Tag: self awareness

Free Yourself From Your Opinions

Get Results: bother each other with opinions
Get Results: bother each other with opinions

Strongly held BELIEFS and the OPINIONS that come from them, are often considered a good thing, but they are in fact the worst thing for the individual and for society at large, let me explain why..

It is amazing how people are able to convince themselves something is true or false, even in the face of contradictory evidence. They grab onto something, will often defend it with their very lives, and only pay attention to data that confirms their beliefs. Whether it be a religious, political, cultural belief or ideology, they have an unwavering conviction to their cause.

You can fool yourself into believing just about anything, if you set your mind to it, even without definitive proof or evidence to support your belief. Many beliefs and the opinions that come from them, are built on nothing more than assumptions and inferences rather than hard facts, and are ultimately motivated by fear.

History is littered with examples of opinions that have resulted in horrific consequences, such as Hitler’s conviction to rid the world of Jews, Bush and Blair’s conviction to fix Iraq to make the region and the world a safer place, both stem from beliefs built on assumption and inference driven by fear, and little to do with fact.

These are extreme examples, but we are all guilty of holding onto a belief far too tightly, and dismissing or ignoring anything that counters it, for recent examples of issues that have divided opinion think of Brexit here in the UK or Trump in the US.

In the case of Brexit, whether you’re a remainer or leaver, you hold onto a mentally constructed position with unwavering determination. Those that oppose your view, are considered ignorant, racists, cowards, undemocratic, or uneducated, depending on which side of the fence you find yourself on.

Have you ever wondered why you feel such affiliation to your position?

Eckhart Tolle is a revered spiritual teacher, his books talk about escaping the control of THE EGO. The Ego is the unobserved mind, it is identification with thought. It is the illusion that your thoughts are who you are. He recommends bringing awareness to the process of thinking, and by observing thought, you remove yourself from it. The moment you start to observe it, you remove yourself from within it, and from this perspective you can take control back.

His explanation for why people hold mental positions and the emotional responses they inevitable experience when challenged goes like this….

“Two or more people express their opinions and those opinions differ. Each person is so identified with the thoughts that make up their opinion, that those thoughts harden into mental positions that are invested with a sense of self. In other words, identity and thought merge. Once this has happened, when I defend my opinions, thoughts, I feel and act as if I were defending my very self. Unconsciously I feel and act as if I were fighting for my very survival, and so my emotions will reflect this unconscious belief, they become turbulent. I am upset, angry, defensive, aggressive, I need to win at all cost, lest I become annihilated, that’s the illusion. The Ego doesn’t know the mind and mental positions have nothing to do with WHO YOU ARE, because the Ego is the unobserved mind itself.”

So, if you do find yourself holding very rigid mental positions, bring awareness to them, observe them, question their underlying purpose. What are they doing for you? If you feel a negative emotion, next time you are challenged, step back from the emotion and observe it, and bring yourself out of the control of your Ego, step out of the emotion. You will feel better for it and mankind will only benefit in the long term. Emotional reactions don’t serve anyone.

Also question the accuracy of such beliefs and opinions, how much is built on assumption and inference driven by fear, compared to hard facts you know to be true, not from the testimony of authority figures and so called experts but from your own experience. After all, authority figures might be telling you only what they want you to believe, for their own gain, rather than in your best interests. Question everything you are being told, and be more flexible with regards to your beliefs. Science takes the approach of trying to disprove rather than prove hypotheses and this is a more effective approach to uncovering THE TRUTH.

For more about spirituality, click here.

For more about self awareness, click here.

It’s okay to be OFFENDED

Get Results: take offence for it to work
Get Results: take offence for it to work

There are many things we can be OFFENDED by….

  • by inequality,
  • by racism,
  • by extremism,
  • by animal cruelty,
  • by bullying,
  • by media bias,
  • by politicians pursuing their own career goals over that of their constituents,
  • by emotional and physical abuse,
  • by religious doctrine,
  • by greed,
  • by anger,
  • by selfishness,
  • when people are rude,
  • when people don’t acknowledge when you let them go first,
  • when people push in, or don’t wait their turn,
  • by people that get offended and try impose their values on others.

