Archive for the 'Limiting Beliefs' Category
In a recent post I explained how other people’s opinion of you has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with them and how they are feeling, what they believe, their values and so on. In this post I want to turn that around and look at how your opinions affect your world.
Opions Are Formed on Everything
Opinions about people are just one way in which we view the world. We also hold opions about everything in life - our jobs, events in our lives, our neighbour’s cat, worldwide events and absolutely everything else. The point I was trying to get across in my previous post about opinions is that those opinions or viewpoints are formed internally and this applies to everything else in life too. As a result, how you see the world - your world, the world of your friends and family and the world at large, has very little to do with the actual physical circumstances of the world and everything to do with YOU and how you feel, what you believe, what you choose to think and so on.
Let me give you a practical example… Last month I had the great pleasure of seeing Madonna in concert at Wembley Arena in the UK. I have wanted to see her live since the early nineties when I saw a video of her latest tour. For me the concert was an absolute blast - it was everything I expected it to be and more. I had goosebumps all night long, I loved it and it was absolutely the highlight of my month.
However, not everybody felt the same way. There were sound problems and some people were so disgusted by it that they got up and left half way through. Apparently the next day there were complaints all over the Internet. While I was queuing up for the toilets after the concert there was a woman behind me on the phone to a friend about the experience. She complained about some of the songs and the way the set was arranged, the accompanying videos and so on. The very things that I thought were great were a turn off to this woman.
Did Madonna put on a brilliant show or did she let down her fans? Neither. The fact is that Madonna performed a concert and yet it is not logical or even possible to attach any labels to it such as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because that is something that can only be placed by the individual and that label will be different for everybody even though the physical experience was the same. To me, she put on a brilliant show and to other people, it sucked. All of those viewpoints are accurate to those individual people and has very little to do with Madonna!
The Story of Two Villages
I don’t remember where I read about this story but I’ll paraphrase it here. There are two villages separated by a river and there is a man who conducts crossings from one village to the next. Very often when he takes somebody across the river they will ask him, “what are the people like in the other village?” and he responds by asking them, “well, what are the people like in your village?”. If they respond that in their village people are generally friendly and helpful he will tell them that in the other village they are much the same. If they tell him that the people in his village are unfriendly and just out for themselves the river man will tell his passenger that the people in the other village are much the same.
You see the river man understands the way the world works - he knows that his passenger is going to see in the other village pretty much the same thing he saw in his current village because what he sees and his opinion of the people in the other village come from within himself, and have nothing to do with the village or the people in it.
You Can’t Make Somebody Else See What You See
I have a friend who is a police officer working in London and she has seen a lot of bad stuff in her time and has also suffered several personal injuries through her work. I remember a couple of years ago having a long debate with her about people and the world in general. She believes that people are inherenly bad, and that the world is a bad place. I believe that people are inherently good and that the world is a good place.
Back then, I didn’t know the things that I am talking about today and I remember fiercely defending my viewpoint and our debate became quite heated! She still holds the same opinion now, and so do I but what has now changed is that I understand that the world is simply what it is, and that it is not good or bad as those labels exist only in our own judgements. I see the world as a good place because that is how I choose to see it but I understand why other people would see it as a bad place and now I can simply accept that we each see it differently, and that those experiences are different for everybody and there is no need to try and make another person see the world (or anything) as you do. You wouldn’t be able to - it’s impossible because you are not them.
The World is How You Choose it to be
You will experience the world - people, jobs, events, experiences however you choose to. Of course, when you have lived your entire life a certain way and hold certain beliefs that have been a lifetime in the making then it is unlikely that you will have any radical shift overnight. What I am hoping to do in this post is open your eyes to the possibility that something you are perceiving in a negative way might not necessarily have to be as bad as you think it is. Does everybody else feel the same way or do others see things differently? Are other people enjoying something you loathe? Is it possible for you to feel better about something by changing the way you think about it?
How do you see the world?
Many of us go through life worrying about what other people’s opinion of us is. We want to be liked, to be loved, admired, popular, looked up to or all manner of similar emotions. The trouble is, what somebody else thinks of you actually has nothing to do with you at all!
