reality

13 Universal Laws of Realness:  Real Always Works

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natural laws of reality

The only way you’re gonna get any RESULTS is by working with reality.

The ONLY way that you will ever get what you INTEND to get from life is if you work with reality instead of against it.

It’s a little crazy that something like that has to be stated but because so many of us confuse our interpretations of reality with reality itself, things get messy, people get confused and life gets weird.

If you’ve read my ‘stuff’ before then you’ll have heard me say “REAL ALWAYS WORKS”.

It always works because reality is the only place where things can actually happen.

This means that if you’re not getting the RESULTS that you want from life then you’ve either:

1) Set yourself a goal that is pure EGO (and therefore unreal),

Or:

2) You’re aiming for something real in an unreal way (because you lack AWARENESS about how reality works).

To understand how reality works, you need to understand the PRINCIPLES or LAWS by which it operates.

More importantly, you need to understand that these principles or laws apply to absolutely ALL of us – it doesn’t matter who you are, what time you were born, what you ‘like’ or ‘dislike’, or even what you feel, desire, or think about life: if you’re a human being having a human experience then REALITY is always REAL and you can either accept it or you can be miserable.

This article will help you understand some of the fundamental LAWS about reality that we all need to accept to work with it.

Even though these ‘laws’ are shared in words, they are not ‘interpretations’ or mere ideas about how life works – they are principles that come from an observation of life itself.

In other words, they’re just as ‘real’ as GRAVITY or the SPEED OF LIGHT or some other unalterable facet of reality itself (i.e. they would exist whether we labelled them or not whereas mere interpretations don’t necessarily need a connection to reality to ‘exist’ (in our minds)).

Laws and principles are real because they’re DISCOVERED – interpretations on the other hand are CREATED.  That’s a very subtle distinction but if you grasp it you’ll understand the difference between real and unreal.

Probably, I’ll keep adding to this list over time but this should get you started in terms of increasing your AWARENESS so you can live without friction and get better results from life (if you ACCEPT the laws and take ACTION – Awareness, Acceptance, and Action ‘work’ every time because they’re REAL).

Here we go:

The Universal Laws and Your Mindset

One quick point before we get started with the ‘Laws’:

Reality requires that we are OPEN to life and that we keep growing and moving towards more wholeness (in ourselves, the world, and reality).

When it comes to ACCEPTING the Laws (the second step after AWARENESS), the only thing that can really ‘block’ you from embracing and then working with the laws is having an UNREAL mindset over a real one.

If you want to know more about this (a lot more) then check out the 7-Day Personality Transplant System Shock for Realness and Life Purpose or read Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness but the abridged version is that a REAL mindset will allow you to keep learning and growing through your ‘identity’ and an unreal mindset will keep you attached to it.

This raises a lot of questions about where the ‘current’ version of your identity came from but – if you’re especially rigid and resistant to change – then your identity is most likely an EGO construction that has been designed to hide certain ‘Shadow’ parts of yourself beneath the surface of yourself (in the ‘Shadow Territory’).

When you have a rigid ego/identity of this kind then your MINDSET will be a reflection of this and will be REALITY RESISTANT instead of REALITY EMBRACING.

Exactly how we developed this ‘unreal mindset’ is different for all of us but this ALWAYS has something to do with unresolved shame, guilt, and or trauma.

What this means in practical terms is that you find it hard to ACCEPT and ACT with reality and the principles that it operates by then you are probably resisting some emotional ‘stuff’ within yourself.

If you can figure out what that is and start facing it then the RESULTS you get from life will grow exponentially as you allow yourself to start working WITH reality instead of hiding from it (both consciously or unconsciously).

In short: if you find these Laws difficult to accept then you need to ask yourself if the problem is with REALITY or if it’s with your attachment to your INTEPRETATIONS of reality.

The clearest sign that you need to work on accepting reality more is that you feel ‘bad’ for a prolonged period of time and you constantly don’t get the results you want to be getting (it’s normal  to feel ‘bad’ sometimes and not get every result we aim for).

This is because when you resist reality you do one of two things: 1) you create friction between yourself and life with the false identity/ego you place between yourself and life (which causes anxiety and stops you getting results), 2) you stop MOVING with life (towards wholeness – your natural drive) and you stop getting results (and when we stop moving we get depressed).

The easiest way to change your mindset and make it more real is to start asking yourself questions so you can get new insight. This is opposed to thinking you already know everything you need to know which stops you learning and keeps you the ‘same’ (which just gets the same results you don’t want).

Short version: if you find it hard to accept these Laws then you might be resisting something in YOURSELF.  Figure out what it is and you can expand your awareness, accept reality, and ACT in a way that has better odds of getting the results you intend to get.

Okay, with that being said, onto the Laws themselves:

The Universal Law of Cause and Effect

The Law of Cause and Effect is simple: every EFFECT in life has a CAUSE.  This is just how things work in a deterministic universe (even if you want to believe in ‘acausal’ ideas like manifestation – you still need to act in way that CAUSES the EFFECT of whatever you’re trying to ‘manifest’).

The Law of Cause and Effect means that whatever you have in life right now is an effect of the causes that came before it. That’s difficult to accept sometimes because it means accepting responsibility for the way that we’ve been living and the choices we made that led us here (because everything we did so far in life contributed to the CAUSE of the EFFECT of the makeup of our life right now).

The Law of Cause and Effect is VITAL to accept if we want to get certain results from life.  For example, if you have a vision for yourself to one day write a book, be a business owner, lose/gain weight, learn a new skill, or whatever else, then – due to the Law – certain actions will be the CAUSE of the desired EFFECT (the goal in question).

If you don’t accept this law then you’ll avoid the REALITY that the only way to get what you want from life and to become the person that you want to become is to get involved in the PROCESS of closing the gap between cause and effect.

This is the most basic laws of ALL REALITY – if you’re not getting the results you want then you’re either aiming for an unobtainable EFFECT (because it’s unreal/ego) or you’re not doing the WORK you need to do to close the gap by BEING the CAUSE.

The Universal Law of Effort

The Law of Effort is simple but needs to be remembered. It states that you won’t get any results or close the gap between cause and effect without expending some kind of energy or effort.

If you’re not getting the results you want then you might be neglecting this law and not putting as much effort as the task in hand requires.

A simple example: maybe you’re not gaining the muscle you want at the gym despite going seven days a week. Probably, by putting more effort in and doing MORE reps or MORE weight, you’ll get better results.

This applies in all areas of our life: if there’s no effort then there’s no real reward as you won’t GROW.

The Universal Law of Averages

The Law of Averages means that the more you work to be the CAUSE of the EFFECTS you want from life, the more likely you are to succeed. This is because getting results is ultimately a NUMBERS GAME.

Things don’t always work out in the way that we want them to (due to the Law of Uncertainty – see below) but the Law of Averages states that the more shots we take the more likely we are to score a goal.

Like all of the Laws, this applies to all of us and means that we all have a chance of getting where we want to be if we can embrace reality instead of hiding behind an unreal mindset and trying to act like the odds are always against us or that if we don’t succeed straight away then it’s not worth trying.