There are so many things you can be offended by, if you choose, far more than I’ve listed above and it is okay to feel offended. Yes really, if you choose to take offence about anything, you can. But understand that taking offence is a choice, it’s an internal process about an external situation, event or occurrence.

It stems from your EXPECTATIONS and/or PREFERENCES that aren’t being met by the situation, event or occurrence.

It also comes from your ATTACHMENTS to ideals, ideologies, ideas, causes, things, people and your thoughts about all these things.

And finally it comes from your PERCEPTIONS of situations, people things, ideas and the world, universe and of existence itself.

The question becomes where do your EXPECTATIONS, ATTACHMENTS and PERCEPTIONS come from? Are they self generated or influenced by the society and culture you have grown up in, or are surrounded by?

Do you have a right to EXPECT anything from anyone or anything? Okay you can be excused for preferring one thing, or outcome, over another, but you don’t have any right of expectation, and you can’t really complain if your preferences aren’t met, can you?

Is it healthy to form ATTACHMENTS to anything or anyone. After all nothing really belongs to you does it? Your partner, your kids, your family, your friends are not really yours are they. They are people you share time and space with, who you love, of course, but when you mentally add a “my”, “mine” to them, you are more than identifying something in a descriptive manner, you are investing a sense of yourself in them. This is attachment. Your mind does this to make itself bigger, better, more. In our consumer focused culture, we are conditioned by society to seek more.

Society’s call to consumption works very well because it plays to our self preservation instinct and our fear of being nothing, because deep down in our psyche, we believe we are a fleeting, temporary particle in time and space and as such vulnerable and insignificant. Society benefits from telling us the more we have (the more we attach to), the more we will BE, because modern society is built on economic growth, it wants us to keep consuming products and services.

With regards to PERCEPTIONS, there is extensive research showing our perceptions to be deeply flawed and influenced by our inner belief systems and values. We see, hear, feel, taste, smell what we think we should see, hear, feel, taste and smell, what we’re primed to, and what we expect to. We run a story over our sense perceptions that works to join the dots, but rather than drawing a direct line, embellishes and exaggerates with story-telling imagination.

For instance, a number of years ago, I went out for a drink with a good male friend of mine. I genuinely forgot to take my phone out with me, this was the days before phones became an extension of our hands. When I got back after 2-3 hours I noticed 15 missed calls from my then, casual girlfriend. Listening to the messages in turn, the content went from a casual, “just giving you a call to see what you’re up to, give me a call back when you get this message”, becoming increasingly agitated with each subsequent message to the last one saying “I know you’re with someone else, why are you treating me this way? CALL ME NOW!!!” Let me just say, I wasn’t cheating on her, I had no intention of doing so, but she was unable to rationally explain the fact that I wasn’t calling her back, which I would normally do straight away, and began to let her imagination run riot, believing I must be cheating on her. I later found out she had been cheated on by an ex boyfriend and as a result had trust issues, but I must admit I was rather freaked out at the time.

Hopefully this makes the point that perceptions are interpreted by internal mental processes, which give all meaning to them. First the event or situation occurs, then the mind tries to find an explanation, which is based on individual beliefs and values, which in turn are built from our own personal past experiences, learned thoughts and behaviour patterns and habits.

I’ve highlighted above some of the reasons we might feel OFFENDED, and if you’ve spent any time on social media, you’ll have noticed the outrage and offence that people seem to feel these days about all sorts of issues, some major some minor. Offence is taken rather than given much of the time. I might offend you by something I say or do, but with no intention from my perspective to do so, but you take offence all the same. You will be offended if what I say or do, doesn’t match an EXPECTATION or PREFERENCE of yours, or if it involves something you have some ATTACHMENT to, or if your PERCEPTION tells you some story about it that isn’t in alignment with your EXPECTATION/PREFERENCE.

It’s okay to be offended, it’s impossible not to be at some point in life if EXPECTATIONS/PREFERENCES, ATTACHMENTS and PERCEPTIONS are at work, but OFFENCE has to be taken to be felt. Remember this, because often AWARENESS is the biggest weapon we have at our disposal to battle internal processing of external events, situations or occurrences and how we feel about them.

For more about self awareness click here.