An Example
As some of you know, my other blog is about Internet Marketing. Now in the IM world there is a man called John Chow who is somewhat ‘famous’ in this niche because his IM blog now rakes in over $30,000 a month and every month he publishes a post stating his earnings just like I do on my IM blog. Now John Chow is a guy who has attracted a large amount of attention due to his financial success and a lot of it is highly negative.
Now what I find interesting is this… setting aside those people who have met John Chow in the flesh, the rest of us know him only from his blog and online presence which means that anyone who reads his blog is exposed to exactly the same information about him, and yet opinions about him differ hugely. One of my recent posts managed to get into a discussion about him, and one of my commenters, Billy Loi had this to say about John:
John Chow for example is incredibly arrogant. Although I do have a lot of respect for him as a highly successful Wordpress blogger who have carved out a niche for himself, he just turns me off by his arrogance. I don’t mind people being arrogant if they show some respect for the little guy like me who is started out as a blogger.
His blogs are so negative about the little guy starting out as a blogger. I get incredibly depressed when I read his blogs.
He looks down on the little guy who is started out. Like for example, do not contact me until you have 100 thousand visitors a day on your blog!!
So even though John Chow has a lot of subscribers, they are all in the same league as him. Just imagine, if John were to invite people to a blogging convention, I would feel uncomfortable going there because I would feel like I don’t fit in.
I know that Billy is not alone in this sentiment and yet I don’t feel that way at all. I have never considered John to be somebody who brags or is arrogant in any way - he simply states his income and I do the same. If my income were to grow to the point where I earned that much and I continued to post my income statement every month, would that be seen as bragging by some people? My suspicion is yes. Why is that?
Because the opinion that you hold of somebody else, has very little to do with them and everything to do with yourself. Billy feels that John is arrogant but I have never got that sense from him. What I see is a family man who uses his financial success to make sure that he has a great time in life and gets to spend quality time with his family. Those are traits that I desire for myself and so when I read John’s blog I admire him and think, yeah I want that too.
My opinion of John has nothing to do with John, and everything to do with me! Because his lifestyle resonates with me, I see the good stuff, I pick out what I like and as a result my opinion of him is completely different to somebody else who feels that the lifestyle projected in the blog is a turn off. However John is who he is and he does what he does and nobody else’s opinion makes any difference to that - it doesn’t change anything.
Remember that neither myself or Billy have ever met John so the only way we have formed our own opinions of him is through his blog. We have both been exposed to exactly the same material and yet have gone on to form completely different opinions which are rooted in our own values, beliefs and ideals, and have very little to do with what we were actually reading!
Other People’s Opinions Of You Don’t Matter
Can you imagine the turmoil that John would be in if he listened to everybody else’s opinion of him? Being such a prominent figure in his niche means that he gets hundreds of comments to his blog and tons of emails too. Imagine if he read the comment that Billy left on my blog about him and thought to himself, “Hmm, I’m coming across as arrogant, I’ll have to try and change that in future posts”. Billy’s opinion of him may change as a result but then what would I think of him? Who knows but my opinion would probably change too.
What this boils down to is that old saying, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. It might be a cliche but it is so true! When you realise that what other people think of you comes from what they are feeling about themselves, what their own values and beliefs are, and let’s not forget - what kind of mood they are in at the time at which they encountered you, then you can see that trying to please others and get their approval is a completely futile waste of time and energy.
Have you ever had an experience where you have blown something ‘out of proportion’ or you overreacted to something and then when you looked at it again when you felt differently, the very same thing that you looked at before now seems different? Has the situation changed? No, YOU have! And this is how opinions are formed! Somebody could be having a really bad day and then encounter somebody who rubs them the wrong way and then forms a very low opinion of that person but the next day they feel better and the person whom they had the low opinion of now doesn’t seem so bad even though nothing has changed!
What other people think of you has everything to do with them, and what they are feeling and thinking and going through. They will see what they want to see and nothing you do, or say will make any difference. I have my own share of online ‘enemies’ too. Every now and then somebody will stop by my blog (the IM one) and tell me that I suck or something but it really is irrelevant because what they think of me really has nothing to do with me at all, and is just about what they are going through at the time.
So, stop worrying about what other people think of you - whatever it is, it’s their opinion and they are entitled to it, and nothing you do is going to change it anyway.
Have you ever noticed how many times you get told that you should be doing or thinking something or other? Oh you should do this, or you should have done it that way instead. That’s not right, this is what you should believe and so on.