The Law of Averages means that you need to work on cultivating an abundance mindset (knowing that there are more opportunities out there and CREATING them), learning to be outcome-independent (not letting your self-worth depend on outcomes), and continuing to learn, tweak, and readjust as you keep working the process of closing the gap between CAUSE and EFFECT.

In practical terms this means things like:

-You might not make every sale in your business but the more sales calls you have the more sales you’ll get.

-You might not win every race but the more races you take part in the more LIKELY you are to get better.

-You might not be able to find a partner right away but the more you go out there and talk to people/look, the better your chances of finding one.

It doesn’t have to be complicated but the LESSON from this law is simple: if you’re NOT getting results then you might need to turn up the volume and do MORE of whatever it is that you’re doing to close the gap between cause and desired effect.

The Universal Law of Perspective

The Law of Perspective means that the point of view you take on situations (a cause) will change the effect of the results that you get.

In general, the Law of Perspective comes down to the idea that there is a natural BALANCE to life and that reality itself is ‘neutral’ in the sense that it stands beyond our human value judgements of ‘good’ and ‘bad’.

The Law of Perspective is important because it allows you to  keep MOVING with reality instead of against it by understanding that when ‘bad’ or ‘good’ things happen it’s only your perspective that shows you the difference between the two.

When ‘bad’ things happen, the Law of Perspective reminds you that there is still a lesson to be learned and an opportunity to be garnered from the ‘bad’ experience. By uncovering these and embracing them, you can get moving again and the ‘bad’ thing is no longer and obstacle (as Marcus Aurelius said: “What stands in the way becomes the way”).

When ‘good’ things happen, the Law of Perspective reminds us that there is always a ‘cost’ and that choosing one thing over another always comes with a reduced set of options. This is neither ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in reality but it means that we need to maintain PERSPECTIVE about the choices we make and where we expect them to take us.

In short, the Law of Perspective means that we are able to STAY REAL and to CHOOSE the perspective that will carry us where we need to be (i.e. to narrow the gap between cause and effect in a real way) and to live the life we want to live instead of an unreal life that’s an effect of distorted perception (i.e. not seeing reality clearly).

You use the Law by asking yourself if you’re seeing what you FEEL you see or what’s actually there. You can also invoke it by seeking lessons and opportunities in ‘bad’ things and finding the cost of the ‘good’ things.

The Universal Law of Action

The Law of Action is a simple law that states you need to take ACTION.  This doesn’t mean that action is the only thing you need – you also need to increase AWARENESS and ACCEPTANCE before acting so that you take action that’s REAL – but without action reality will keep moving around you but it might not take you where you need or INTEND to be.

The Law of Activity works because – in alignment with the Law of Averages and the Law of Effort– ACTION increases your odds of getting a favourable result from reality as you attempt to close the gap between cause and effect.

Action increases your ODDS for two reasons:  1) it increases the SPEED with which you move forward (as opposed to just sitting around thinking about things or planning them which just keeps you in your head), 2) it TEACHES you how to take better actions by giving you feedback from reality itself.

By SPEEDING up your progress and giving you FEEDBACK, action allows you to keep refining your process and course correcting so that you become more efficient at getting the results you want.

Again, this comes back to having a REAL mindset because without being mentally ready to act in the physical world you won’t go out there and learn the lessons that only action can teach you.

In practical terms, the implementation of this LAW is simple: you need to go out there and ACT in the world instead of just observing it from the distance.

No action, no results. Ever.

The Universal Law of Uncertainty

The Law of Uncertainty states that no human being experiencing life on earth or in the world (that we’ve built on earth based on our assumptions about ourselves, the world, and reality) will ever know EVERYTHING.

This law comes down to the naturally LIMITED nature of human beings, both at the level of their PERCEPTIONS of life and their INTERPRETATIONS of life (see the post on this site about the Veiled Veil).

The short version of this is that we don’t know everything there is to know, always LACK information accordingly, will constantly be LEARNING new things as the waves of past, present, and future flow around us and bring new information and situations to be dealt with, and that the ideas we have will always end up being REFINED and RECONFIGURED by reality.

The Law of Uncertainty basically means that NOT KNOWING is more common (and real) than knowing and so is ultimately a reminder that the only way to close the gap between cause and effect is to remain OPEN instead of going about it as though the things we ‘think’ we already know are certain.

In practical terms, this law means that you need to come from a stance of knowing that uncertainty is the default state and something we have to actively work with and ride through to grow more real.

YouTube player
A video I made about the Universal Laws of Realness over on my YouTube Channel.

The Universal Law of Assumption

The Law of Assumption states that if you assume something you increase the odds of it coming true.  This doesn’t mean that it will 100% come true but it means that you will make it more LIKELY to come true by thinking, feeling, and ACTING in alignment with the assumption.

The most simple example of this law in operation is if you ASSUME that you’ll fail you probably will and if you assume that you’ll succeed you probably will.

All that’s happened here is your MINDSET and belief system (which affects your assumptions) has either opened you up or closed you down and ensured that you got the corresponding results.

To complicate things, the Law of Assumption continues to operate whether or not our assumptions are conscious or unconscious.  In other words, even if you aren’t aware of your own assumptions – because they’re hidden behind EGO and buried in the SHADOW – they will still dictate your life and affect the results you get.

This is why it’s so vitally important to do INNNER WORK – so you can uncover the hidden parts of yourself that have been disowned because of your shame, guilt, and trauma, and ensure that you’re not sabotaging yourself without knowing (because of the hidden assumptions).

If you’re not getting REAL results from life then there’s a very HIGH chance that your CORE assumptions about yourself, the world, and reality are screwing your life up.

You can train yourself to ASSUME things that will SERVE you and as long as these assumptions are REAL (e.g. you’re not assuming you can summon a unicorn on command or anything like that) then you’ll get better results by being more aligned with the REALITY of things (just make sure your assumptions work within the context of the LAWS).

The Universal Law of Value

The Law of Value states that in order to get value from the world you need to give value to the world. You do this by becoming more REAL (by taking the actions that will help you grow towards WHOLENESS) and then SHARING things with the world that help others to grow more real too.

To get RESULTS from life in ANY area you need to offer some kind of value to somebody. This is because we are all interdependent and so none of us is an island (as the old saying goes).

Here are some examples:

-If you want a successful RELATIONSHIP, you need to make the other person’s life better (value).

-If you want results in your business, you need to provide a product or service that people value enough to pay you for.

-If you want to produce a piece of art/write a book/create something, then it will only find an audience if it offers some kind of VALUE (helping them understand themselves more, solving a problem, whatever).

The Law of Value means that if you’re not getting results in the way that you want then you probably need to start exploring what ACTIONS you can take to be able to offer MORE value to the world.

That might sound harsh if you’re not currently getting the results that you want from life or business (or wherever) but it means that you need to use the Law of Cause and Effect to start becoming a more ‘valuable’ version of yourself by doing the WORK.

The Universal Law of Flux

The Law of Flux means that everything continues to CHANGE from the perspective of a human being moving through time, space, and causality (cause and effect).

