Changing Your Life – It’s Up to You

A long-standing friend recently recommended one of his best-loved self-help books to me – it was the latest in a long list of his recommended reading. In chatting with him, I enquired as to how he was getting on putting into practice what he was learning from all his reading. It emerged from our conversation that, in fact, he was a life-long student of living life to the full but was unlikely to ever actually try it. As the conversation unfolded, he told me that a mutual friend had suggested to him that he “stop reading the bloody books and starting doing it!”

Bookshop shelves groan with personal development, self improvement and self help books. It’s big business – apparently the fastest growing sector of the publishing market. In addition, personal development websites abound – offering all manner of inducements to purchase their package which will change your life in five minutes.

None of these websites, packages or books will change your life. They may well point you in the right direction, provide you with an insight or understanding that had been missing from your range of knowledge or experience or, perhaps, offer you concrete tips on how to get more out of life, change your life, transform yourself or whatever. Undoubtedly, there is some very good stuff out there – and some innovative and practical personal development online help – but none of it is going to be of any use to you until you put it into practice for yourself and keep putting it into practice.

You are the only one who can change your life. You are the only one who can take control of the awesome inner power that is simply waiting for you to muster up the courage or energy to unleash it. But neither courage nor bravery is required – in fact very little effort is required at all. The interesting thing is that much of the advice provided by books and websites requires very little effort on your part, really only a tiny amount of work is required of you. In fact, to change your life immeasurably you really only need to very minor alterations to the manner in which you use your mind. And, indeed, I have seen many people make these tiny adjustments and experience major benefits. Sadly, however, having been in this business for over fourteen years, I have seen far too many people unwilling to take five minutes each and every day, on an ongoing basis, to make the other twenty three hours and fifty five minutes so much better. I know that it doesn’t make sense – but it’s just so easy to revert to type, to fall back into our default state of “not too bad” and rejoin the herd of normal crazy people who simply do not take control of their mind.

All this leads me to the key point that I want to make – one that I’ve already alluded to – you have to keep putting what you learn into practice. No book, program or package will change your life in five minutes. You won’t change your life in five minutes. But five minutes each day is an entirely different matter. Life is lived one day at a time – so, if you take or make the time to ensure that your mind is up and running each every morning, then your life is going to change beyond all recognition. Decades of research in the field of psychology has come to the conclusion, in no uncertain terms, that normal people perceive only what they expect to perceive and experience only what they expect to experience – that the normal life is dictated by the sadly closed normal mind that prefers, as its default state, to dwell on the experiences that impressed us during our formative years. This is how your mind works and how your mind will always work unless you take five minutes each morning to make sure that it’s open, clear, focused on now so that it isn’t focused on the past.

You need to make sure that your mind is open for business each and every morning – open to the business of living not just any old not to bad life, but ready to live life to the full where it’s meant to be lived – in the here and now. If you pull your mind’s attention into the here and now, you will alter your perception – no longer will it be coloured by the formative events that made you who you think you are. If you pull your mind’s attention into the here and now you will open up a whole range of experience that is completely foreign to the normal mind – it’s the experience of real life, real opportunity, real happiness, real success – and it’s all on your terms. In pulling your attention into the here and now you will change your expectations and your expectations once changed will lead to a totally different life. But your changing your mind is not a once off event – it’s something that you have to do one day at a time – because real life is lived one day at a time.