Traps

Our habits of thinking can easily lead some of us into a trap that we sometimes don't recognize. When we are satisfied with our viewpoint on a topic we have effectively established a filter on our senses and our thinking that stops from reexamining that viewpoint even in the face of new information. We literally cannot even see that new information because of our filters. Unfortunately this can occur at a very early age or be affected by work and personal interactions.
Our filters in essence create a box within which we look for our answers. This leads us into the trap of continuing to ask the same question over and over again and frustrating ourselves by always getting answers from our box that don't work.
Perhaps the way to break the trap is to start searching for questions rather than continuing to look for more answers within our filtered box. New questions can come from reading, movies, conversations, controversy and so on. When we start looking for questions we will often find that we have a answer to that question that resonates with us and changes the filters we use.
Your thoughts?

Patience

There are undervalued skills in this time of instant communication, instant social groups, instant news and needing instant results.
Most of us when we are making a change or achieving a goal tend to go overboard. Jumping into anything or everything that can stack the odds in our favor to complete the change/goal instantly without any consideration for our current habits and skills.
We often attempt most times to change too much and do it too quickly when it requires overturning the habits and thinking patterns we had for years and require new skills we don't currently have.
Perhaps the skills we need to develop and master before trying radical change are timing, appropriate choice of goals and above all patience.
Your thoughts?

Life Perspective

For a number of people winning at life appears to be an ever increasing list of things to have or to be accomplished. They are never satisfied with what they have and therefore are always living in the future. Others seem to live with the chains of the past. Every failure to achieve something adds yet another chain preventing them from taking chances at all and therefore end up doing nothing.
In both cases the present escapes them and they are never happy with any aspect of their life. Why do we make it so hard to just enjoy our lives?
Is there a better perspective?
Instead of making life a perpetual contest we could perhaps change our perspective by asking instead what is the legacy that we will leave behind us when we die. If we have made a positive difference in even just other person then we have won. Our life has meaning. If we were to use the analogy that life is like a poker game then each moment is like having a fresh hand dealt. What has gone on before has no bearing on the current hand dealt other than the experience of getting to know the other players. It is the accumulation of well played hands that produce a winner not dissimilar to life.
The change from winning to legacy and the focus on how we play the current hand dealt by circumstances and our interactions with others could lead us to living a more fulfilling life.
Your thoughts?

Too Much Truth

We may want to make a major change to accomplish a desired goal and find that we run into trouble at almost every turn. This is not an uncommon problem.

It arises from the fact that our beliefs, truths, and habits are like an interwoven multicolor ball of wool that have built up in layers over the years as our lives grew more complex and diversified.

Now we have reached a point that we want to change a major belief or habit. The real root issue is that beliefs are our truths that we have held and bound our experiences to and the result is like the famous Gordian knot. Now we are attempting to duplicate the feat of Alexander and cut through it with one swipe of the sword. 

It could result in trying to change too much truth all at once and it may overwhelm us and stop us in our tracks. If we reach this barrier then we need to change our approach.

We could treat a major change more like peeling the layers of an onion. Each layer represents truths, beliefs, and experiences that we have to restructure in the context of the new belief that we wish to hold. As with peeling an onion we have tears (emotions) that we need to stop and wipe our eyes and wait a moment to let the effect evaporate. Layer by layer we can steadily approach our goal of changing our beliefs and truths until it is done.

Not all things can be fixed by approaching it with a sword.

What has been your experience?

Technorati tags: managing change, beliefs, truth, perspective. personal growth

Thinking on Addictions

I was asked a question that I feel deserves a post because it is one that has truly fascinated me for some time. This is because of my own history of dealing with my personal addictions and my experiences as a Reiki Master; with energy healing, as a hypnotist; in issues of pain and healing, and when I was teaching Martial Arts; the various aspects of Qi (Chi), prana, mana, ka, and Qigong to name a few.

The question: Addiction. Do you think it is learned? inherited? 

This deals with the field of behavioral genetics and more specifically psychiatric genetics. Studies have at best shown a 50-60% correlation in alcoholism appearing in a family tree. I would rather say that there could be an inherited predisposition to alcoholism. However there are numerous documented twin studies where one of the children becomes an alcoholic and the other doesn't.