This can be complicated somewhat because reality is WHOLE but our experience is FRAGMENTED (and what is whole doesn’t change because it’s already complete).

The Law of Flux means that we are constantly moving and the world is constantly changing around us but only at the level of fragmentation (let’s say perception and interpretation for the sake of simplicity).

If we can move with it then we can let go of some of the fragmentation that isn’t serving us (and none of it does, really) and move more closely to the truth about things (i.e. reality/wholeness).

From a practical point of view, the Law of Flux is simple: expect change instead of trying to cling to things (including our ideas about ourselves).

Any time we cling or resist change then we simply create unnecessary friction between ourselves and reality and it complicates our journey of closing the gap between cause and effect.

The main ‘thing’ that people cling to in order to attempt to resist the Law of Flux is their identity or self-image (ego). Though our experience of ourselves is STABLE – if we’re real – the details and concepts that make up the story we tell ourselves about ourselves can hold us back from ourselves and life (especially if it’s been designed to hide the SHADOW ‘stuff’).

Expect change and work with it and you will be more likely to apply the Law of Cause and Effect by taking action successfully and get where you need to be: reality.

The Universal Law of Relationships

The Law of Relationships states that you are not alone.  Forgetting this law and tricking yourself into thinking that you’re alone in the universe just causes you to believe (and act) like you’re INDEPENDENT instead of INTERDEPENDENT and connected to everybody and everything else.

You’re not alone because you’re connected to life itself at all times (if you’re alive) but also because you share the world with everybody else. You also have a relationship with REALITY itself which increases in depth the more you grow into yourself towards WHOLENESS.

If you forget the Law of Relationships, you will cause yourself to live in unnecessary SEPARATION and with a false sense of INDEPENDENCE that will hold you back. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t act in an AUTONOMOUS way (i.e. OWN yourself) but it does mean that you share life with other people.

On a practical level, this law means that:

-If you want to do something great you will need to work with other people.

-That to get the most out of life you will need to keep building a REAL network of relationships.

-That you need to be able to get out of your head and to have real relationships with people in the first place (and the more real your RELATIONSHIP with yourself, the more real your relationships with others will be).

-That the Law of Value ultimately comes down to how you go about your relationships.

-Etc.

In short, your life is yours but you share it with others and to make the most of this you need to embrace the law and work on anything INSIDE YOU that decreases the QUALITY and QUANTITY of the real relationships in your life.

The Universal Law of Priority/FOCUS

The Law of Priority means that what you CHOOSE to prioritise in life will become the FOCUS of your life. Ultimately, this comes down to the FACT that you’re going to be DEAD one day and so your time, energy, and attention are the most important things you have.

Quite simply: the Law of Priority means that if you CHOOSE to give your time, energy, and attention to UNREAL things – like distractions, general BS, drama, things that aren’t aligned with your true values and intentions, etc. – the you will just get more UNREAL things in return.

If you focus on the REAL stuff – like your true values and intentions and the relationships that matter to you – then you will get more REAL things in return.

This – like all the laws – feeds into the Law of Cause and Effect but it, ultimately, means that you need to check in with yourself and make sure you’re prioritising the things that actually matter to you (as opposed to what conditioning or social program has told you should matter to you).

Using the Law of Priority in a practical way is simply about making REAL CHOICES on a daily basis: are you prioritising the REAL or the UNREAL? Your answer and actions affect what will show up in your life next (i.e. whether the EFFECT/Result will be real or unreal).

The Universal Law of Wholeness

The Law of Wholeness states that EVERYTHING is moving towards wholeness.

This happens with or without our intervention and so we either work with it and flow towards wholeness in ourselves or we resist and become more confused and fragmented.

As a human being, you have a natural DRIVE towards wholeness in yourself, the world, and reality – ultimately, this just means that your drive is to be more CONNECTED at each of these levels.

At the level of yourself, this connection comes from being more integrated between the SHADOW and the EGO and facing your hidden emotional ‘stuff’ (shame,  guilt, and or trauma) so you can dissolve it, remove the fragmentation that arises in your life because of it, and start to move into a deeper relationship with reality.

The CREATIVE PROCESS is actually the process of becoming more whole in yourself and allowing the unconscious to become conscious. This is the ONLY way you can become unblocked and remove your illusions about yourself (because all illusion stems from an unreal emotional relationship with ourselves and life that brings SHAME).

The Law of Wholeness is essential for allowing us to TRUST and BELIEVE in ourselves and life. Without accepting this law, it’s incredibly difficult to move forward, take risks, and ride through uncertainty as we embrace life and grow real.

In practical terms, you can cause less obstacles and trouble in your life as you close the gap between cause and effect by actively working to become more whole. This means looking at your own ‘stuff’, working through it, and ensuring that as you move forward and grow you grow into your real values and intentions.

The Universal Law of Acceptance

The Law of Acceptance states that the only thing you can do with reality is ACCEPT it (and then act from this place of acceptance). This is because reality is always real regardless of whether we accept it or not – it just is what it is.

In other words, our likes and dislikes, our judgements, our feelings, our expectations, our desires, etc. have absolutely no effect on reality or the PRINCIPLES and LAWS by which it operates.

In practical terms, this means that you need to ACCEPT the laws and work to embrace them. Any resistance is just a denial of yourself (because you’re real away from false beliefs and so denying reality is denying yourself).

Failing to ACCEPT the laws is also a waste of your time (going against the Law of Priority) because it will not change anything and will simply waste the opportunity you have to be REAL.

In practical terms, the Law of Acceptance means that you need to check in with yourself and explore the TENSION in your life. If you feel out of balance and you’re not getting the results you want then you need to work on EMBRACING the laws and living them through ACCEPTANCE.

Conclusion:  You need to accept these universal laws and work with them in order to increase your odds of getting the RESULTS you want (because results can only happen in reality).

The short version: REAL ALWAYS WORKS so if it’s not working for you it’s not a problem with reality but a problem with the way you see things and act because of that perspective.  Embrace the natural laws of reality and start levelling up faster.

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

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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About The Truth but Were Afraid to Ask

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The Biggest Problem Most People Have is that People Believe What They Want to Believe

One of the biggest problems in the world is the pervasive myth that we can believe whatever we want to believe because there are multiple ‘realities’.

According to this myth, reality is – ultimately – whatever the hell you want it to be and so everybody can live in their own ‘reality’, defined only by the limits of their own imaginations and beliefs.

By this definition all beliefs are equally valid, my ‘reality’ and your ‘reality’ are worthy of equal respect and are equally true – even if I decide to believe that I’m a unicorn and you should give me all your attention and energy – and we all need to tolerate each other’s beliefs without question because questioning such personal things as ‘reality’ is offensive and can upset people’s feelings.

This article concerns itself why this myth isn’t just BULLSHIT but also why it’s causing all kinds of unnecessary confusion and conflict in the world.

We will also explore exactly what it is to cause people to want to ‘believe’ in their ‘own reality’ in the first place and how you can IMPROVE YOUR LIFE by learning to step back from this instinctual, ego-driven tendency to run away from your own emotions – especially shame – instead of running towards reality in truth.

