awareness

‘How do I sort my life out?’: Awareness, Acceptance, & Action

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How To Sort Your Life Out

If you’re trying to change or sort your life out then this article will offer you an effective structure that you can walk yourself through.

It’s universal enough to apply to all of us (literally) but also fluid enough to be able to allow you to make sure that you’re truly working on your own terms and in the context of wherever you happen to be internally (mentally, emotionally, psychologically, etc.) and externally (your life situation at present).

It’s a process that I’ve refined over the years as a result of writing my books and thinking about this kind of ‘thing’ (human growth and getting RESULTS in a REAL way) but also from practically applying it as a structure to the relationships I’ve had with my coaching clients:

Awareness -> Acceptance -> Action

Before we get started though, you need to know about ‘The Gap’:

The Gap: Letting Your Goals Change You

The ‘process’ that we’re talking about is the process of CLOSING THE GAP between where you currently happen to be (whether you know it or not) and where you ‘think’ you want to be in the future (which may change as you take action, move forward, and learn more about yourself, the world, and reality).

The fact that it deals with something as contextual as ‘The Gap’ is what makes the process so universal – no matter who you are or what you’re trying to achieve in life you WILL find yourself standing at one side of ‘The Gap’ between the current version of yourself and the next.

The key point that needs to be made here is that – if you’re doing it ‘right’ – then by the time you’ve got to the other side of ‘The Gap’ then you’ll be more REAL as a result of doing the necessary work to raise your awareness, work on your strengths, and to allow some of the hidden ‘parts’ of yourself to emerge from the SHADOW of yourself as you use your creativity to change your life.

This is one of the biggest ‘secrets’ about moving forward in life and getting REAL results: the goals that mean the most and change your life for the better are the ones that TURN YOU INTO A DIFFERENT PERSON – a version that’s always more REAL.

Here’s a fancy diagram from the 7-Day Personality Transplant System Shock for Realness and Life Purpose that shows what we’re talking about:

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that the goals that will have the biggest impact on your life are the goals that will CHANGE YOU(for the better by allowing the REAL you to emerge).

The first step towards changing your life (or just ‘sorting’ it out) is to commit to allowing this change to take place. If you don’t, then you just end up BLOCKING things with your ego (and the fear, pride, and desire that beg you to keep seeing yourself in a certain unreal light) and you won’t get the RESULTS that you want.

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’re trying to do – ‘The Gap’ applies to everybody (purely because of how time, space, and the law of cause and effect applies to all of us here on good old planet Earth).

Your basic task is to figure out what’s on the other side of The Gap (and to make sure it’s something REAL so you’re not wasting your time), ask yourself what’s stopping you from getting there (and doing something about it), and then asking yourself “WHO DO I NEED TO BECOME?” in order to get there (which almost always involves cultivating new QUALITIES (or allowing them to re-emerge) and developing new SKILLS).

As you go about doing the work of closing ‘The Gap’ you can make your life a lot easier by following the universal path of Awareness, Acceptance, and Action.

I call this a ‘path’ as ultimately it’s a linear process that builds on itself but – in truth – you can always go deeper into reality and so you will continually uncover new layers of yourself as you move forward that will bring new insights and fuel for growing REAL.

The other thing, of course, is that once you get to the other side of one ‘gap’ you ultimately realise that you’re at the starting point of another one – this is just the nature of life and being a human being: you can always go deeper and nothing really ever ends (until you die at least and even then it’s debatable).

Everybody’s path is different but the building blocks are the same.

Even though all of our lives are ‘different’ because we’re all dealing with our own ‘stuff’ and have experienced life in our own unique ways, the building blocks and the underlying structures of our lives are all the SAME.

This is what makes the human experience the human experience. I’ve talked about it already on this site and in my books but the short-version is that we are all born WHOLE, become fragmented by the world and its conditioning, and then go through a process of waking up and becoming more or less WHOLE (REAL) again (if we’re lucky and/or do the work – some people spend their whole lives being FRAGMENTED/UNREAL because they get too caught up in their IDEAS about themselves and the world).

It goes like this:

Stage 1: Childhood (wholeness) – In which we are still relatively ‘unconditioned’ by the world and its fragments and are free and spontaneous in our REALNESS.

Stage 2: Unreality (fragmentation) – In which we have become conditioned by the world and hypnotised by our own emotional ‘stuff’ to believe that we’re something other than what we really are (and so we do things like end up in the WAGE CAGE, detach from our true purpose, don’t know how to have meaningful/intimate relationships, etc.).

Stage 3: Realness (wholeness) – In which we start to do the work of facing our emotional ‘stuff’, bringing our SHADOW LIFE to the surface, expressing who we really are in the world, moving towards our true potential, and shifting into a way of being and doing that is more REAL (not everybody CONSCIOUSLY makes it to this stage but everybody can).

What this specifically looks like in the context of your life will be different to what it has looked like in anybody else’s – for example, the goals you set yourself or the obstacles you’re facing will be different (along with a million other things like your personal skills, qualities, story, etc.).