Coping Strategies For Failure: Making Excuses, Blaming, Complaining

Get Results: overcome blocking coping strategies
Get Results: overcome blocking coping strategies

If you’re guilty of saying the following statements, you need to sign up to my email list

  • I’m not getting quality leads anymore from [X]
  • [X] is not delivering[ Y], and that’s why my business is failing
  • People just aren’t buying anymore
  • People don’t want to pay for [Y] anymore
  • Everyone wants something for nothing these days
  • Too much competition, charging ridiculous prices, I can’t compete, they
  • won’t be around long, but long enough to hurt my business
  • There’s downwards pressure on prices
  • It’s a dying industry, technology is disrupting my business model
  • It’s much harder to make money in this industry now

All of these statements are excuses; they are examples of you complaining and blaming other people, organisations, circumstances, situations, and/or events for your predicament. They are COPING STRATEGIES designed to deflect responsibility from yourself onto others. This may seem like a good strategy, after all, if someone else is at fault for the position you find yourself in, then you don’t have to deal with the feeling of guilt for messing things up.

But in fact by blaming others, by complaining about how life has conspired against you, you are not just passing on blame, you are also passing power, the very power you need to get yourself out of the mess you find yourself in.

Until you TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for your situation, you will not be able to access your RESOURCEFULNESS. You need to have the right mindset to be able to make a sustained effort to make things right, and resourcefulness is required to find the innovative approach you’re going to need to succeed.

3 step method for success

  1. Increase SELF AWARENESS and banish the COPING STRATEGIES/mechanisms that are allowing you to accept your unsatisfactory situation,
  2. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for yours and other people’s actions and the consequences of those actions on you and your business. You might think it’s harsh to have to take responsibility for what other people do, but at the end of the day, it’s you and your business that will have to pick up the pieces if things head south. So make sure you vet those that you invite into your life/business, either as friends, partners, investors, employees, suppliers or customers. Don’t rely blindly on others’, do your due diligence and have the necessary checks, controls and plan B contingencies in place to make sure you are living up to your responsibilities, for youself,
  3. Open up your mind to the possibilities, enabling you to access your RESOURCEFULNESS to find that innovative approach which is going to turn your fortunes around and allow you to achieve success.

Intention, Execution and Consequences

Get Results: intent execution consequences
Get Results: intent execution consequences

Of late, I’ve been doing a bit of reading up on the history of philosophy, and came across some information regarding Utilitarianism, and it got me thinking….

For the purpose of this post, I’m not going to go into detail about Utilitarianism other than say it is a philosophical moral theory that focuses on the RESULTS, or CONSEQUENCES, of our actions, and treats INTENTIONS as irrelevant.

For sure consequences are what we have to live with, they are the results of action or inaction that effect us and others, after the events that lead to them, but should intentions be considered to greater extent than they often are?

If someone else’s actions result in you becoming worse off in some way, either economically or emotionally, should you focus on what that person intended to happen or on their execution and consequently, the consequences you are left with.

For instance, if a friend is trying to do you a good turn, by say, reuniting you with a relative you’ve lost contact with, and as surprise, arranges a surprise meeting, but when you’re confronted with that person, you are angry having been put in an uncomfortable situation. Should you react to the consequences of their intervention, or focus on their good intention.

If a friend convinces you to invest money into a business venture, but they fail to make a success of it, and it ends up costing you your investment, do you fixate on their inept execution or their intention of doing their best to make a success of the venture.

I guess, how the friend deals with their failings, in either of the situations detailed above, has some baring on your response. If in the latter example, the friend tries to hide the fact that the business is failing, is dishonest about their business acumen, doesn’t show remorse when it all goes pear shaped, or isn’t prepared to try to make the situation right, will affect how you feel about it, and them, in the end.

It’s true that many people will take a balanced, considered view, appreciating all the aspects that contributed to the failing, but there will equally be those that fixate on the consequences, and find it difficult to look beyond these.

Empathy and compassion is required in order to be able take the other persons view, and to be able to seriously consider their intent, at least as much as their inadequate or inappropriate execution. This can be especially difficult in the wake consequences that negatively impact you.

Empathy and compassion, come naturally to some people,  but require some development in others. It’s important to remember that we have all been guilty of doing things that didn’t turn out as planned, and which impacted other people.

Generally, when things go wrong, the intention is seldom for it to be so, however we should always be mindful of our actions and their impact on others, and generally they will impact someone else at some point. Think your actions through thoroughly before taking them, and be more empathetic to others when their actions don’t turn out as intended.