In short, we’re going to open up a can of worms that will help you to separate belief from actual TRUTH (or, more accurately, a truthful way of living) so you can stop holding yourself and others back with attachments to mental constructs, belief systems, and points of view that may help you in the short-term but which can only ever hinder you in the long-run.

If you feel like the world is going ‘mad’ or that people are putting more and more clown makeup on each day as the world becomes more absurd then there’s a good chance what you’re about to read will help you make ‘sense’ of things.

Here we go:

The Thing that People Usually Call ‘Reality’ or ‘Truth’ is Actually Just ‘Interpretation’.

When people say that this is “My truth” or this is “My reality” what they actually mean is that this “My interpretation”.

Actually, even in most cases of people simply talking about reality or truth, they’re also talking about the same thing: their interpretations of these things.

This is a subtle distinction but it’s important because truth and reality are actually OBJECTIVE (factual, basically) and interpretations are SUBJECTIVE (clouded by a person’s own experience and sense of themselves).

A story that I always use to demonstrate this when I’m coaching people or whatever is the story of ‘The Blind Men and the Elephant’ which is from the Upanishads or somewhere (which goes to show just how long the distinction between reality and interpretations has been causing problems in the human experience).

The story itself is pretty simple:

As the name suggests, it involves a bunch of blind men and an elephant.

Because they can’t see what they’re looking at – a metaphor for how we all naturally perceive and interpret reality incorrectly because of our limited human capacities – they all start to argue about their INTERPRETATIONS of the reality of what stands before them (the elephant).

For example, the guy who is standing near the trunk and gets hold of it, starts to argue that what they’re dealing with is a snake; the guy that’s holding one of the elephants legs starts to argue that they’re dealing with a tree trunk; the guy who has hold of the tusks begins to argue that they’re dealing with some kind of strange weapon (or whatever).

The point of the story is that all of them are dealing with the same underlying REALITY but because of their own individual vantage points – like our own life experience etc. and literal positions in time and space – they all come up with different INTERPRETATIONS about the same fundamental thing.

These interpretations have NO EFFECT whatsoever on the FACT that there is only ONE REALITY (the Elephant) but because they all come up with their own interpretations by focusing on the fragments instead of the whole they end up causing CONFLICT.

An interesting thing here is that it’s not the reality itself that caused this conflict and confusion – it’s the attachment that the blind men have to their INTERPRETATIONS and their conviction that these interpretations are the ONLY CORRECT interpretations.

This is interesting because it helps us to understand that the truth itself is beyond conflict because IT JUST IS WHAT IT IS.

The only thing that causes problems in our lives is our INABILITY or UNWILLINGNESS to accept this truth by stepping away from our own beliefs and interpretations.

In life itself, things work in the same way:

There is only the TRUTH (or reality in my view) as a WHOLE and it’s the same truth for all of us.

The thing that causes problems in our lives is that we all see this truth to differing degrees based on how willing we are to face it (which may be difficult sometimes as the truth is the truth regardless of what we ‘like or ‘dislike’ about it).

The question now becomes if the truth is the truth then why do we WANT to BELIEVE in something else?

Understanding this can help you to GROW REAL and live a life that’s aligned with who you really are and truly want to be.

To understand it you need to understand a common law of the human experience:

People Believe What They Want To Believe

There is an important difference – as we’ve hopefully just seen – between our interpretations of the TRUTH and the actual truth.

Our interpretations aren’t the ‘thing-in-itself’ (i.e. the TRUTH) – they’re just the CONCLUSIONS we come up with after perceiving whatever’s out there in reality and then interpreting these perceptions in the light of whatever STORIES and NARRATIVES we want to believe about life.

I often call  this set of fragments and confusions between ourselves and the truth ‘The Veiled Veil’ – that sounds fancy but all it means is that there is a twofold veil between us and the truth because of the way human beings ‘work’:

First, there is the veil of perception – i.e. what we literally perceive because of our bodies and the way they let information in (which is always limited because our bodies are fragmented and reality/truth is WHOLE).

Second, there is the veil of CONCEPTUAL interpretation – where we try to make ‘sense’ of the things we perceived in relation to the beliefs we already have and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, the world, and reality (which are conclusions that have already been fed through the VEILED VEIL).

Anyway, maybe that seems a little complicated but all it means is that the interpretations we have are made up of BELIEFS that are almost always informed by UNREAL information: unreal perceptions (i.e. not aligned with the actual TRUTH) and unreal interpretations (that we CREATE because of whatever we have going on inside ourselves and the stories we tell ourselves and want to believe in).

The long and short of all this is that there is an important distinction between our BELIEFS and the TRUTH.

Some beliefs might be more ‘real’ than others – in the sense that they may ‘point’ more closely to the truth than others – but in general NO belief is completely true because they are just FRAGMENTS of the truth as a WHOLE.

Now, there’s nothing ‘wrong’ with this – it’s just how things work: We need beliefs to make sense of the world and to interact with others (and ourselves to some extent).

The problems start to arise when we treat our beliefs as being the TRUTH and act like we’ve got everything figured out. When we do that we just end up causing unnecessary friction for ourselves and remove ourselves from the flow of life that is necessary for us to keep growing real and moving into life more deeply.

The other problem is that by acting like our beliefs are the actual truth we also invite unnecessary CONFLICT with others into our lives… For example, in cases when our interpretations of the elephant are different to somebody else’s but we both need to be ‘right’.

If beliefs cause all these problems – when treated as the truth – then why do we become so attached to them?

That brings us on to the fundamental law of human nature that we talked about: PEOPLE BELIEVE WHAT THEY WANT TO BELIEVE.

If beliefs are not reality or truth – which can’t be chosen because they just ‘are’  – then they are something that we have CHOSEN.

We didn’t just wake up one day and find these beliefs magically embedded in our heads – they’re something that we have decided to CHOOSE as a response to whatever it is that we’ve been through in life and what we want from life further down the line.

When you understand this you can ask yourself why ‘You’ or the people in your life believe the things that they do – if they’re just running on ‘autopilot’ you can bet your bottom dollar that they’re CHOOSING the beliefs that they have for one of two main reasons:

1:- To avoid some emotional ‘stuff’ within themselves (shame, guilt, and/or trauma).

2:- TO try and run towards some illusion they need to be true about life so they can keep telling themselves some STORY they want to believe about themselves, the world, and reality as a whole.

In many ways these  two motivating factors are interrelated (and go back to the unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ like shame) but the bottom line is that PEOPLE BELIEVE WHAT THEY WANT TO BELIEVE to avoid the truth about life (because when you’ve been ‘away’ from the truth for a while – not that it ever goes anywhere – then the truth will set you free but first it will piss you off and make you miserable).

Let’s explore these two aspects of ‘People believe what they want to believe’ in a little more detail:

We Choose Our Beliefs Because of Our Emotional Relationship With Ourselves

The best thing we can do for our long-term self-interest is to accept the TRUTH and to work with it. If we can do that then we have a better awareness of ourselves, the world, and reality and will be able to act on this awareness to get better RESULTS.

