If you have spent any time pursuing personal growth, nothing I have to say to you is new. However, I may just have a new take on some basic concepts. So what are these concepts? They include Awareness, Presence, Anticipation, Acceptance, Choice, Witnessing, Resistance, Consciousness, Perception, Triggering and Inside Game.
These are Master Skills without which we cannot expect to have the life we want.
For a great life, look forward and do what you like to do while avoiding constraints.
Presence.
“Time is an illusion,” said Albert Einstein. There is only NOW. The Past is history, no longer exists and cannot be changed. The Future is a phantom and will never arrive. I have spent many years reliving the Past with its mistakes, missed opportunities, could haves and should haves. I have spent most of the remainder of my life worrying about the Future – virtually none of which actually happened. As Mark Twain said, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”
We only actually live in the Present so Presence is essential or as some sage has said it is “a present”. I enjoy movies and my first identification with Presence was when a Kevin Costner character said someone had told him to just “be present” and that changed his world. I have lived almost my entire 72 years somewhere outside of the Present. How about you?
Awareness.
This movie experience instantly created Awareness in me, but it was a low grade of Awareness. Though I was often aware, I was but not in a deep sense. Deep Awareness, when it happens, allows me to not only be aware something is happening within my world but to observe what is really happening, my reaction to it, the reason for my response and whether or not the reaction serves me.
Intrinsic Meaning.
Nothing has any intrinsic meaning– only the meaning I give it. Therefore, nothing is inherently good or bad, right or wrong, up or down just a part of the apparent duality we live in. Meaning is merely a point on a continuum as in white being on the opposite end from black. Perhaps there is no such thing as black or white, and everything is circular and just a shade of gray. As the Bard said in Hamlet, “There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.” There is such a thing as your truth or my truth. There is no such thing as absolute truth, or we would all see the same thing. Look at the incredible power we have. Since we assign meaning to everything, we can change our meaning of anything and thereby transform our lives.
Filtration.
My brain each day must sort through billions of electronic signals from my eyes, ears, nose, taste buds, skin, and other organs. To not be deluged by this massive assault on it, the brain filtersthe incoming information to allow a manageable amount of pertinent data to enter and be evaluated. This process of filtration uses danger, beliefs, values and many other factors as filters. For me, Pertinence is the problem. Do I filter out data based on bias in my filters? Of course, because a filter is always true. If I believe something, I will filter out data contrary to my belief and accept data supporting it. Have you ever purchased a car and the next day you see cars like yours, and you had never noticed them before? Of course, they were always there, our filters just do not consider them pertinent to allow us to notice them.
Witnessing – Observation.
Once we have a significant degree of Awareness, we can begin to see in “real time” what we are doing, what in our internal makeup is causing our action/reaction. We start to see whether our action serves us or not. Once we achieve this level of Awareness, we begin to have Choice. We can only choose when we are conscious to not operate on the autopilot of unconsciousness. We choose consciously, and all that does not serve us just falls away.
Choice.
We choose everything – we are creator beings. Unfortunately, we mostly choose unconsciously – on autopilot. Many of the Choices we make do not serve us as they are based on erroneous or outdated values, ethics, and beliefs. If you think about your beliefs, ethics, and values, you realize many/most of them came from your parents, Religion, siblings, relatives, teachers, peers and others close to you at a very young age. You then had no ability or basis for evaluating them. Most of us have never made any effort to catalog them to see if they serve us in where we want to go in life, what we want to become and what we want to do. This requires work, and most of us are lazy when it comes to thinking.
Resistance and Acceptance.
“What you resist persists.” This is probably the most common statement I have heard in my 15 years of personal development. Is it true? Yes, to the extent that what you focus on you create and what you accept just goes away. We must always accept everything. After all, it has already happened and therefore history. We know we cannot change history, as it’s a done deal. This does not mean we are OK with it and want to change a situation, so it does not happen again. The Serenity Prayerbelow, although it is wise, does not clearly state that we must accept everything.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold Niebuhr
We must accept things by accepting ownership of them because we cannot change anything we do not own. I can only change my own stuff.
Willpower.
Willpower does not work – well maybe. If willpower worked, I could change my life quickly and easily. In 1980 I quit smoking – took several tries. In 1993 I stopped drinking alcohol – easy. Both quits were done “cold turkey” as I was addicted to both and willpower worked for me. However, I am overweight and have been for more than 30 years. I have not been able to change this situation despite many efforts. Perhaps willpower does work if what you want to do is not a matter of degree but absolute. Quitting smoking and alcohol consumption were absolute as in Yes or No but nothing in between. However, being overweight is about eating too much and/or the wrong things. We have to eat if we like living. How much I eat or what I eat is a constant choice made many times a day – always a matter of degree. This is not as simple as Yes or No at the grocery store.