Have you ever sat back and wondered what your life would be if you chose a different path? Maybe you believe that your life is set. Your parents have talked about how you will always take over the family business and you, at one time, had a dream of being a writer. Perhaps you are always feeling angry or you have a pet peeve that just sets you off. Many people will just say I can’t help it, that’s just how I am. They have resigned themselves to being angry.
So many people think that they can’t change. They are beholden to a set of rules for when they were young kids. People are so quick to limit themselves and create their own misery because they want to think that they are firmly stuck in the life they are living. To think that their dreams are dead and gone, never to be resurrected. This is flat out false you can change and the chains that you are shackled with were forged by you, not the people you gave your power to.
What if you have a choice?
We make choices everyday. Do you go left or do you go right. Do you go to work or just loaf around the house all day? There are thousands of choices made each day, Many of them are conscious thoughts. While the majority of them are unconscious thoughts.
Our brains like to make things with as low energy as possible. So it depends on the habit center of your brain. When you make a change and do something different this essentially wakes your brain up and it starts paying attention. This is also when your amygdala really starts to make noise. This gets your heart rate up. You get nervous. You may even sweat.
This is your body sending out warning signs that you are doing something dangerous. You have stepped out of your routine and now it is having to work. This is one reason writing notes with your left hand will actually cause your mind to remember more than if you were writing with your dominant right hand. Your mind is having to pay more attention to what is happening.
The point is that you are not following the safe route. Yet if you are being predictable then your mind will just turn to low power mode to save energy. and this is where the majority of your unconscious thoughts come from. These unconscious thoughts make Unintentional models.
These unintentional models are often keys to how you are programming your mind.
Your programming
Your brain is nothing more than an organic computer. It takes all the data that it has coming in and processes what it sees, feels, hears, tastes, and smells to determine what is happening around you.
If you look at your mind as a computer it is easy to see it as running programs. In the morning it runs the wake up app. Followed by the get the kids to school app, and finally drive to work app. As you are going you are hearing what is being said on the radio, what your kids are talking about and you are thinking thoughts.
These thoughts are what make you who you believe you are. You may believe that you are a great dad, or a failure as a husband. Your thoughts may tell you you are not a reader or you suck at math. Telling yourself this will cause you to be bad at math, and if you try to read you will fall asleep in a few pages.
If you ask yourself low quality questions your mind will work to produce low quality answers. This is why if you are always asking yourself why you are bad at talking to people you find reasons as to why you don’t talk to people well.
The grand programmer
You are the programmer. Now when you were young you were taught several things. It is your moral code, and your work ethics are tied in to those who raised you. If you weren’t made to work that much then how are you going to build a good work ethic? By changing your programming that’s how.
You can change all parts of your life. If you are willing to pay attention to what you are thinking and then do the needed thought work to be able to implement that new thought. It’s not hard. It does take a bit of tenacity and persistence to make the shift. Yet If you keep it up you can reprogram your life. You can change how you see the world. That world can go from a place of no money and dark depressing addiction one day and become bright and optimistic shortly thereafter. No it’s not instant but it can happen quicker than you mind will allow you to believe.
If you have gone through life thinking you are a bad reader, then guess what? You are probably bad at reading. I often hear men say that they can’t read because after a few sentences they fall asleep. Yet they can read facebook posts for hours. Why? Because that is their programming. THey have told themselves that they are not able to read more than a few sentences. They have programmed their sense of self to be that reading is shutdown time.
You can change your programming. No matter what you want to think. You don’t have to be the asshole. You don’t have to be the push over. You don’t have to be the nice guy who doesn’t get the hot chicks. You can change yourself and you just may find that your wife’s attitude changes. Suddenly because you have made changes in who you are she sees that man that made her thighs go up in flames again.
FInd out what your programming is and decide you are going to start changing that programming. It’s not easy and there are times you are going to default back to your old ways of thinking but with work that programming will stick and your life will change for it.
Why your past doesn’t define you
BUT! I was abused as a child! I can’t change the past. You are right, you can’t change your past. Yet, that doesn’t mean you have to embrace being the victim.
What if I told you that you lived the life you were meant to live? Now that may activate some type of emotional response in you. Notice that I didn’t say trigger. You chose to have that response, so you actively made the decision to get angry about what I said. That is because what I said went against your programming. So, how are so many people who were in abusive pasts able to thrive and get past that horrible time?
We all have to go through tough times to get better. Those who succeed don’t dwell in the past. They take what they learned and apply it to making their world better. They may know that hitting doesn’t fix the problem. THen again it may be denigrating words that were yelled at them and they know that doesn’t help either. They take the skills and the gifts of those horrible times and they change their programming so that they are able to grow from that experience, not shrink away.
You can change who you are
Your life isn’t a permanent pile of pain and suffering unless you choose to live that way. You always have a choice, what is that choice? That is up to you. YOu have to make the effort to dig yourself out of the pit you are in. You have to do the hard work of changing your life. You can embrace the events of your life and make them benefit you and your programming or you can let those bugs stay in your system and eventually you will crash.
Change who you are to who you want to be. Us Humans have that superpower. We see poor people become financially successful. We have seen those who quit school at 8th grade become college graduates. Those who were damaged by wars become leaders. You have a destiny, what is it? That depends on what you want to do with your gifts and values. Need help? Contact me.
