And
then how we take action upon those perceptions. 'It
is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand
battles,' Buddha encouraged.
When we hold a thought
in our mind and attach emotion to it, that thought
is empowered. In the natural order of things, it
needs to hatch!
What's on YOUR Mind?
In his study of what makes some
people live happy, successful, comfortable lives
while others end up in the dumps, Napolean Hill,
author of the classic Think and Grow Rich came to
this important conclusion: People become what they
think about.
Remember that old saying,
'Careful what you wish for?' It's the same as
careful what you think about. When we hold a thought
in our mind and attach emotion to it, that thought
is empowered. In the natural order of things, it
needs to hatch!
I have a friend who used to swear she'd end up a bag
lady--this was her negative self-talk for
years--until she rediscovered the millennial wisdom
'As you think, so you shall be,' and took it to
heart. She cancelled her old fears and now holds
forth a sunnier vision for herself, knowing that the
mind draws us toward the people, places and
circumstances where we focus.
Thoughts Are Things
A happily retired male friend is in
the process of losing weight. When you examine it,
his self-talk about it may actually thwart his
achieving the desired goal.
If he focuses
on losing weight, he's focusing on being a loser,
and he's focusing on the weight. Who wants either of
those?
We discussed this phenomenon of positively
programming one's mind and he shifted his thinking
from 'lose weight' to 'gain health' or even 'gain
svelte' (or whatever works for him). In the first
week he found it was so much easier to push away
from the table that he lost five pounds--without
either Atkins or South Beach!
Sometimes
people fear change because they feel compulsive
about knowing exactly what's going to happen next.
Guess what--we can't know everything. In fact,
letting go of outcomes guarantees that our endeavor
will be successful on some level. One of my artist
friends once told me, 'I'm always creating
something, even if it's only a mess.'
So
it's vital to have one's thoughts attuned to a
vision, and to begin taking those first steps toward
it, even if baby steps. What if the first time
babies fell down they never got up and started
walking again?
One of my coaching clients
is a successful attorney/MBA who left her
high-powered job as a tax associate with one of the
Big Accounting firms to pursue entrepreneurial
endeavors.
After our discussions, this
brilliant 30-year-old who is accustomed to being in
complete control offered me her newfound wisdom: 'I
now understand that I do not need to see the entire
path right this moment but it will unfold before me
as I begin.'
If you keep your kayak snugged up to the riverbank,
you won't experience a whole lot of change. But when
you push out into the flow, the vision in your mind
serves as the paddle getting you where you want to
go.
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