Those ‘results’ will be different in the context of everybody’s life, depending on what it is they’re trying to achieve with their lives.

No matter what, though – no matter who you are or what you’re trying to do – the one thing that we all have in common is that the only place where we can get results in the first place is the same for all of us: REALITY.

Or as I say all the time, “REAL ALWAYS WORKS”.

That being said, it makes RATIONAL sense to try and ensure that our beliefs are as closely aligned with reality in truth as possible.

The problem is that – for a lot of us – this may involve going through the short-term pain of giving up some of our illusions and aligning ourselves with the truth again.

Because most of us don’t want to feel ANY pain and would rather stay in our comfort zones this means that we defend the familiar beliefs and patterns we’re used to against the truth(even in cases where they’re making us miserable because we don’t get any results).

This is where the emotional ‘stuff’ comes in:

The MAIN reason that people choose to keep believing things that go against the truth is because choosing to believe the truth instead will cause them SHORT-TERM emotional pain.

Actually, it’s not ‘the truth’ that causes this problem for them – because being aligned with truth feels ‘good’ (as you’re flowing with life and living in a creative and authentic way).

No, the thing that causes this pain is the LOSS of illusions that have been ‘protecting’ us from our unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ like shame, guilt, and trauma.

It goes like this:

-We have difficult emotions that we don’t want to face so we create a version of ourselves and a BELIEF SYSTEM to go with this version that explains these feelings away.

-Because this belief system is designed to explain away something that actually exists (the feelings) it is UNREAL from the outset.

-When the truth comes along (however that might be) it threatens the foundation of the unreal belief system by letting reality back in.

-Once reality is back in the picture, we can either FIGHT against it (a battle we can never win) – which will just cause anxiety and unnecessary tension – or we can start to face it.

-If we ‘face’ the reality/truth then we end up removing the unreal belief system and the EMOTIONS we were trying to hide resurface.

It’s not ‘The Truth’ that caused the emotional turmoil – it’s the shattering of the beliefs that were trying to hide unresolved ‘turmoil’ that was already there (and probably got worse by being avoided for a period of time).

As a general rule – general because we can become REAL and wake ourselves up from sleepwalking through life – most of the beliefs that people have are a product of their emotional relationship with themselves.

If they feel ‘bad’ about themselves – consciously or unconsciously – they will become more RIGID with their beliefs because they need to believe that certain things are true so they can keep avoiding their emotional ‘stuff’ (which will be DISSOLVED if shared with others or simply embraced anyway).

People who are RIGID like this are not open to any disagreement because they’re not willing to learn (because that threatens the belief system they created).

If you look at the world around you – especially online – you’ll see that there are all kinds of people rigidly attached to certain belief systems and defending them like their lives depend on it.

Like we already said, the TRUTH is beyond any conflict – it’s only the interpretations that cause problems. These people arguing rigidly online aren’t defending the truth but their interpretations… Hopefully, you now understand why – because they need it to be true so they can keep avoiding their feelings about themselves (as shame-driven people).

If people have a HEALTHY relationship with themselves and their emotional ‘stuff’ then they aren’t DRIVEN by shame (etc.) but instead live in a way that lets them keep going more deeply into the TRUTH about themselves, the world, and reality and DISSOLVING their shame.

These people are easy to spot because they are not RIGID about their belief systems and are ready to grow and keep evolving (though they may still have CONVICTION about their values, intentions, and principles).

Ultimately, this is the difference between being OPEN or being CLOSED – if you’re open, then you’re willing to let the truth in and change your opinions so you can grow and evolve; if you’re closed, then you’re unwilling to let the truth in and simply want to stay the ‘same’ (for the reasons we talked about).

People Need Stories to Give Themselves Hope.

When it comes to certain situations or expectations about the future, people – especially shame-driven ones – will believe what they want to see, not the actual truth about life.

Again, this comes back to their relationship with themselves because their underlying ‘stuff’ affects the things that they think they want or need from life.

If somebody feels ‘bad’ about themselves, for example, they might think that what they need is a relationship with somebody (just an example). This will affect both their PERCEPTIONS and INTERPRTATIONS of what’s in front of them.

A simple example of this is unrequited or one-sided ‘love’:

Sometimes, if somebody is particularly lonely, desperate, or feels that they can’t love themselves they will perceive themselves as being ‘in love’ with somebody and also perceive that somebody else as being in love with them too (even when they’re not).

A similar example is when somebody is horny and they have a crush on somebody (who in this example isn’t interested in them in return) and so they start to look for ‘signs’ that the other person is interested too.

In both of these cases, the person in question has a NEED that’s driven by their emotional or physical relationship with themselves and they WANT the truth to be a certain way.

When they fall into this cycle they start telling themselves a story about how the other person (in this hypothetical example) feels the exact same way… It’s not because the other person actually does feel the same way but because the person telling themselves the story wants reality to be that way.

Other examples of people WANTING to believe bullshit stories like this often revolve around avoiding reality in the form of HARD WORK:

The short version of this is that when people set themselves ‘difficult’ goals they often start to become disillusioned by all of the hard work involved and so they start to believe in ‘MAGIC BULLETS’ that can take them out of the law of cause and effect and get them IMMEDIATE RESULTS (i.e. results that don’t involve work).

If you look around you’ll see this stuff everywhere:

-Business gurus online selling people a SHORTCUT to getting million dollar clients overnight.

-Weight loss products that will help you lose weight FAST with minimum EFFORT.

-Astrology reports (or whatever) that will give you all the answers you need RIGHT NOW.

There are a million different variations of these kinds of thing but the reason there’s so many isn’t because they actually get results or have anything to do with the TRUTH but because people WANT TO BELIEVE in these products to tell themselves the story that they don’t have to do the work required to get actual results (and so they buy these products and send themselves on a wild goose chase that just makes things worse in the long-run).

Finally, another example of where this ‘story’ thing shows up is when people are giving you advice:

Almost always – especially with unwarranted advice, at least – they aren’t telling you anything about the actual TRUTH but they’re telling you how they want to see the world.

If you’re trying to do something ambitious, for example, and somebody gives you the ‘advice’ that it can’t be done they’re not advising you but telling you how they WANT it to be. Probably if you dig into their past it’ll be because they already gave up on their ambitions and have some shame around it.

I could write about this all day but what I want you to get from this is that most of the stated beliefs out in the world aren’t the truth but a RESPONSE to it. That response is always motivated by some emotional ‘stuff’ and if you want to stay TRUE TO YOURSELF you need to know this so you can check yourself and others.

What To Do: Stay TRUE.

The only way not to fall into the BELIEF TRAP is to remember that beliefs are just beliefs but the truth is the truth.

There’s a quote by the physicist David Bohm that I’ve been throwing around for years:

“Your opinions are something that you have, not something that you are.”

We need to become familiar with this idea if we want to keep growing and evolving beyond  the limitations of our identities and the belief systems that we have CHOSEN because of them.

This starts by learning to understand how beliefs are formed in the first place, how they’re distinct from THE TRUTH, and how we identify with things because of our own emotional ‘stuff’ in order to keep telling ourselves certain stories.