Crash Course in PHILOSOPHY

Get Results: mindworks
Get Results: mindworks

I came across this crash course in Philosophy a while ago and thought it might be interesting for you to check out. The whole course is accessable below. The videos are embedded as a playlist so will follow on from one another automatically, so sit back and enjoy.

The EQUATION OF EMOTION in action

Get Results: the equation of emotion
Get Results: the equation of emotion

Is it possible that western cultural values which imply that we should always be happy to be considered a success and that depression and sadness are signs of failure, are actually what are making us more depressed?

According to research, cited in an article on the conversation website, and which can be found here, it would seem that this could well be the case.

Feeling we should be living up to such cultural standards, and perceiving ourselves as falling short of them, is a great example of the Equation of emotion (EOE) in action. Remember that the EOE compares our expectations and preferences (EP) to our reality as perceived (RP) and throws out a negative emotion if the RP falls short of the EP.

Expectations, even culturally led ones, that aren’t being met by our perceived reality, cause negative emotions, and because we are the source of the perceived devaluation, we feel the emotion of SADNESS.

The equation of emotion is said to be responsible for all the emotions we feel, and well worth checking out. Here is an article I wrote about it.

We might not even realise we’ve internalised these particular cultural values, which could have been done on a subconscious level, through things like subliminal advertising imagery and symbolism, and as a result we may not even be aware that such subconscious expectations even exist within us.

When you’re on a journey of self-discover and self-awareness, subconscious influences can be difficult to uncover. Often working backwards helps in the discovery process.

  • What is the emotion, you’re feeling?
  • What’s the relevant attachment?
  • And what’s the expectation/preference you have about that attachment?
  • Does your  perception of reality fall short of this expectation/preference?

I hope this article will aid your journey of self discovery and self awareness. Check out more articles about self awareness here.

Don’t Let Fear Hold You Back From Pursuing Your Goals

Get Results: fear
Get Results: fear

Fear and fearfulness can be a real disabler, stopping you dead in your tracks and keeping you from pursuing your dreams and goals.

Fear manifests in the form of…

  • Procrastination,
  • Overwhelm,
  • Making up excuses,
  • Doubt in own ability,
  • Anxiety, where there is an imbalance in perceived ability and requirements,
  • Denial,
  • Avoidance

These behaviours come from some underlying fear, it could be fear of failure, fear of… coming to harm, even death, embarrassment, vulnerability, loss, poverty, change, uncertainty, discomfort, rejection… the list goes on.

Fear is a mind-construct and comes from working through scenarios of what might happen in the future, but because it’s thought-based it inevitably will be biased towards self-preservation and minimising risk and uncertainty where possible, because that’s what thoughts are conditioned to do.

Doing anything new, moving away from your comfort zone, will cause a fear reaction. It does so for everybody to some degree. The difference between those that act and those that don’t is confidence and risk-tolerance.

Some people naturally believe more in themselves or have been brought up to have confidence in themselves and are prepared to tackle uncertainty and risk, because they feel they will find a way through to a successful conclusion, no matter what.

Others have been conditioned to believe risk is dangerous and to play safe and/or have been brought up in such a way as to have their confidence eroded to the point that they just don’t want to take a chance.

Confidence is often built-up or demolished in childhood years, and the beliefs about ourselves, that are subsequently formed, follow us into adulthood.

We should increase self-awareness and truly challenge any limiting-beliefs, because often they are more likely to be reflection of the self-doubt of the very people who discouraged us from taking risks, dealing with uncertainty and change, rather than of us, as individuals.

Discouragement and warnings of what might go wrong, may have been made with the best intentions of keeping us safe, but result in a self-imposed prison.

Because they may be long-standing beliefs, it may take some time to break out of the groove they have imprinted on our minds and patterns of thinking, but bringing them into AWARENESS and challenging them is often the all important first step.

Repetition of a new empowering belief will form a new neural pathway through the power of habit. Put simply, replace bad habitual thinking patterns with good ones.

For more posts relating to FEAR, click here.

Listen To Intuition

Get Results: Motivation requires...being tuned into intuition
Get Results: Motivation requires…being tuned into intuition

What is intuition?