The biggest GAP that most of us will ever cross is the one between Stage 2: Unreality and Stage 3: Realness but even once that’s crossed life will still be a series of gaps that need to be traversed in order to make the most of it and keep growing real.

This is where Awareness, Acceptance, and Action comes in:

Awareness, Acceptance, and Action are the full package

Awareness, Acceptance, and Action will give you everything that you need as you go about the process of closing ‘The Gap’ in your own life.

Whatever you’re trying to achieve or wherever you’re trying to go they will SERVE you on your journey.

Here are some simple definitions:

Awareness: Means gaining insight of anything that will expose the gap between yourself and reality.

All this ultimately means is that you take yourself through a process of exploration so that your understanding of real and unreal increases and that you become AWARE of ‘the Gap’ by becoming aware of what ‘reality’ actually is (or isn’t).

Acceptance: Means removing your judgement of whatever it was that caused you to CHOOSE this gap between yourself and reality.

What this ultimately means is that something caused you to keep choosing an UNREAL LIFE in the first place. Usually, this is because we have learned to JUDGE certain parts of ourselves as being ‘unacceptable’ and sent them into the SHADOW TERRITORY (to use language from the book ‘Shadow Life: Freedom from BS in an Unreal World’).

Acceptance is the process of flipping the script and removing judgement and its impact on our lives (Acceptance is the opposite of judgement because the only thing you can do with reality is ACCEPT it – your judgments don’t affect it in any way).

Action: Is kind of self-explanatory but just means DOING whatever it takes to close the gap by unblocking yourself and taking action.

Without taking ACTION things will continue to change around you (that’s just how life is) but you won’t make the kind of progress that you want to be making.

The short-version is this:

Awareness: Increases your understanding of REALITY.

Acceptance: Working to stop JUDGING reality.

Action: Actively working WITH reality.

The final point to be made here is that you need ALL THREE – this is because they build on each other and are interconnected.

If you only (or predominantly) focus on one of the stages then this is what ends up happening:

Only Awareness –  You become self-obsessed and nothing ever changes and the gap between you and reality gets wider (you just need enough awareness, not total).

Only Acceptance – You become passive and life just becomes something that happens to you.

Only Action – You become controlling and don’t take the right actions or get results because you lack understanding (that you get from Awareness and Acceptance).

This is why you need to take yourself (or if you need further support get in touch about working one-on-one) through all of the stages one after the other.

Here’s some practical stuff you can DO at each stage:

What you can DO at each level in order to improve your life

Ultimately, the only ‘rule’ about what to do at each of these levels is this: “Whatever works” – it’s your life and your ‘stuff’ that you’re dealing with.

As long as you understand the FUNCTION of each phase (as explained above) you can use your creativity to keep moving forward and closing ‘The Gap’.

Here are some ideas and principles for each stage:

Awareness

At the ‘Awareness’ stage you need to be doing anything that increases your awareness of REALITY by helping you to either see where you’re blocking your view (because of illusions etc.) or by acquiring new knowledge (about how life works – not just trivia for the sake of ‘knowing’ things).

Some things you’ll need to do:

Asking the right questions: Learning to expand your awareness of yourself, the world, and reality by testing your CURRENT ASSUMPTIONS and seeing what’s real and what’s not.

Being present: Learning to see how you’re holding yourself back from the present moment (where you always find reality).

Exploring the reasons behind your ‘goals’: To make sure that the life and version of yourself you perceive on the other side of ‘The Gap’ is aligned with your true VALUES and INTENTIONS.

Becoming AWARE of your true vales and intentions in the first place: Which are often hidden beneath decades of conditioning and BS (which you also need to become aware of).

Testing your thoughts, values, and beliefs: Making sure that you haven’t just picked up a value and belief system from the world arbitrarily and that it’s actually aligned with the real you (a great starting point is figuring out your REAL values and seeing if they’re in your life)

Seeing how you’re blocking self-expression: Maybe you have certain sides of yourself or points of view (etc.) that you keep finding yourself holding back. You need to be AWARE of this so you can ensure that they get expression on the other side of ‘The Gap’.

Becoming aware of how life actually works: Uncovering and taking the relevant RED PILLS so that you don’t have any illusions or BS holding you back in the areas of health, wealth, and relationships (and life in general).  For example, you may need to become aware of the fact that you’ll be DEAD one day and so your time, energy, and attention are the most valuable things you have.

Deconstructing your ego: You need to start understanding that the main thing holding you back is your EGO – i.e. the image you created of yourself in order to hide from your unresolved emotional ‘stuff’. You need to be AWARE of how this SHOWS UP in your life and how it’s holding the REAL you back (normally by making you passive and resisting ACCEPTANCE and ACTION – the next stages).

In short: Anything you can do to increase your understanding of yourself, the world, and reality.

Acceptance

As we said, ‘Acceptance’ is about moving towards a life without judgement of REALITY (because you can’t judge reality as it just is what it is). This applies to the levels of ourselves, the world, and reality itself.

