Decide to Think Differently and Create an Extraordinary Future
Did you know that we make thousands and thousands of decisions every day? And that the great majority of those decisions are the exact same decisions we made the day before…and the day before and so on? Making the same decisions day after day can only lead us to engage in the same behaviours. The same behaviours will create the same experiences and the same experiences will produce the same emotions. We can say then that we are literally living in the past and our future doesn’t seem very different.
What if we could change some of the decisions we make today based on what we want to experience in the future? It is fair to say then that we would no longer be living in the past, but creating a map to the future instead. But how do we change the decisions we make so we can create a new future? Well, the first step is to become aware of those decisions and the second step is to plan ahead our day in order to have less things to decide on. In order to become aware of the some key decisions we make, we must disconnect from everything in our external environment. Get ready, because this journey will potentially change your life.
So, first we put some relaxing music on and close our eyes. By doing so we’ll be turning down the volume of our external reality and turning up the volume of our inner world. Inside us are only thoughts and feelings. The very thoughts that initiate our decision-making process. The goal here is not to stop thinking or calming the mind, but to observe attentively what kinds of thoughts go through our mind and how those thoughts are making us feel. At first, this may be frightening because we’ll be faced with an overwhelming amount of thoughts which were hid behind the busyness of every moment of every day. Another issue we will must certainly run into is that we will face thoughts like “come on, this is a waste of time get up and get a cuppa coffee” or “I could be using this time to call mom or to go to the gym” etc. As our goal is observe the thoughts, it will require some will to remain seated still and not engage with our own thoughts. Every time we refuse to act, it’s a victory.
Becoming aware of some of the thoughts we were unconsciously thinking gives us the ability to analyse whether those thoughts were positive or negative, whether they made us feel good or bad and ultimately what kind of decision those thoughts were making us make. Now that we know what thoughts are behind some of our decisions, thus we can decide differently every time some of those thoughts go through our awareness. It’s important to be prepared to resist the urge to withdraw when thoughts like “come on, this is a waste of time get up and go get something productive” or “I could be using this time to call mom or to go to the gym” etc. As our goal is observe the thoughts, it will require some will to remain seated still and not engaged with them. Every time we refuse to act, it’s a victory which will prepare us to make better conscious decisions.
It is time to take it a step further, shall we?! So now, put some more relaxing music on, sit back down and close the eyes with the intention of rehearsing the thoughts we want to think in order to make some new decisions. For instance, if we were thinking “my boss is a jackass because he didn’t approve my holidays 9 months ago” which was leading us to feel unmotivated to go to work and as consequence we engaged in complaining about the boss to other coworkers, we may want to change that thought with something like “If I were the boss, I wouldn’t like to have unmotivated people in my team”. The new thought will probably make us feel a bit more compassionate for our boss which would ultimately lead us to decide to have a more friendly and collaborative attitude at work.
By rehearsing a new thought in our head ahead of the actual event - in this case prior to go to work - we would no longer be living in the past, but creating right now the perfect environment to a more enjoyable future at work. If we can do this with one thought, we shall be able to do it with two, three…ten. If we continue to do this process regularly in different areas of our lives, we’d be liberating ourselves from the memories of the past, thereby connecting ourselves in the present moment with a possibility in the extraordinary future. If we are free from our past, this means that we’ve become new beings who have the ability to turn wishes into goals, goals into accomplishments and ultimately our dreams into reality.