If you want to move forward with some of this stuff then keep TESTING your beliefs.

Ask yourself questions; make sure you know how you reached certain conclusions. More importantly, be open to CHANGING YOUR BELIEFS because if you’re so convinced that they don’t need to change then you’re just keeping yourself from the thing that you actually want: THE TRUTH.

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:

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Why I Haven’t Killed Myself Yet (and You Probably Shouldn’t Kill Yourself Either)

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The Existential Question of Suicide

There’s a famous quote by Albert Camus where he says something like “If you haven’t killed yourself yet then you’re an existentialist”.

I think about that quote a lot.

Camus is also the guy who summed up the modern existential state by asking, “Should I have another cup of coffee or should I kill myself?”

It really helps put things in perspective: ultimately, if you’re here and you’re reading this right now then things have never got so bad that you’ve made the CHOICE to end it all.

That’s good news. Probably somebody out there likes having you around (and even if it feels like they don’t you’re probably just not looking hard enough or need to buy a dog or something).

Being a human being is kinda weird: Every morning we wake up and we keep making the choices to just keep going through the motions and ploughing on with our lives – even though we know they’re going to end anyway one day and that there’s nothing we can do about it (and maybe you could make an argument that a lot of what goes on in the world is a distraction from that inescapable reality).

This ceaseless, inexorable ‘ploughing on’ happens despite us constantly having to deal with problems and obstacles, having to deal with the dramas and derangements of other people, and having things creep up on us out of the blue every so often and knock us sideways or derail the train of our lives and whatever plans we might have had (“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face”, as Mike Tyson said).

There’s a deeper sense of despair in the world than any time since I remember in my long ass lifetime (40 years young now, wtf) but despite all the absurdity and clownish chaos of the extremities of political ideologies and all of the weirdness, drama, and bullshit that permeates the world (and the subtle and not-so-subtle threats to OBVLIVION), most of us just keep ploughing and plodding along, doing the same old things we’ve always done.

I think we’ve all had that thought pop into our heads at least once or twice in our lives – even if it hasn’t really been ‘serious’:

“Why don’t I kill myself?”

Sometimes it just creeps in there when you’re washing the dishes, driving down the Bingley bypass, or making love.

Life is fragile, after all – it would be so easy to do any of the romanticised suicide rituals that we’ve all heard about and to end it all with relative ‘ease’:

-Go to Paris and jump off the Eifel Tower.

-Overdose on some drug of choice.

-Take a toaster in the bath (and plug it in, of course).

-Get a razorblade and slit one’s wrists (everybody knows that you need to go ‘down’ and not ‘across’ for whatever reason).

-Steal a car or commit some other crime and get the police to chase and shoot you (depending on your country or the severity of your crime, of course).

The options for leaving this hellhole are only limited by your creativity (which is ironic in a way seeing as the world you might be trying to escape is trying to quash your creativity anyway).

So why do we stick around? Maybe there’s some ‘stuff’ to be learned here?

I can’t really speak for others but here’s why I haven’t killed myself yet:

I’m going to die anyway.

Maybe it’s laziness but I really don’t see the point in killing myself when I’m going to die one day anyway.

Maybe it’s because I’m an optimist but I know that anything could happen between now and whenever that happens to be (within the realm of possibility, of course).

That could include things that are ‘bad’ and so maybe things will get worse than they’ve ever been but ‘possiblity’ also means that things could get ‘good’ or even better as well so I might as well stick around and find out.

I suppose knowing that death is inevitably coming anyway gives me a kind of peace because it makes me more present (when I’m reflecting on it) but it also serves to remind me that THIS IS IT – as far as I know, this is the only life I’m ever going to live and so I might as well squeeze every drop of life I can get out of it.

I know that things won’t always be perfect but nor do I want – or even need – them to be.  Being ‘me’ is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and so I might as well accept it as it ‘is’ (whilst still trying to change what I can change and move towards my vision) and ‘enjoy’ the full spectrum of human emotions and experiences – misery, confusion, conflict; joy, exultation, love – all of these things are just part of the overall cocktail of life and make it what it is: a rich tapestry of colours and sensations that all come together in one hideously beautiful abstract painting that kinda makes sense if you look at it in the right way.

There’s loads more to do.

The thing about life is that there’s always more to ‘do’.  Some might say that this is actually one of the ‘bad’ things about life – the fact that we constantly have to be bumbling around like blue-arsed flies ‘doing’ things instead of ‘being’ them.

It’s like the Myth of Sisyphus (popularised and given context by Albert Camus again) – pushing the rock up the mountain only for it to roll back down again and for him to have to repeat the process and struggle up-and-down for eternity.

I was speaking to somebody recently who was struggling with the endless ‘doing’ and struggle of the human condition:

They were saying that every time you think you’ve got to the top of the mountain you end up realising that it’s not the actual peak – it’s just a ridge.

And when you get to the top of the next ridge you realise you’re still not at the top (and on and on it goes).

I don’t mind ‘doing’ things as long as my  ‘being’ is injected into that ‘doing’ – for example, by aligning it with my REAL VALUES (not the values that the world has tried to ingrain or condition me with).

In my own life, I’ve really found that by getting to the top of one ‘ridge’ I might not have made it all the way to the ‘top’ – to some perfect state of absolute completion and power – but I’ve still grown a lot more real (i.e. whole and integrated in myself, the world, and reality) and have got a better VIEW of life and what it all means along the way.

I think all this ‘doing’ is only really a problem if you either don’t KNOW what you’re doing (because you’ve been told by others) or because you’re FORCING yourself to do things that are taking you away from yourself rather than doing anything actually real or true to you (and that’s when you’re most likely to end up being like Sisyphus and doing something ABSURD).

I dunno, I think it comes down to our expectations. If we expect life to be life then it’s a lot ‘easier’ – or at least more SIMPLE – and so we’re less likely to kill ourselves. I think if my expectations were different maybe I would’ve been disappointed by now and jumped off the Eifel Tower or taken my plugged-in toaster in the bath.

Personally, I like the journey but I’ve learned to trust the process and it’s taken me out of my head and into life a little more… I think if we resist life then we resist life (if you know what I mean). I’m trying to be open.

The other thing about all these things to ‘do’ that’s stopped me from killing myself is that doing brings a lot of amazing MOMENTS and EXPERIENCES that allow me to dangle a future over my head like a golden suicide-prevention carrot that keeps me plodding along.

Like we said, despite all this empty ‘doing’ in the world (going to work in the wage cage, filling in spread sheets, queuing in the supermarket whilst the self-checkouts blurt out error messages), there’s a lot of BEING that creeps into our lives that makes it worth living.

This ‘being’ doesn’t necessarily have to come from anything grandiose or extravagant – it can just be small things that turn all your senses on and remind you exactly who the fuck you are:

-Sitting in a garden with your eyes closed and the sun on your face.

-Kicking those autumn leaves or watching your breath condensate as you go for a walk.

-Seeing a full moon from on top of a hill.