This stage builds on the ‘Awareness’ stage because as you start to increase your awareness and uncover a better understanding of reality you will find yourself RESISTING because of your own ego ‘stuff’ and your conditioning from the world in general.

Only if you ACCEPT reality based on what you’ve become AWARE of can you ever hope to DO anything real with it.

Some practical things you can do:

Looking at the ego versus the shadow: If you can understand the relationship between your ego and the SHADOW parts of yourself that your ego has been CREATED (by you) in order to hide then you will gain a better understanding of what causes you to JUDGE reality instead of accepting it.

Understanding why you want to believe certain illusions: The main reason you JUDGE reality is because you want to believe in something else (the standards that your judgements are based on) – when you’ve increased your AWARENESS you’ll start to see that you were believing in FALSEHOODS.

When you ask yourself honestly WHY you chose to believe these things you’ll learn to start accepting the parts of you that you were hiding from by doing this.

Unblocking your emotional ‘stuff’: There are exercises, activities, and things that you can do to start facing your hidden emotional ‘stuff’ (almost always shame, guilt, and trauma or some cocktail of the three). Whatever this looks like in the context of your own life is up to you but the key point is that by letting your emotional stuff ‘out’ you will better be able to ACCEPT and flow with reality.

Looking at the way we think and how it reflects a lack of self-acceptance, etc.: Again, building on the AWARENESS you keep cultivating, you can start to look at how your thought patterns either reflect self-acceptance or self-judgement.

Like we keep saying acceptance is the opposite of judgement and so if you find that you’re constantly judging yourself with a harsh inner critic (for example) then you will need to ACCEPT that you have some stuff going on that is keeping you from reality.

In short: ANYTHING that helps you to move towards more acceptance of yourself (especially), the world, and reality and  that stops you from JUDGING what’s real (because that’s irrational).

Action

Action is the most self-explanatory stage – it simply means taking all of the learning you acquire in the Awareness and Acceptance stages and making sure that you act in a REAL way without judgement.

Some practical things you can do:

Create a vision based on what you’ve learned about yourself, the world, and reality: This is the first stage of action – creating a real vision based on the AWARENESS you uncovered and a true ACCEPTANCE of yourself in reality.

This vision is essentially a picture of what the other side of ‘The Gap’ will look like. The more clarity you have here the better (whilst not forgetting that you can change this vision whenever you like and as you keep learning and moving forward).

Setting concrete goals: Once you’ve got the vision you can start breaking it down into GOALS. For example, maybe your vision involves writing a book – you can set specific goals to write a certain number of words by a certain deadline, etc.

Sorting out your habits: Looking at the ONGOING HABITS you’ll need to be able to get where you need to be by taking action every day. For example, with the ‘writing a book goal’ your habit might need to be ‘Write at least 500 words per day’.

Understanding your values and translating them into goals and behaviours: Making sure that the ACTION you take is aligned with your real values (and intentions) so that you’re actually doing something REAL and not just doing things for the sake of your ego as a way of avoiding your shadow.

Developing the skills and qualities that will let you become the person you need to BECOME to close the gap: This will be different for everybody but it basically means knowing who you need to BE in order to get what you want.

The qualities you need to develop might be things like “assertiveness”, “confidence”, “risk-taking” but it could be literally anything based on your vision for yourself and who you need to STRETCH INTO to get there (because the qualities are already in you – you just need to turn up the volume by stretching yourself).

SKILLS will also be different depending on your vision but – for example – might be things like copywriting, video editing, gymnastics etc. It literally could be anything but you need to be AWARE of it and to ACCEPT it if it’s real so you can start taking ACTION and doing it.

In short: Action is about doing whatever it takes to BECOME that person that’s on the other side of that gap waiting for you.

Final lesson: it’s CIRCULAR and so you will always be able to go deeper as you keep learning.

In short, this is a process that never really ends and you can always go deeper but if you understand the specific stages and what’s needed then you can get better RESULTS and live a better life.

To repeat the short-version:

Awareness: Increases your understanding of REALITY.

Acceptance: Working to stop JUDGING reality.

Action: Actively working WITH reality.

You need ALL THREE of these stages to close that gap and to get the life you want to be living.

It might not be easy but it’s always worth it and you’ll always be more REAL by the time you’ve finished.

 


If this story inspired or helped you then please share it with others! 🙂

Sign up for my mailing list if you want to stay in touch (you’ll get access to the 7-Day Personality Transplant for uncovering your life purpose):

If you want to find your own real life, start moving towards unconditional acceptance, and finding a sense of purpose then check out this 7-Day Course that you can start right now:

The Loop: What You Have Now Is What You Once Wanted (Whether You Know It Or Not)

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You Always Get What You Want

More often than not, the things that you have in your life now are the things that you once wanted for yourself.*

Though you might not realise it – or may even be trying to hide from it – the current state of your life and the situations that your life is comprised of are the CONSEQUENCE of all the CHOICES you made in the past.

