Change Your Life : It’s About the Choices You Make Today

Perhaps you’re stressed out – or you’ve had enough of your awful boss. Maybe you’re overweight and simply haven’t had the staying power to shed those pounds. Maybe you’re lonely – looking for friendship or a relationship but you freeze every time you’re in company. Perhaps you almost collapse every time you have to stand up in front of an audience to make a presentation – or are getting more and more frustrated by the way you shout at your children when you know that you don’t mean to. The facts of the matter are that the world is awash with unhappy, unfulfilled, stressed people – who think they’re caught in a trap from which there’s no escape. They’re wrong.

There is no trap – it’s a trick of your own mind. If you’re shy in company or a useless public speaker, it’s because your subconscious attention is focused on snapshots of childhood events that made you feel ill at ease – the terrible thing is that your subconscious mind is convinced that whatever happened then is happening all over again – and you spontaneously react accordingly. If you’re stressed, regardless of what you think is stressing you, it isn’t, you’re stressing yourself by letting yourself react to what you think is causing the stress. Once again, those reactions are coming up from the depths of a very confused subconscious mind. If you can’t stand your boss – you may just see him that way – again the subconscious mind plays those kinds of tricks too! On the other hand, he or she may be just the kind of person that no one needs in their lives – but you’re afraid to do whatever you think you need to do to change your circumstances. Again, fear, like shyness, is only a state of mind – nothing to do with the real and current facts.

The fact is that your subconscious mind is playing tricks on you – throughout all of your adult life – this is your default state of mind. By default, your subconscious mind is making your moment to moment choices – choosing to focus on the subconscious programming that was installed during your formative years. You are not aware that you are making these choices, they just happen. You’ve got to make yourself aware – no one else can do it for you – it’s a classic case of DIY, you’ve got to do it yourself. This is the essence of self-help.

Awareness will totally transform your life. In becoming aware that you even have choice, you become aware. In choosing to make these decisions for yourself you are liberated from your own perceived inadequacies, anxieties and fears. You realize – because this is self-realization – that you can take control of your behaviour and actions. In short, by taking control of your mind, you take control of your life. You will realize that stress and anxiety, fear and unhappiness are no more than constructs of your state of mind, the illusionary creations of the mindlessness that is part and parcel of the normal adult routine life.

So here are your choices – you can continue to let your subconscious mind choose to re-run old programs, dictate your current reactive behaviour and continue to ruin your life or you can choose to turn your attention to what is actually going on in the here and now. This second choice – the only one worth taking, means that you prevent your subconscious mind running the programs that say “I’m fat and I’m always going to have to battle being fat”, “I’m shy and I’m never going to shine my light”, “I hate my job but I’m going to have to put up with it” or “Things are overwhelming me and I’m all stressed out.” Imagine giving all that up!

This second choice isn’t implemented by fighting your perceived demons, it is implemented by ignoring them. This is achieved by deliberately turning your attention to the reality of the present moment. In other words, this is a choice that you’re going to have to make time and time again – it’s never-ending (no quick fixes here) but, every time you take this choice, the next time becomes easier until it becomes your new default state of mind. How do you turn your attention to now if you’ve had an adult lifetime’s experience of self-torture? Well, first of all, your perceived experiences up to now are in the past – you either learn from the past or, like the normal adult, live in it. Again, your choice. The fact that you’ve had a lifetime of stress or anxiety or personal pain is irrelevant to now. Now is a new now and it’s where your journey starts.

To start making these little, moment to moment, choices that will change your life straight away, you begin by training yourself to pay attention to what your five senses are telling you without you interpreting what they mean – you simply notice and experience. This “training” should be started in an environment which is quiet, non-threatening, low-pressure. In other words, set aside a few moments in the quiet of your own home to sit and see, feel, hear, smell and taste. You could start by closing your eyes – obviously, you then can’t see! but this has the effect of “turning up” your other senses – you’ll hear things that you haven’t heard before (the sounds were there all the time, you just weren’t paying attention).

Your senses afford you the luxury of experiencing what is actually going on in the present moment. In coming to your senses in a quiet environment, you will realize that the subconscious nonsense that has been plaguing your life has no nonsense in the here and now. In opening your eyes you’ll see what’s been before them all the time.