-Listening to the waves wash up against the shore or the ripples and whirls forming and fading away in a river.

Maybe these are clichés but those moments are FREE and – more importantly – they’re REAL.

I haven’t killed myself yet because of all the moments like that I’ve had previously – or that I’m having now as I write this and look outside every so often at a tree blowing in the wind – but also because of all the moments that I know will come.

I know that they will come because life is nothing but a series of moments that we try and thread together with the narratives and stories that we tell ourselves… None of those stories will last, though, but if the moments are real they’ll last forever (because those moments are about being connected to the whole and so they’re real and what’s real is always real).

That doesn’t mean that I’m going to be ‘passive’ about it and just let these moments happen to me (that’s ego) – I’ve learned now that the way to SPEED UP and experience life more fully is to create a vision for life and to go out there and LIVE THE VISION.

Obviously, there are no guarantees in life and I could get run over by a bus tomorrow and taste oblivion but if I don’t then there are things I’m pretty much certain I’ll do one day (unless something goes seriously wrong and then I can either learn to accept it or then kill myself lol).

I think without the vision it’s much harder to find reasons to keep living – the vision doesn’t need to be big but it needs to be something and it needs to be real:

I haven’t killed myself because I want to grow my business and help more people not kill themselves too.

I haven’t killed myself because I want to go to Norway and climb some mountains.

I haven’t killed myself because I want to go to Italy again.

I haven’t killed myself because I want to hold ‘The One’ in my  arms and know that life is for the living (yeah, I know that it’s never the ‘One’ and just one of the ones but it’s still an amazing part of the human experience – just like with all the ones that were already the one).

You get the picture.

I suppose it doesn’t even really matter that much if the vision even materialises in reality or not (though if you ACT on it there’s no reason why it won’t –  though maybe not exactly as you envisioned given the way the reality waves work and the inevitable gap between expectation and result).

No, what matters is HAVING the vision.  I think as long as there’s some kind of picture in your heart then you’ll probably be okay. If you don’t have one just CHOOSE one – it’s not that complicated (though we like complications, especially when we’re already feeling down or depressed because they give us reasons not to move and grow through the FEELINGS that are holding us back and the IDEAS we created and attached to as a response to them).

Maybe that oversimplifies things or sounds delusional – I think that’s only  the case if you choose something and then you don’t ACT on it.  Without the action you’re deluding yourself; if you choose and then act then you’re really living (so why would you kill yourself?).

There’s loads more real human beings to meet.

Other people can be annoying (an understatement) and it can be easy to become disheartened by some of the time-wasting and drama that they can suck us into if we’re not careful.

Even worse than that, you see the news and it’s easy to lose faith in ‘people’ as a whole: they’re starting wars, stabbing each other, chopping each other’s genitalia off, arguing about politics, and generally causing all kinds of unwholesome havoc wherever they go.

Despite this being the case, this is just ‘people’ in general – it’s not humanity (which involves a little wholeness or soul).

People are just ‘ideas’.

People are just acting out their self-images and the points of view of their ego and causing all kinds of bother because of it.

One reason I haven’t killed myself yet is that, despite all this HORROR, there are still REAL HUMAN BEINGS out there that you can create memories and moments with and more importantly LAUGH YOUR ASS OFF with.

Even in the worst-case scenario – those periods in life when you feel totally disconnected or isolated from ‘The World’ at large – it doesn’t change the fact that there are nearly 8billion (or whatever it is today) people on the planet and that some of them out there are gonna be on your wavelength.

Just because you feel alone doesn’t mean that you are alone – even if you do have to do a little work of not being PASSIVE and actually reaching out or reconnecting to people.

I have family and friends that I think would miss me if I killed myself – actually, I’m pretty sure that some of them definitely would (even some of the ones I might not have spoken to in a while).

It sounds kinda funny when I put it like this but one reason I haven’t killed myself is because I don’t wanna DEPRIVE people of my presence. I’m saying that slightly tongue-in-cheek but it’s true: I’m funny and I have good things to say and I can cheer people up in general or make their lives better with the ‘value’ (overused word) I bring to the relationship.

Why deprive people of that? With great power comes great responsibility and – in some relationships, not necessarily always – I’m awesome.

Of course, on some levels, it’s not just about ‘being awesome’ – some people love you regardless of how awesome you are. In my case I think my Mum and my Gran actually love me unconditionally – despite whatever flaws I have or the stupid things I’ve done and been through that have made them worry in life.

I think if I killed myself now it would just cause them too much pain and even though I wouldn’t be around to feel guilty about it I don’t want to be responsible for that.  I suppose this is why a lot of people don’t kill themselves – because they don’t wanna hurt the people they love and that love them. Life is life but we’re all in it together – there’s some comfort in that whether you want it or not.

The way I look at people these days is that every single one of them is an EXPERIENCE (or at least a couple of moments here and there).

Some of them are REAL experiences and some of them are UNREAL experiences – if you’ve read my ‘stuff’ before then you’ll be able to figure out the distinction between the two but the short version is that the real ones bring a spiral of energy as they take you deeper into wholeness and the unreal ones just block things with their own bullshit and there’s no real connection.

One reason I haven’t killed myself yet is because there’s already some real ones in my life that bring the ENERGY – I suppose you could say that energy is life-enhancing and so as long as it’s there and it’s taking me where I need to go then I suppose there’s something to live for.

Yeah, there’s the unreal ‘stuff’ and relationships too but that’s all part of the human experience like we said earlier – you can’t have the sweet without the sour. All of these things just make being ‘human’ human and as long as we have that basic panoply of experiences and the real stuff keeps coming or is around the corner then you might as well keep going.

Human beings are ‘tribal’ creatures (at least that’s what they tell us) and so people (or humans) need people (or humans).

Yeah, you can do it on your own if you really want – it’s not impossible.  Overall, though, we need each other to be mirrors of each other and it’s just a lot more ‘fun’ to go out there and share the path with people and share battle stories and get scars together.

There have been times in my life when I’ve been alienated – even from the real ones – because of how things have just worked out or because I’ve had a period of downtime because of illness or whatever else. The real ones are always real, though – you can reach out or they will and then you’ll pick up where you left off like time, space, and causality aren’t even things we have to deal with. Real life is amazing like that.

I guess what I’m saying is that I haven’t killed myself yet because it’s always there – even if sometimes you have to reach out for it. I suppose when I was younger I might’ve fallen into the unhealthy pattern that if it’s real then you don’t need to reach out (and, tbh, in many cases you don’t) – people just get caught up their own lives, though, and sometimes reaching out is just a reminder of what’s real, not a reflection on who you are (that’s ego).

What about those cases where there is nobody to reach out to? What happens when I’m old, for example, and all my friends have dropped dead? Or what if I’m simply a different person now – because I was once unreal and now I’m not – and so I’ve distanced myself from the people and things that once seemed real in order to be true to myself?

Maybe that’s a tad dramatic but you know what I mean – not everybody is connected to people even though everything is connected.

In cases like that I always think that “It’s better alone than in bad company” (or unreal company – even worse).