These choices will be affected by all kinds of different factors:

-Your underlying emotional ‘stuff’.

-What you’ve been conditioned to believe is possible.

-What you’re trying to hide from about yourself, the world, or reality.

-The relationships in your life (which you’ve also CHOSEN to stick around in or not).

-Your general way of thinking (‘negative’, ‘positive’, or REAL, etc.).

-Etc. Etc.

Either way, however you may have happened to end up thinking about life, these thoughts will always affect the way that you go about making CHOICES in life, and the end result will always be the same:

If you made REAL CHOICES – i.e. choices that are based on your authentic values and intentions rather than just your instinctual programming or social conditioning – then your life will predominantly be REAL too and reflect this.

If you made UNREAL CHOICES – i.e. choices that were rooted in your EGO or your fears about yourself, the world, and reality that caused you to HIDE your true values and intentions from yourself – then you’re life will predominantly be UNREAL too and reflect this.

A simple PRINCIPLE of life that applies to us all (and that we’ve mentioned before on this site and in my course the 7-Day Personality Transplant):

If you put real in, you get real out; if you put unreal in, you get unreal out.

It’s pretty simple, but a lot of the time we forget this or we think we are being real (even though we’re not getting the results that we want – the only sure sign that we’re actually acting in a real way: we’re either at peace because we ACCEPT life or we’re at peace because we’re getting the RESULTS we want).

This article is about how it sometimes takes current reality a little time to catch up with the beliefs we’re putting into the world but how almost ALWAYS, the things we have in our lives now are simply a reflection of how we used to THINK about life and how those thoughts affected the actions we took.

You need to know this and to ACCEPT it so that you can start making better choices RIGHT NOW so that you stand a better chance of living a life you want to be living further down the line.

Here we go.

*Obviously, this doesn’t apply to everything in your life as some things are completely out of our control (‘acts of God’ like natural disasters, people dying, illness, etc.) and so this isn’t one of those solipsistic posts about how we completely create our own reality like some kind of omnipotent being (if you’ve read my books you know I think that’s BS and a lot of the ‘spiritual’ philosophies out there that that say that ‘stuff’ are just selling people what they want to believe, not the truth).

Emotional ‘stuff’ leads to assumptions leads to belief systems leads to thoughts leads to actions leads to emotional ‘stuff’.

You need to understand that the way you feel, think, and do things when you’re running on autopilot is circular and builds on itself.

If you don’t step back and take control of this process (by growing REAL, the whole point of everything discussed on this site), then you just end up getting caught in the THE LOOP and feeling that you’re powerless and have no control over your life because you forget that: 1) you have a CHOICE, and 2) what you currently have is the CONSEQUENCES of those choice.

Here’s how things unfold for most of us when we don’t step up and take control:

 

Here’s an example of how this might show up in your life if you’re not aware of your ability to make a CHOICE to change something at ANY of these different levels (a good thing because you can CHOOSE to change the area that’s easiest for you personally and still break the cycle of ‘The Loop’):

You have some underlying emotional ‘stuff’ like shame.

This shame causes you to make the fundamental assumption that you’re just not ‘good enough’.

This fundamental assumption causes you to create a kind of ‘people pleaser’ belief system where you survive by putting the needs of others before your own (so it doesn’t trigger the shame you’re trying to avoid).

This ‘people pleaser’ belief system cause you to have unreal thoughts about yourself – for example, that you can’t do the things that you’re really interested in doing in life because it might upset people or they’d disagree with your choices (for example).

That causes you to take actions that keep you in your comfort zone and to avoid your edge for fear of upsetting others or stepping up and pushing through your own emotional ‘stuff’.

The fact that you’re being passive and not taking the real actions you want to be taking (i.e. because you’re not aligned with your true values and intentions) causes you to feel more shame and so your CHOSEN actions (or lack of action) just causes you to PERPETUATE your emotional ‘stuff’ instead of healing it.

The cycle continues.

The interesting thing here (imo) is that 1) most of us aren’t AWARE that we’re involved in this cycle of ‘The Loop’ and so it just keeps repeating and we get more deeply entrenched in our lives as a CONSEQUENCE of being on the hamster wheel, and 2) because we’re not AWARE of it we don’t realise how much CHOICE we have to change our lives for the better.

We can change our lives by changing the cycle (or, more accurately, starting to change the cycle so we can get different RESULTS from life – as the old quote says “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results).

For example:

We can CHOOSE to change the level of our emotional ‘stuff’ by doing some introspective work and figuring out what’s going inside of ourselves, meditating, talking to others about our ‘feelings’ (often just talking will dissolve shame, etc.), working out emotions through our creative art, etc.

We can CHOOSE to change our fundamental ASSUMPTIONS about ourselves, the world, and reality, by doing exploratory work, digging deeper into the way that we see things through introspection or journaling, etc. and seeing what PATTERNS emerge.