Recent research by  Dr. Bruce Lipton and covered in his book The Biology of  Belief revealed that genes do not in fact control our behavior, instead, genes are turned on and off by influences outside the cell. These influences include our perceptions and beliefs.

Dr. Candice Pert's research into peptides has shown that the receptors we have in our brain are also present throughout our bodies. Two of her books; Molecules of Emotion and Your Body is Your Subconscious Mind, in particular cover the interaction of body and mind.

I think that we can inherit genes that predispose people to addictions but it is not a final sentence. The fact that there are documented cases where people have conquered cancer and other diseases, ended addictions and the enigma of the placebo effect have convinced me that our perceptions, beliefs and environment do matter.

My take:

1. Cells react to their environment and modify themselves accordingly. Change the environment and they change.
2. The cells in our bodies die and are replaced including the brain totally every 7 years. Some in minutes, some in days, etc. Over time cells adapt themselves to a new environment that is after we quit smoking or stop drinking the cells adjust and craving decreases or stops.
3. People can make themselves get sick or die. Broken heart syndrome, witch doctors, hypochondriacs, false pregnancies. etc.
4. Quantum scientific discoveries on the fundamental basics of energy.
5. Rich history of yoga and martial arts in extraordinary physical and mental abilities as well as energy projection.
6. Thinking on and changing our perceptions about our past issues changes the impact they have on us.

Food for thought. Enjoy the meal.

Technorati tags: beliefs, thinking skills, perspective, managing change, personal growth, addictions

Thinking About Beliefs Part 1

This is the first post of a three part series on my thinking about beliefs.

Beliefs are difficult to think about. There are all kinds of definitions as to what a belief is. The one I often use is a quote from Edward de Bono a renowned thinker. "At its most powerful a belief is a perception that forces us to look at the world in such a way that the perception is validated."

The following diagram represents my perspective on how beliefs come about. It starts with a feeling that we have. We then tend to look at our current experiences; that is what is going on in our world at that time, and we naturally assume that they are the cause for that feeling. This is our perception of the causal connection between the feeling and the experience. The next time we have a similar feeling with a similar experience we reinforce our perception (our belief).

As the accumulation of experiences that we match to a particular feeling increases the stronger our certainty that our perception is correct; it is our truth. A belief then is something about which we have the feeling it is true and is so self-evident that the idea of questioning it is just not thought about.

Over time we add supporting beliefs that support the central core belief. The next diagram represents a single belief with the light blue circle being the core belief. The other shapes represent the supporting beliefs.

Let me use an example to illustrate.
We want to belong to our family group as it is essential to our survival. Our parents believe that we should be silent around adults as a sign of being well brought up and properly respectful. We are disciplined by being forced to go to our room or to stand facing the corner until we say that we will behave properly next time. This is repeated until we learn to be silent and are rewarded by being praised by our parents when our behavior is proper. These repeated experiences forms the connection between our experiences, our feelings and our results. Our perception matches our beliefs.

Later on we start school and want very much to be part of the group. We quickly find out that speaking out in the classroom gets the disapproval of the teacher. Now we form a secondary belief that expressing ourselves in school is bad behavior and we tack it on to the original belief. Similarly it could happen with our playmate groups, team sports and so on with the accumulated experiences teaching us that the belief is true. Our perception of how the world works is firmly validated and the belief is firmly rooted as part of our survival mechanism.

Now we cannot see any evidence that the belief is incorrect in any way as our perception filters out any contradiction to the belief. We simply ignore them.

The second post will be on the Fallacy of Limiting Beliefs and the third post on the Number 1 Myth of Self-Help Programs. Stay tuned.

Technorati tags: beliefs, perspective, thinking skills, personal growth

The Value of Unpleasant Feelings

For a long time I never used to see the value of having unpleasant feelings. They were something to get rid of even to the extent of ending relationships or changing activities. Yes, I had definitely bought into the feel good philosophy. Then I would wonder why I end up back in the same situation over and over again. 

Has this ever happened to you?