We Are Not All The Same
Trying to fit your life around all of these shoulds is very difficult and yet it is what most people do all the time. They seem to come from everywhere - our parents, other family members, friends, co-workers, even the modern media such as the TV and magazines try and tell you what you should be thinking, or wearing, or doing etc.
There is a fundamental flaw with this whole should-mentality: we are all unique and so what is right for one person is not necessarily right for another. Yet in modern society we try to classify ourselves, to conform to some idea of normality, we obey rules which have been set out by authorities and we try to get along with people by agreeing with them when they tell us what we should be doing or thinking or wearing or … the list goes on.
For many people on many subjects there may well be similarities. For example, for many people, getting a ‘good job’ is an acceptable way to earn a living but not for everybody. Some people (like me) prefer to work for themselves, others don’t need to work at all so they don’t, a few people have special lives afforded by their status such as royalty, some might devote their life to religious calling, others might spend their life in pursuit of some kind of goal. I’m sure as you read this list you’ll resonate with one or two of them and you might even have felt a little bit of negative resistance to some of them and all of those emotions are perfectly normal.
There is no right way to live your life, no job that is right for everybody, no set of rules by which everybody should adhere. Life is a choice and it is different for everybody.
How Do You Know What’s Right?
You might be feeling a little overwhelmed at the idea of so much choice. If that is the case then how do we decide how to live? Quite simple - our gut instincts tell us. To me, the idea of going out and getting a job is torture. So is the idea of living in a third world culture. How do I know this? Because when I think about those things they feel bad but when I think about being an entrepreneur and carving out a life of luxury I feel good and remember that life is meant to feel good!
Other people try to impose their shoulds on us and when they do that, we get an emotional reaction. If that emotion feels good then the chances are that their should is probably a worthy should for you too but if it feels bad then it is most certainly not.
The Curse of the People Pleaser
One of the shoulds that many of us hold for ourselves is that we should try to get along with other people - to get along with our families, friends, co-workers, blog readers and anybody else that we come into contact with. The trouble with that is that in our attempts to get along with others we often feel as though we should agree with them, which means adopting their shoulds as our own and as we are all different this is bound to cause conflict somewhere.
What the people pleaser often does is to ignore his own emotional reactions and simply try to go along with other people and their shoulds. This may seem beneficial in the short term because it allows you to agree with those around you but one day you wake up and realise that you are not living a life that really makes you happy and you start to resent those people that told you that you should have done it their way.
How do you please both yourself and other people? You can’t! This is the unfortunate truth. If you look at any situation, any opinion, any belief you will see that it is actually impossible to please all of the people all of the time. Let’s take a really simple example. I once ran a poll on my other blog asking if I should have guest posters or not. Half of the people who voted said yes and the other half said no. How could I please them all? I couldn’t.
Listen To Your Inner Guidance
If you cannot please all of the other people then what can you do? You can decide to listen to your own guidance instead. If everybody in the world attended to their own feelings, stayed in their own business instead of everybody else’s, and looked after their own needs then the world would be a better place!
That is not to say that we should just ignore everybody else. It may well be that other people have much valuable advice to give us but the decision as to whether or not to follow that advice should come from within - by listening to your emotions. Noticed that I just imposed two of my own shoulds on your in that paragraph! You can decide whether or not this post makes sense to you!
Don’t be afraid to change your mind. There have been many times when I have held an opinion on something and after learning new information I changed my mind. Those opinions felt right at the time and such is the way of life - the world is ever-changing and so are we.
In a recent post about goal setting I expressed how I used to get frustrated when my goals always seemed to change and evolve and this is why. Similarly, something what you feel you should do or think or believe right now may not be something that is a should for you in six months time. But as long as you always listen to your inner guidance you should be okay.
Be Careful Of Your Own Shoulds!
Another person who can impose shoulds on you is you! Do you find yourself doing something because you just feel that you should even though you don’t really want to? A great example of this is new year’s resolutions. There are various statistics around but in general a very large percentage of new year’s resolutions are broken within mere day’s of setting them.
Why is this? One possible reason is that many people set their resolutions because they feel they should. I really should stop smoking this year, I should join a gym, I should donate some money to charity and so on. If these things do not feel right to you then you won’t have the motivation to see them through.