We can CHOOSE to change our BELIEF SYSTEMS by actively continuing to learn new things, putting ourselves in difficult situations, chasing new experiences that push us through our EDGE, testing the validity of our beliefs and the conclusions we’ve made about ourselves, the world, and reality by philosophical enquiry, etc. etc.

We can CHOOSE to change our THOUGHTS by learning to see when our thoughts are too negative, understanding when we’re held back by LIMITING beliefs, paying attention to our inner monologue and the language we use (maybe it’s passive and unreal – for example, always about how we will “try”, “always” or “never” do certain things, etc.).

We can CHOOSE to change our ACTIONS by learning what our REAL VALUES are and translating them into goals, we can act on our REAL INTENTIONS by making sure that we know what they are (by digging beneath the surface or our social conditioning, etc.), we can create a VISION for ourselves based on the real version of ourselves we want to become (instead of who we think we are right now because of false beliefs and BS), etc. etc. etc.

In short, there’s absolutely LOADS we can choose to do if we want to change our lives for the better and get out of the passive cycle of just UNCONSCIOUSLY CHOOSING to have each of these levels feed into each other as part of a cycle of negatively based on how we might ‘feel’ about ourselves.

Whatever life you’re living right now is a CONSEQUENCE of how you’ve engaged with this cycle in the past.

To paraphrase what we said above:

If you’ve been real at all or some of these levels your life will now be more real than if you’d be unreal.

Unreal in, unreal out; real in, real out.

If you start WORKING to change your relationship with yourself at these levels then you will eventually see that your life becomes more real down the line (it won’t change overnight because you need to wait for reality to catch up – this is called the REALITY LAG).

The Payoff of ‘Negative’ Consequences

Because we make a CHOICE about how we interact with ourselves at each of the levels on this cycle – even if we just choose to let things unfold on their own terms by doing NOTHING – then we can say that the life we have right now is whatever we actually WANTED for ourselves.

This applies just as much to the ‘positive’ things we have in our lives at present as well as the ‘negative’.

For example:

Maybe we have a crappy job that we hate right now and we’re stuck in the WAGE CAGE – we might have CHOSEN this because it reinforces the negative assumptions we have about ourselves as not being good enough (in the example given above) and so we don’t have to change or can prove ourselves ‘right’ on an unconscious level.

Maybe we can’t find a relationship despite telling ourselves we want one – we might have CHOSEN this because unconsciously we fear that a relationship will cause us to change our THOUGHTS about ourselves and that would mean having to face our emotional ‘stuff’ (that those thoughts only exist to keep us avoiding in the first place).

Maybe we have our own business and we’re constantly busy taking action but never get RESULTS (no sales or whatever in this context) – this might be because we have decided to only focus on the EASY actions (like doing spread sheets all day or whatever) so that we don’t have to do the stuff that would actually push us through the EDGE to the next level (like networking or making sales calls or whatever).

You could come up with all kinds of examples but the basic point is that we choose to keep acting in ways that keep the cycle of THE LOOP going so that we can avoid growing through our comfort zone and facing the fundamental emotional ‘stuff’ that has been shaping our life since day one.

What You Can Do: How to Break the Cycle and Escape the Loop.

To start breaking this cycle and to start getting different CONSEQUENCES then you need to change your patterns at each level (though because they’re all connected then just changing in one area will make a difference in all the others).

I’ve already given some examples above but the abridged version at each level:

Emotional ‘Stuff’: You need to start DISSOLVING your shame (etc) instead of being DRIVEN by it.

Assumptions: You need to actively work to replace unreal assumptions (“I’m not good enough”, for example which is never real because it involves a judgement) with REAL assumptions (which are designed to promote self-acceptance which is REAL – for example, “I am capable of succeeding just as much as anybody else”, “I can handle whatever happens”, “Nothing can stop me being real”, etc.).

Belief Systems: You need to replace belief systems that hold you back or make the world seem like a place where good things can’t happen to you with a belief system that supports your GROWTH.

Thoughts: You need to learn to step back from your thoughts, realise that they’re not ‘You’, and to condition yourself to never give into negative thoughts that stop you from acting on your true values and intentions (such as inner criticism etc.).

Actions: You need to make sure that you actually do ACT (because action is the only thing that will get you where you want to be), but you also need to make sure that you increase AWARENESS of what’s real (about yourself, the world, and reality), that you ACCEPT your true goals, and that the ACTION you take is not just a distraction from your emotional ‘stuff’ that keeps this unreal cycle going.

In your own life, you’ll know which one makes the most sense for you to experiment with and make the most progress but I think that the ‘easiest’ way to start making changes is to change our approach to taking ACTION.

This is because if we CHOOSE to act on a vision for the highest, most real version of ourselves then the rest will kind of fall into place as the RESULTS we get from taking real action shows the futility of feeling ‘bad’ about ourselves, negative thinking that stems from this, and so on.

I’ve actually seen it quite a lot in the coaching relationships I have with people: once clients start taking real action and ACTING in a way that’s congruent with who they want to BECOME (not just who they fear they are right now) then they start to build momentum and collect EVIDENCE that goes against the foundation of feelings and thoughts that are rooted on an unreal relationship with any emotional ‘stuff’.