Intuition, otherwise known as gut feeling, or sixth sense, is a feeling either of unease, or alignment, about someone or something. It is a method of communicate for the subconscious, which is in possession of much more information and memory than is available at a conscious level.

Why is it important?

The subconscious, absorbs much more data than the conscious, holding much of that information in store, until it’s needed. So having a way to access this information is very useful and intuition is a direct link to it.

What can go wrong?

It’s easy to mistake the noise created from THOUGHT and THINKING to be INTUITION, it is not. THOUGHTS are largely driven from a FEAR based perspective. If we were coming at this from a spirituality point of view, we would say thinking is EGO based.

So the feeling of unease you might sense, in taking a particular action, might actually be due to fearful THOUGHT, rather than a more enlightened warning from INTUITION.

The difficulty comes from distinguishing the two, from one another.

Telling the difference between INTUITION and FEAR

Fear is the default perspective of the Ego, of THOUGHT and THINKING. It’s all about self preservation from this view point. Most of negative feelings you experience will come from this type of fear. Many irrational fears can be found here, such as the fear of public speaking, or the fear of venturing out of your comfort zone. These fears are not life threatening as such, but they might result in a negative physiological reaction, when you start to think about actually doing them, in the same way as if your very life were under threat.

Intuition on the other hand, is not driven by fear, but is more of an awareness of something feeling right or feeling wrong. It’s noticing the expression on someone’s face, not being completely in sync with what is coming out of their mouth for instance. It’s a sense that something is out of place, or, on the flip side, is safe to pursue.

Intuition comes from the accumulation of years of the subconscious absorbing many subtle and not so subtle things that the conscious filters out, so that we can function more efficiently on our day to day activities. But these things are noticed by the subconscious and this noticing builds up over time. It is only when something is out of place that many of us become aware of intuition, operating in the background of our consciousness.

Intuition also works in a positive way too, when things just feel right and everything seems to be in alignment.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book, “Blink”, says intuition is easy to ignore, due to its subtlety, which is why people often fail to recognize it. On the other hand, fear is much more effective at attracting our attention, by screaming what it wants us to do or not do.

Intuition is a feeling that comes from life experience via sense perceptions, using all of the senses (sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing), and subsequently utilises much more of the brain. On the other hand, fear simply activates the Amygdala as a neural shortcut, and that leads to a racing heart, energised by fearful thoughts.

Fear is activated for many levels of importance, it’s energised by imagination and self story-telling. Intuition on the other hand, generally only comes into consciousness for the important moments of life and is much more experience based in nature, and certainly not prone to such imagination and story-telling fantasies.

The feeling you get from intuition is usually a sense of peace and alignment, whereas fear can keep nagging at you, even when you know you’ve made the right decision, playing the devils advocate, continually questioning your choices.

Intuition can be for and against taking action. Fear is usually only against action in preference to maintaining the status quo, resisting change and  uncertainty, and doing nothing new or challenging.

What is the best way forward?

Learn to quieten the mind, to think less intensely and be less driven by irrational fears.

Back feelings up with rational decision-making techniques and tools like the decision matrix to add a second check to your decision making process.

Improve your self-awareness, by observing your own behaviour and habitual thought patterns, so that you can spot how and when your fears are activated.

Improve your clarity of purpose to help intuition. By knowing where you want to go, and having clear goals, you will better navigate your journey.

For more articles about INTUITION, click here.

Check out our Motivational guide.

Being Wrong

Get Results: self awareness
Get Results: self awareness

How do you feel about the possibility of being wrong?

It is considered to be a very bad thing by most people, resulting in feelings of dread, embarrassment, emptiness, sadness and a sense of loss for time and effort, which may have been wasted. We really don’t want to be proven wrong, do we?

We’re right until we know we’re wrong

The trouble is we feel we are right (even though we might actually be wrong) until the point we REALISE we’re wrong. A good analogy for this is the Looney tunes cartoon where the coyote chases the road runner off the end of a cliff, and is okay, even though he’s running in mid air, until he realises there’s nothing under his feet, only then does he fall.

We misunderstand the signs around us more than we care to admit, yet we do what we can to avoid thinking about the possibility of being wrong.

We grow to believe we see the world as it really is, we are certain it is so, but this is dangerous. When we ATTACH to the idea of needing to be right, this prevents us accepting any possibility of being wrong.