Always, ALWAYS listen to that inner guidance - your emotions, and check them regularly!
Ever since I picked up my first self help book that I mentioned in my story last week, I have been searching for ways to improve my life. I’ve asked myself all sorts of questions such as what is my purpose? How should I behave? What character traits should I try to develop? How should I think? And so on…
I’ve been doing this for years and I’ve never really been particularly satisfied with the answers I came up with. Just this morning I think I worked out why - because I always looked outside of myself for the answers! Only I can know the answers to those questions. The problem is that there are no shortage of people who will be quite happy to answer those questions for you.
Most people only have your best interests at heart but as I have just realised, we are all inividuals and even if many of us share similar personality traits, values, opinions, beliefs, desires and so on, our combination of all of those things is unique to each of us so no one path, one way to live, no purpose, no belief system and so on can suit everybody. If there was just one single answer to all those questions then we wouldn’t have a need for all those books!
My Little Aha Moment
I’ve been reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and I am almost at the end of the book now. Much of what I have read has really resonated with me and has helped me in many ways. I think the concept that has had the biggest impact is the benefit of accepting what is, because what is simply is and there is no point fighting with reality. However, other parts of the book didn’t sit so well and made me feel uneasy.
Now it may well be that my understanding of what has been written may not be what the author intended but that can’t be helped either because our very uniqueness means that we will each interpret anything we read in a slightly different way because it gets filtered through our own minds first. Eckhart says that much of our emotional pain comes from an attachment to desires which are usually rooted in ego.
For example, being attached to a particular person, a job, money, a possession and so on. The Dalai Lama says much the same thing. Reading these two authors gave me the impression that it is somehow ‘wrong’ to have any desires altogether. This does not feel good! Now one thing I’ll just mention here is that I understand the difference between desiring something and having a desperate need for it - this is a topic I shall explore in another post.
However, I’ll assume for the rest of this discussion that what is meant here is that wanting things will eventually result in pain because everything in this world is temporary. Relationships are temporary - even if you find your soul mate one of you will probably die before the other! All people are temporary because we will all die. Jobs are temporary, our youth is temporary. For some people health is temporary and so on. When we lose something that we once had, we experience pain. So I can understand the logic in not having desires in the first place - if you don’t want for anything then you won’t get upset if you don’t get it or if you get it and later lose it.
But here’s my problem, and this may not be your problem. I like wanting things! The very fact that there are things in life that I want and don’t have yet excites me, it drives me forward, it gives me a purpose, gives me something to look forward to. If I ever got to a point in life where I had everything that I wanted I think my life would be over. What on earth would I do next?
Now you see, that’s just me. I figured out a few years ago that something that is very important to me is having a sense of progress, of working towards something. I think that’s why I hate most day jobs because when you just do the same thing every day you’re not creating anything, you’re not moving forward, it all seems so very pointless. That is probably why I was attracted to software development because that is at least creative.
I’m waffling… what I realised is that for me, wanting things feels good. For others wanting things just gives them a sense of lack and that feels bad. There is no right and wrong. What feels good to me might not feel good to you and of course, only you know what feels good to you.
Listen To Your Gut
Feeling good and feeling bad are emotions, gut feelings and in can take a while to tune into them. Many people don’t trust their own emotions and instincts and always look outside of themselves for answers. They always ask for other people’s opinions. They’ll read a book and treat it as gospel and so on. This very blog is another example. Some stuff that I write might resonate with you and other stuff might not sit right, might make you feel uneasy.
The trick is to ask yourself, how does this feel? Then take what works for you and throw away the rest. This applies to everything. Influences are all around us - things we see on TV, things we hear from other people, things we read, experiences we have, thoughts that we have and so on. Even our own thoughts are not necessarily good for us! If you are thinking about something that makes you feel bad then change that thought! Okay that is a topic that can and has filled several books so I’ll come back to that one!
The point I want you to take away from this post is that only you know what is right for you and the only way you know that is by learning to trust your gut instincts. This can be hard for some people. Many people have a low sense of self esteem and they always feel the need to validate themselves against other people, they worry about what other people think and so on. Practice it - like with anything else, it’s a skill you can develop!
I often read that what we give out comes back to us. If we just stop thinking about ourselves for a moment and help those around us, if we give of our love, our time, our attention, our money and so on, then all of these things will be returned to us multiplied.