The short-version of what this looks like is that you need to start running towards something REAL instead of just trying to run away from the unreal stuff (that comes from your emotional ‘stuff’ and the emotions it gives you about yourself).

The steps that will put you on this path are quite simple:

  1. Figure out your true values and intentions for your life by digging into how your life would be different if you weren’t HOLDING BACK.
  2. Turn this into a VISION for the future version of yourself and what your life would look like if you could realise this vision.
  3. Ask yourself who you need to BECOME to make that vision a reality (i.e. what skills and qualities would you have).
  4. Figure out what GOALS you need to dedicate yourself to in order to close the GAP between where you are now and that highest vision.
  5. Go out there every day and start DOING what needs to be done to close that gap.

Like I said, that’s a very simple process but it will be harder to actually do in real life (instead of just on the screen or wherever you’re reading this).

Coaching can help you with this (*cough*) but so can just being DISCIPLINED and realising that if you do have a struggle along the way then it will be a struggle at one of the levels shown on the cycle above.

If you can figure out which and start attacking it then you can unblock yourself and get going again.

Either way, once you start making a shift, your life will make a shift too and eventually the life you’re living will be a CHOSEN consequence of being REAL, not just a passive consequence of being UNREAL and getting lost on the hamster wheel of THE LOOP.

Go get it.

 


If this story inspired or helped you then please share it with others! 🙂

Sign up for my mailing list if you want to stay in touch (you’ll get access to the 7-Day Personality Transplant for uncovering your life purpose):

If you want to find your own real life, start moving towards unconditional acceptance, and finding a sense of purpose then check out this 7-Day Course that you can start right now:

 

How to be real no matter what.

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“Real always works” – that’s what I’m always telling my clients and how I live my own life (really, “Real always works” is just a shortcut to circumventing all of the mind chatter that stops us taking action).

There’s only one problem: even though we may intend to be real, we’ve found ourselves in an unreal world where there’s more disinformation, BS, and confusion than probably any other time in history (really, not hyperbole or exaggeration: thanks to Internet algorithms and social media echo bubbles there’s more misinformation than ever before – we can all live in our own alternate (un)reality if we CHOOSE).

Here are ten things to keep in mind that can help us avoid the vortex of an unreal world and keep moving towards real life so we can be real no matter what.

1. Remember the times when you’ve felt most real.

I’m always reminding my clients (or readers of my books) to remember the times when they felt most real in the past. Almost always,  these will be times when they have stepped outside of themselves (or more accurately, their IDEAS about themselves) and they are fully present and spontaneous in the moment.

In my own life, the examples I always tend to give are:

  • Bounding down Mt Fuji one morning with the clouds beneath me.
  • Making love with somebody I truly care about.
  • Riding a motorbike.
  • Being outside in storms.
  • Really good yoga sessions.
  • Etc.

All of these experiences were times were my mind-body connection was heightened, I felt ‘one’ with my surroundings because I wasn’t only perceiving or interpreting everything conceptually, and where I got into a flow state of some kind and moved towards WHOLENESS instead of just mere fragments of living.

The lesson here is that you can’t always feel like this because these moments need you to take yourself out of the day-to-day world and to put yourself in the realest place possible.

Once you’ve tasted these moments, however, they do show you what real life is and show you the direction you need to start aiming back towards once the world begins to creep in again (really this is just the process of returning from the fragmentation of the world to the wholeness of reality: see Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness if you want to build on these ideas).

2. Always keep the real vision in mind.

If your life feels unreal then there’s a good chance that it’s because you don’t have a vision for where you’re going or – if you do have one – it’s not compelling enough.

In my experience of coaching people, a ‘compelling’ vision just means that we choose something REAL to run towards instead of only trying to hide from the unreal stuff (for example, running towards something that is an expression of our true values – creativity, freedom, whatever – instead of trying to hide from our shame or guilt, etc.).

A lot of people set goals for themselves that are actually unreal and become outcome-dependent because they think they can fill the void inside themselves with external validation or other things that can never really save us.  My view of why this happens is because they set goals from a foundation of not knowing themselves (because they haven’t gone through the process of raising Awareness and Accepting themselves before taking Action).

Chasing an unreal vision will only serve to make your life increasingly more unreal as you push yourself further away from yourself; chasing a real vision will eventually bring real results that compound on themselves and make life more real overall.

You can remember it by remembering this simple formula (from the Personality Transplant):

Unreal in, unreal out; Real in, real out.

Make sure you’re aiming for something real before you get there.

3. Set goals and habits that structure your day.

You don’t need so much structure that your life becomes a prison but – once you have that real vision – you need enough structure to support its forward momentum and to carry you where you need to be.

For most of us, this just involves breaking the vision down into goals and also dedicating ourselves to the (almost) daily habits that will take us there.

The reason that this works is because real life is about working with time and that the only way to get RESULTS is to use cause and effect to manipulate time.

