If you notice, we are engulfed in a culture that emphasizes purely on “doing”. You might also have noticed that for most people, may be including yourself, the whole day is just one big never ending “to do” list. Do you find yourself moving hastily in a headless rush to achieve deadlines, submit assignments, give presentations and then towards the end of the day scramble a few hours together for your family? It this your daily story?
Whose script are you living?
Take some time to reflect on your present life and answer this question, “Are you at peace with yourself?” If your answer is “no” then ask yourself the next big question “What am I doing wrong?” The reason you are not happy with your life is because you are living someone else’s script. It could be the script of your parents, your friends, your teachers or your present peers.
What’s this script I am talking about? It is similar to the script of a movie, the story line. Each person develops a script that helps him navigate through life. Your parents lived their life using their script, so do your friends and peers. Unfortunately most people accept the scripts handed down to them by others. Whose script are you living? May be it’s a mixture of the scripts given to you by your parents, siblings, friends and peers. The one person who should actually have written the script has made no contribution to the script at all – You.
Your beliefs are a part of the script you are using
Have you ever seriously given a thought to certain beliefs that you have taken for granted. Just have a look at the list below and see if any of it is a part of your belief system. Be honest with yourself.
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1. Life is suffering and you cannot get around it.
2. You must work in the field of your education whether you like it or not
3. Work is monotonous and routine. If you want to have fun, don’t find it in your work.
4. You must keep yourself busy and occupied
5. We live in a competitive world. It’s a dog eat dog scenario out there.
6. I need to work to make money, whether I like my work or not is secondary.
7. Future is uncertain and I must always live in fear.
8. Rest and relaxation is for vacations. It is not possible to be at peace on day to day basis.
If you have even a single one of the above beliefs as a part of your belief system, then suffix to say that you have all the 8 beliefs as part of your belief system – you might not agree with me but a deeper introspection will prove this to be the case. Some of our beliefs are unconscious; we don’t even know we are operating from that mindset.
It is also true that if you hold one of the beliefs above, then you will experience a deep sense of lack every now and then. This lack is usually due to a meaninglessness you find in your everyday living. There is no sense of inner purpose.
A lack of purpose always points to one thing – you are living someone else’s script. You never took the time out to find out what you want out of your life. You never wrote your own script. It is of course far easier to follow someone else’s script but on the downside you will never feel congruent with your inner purpose. No one can really tell you what you should be doing in life. It’s a very personal decision.
Working on the inside instead of focusing on the outside
Do you procrastinate a lot? Are you constantly looking to upgrade your time management skills? Do you experience a lot of resistance while working in the office? Do you find yourself constantly looking at the clock, waiting for the office hours to get over? In all possibility you might be doing all of these on day to day basis. You might think it’s normal to be this way because everyone around you seems to be following the same pattern, but truly it’s far from normal. You can never be productive if this is your mindset, you can never work to your potential and hence your contribution, or the value you give, will always be negligible. You can never experience abundance using this mentality.
“But there seems to be no way out”, is a very common excuse and in a way it’s true. There is no way “out” there because there is no “out” there. If you look at changing your life from the outside you will always fail. You will keep repeating the same pattern of misery. In fact a clear indication that you have been doing just this is evident if you just look at your past and find a pattern emerging. Relationships have constantly failed, jobs have always been miserable (even after shifting several companies), loneliness has been a constant companion, short term pleasures have been the order of the day and health has always been degenerative – why is this pattern not changing for you? It’s a pattern you will keep repeating if you try to change what is outside yourself.
Start always with the inside. Look at your thoughts. Don’t analyze them. Just watch and you will see for yourself that your reality reflects your thoughts to the digit. You can come to a conclusion that you think these thoughts because your circumstances are as they are, but that is like reversing the truth. The fact is that your external reality is an expression of your thoughts. Change your thoughts and your reality changes on its own.
It is a wonderful feeling of liberation to know that “you” are in control. Everything is under your dominion; there is not a speck of reality that will not change as soon as you change your thoughts. Isn’t it true that your thoughts are very much in your control and they are your doing? You can watch your thoughts; this alone should convince you that you can change them at will.
Forget the techniques
You don’t need techniques. They are quite useless because they make your work like an automaton. NLP or EFT might work but towards the end you just lose touch with your heart once you start using techniques. Is it really so difficult to watch your thoughts, see that they are incongruent with the reality you wish to live, and then stop being influenced by them? It is the simplest thing to do. In fact as soon as you start watching your thoughts most of them will stop influencing so badly. You don’t need to replace them with positive thoughts, just watch them till they stop having a hold on you.
This step can change your life completely. Initially, watching your thoughts requires some patience. Remember that you don’t have to do anything but just watch the thoughts. You will feel ill at ease in the beginning, but don’t take any action to suppress this feeling of unease – like watching TV or drinking. It is a good practice to just take a decision that you will not do anything to distract yourself. Staying present with your thoughts will become your second nature with a little practice. You will slowly start realizing a certain pattern in your thoughts and that pattern will be evident in your reality also. It can be quite a revelation the first time you see through this.
Once you see through your negative thought pattern, it loses its hold on you. Slowly but surely you will see your reality changing now that your negative thoughts are ebbing away. One direct result of this practice is that you will start following your heart on daily basis. All your decisions will come from a place of intuition and guidance from within.
Many people make the mistake of trying to replace negative thoughts with something positive but it does not work that way. The moment you involve yourself with a negative thought you start giving it energy. The best way to overcome a negative thought pattern is to just watch it unfold. Be acutely present with the thought till it passes away.
Don’t be skeptical about it
If you feel skeptical about using this technique you might want to give it a try just to find out what happens. It is very hard to do nothing but watch a thought. There is always an inner parent asking us to take action. Suppress this urge. Watch the thought till its end and it would lose its hold on you and new guidance will make its way up. Your heart’s voice becomes more prominent when the voice of your mind conditioning is removed.
Try this right now to solve a problem you have been tackling for long. Here’s what you need to do.
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1. When the negative thought pattern of the problem starts surfacing, don’t resist it. Let it come through. Watch the thought – is it a voice, an image or a feeling? Just stay with it.
2. Avoid the temptation to start analyzing. If you feel uneasy and worried just stay in that state. If you get highly emotional just stay with the feeling. Just be an observer of all that is happening in your body and mind.
3. It can take up to 20 minutes of awareness to see a thought through to its end. The feelings that came with it will seem to disappear. There will be a sense of release.
4. You might be guided towards a solution either in words or through some action you take involuntarily. Even if nothing happens just let it be, may be you don’t need to take action right now.
The toughest part for most people is to stay with the emotions generated by the thought. If you are capable of being aware without becoming one with the emotion, half the battle is won. The rest is just about avoiding the temptation to analyze the thoughts.
Trust you body’s intelligence to guide you. Your intellect has very little wisdom compared to the infinite intelligence of the body. Analyzing thoughts is futile because you are using your mind to solve mind’s problems. Don’t make that mistake. Just watch, be aware, that is all that you need to do. Guidance will appear effortlessly.