Yes BUT…
In my last post I briefly mentioned the idea of being on an emotional scale, that there is a hierarchy of needs. All those things may indeed be true, and they may be true for everybody and not just those people that already seem to have an abundance of those things to give away. The tragedy may be that the people the suffering the most may be the very people who could benefit most from such wisdom yet they are unlikely to be in a place on an emotional level where they can accept it.
Modern western society is materialistic, and somewhat selfish. Most people don’t do voluntary work, most people don’t give away a portion of their salary to charity, most people just work on themselves. And that’s fine - if everybody just worked on themselves, there would be a lot less problems in the world.
My point is not to berate western society - I don’t do those things either, though I would like to, I won’t even bother coming up with excuses. My point is that when we are at a very low point on the emotional scale, when there is some big hole in our lives, or some big fat mess that needs cleaning up our reaction tends to be “yeah I’ll go help all the starving children later, right now I got kids to feed”, or something along those lines.
I’m transitioning right now. One of my issues is money. I don’t yet earn enough to be able to afford to live on my own (though I do have savings to see me through, but I’d rather not dip into them too much - a topic for another post!) and at the same time I recognise that if I can learn to give, then perhaps karma will be on my side. I would really like to get into the habit of tithing a portion of my salary and what better time to start then at the beginning. So far I have not drawn any personal salary from my business.
The catch is that right now, I feel like I can’t afford it but that is the myth that we all struggle with. Internally I’m screaming, okay when I’m earning this much <insert much larger number than current earnings> then I’ll give some away. But I know on an intellectual level that its got to be easier to give away a percentage of $1000 than of say $10,000.
Inside, I just want to fix myself. I want to fix my finances before I worry about anybody else’s. It’s one of my lowest basic needs - the need for a home. I think the dilemma is similar for other activities too such as doing volunteer work. The concern that most people have is lack of time and of course the saying is that whatever it is you want, give away first. If you need more time, give away your time. But when we have no time the last thing we want to do is give it to anybody else!
So frustrating isn’t it? I actually find that I do have a lot of free time right now, but I’m still struggling with that money one. I’ve settled on a compromise. I will tithe a percentage of my salary but it will be a smaller percentage than I had first wanted. As I earn more, I’ll up the percentage. I’m sure I’ll meet resistance again at some point but we’ll see.
I wonder if anybody else has struggled in this way? Have you had a sense that forgetting your own problems and helping others in some way is the way forward and yet all you really want to do is work on your own problems? Do you feel the internal conflict? Does the conflict make you feel guilty?
On my main blog I made an announcement about this one a few days ago and as soon as I did I started to feel a sense of panic. How on earth can I help anybody else when I can’t even sort my own life out?
I’ve started this blog because I’m fed up of having a crappy life and I want to learn how to feel good as much as possible and of course I want to share that with my readers. The problem is, I’m only just starting to learn this stuff myself so I’m not ‘there’ yet. I think the problem is in the preconception that arises from the word ‘help’. As as I think that I should be helping people with this blog that word conjures up images of some kind of enlightened guru who lives in a constant state of bliss and has it all sorted out. Well that certainly isn’t me.
I see people like Wayne Dyer, Eckhart Tolle and they seem to be like that. Nothing phases them, they take everything in their stride, they are constantly calm. Or are they? Who knows? Who cares? I am not those people and shouldn’t try to be. And who says that you have to be an expert to help other people anyway? All I’m going to do here is share.
I’ll share my story of the last few years that have led me to where I am now and as I move forwards from this point I will share my experiences and my insights. That is all. That is all I could possibly do and trying to do anything else would be futile. And for all I know it might just be that sharing my mistakes, my frustrations, my weaknesses and all those ‘negative’ things might just help somebody else in some way. It might be just what they need to hear at the time.
I’ve been reading a book by Louise Hay called “You Can Heal Your Life” and so far a lot of it is resonating with me. She says that a (false) thought that we often think is that “I’m not good enough” and as I read that I thought to myself, “oh no, I don’t think that” but it dawned on me this morning that I do!
I do hope however, that I’ll have some positive stories to share too! :-)
I set out to actively lead a life that truly feels good in the Spring of 2008 after a series of setbacks in my personal life. My aim is to spread whatever I learn about feeling good to others through this blog.