For example, if you have a vision of being a creative consultant of some kind then a goal you might have to support that might be to write a book. The habit that will support that is writing every day.

You need to break down your vision into the necessary goals and then be disciplined, consistent, and focused with your actions as you get there.

If you don’t have this basic structure then you will likely just fall into the trap of being distracted with activities, relationships, and thoughts that just make your life more unreal.

4. Value the truth more than anything else.

I’ve said it loads of times before but – in order to live a real life- you only really need to commit to doing two things:

  1.  Uncovering the truth (cultivating Awareness and Acceptance)
  2. Living the truth (Acting on it).

The only caveat here is that we often think we have the truth but all we really have is an interpretation of it. This is why you need to work on being constantly curious, constantly learning, and shifting yourself into having a growth mindset.

Sometimes, we think we’re doing this but actually we’re just tricking ourselves because of our EGO RESISTANCE and a desire to remain the same because of our unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ like shame, guilt, and/or trauma.

The ultimate barometer is how much FRICTION we feel in our lives – if we’re constantly coming up against obstacles or have problems that we just can’t find solutions to then these obstacles and problems are usually only lingering because we’re trying to hide  the truth from ourselves at some level.

The cure is to look inside yourself and see what you’re not yet willing to accept – only if you uncover that can you find a solid foundation to build on and move forward. Without valuing the TRUTH above all else, though, you’ll never be able to do that work as you’ll always be judging what you find.

5. Remember that your time, energy, and attention are the most important things you have.

You’re going to be dead one day. That’s a real FACT that we can all agree upon.

This being the case, it means that the most precious and valuable things you have are your time, energy, and attention.

A lot of us end up being unreal because we forget this and we give our time, energy, and attention to distractions and BS that don’t deserve it (the short version of what these distractions and BS are is that it’s anything that causes us to deviate from that real vision and growing into who we need to be (with our goals and habits) to make the vision a reality).

To stay real, you need to condition yourself to keep checking in with yourself to make sure that you’re CHOOSING to give your life to the things that are real to you and will allow you to be more real.

All being real means, ultimately, is that you know WHY you’re doing what you do (because you have a real vision), you know HOW you’ll do it, and you choose to do WHAT you need to do to get there (the ‘What’ may sometimes be to do nothing so you don’t burn out).

6. Remember that the world isn’t real, it’s just other people and their ideas.

One of the biggest causes of unreality is that we IDENTIFY with the world and think it’s real – in other words, we allow ourselves to be conditioned from the outside-in thanks to the media, our parents, other people, the system, etc. etc. etc.

Really, the world is not real at all – it’s just a bunch of conceptual ideas and the end-result of our collective thoughts and interpretations about life and reality based on our collective emotional ‘stuff’ and how much light we’ll let it.

As we said above: unreal in, unreal out – if most people in the world are distanced from themselves then the world we build will be an unreal extension of that.

If you’re not aware of this,  then you might try and FORCE yourself to fit into the world, but all you’ll be doing in that case is trying to deny all the real parts of yourself that can make the biggest difference to your life.

Flip the script and start with reality before the world.

7. Don’t be discouraged when things don’t go to plan – that’s just how life goes.

Even with the greatest vision and all of the consistency, discipline, and focus in the universe, you’re still just a human being in an imperfect reality and things can and will go wrong.

Being real just means that you don’t let this turn you off – you know that the map is not the territory and so you will have to adjust and adapt to get where you need to me.

The more unreal you are, the harder this will be because being unreal means that you try to control everything in an attempt to hide from your own unresolved emotional ‘stuff’.

If you find yourself lapsing into control freakery and being emotionally wounded every time you fail or get rejected or whatever then you need to work on accepting yourself and reality so you can see things clearly.

Being real means if you fall down 7 times, then you get back up 8.

8. Learn to listen to yourself and to act accordingly.

Your body and your mind will give you clear signals if you’re being unreal – learn to listen to yourself and to make changes as necessary.

When it comes to your body, it’s kinda obvious: if you feel burned out, depleted, or in pain then you need to rest.

If you feel lethargic, then you may need to exercise more as the more energy you use, the more energy you get (only you will know what you need to do but you need to DO something).

Anxiety and depression are often also signs that you need to listen to yourself:

In the case of anxiety, it often means that you’re living according to a FAKE/unreal version of yourself and so you’re constantly getting feedback from reality in the form of friction. This constant friction would make anybody anxious and will turn to frustration and misery if you don’t listen to yourself and make changes.

In the case of depression, it often means that you’ve developed a passive mindset and have lost touch with your purpose. When this happens you stop moving, have no vision for the future, and become miserable.

In all these cases – and others like them – listening to yourself at a real level and acting on it is the solution.

9. Make sure you’re living your real life and not somebody else’s unreal one.

A lot of the time, you might think your living ‘your’ life but if you feel restless or even miserable then there’s a 99% chance that you’re actually living somebody else’s life in the form of goals that aren’t yours.