The problem is that we can focus so much on getting rid of the unpleasant feelings in any way possible as we feel they serve no purpose that we develop habits of ignoring the feeling or trying to find pleasure  through excessive drinking, eating or other activities that usually end with feelings of guilt or remorse. The problem hasn't gone away; we have just buried it in a shallow grave.

Unpleasant feelings such as anxiety, fear, pain and discomfort are unsettling but essential to our living a quality life. They are a call to action we should heed because it signals a gap between who we think we are and how the world sees us. The result we got did not match our expectations. We then have an opportunity to learn from our results; if we choose to, and change our behavior and get better results.

Be thankful for your unpleasant feelings for they are your inner guide to a more fulfilling life.

Technorati tags: thinking skills, perspective, feelings, personal growth

When Stuck on a Problem

Let's look at an activity most of us have done at some time or other. Have you ever cleaned a car, bicycle, raked the lawn, washed the floor or cleaned almost anything. I can remember after washing my car and looking at it; feeling very pleased with how clean it looked. That was until I started walking around the car and all of a sudden streaks and missed spots jumped out at me.

What changed?

It was a combination of changing circumstances (walking) and changing perspective (how I viewed the car) that brought things (dirt) to light. We can use this same principle when we are stuck in our thinking on a problem. We need to find a way to change the circumstances and perspective.

How do we do that?

We could restate the problem in different ways. For example: instead of using I always...; we can think of specific different circumstances when the problem arises such as feeling disliked or angry. Then we need to work on changing our perspective by using our imagination such as looking at it from another persons viewpoint covered in a previous post.

We need to change both circumstances and perspective to be able to gain new insights and solutions.

 

Technorati tags: perspective, changing habits, problems, thinking skills

Is it the Journey or the Destination that's Important

In hypnosis to explain what it is like we often use the example of a time when you drove to work or went somewhere and when you arrived you couldn't really recall the details of how you got there; you just arrived. What happened is that your mind was so busy thinking about an upcoming event, a bad situation, or anticipating something so intently that your subconscious mind (habits)took over the task of getting you there. Your subconscious mind if necessary would have interrupted your thinking if a situation had needed your attention.

Similarly some of us can get so focused on our future (vision, destination) that we leave the running of our life to our habits. The reverse of this is creating busy work. Taking on so many tasks that we cannot pay attention to where we are going. In either case we can suddenly wake up (a situation) not knowing how we got there but faced with a result that we didn't want. We all need destinations to provide directions in our life but we can't afford to do it on autopilot.

So what can we do?

We need to pay attention to both. It is like taking a scenic train ride such as the Alaska Rail & Cruise Tours. Our journey will have many sights that add to the richness of our life creating those fond moments we remember long after we have arrived at our destination. We may even stop and take side trips. Our destination can and will be enhanced by the journey. But we have to be present and paying attention and not lost in our habits.

Technorati tags: thinking skills, perspective, planning, vision, life skills

The Secret to Changing Habits

We have our habits because they have a benefit for us. We don't have to think about them or make decisions. You don't want to go through a complicated routine to tie your shoelaces or to drive your car. Some of our habits are easy to change. If we are forced by road construction to find an alternative and we like it, we may never go back to our old route. Some of our habits are hard to change, like how we respond to criticism or how we treat money because we have had them a long time and are old friends.

So how do you change those long term habits?

If you have tried and tried to make a change and gotten nowhere; (smoking, weight, money...), it is likely that you took an all or nothing approach. With gritted teeth and armed with your willpower you decided it was going to change right now and got nowhere at all. The secret is that you don't try to replace your habit all at once. Remember your habits are there because they benefit you in some way so you need to change them in small doable steps.

For example I lost 118 lbs from a weight of 298 to my current weight of 170 by making a small simple change in my eating pattern. I started eating 5 meals a day instead of big meals twice a day. I still ate what ever I wanted but I found that I started to eat smaller meals because my next one was only a few hours away. Over time as I lost weight slowly I changed what I was eating and so on until 14 months later I reached the weight that was comfortable for me. It was relatively painless and intially I would fall off the wagon but I just continued back on my routine. It got easier the longer I did the routine. I eased into the change rather than fighting it.

If you have a long term habit you want to change then try being nice to yourself instead of fighting yourself.

Technorati tags: changing habits, secret, weight loss