Dealing with disagreement

In the face of disagreement, we are convinced that those who disagree are ignorant of the full facts, and when they are furnished with them, they will agree with our view.

If others have the same facts as us, but still disagree, then we resort to thinking them to be morons and idiots, who lack the necessary education to grasp the true reality.

When we know others to be smart and they still disagree with us, we think they may be withholding something from us, for their own gain.

All these are psychological coping strategies, to keep us from admitting we might actually be the ones who are wrong.

Culture teaches us to be right

Culture has conditioned us into thinking that people who failed when we were growing up in school, were the class dim-wits and drop outs, we have learned that lesson so well that we carry the fear of being wrong with us into our adult lives and subsequently spend all our time avoiding the possibility. We believe getting something wrong means there’s something wrong with us.

We’re missing something

We overlook the role INTERPRETATION plays in shaping our perceptions, which explains why different people might take different meanings from the same event.

This however is what feeds creativity and makes mankind so interesting and diverse. If we all saw the world in the same way, we would lose much of what makes us, us.

Be prepared to stand outside the need to be right all the time, accept we are probably wrong a lot of the time and that’s okay. For instance, we might have thought in our school days that we would marry our childhood sweetheart or be flying around with jet packs strapped to our backs as adults, but life just doesn’t turn out the way we thought it would.

Check out this Ted Talk lecture by Kathryn Schulz, it’s the inspiration for this article and well worth a watch.

We Can’t All Be Right But We Could All Be Wrong

Get Results: we can't all be right but we could all be wrong
Get Results: we can’t all be right but we could all be wrong

Eckhart Tolle describes, in his book A New Earth: Create a Better Life, how much of Mankind is currently under the control of the Ego and this is the cause of much social unrest and conflict around the world.

The Ego is thought you identify with, and to a large extent, is concerned with self-preservation, and in order to carry out that function is fearful by nature. It is preoccupied with the fear of pain and destruction.

Being rather imaginative, it comes up with all sorts of mind constructed scenarios resulting in its demise. It tries to build itself up so that it is more on the one hand, while resisting change and uncertainty on the other, instead opting for routine,  consistency and predictability..

The Ego believes that by having more (possessions, ideas, psychological positioning) it will be more, and the more it is, the less chance of being nothing. While at the same time, fearing the more it has, the more it has to lose.

There is no scenario, that can end well, from a mindset of fear. Fear makes us inward looking, exclusive and more selfish because we believe the lie of scarcity, if there is not enough to go round we better grab our share, while we can.

Fear creates division, which in turn breaks communication, which in turn creates misunderstanding. For us to be more there needs to be an “other” that has less. We can’t be better or stronger if there isn’t an “other” to be less or weaker. There is no greater “other” than an “enemy”.

We all hold opinions based on social, political and cultural upbringing. Our parent’s, family, friends, colleagues, and mainstream media tell us their opinions and we make them our own, without really taking a long hard look at the logic and spirit behind them. These opinions become our beliefs and values, and over time, set into rigid thought patterns. We base all our decision making on these beliefs and values, they shape all aspects of our lives. Some of them serve us, but many hold us back from pursuing the kind of lives we would like to live, because they are consumed by fear.

Our Ego, in its attempt for growth, has us believing “we” are right and “they” are wrong. Our stance of superiority has us believing our perspective is the only valid one, so we fail to listen and be empathetic to other’s counter views, which are equally valid from their perspective.  We can’t all be right but we could all be wrong.

Those with superior education might consider their views more informed, but if the source of that knowledge, turns out to be biased, than they might just be more brainwashed and less open to opposing narratives and views.

The media is largely responsible for fueling our fears, but they only supply what interests us, so while under the influence of the Ego, we pay more attention to, and takes interest in, fearful stories and bad news, so that we might avoid such situations ourselves in the future.

Get Results: awakening
Get Results: awakening

What is the solution for escaping such a destructive situation? Return your self-preservation instruct to servant and end its role as master. Open your heart and mind to opposing perspectives. Embrace an empathetic mindset and allow yourself to learn from others. Without the Ego in charge, there is only love and inclusion, and from that comes peace and prosperity for all.

If your interested in spirituality, check out our spiritual and wellbeing guide.