Only you will know whose goals they really are? Maybe it’s your parents? Maybe it’s some Hollywood movie? Maybe it’s just ‘society’ as a whole?

If you want to be real, you need to learn to decondition yourself and make sure that what you invest your time, energy, and attention on actually comes from deep within yourself.

10. Embrace your weirdness.

When we’re being real, we might be judged by the world for being unconventional or deviating from standard paths and ways of doing things.

If you resist embracing this weirdness at some level, then it means that you’re still JUDGING yourself. All judgement is unreal because it brings in value judgements of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ (whereas what is real is beyond duality).

If there’s something weird about you and you’re not hurting anybody then don’t hide from it, embrace it.

Your weirdness is one of your greatest gifts to the world as it allows you to express the truth and the truth allows others to learn and embrace themselves too.

Don’t give into the pressure to hide from yourself because of your unreal ideas about the world. Life is for the living and real life is always a bit weird.

 


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Too Much Analysing of the Self Kills Awareness of the Self, The World, and Reality.

Too much of ANYTHING is usually a ‘bad’ idea…This is particularly true when it comes to the approach we can take to figuring our ‘stuff’ out and the lack of balance we can sometimes bring to this process.

Though an important part of the journey of growing real is about asking questions and testing our assumptions about ourselves so that we can push through our limiting beliefs (etc), if we get ADDICTED to the thrill of chasing insight we just end up getting in our own way.

When this happens, we become even more STUCK because we TRICK ourselves into THINKING that we’re doing the work required but actually we’re just being SELF-INDULGENT.

As we’ve said, growing real is about walking a path of three parts:

1. AWARENESS – gaining INSIGHT that will show us the gap between ourselves and reality.

2. ACCEPTANCE – removing our JUDGEMENT about whatever it was that caused us to put a gap between ourselves and reality in the first place.

3. ACTION – doing whatever it takes to close that gap by UNBLOCKING ourselves and taking action.

Sometimes, when people set out on this journey they become so addicted to seeking out ‘awareness’ that they stop moving:

-Every little emotion that pops up is analysed for days and treated as being more significant or interesting than it actually is.

-Every little thought is treated with some kind of gravitas when it’s just a passing thing.

-Every problem from the past that is remembered is mythologised and made to be some seminal moment to fit in with the EGO’s narrative (that it created to avoid growing).

-Every new obstacle that arises is linked in a chain of storytelling to connect it to other obstacles to show how difficult life can be.

-New books and ideas are taken on board to support the analysis and strengthen the case against change.

This kind of ANALYSIS ADDICTION is just a TRAP that we fall into when we filter our whole journey through the EGO.

It’s not about analysing anything REAL but about rearranging the furniture on the TITANIC of the ego as it tries not to sink.

When you fall in this trap you get stuck in ‘Awareness’ but actually you’re not aware of anything REAL – you’re just adding complexity to EGO.

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This is the Sign You’ve Been Waiting For to Walk Away from the BS Thing that Keeps Holding You Back.

Every so often, I like to remind people that a super power we all have is to say “NO”.

When you say “No” to something UNREAL then it frees you up to say “Yes” to the real stuff – your true values, your true intentions, your true purpose, and most importantly your TRUE SELF.

The problem for a lot of us is that we make a lot of the decisions about our lives and what we want to do with them based on an UNREAL IMAGE of ourselves:

-We don’t believe in ourselves so we CHOOSE jobs, relationships, or ‘friendships’ that aren’t healthy or satisfying.

-We don’t believe in the world so we think that we just have to follow our SOCIAL CONDITIONING and do what we’re TOLD.

-We don’t believe in reality so we don’t acknowledge that we can GROW REAL through a lot of our limitations (and when we can’t we can learn to ACCEPT and be more CREATIVE with these limitations).

When you make choices about your life from the UNREAL side of who you are (i.e. the EGO which is designed as a response to the Unholy Trinity of shame, guilt, and/or trauma and serves as a barrier to keep your SHADOW at bay – see Shadow Life: Freedom from Bs in an Unreal World) then what you get from life is equally UNREAL.

It’s pretty simple:

Unreal goes in -> Unreal comes out

Real goes in -> Real comes out

If you’re lucky enough to have something ‘bad’ happen or if you step up and do the WORK then you can start to go through the process of becoming aware of how the world you’ve CHOSEN is UNREAL:

Asleep -> Awareness -> Acceptance -> Action

If you stay ASLEEP you will feel the restless call of the void as your shadow calls to you from beneath the surface.

If you become AWARE you’ll start to feel frustrated at what you’ve CHOSEN for yourself.

If you start to ACCEPT you’ll understand why you made those choices and FORGIVE yourself.

If you accept you can start taking ACTION and the first step is to set the BOUNDARY by saying “NO” to the unreal stuff that doesn’t serve you.

Like anything, it’s a PROCESS – you might not just up and leave but you can CHECKOUT MENTALLY.

When you’ve done that the next step is to work on bringing the REAL STUFF and to keep walking.

No dramas, no stress, no malice.


 

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