If I ended up like that then I still wouldn’t kill myself – because there’s always the chance that there’s another real one out there somewhere or – if not – then there’s still gonna be those moments that we talked about up above.

There’s always something or the promise of something REAL and I suppose – at the end of the end of the day – that’s all it really takes to make a life: a taste here and there, the lingering sensations, and then the promise of something more.

You never know what’s around the corner but if you reach around you’ll probably find something and if you don’t you can still be real. Something like that, anyway.

It’s why I’m still here.

 

 

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:

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Goal Setting for Creative People

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How To Get Results and Stay Creative

This is a relatively short but post but it will make a BIG difference to your life if you act on it.

It’s going to walk you through a simple but effective process of goal setting that will help you to get a big picture overview of your life or creative project, start to refine a VISION that keeps your passion ignited, and to make sure that the things you’re doing are actually REAL to you.

A lot of creative people hate setting goals because it makes them feel like they’re restricted in some way.  That can be true if we CHOOSE goals that are unreal to us or that we have to force ourselves to do but the bottom line is that – if you want to get RESULTS – then you need to find a way to FOCUS on the things that will take you where you need to be whilst also supporting and nurturing your creativity with DISCIPLINE and CONSISTENCY.

At the end of the day, the only thing standing between you and the life that you want to be living is the CHOICES that you make about how you spend your time right now in the present.  These choices will affect the ACTIONS that you take and the actions that you take (or don’t take) will close the gap between where you are now and where you want to be in the future.

Here’s a process for setting goals without feeling like you’re killing your creativity – you’ll start to see almost immediate results if you start making changes to your life based on what you learn here about the actions you need to take.

You’ll probably benefit from grabbing a piece of paper and a pen to help you make the most of this.

Here we go:

Stage 1: Open Up the Vision

The first step in this process is getting a big picture overview of all the things you want from your life/creative project/whatever you’re working on.

In other words, you can use this process to look at your life as a whole or you can use it in relation to something more specific (like writing a book or creating a new work of art etc.).

Either way, the first step is to OPEN UP THE VISION by coming up with as many ideas as possible for whatever it is that you’re trying to set goals around.

This means pushing your creativity to the LIMITS and seeing how many different ideas you can come up with.

Here’s what you need to do at this stage:

-If it’s something general like your life, then you can use Be/Do/Have. This is a pretty famous idea used in the coaching world but it simply means writing down three columns and listing as many things as possible that you want from life in each area.

For example:

Be: “I want to BE rich/famous/stronger/healthy/whatever”

Do: “I want play the piano/write a novel/start a business/whatever”

Have: “I want to have a new car/a partner/a killer body/a dog/whatever”

In this first stage, the idea is to not hold yourself back with your thoughts about what’s possible or not – you need to be AUDACIOUS and to just be honest with yourself about the things you INTEND to bring into your life if there’s nothing stopping you(including yourself).

-If it’s a specific creative project that you’re working on then you need to figure out as much as you can about what this project MEANS to you and what EFFECT you want it to eventually have on people.

For example, if you’re writing a novel or something then you need to figure out exactly what it means to you and how you might translate this meaning into the right story. You need to write down as many ideas as possible for using this creative project to become a vessel for the kind of meaning you want to put into it.

You also need to think about the EFFECT or IMPACT you want it to have on people – for example, maybe you want them to feel inspired,  connected to you, sad, happy, or whatever else.

Use your creativity to flesh out the VISION for your creative project but – either way – by the time you’re done you should have an understanding of what the project means to you and how this meaning can be translated into something that IMPACTS people in the way that you want it to.

In short, the first step to setting goals as a creative person at this stage is to let your imagination run wild and to create a BROAD VISION for yourself.

Don’t stop writing until you’ve run out of ideas.

Stage 2: Refine the Vision

You started with a BROAD vision for the things that you’re interested in doing. The next step is to start reducing the items on your list by finding out what’s actually aligned with your REAL values, beliefs, and intentions versus what’s just something that seems ‘nice’ but isn’t necessarily that real for you right now.

For each of the things you put on your Open Vision List from Stage 1 you need to answer the following questions:

-1: What are my reasons for wanting to DO this?

-2: Would the REAL ME do this?

If your reasons for wanting to do whatever you’ve listed are unreal then you need to either remove that ‘goal’ from your list or to try and find a way to make it more real.

‘Unreal’ in this context means that the goals are either there because you think they’re going to fill some kind of void inside yourself, because they came from ‘other’ people and aren’t actually your goals, or anything else that’s going to stop you from growing in a way that’s aligned with your highest values and intentions.

The second question is a little ‘intuitive’ but all it really means is that you ask yourself whether the most real or authentic version of you would do the thing in question – if you feel like it’s a ‘No’ then there’s no point doing it because the whole point of setting goals is so that you can move towards a more REAL version of yourself in the long-term.

By the end of this stage you should have list of goals that are DEFINITELY something that will benefit your life and make you more real because you know that you have GENUINE reasons for wanting to do them and that they’ll make you more REAL yourself as you move forward and take action.

Stage 3: Categorise Your Goals

At this stage, your list of goals should be a lot shorter than it was but you’ve still been able to go through a CREATIVE PROCESS of making sure that the goals you’ve chosen are something that will make a big difference in your life.

The next stage is to get some clarity about how you’ll start to carry out these goals.  What this means is that you need to CATEGORISE them so that you can start to make a strategy for dealing with them (and actually getting RESULTS).

There are four different categories that we’ll be working with: Ongoing Goals, Short-Term Goals, Medium-Term Goals, and Long-Term Goals. In each of these categories, you need to give yourself a goal that’s SPECIFIC and has a DEADLINE.

It works like this:

Ongoing Goals – things you will do every day (or most days). If you have something vague on your list like ‘get fit’ then you’ll need to probably create a SPECIFIC ongoing goal here (e.g. workout for 30 minutes every day).

Short-Term Goals – things that will take a week to a month. E.g sort out your website, reach out to a specific person on social media, etc.

Medium-Term Goals – things that will take between a month and a year. For example, reaching a target weight or making a certain amount of money etc.

Long-term Goals – things that take more than a year to complete. For example, moving to another country, writing a book (maybe – some people might take less than a year), etc.

If you’re working with a creative project, then you’ll need to look at how the overarching vision fits into these categories. For example, maybe your goal is to “write a book” it might look like:

Ongoing Goals: Write every day, edit, research.

Short-Term Goals: Finish the next chapter by next week, have three chapters written by the end of the month.

Medium-Term Goals: Finish the first-draft six months from now, find some beta readers, etc.

Long-Term Goal: Publish the book and become a bestseller, etc.

Whether it’s your life or your creative project, you’ll benefit from being aware of what goals you have at each of these levels and what you need to DO and WHEN in order to make your vision actually a reality.

Stage 4: Motivation Check

At this stage, it’s probably going to look like you have a LOT of stuff to do.

To stay motivated you might want to make sure to remind yourself of why these goals are important to you. All this means is that you do a final check-in about your overall vision and make sure that it SELLS ITSELF to you.

The main question to answer for each of your goals is “What does achieving this goal mean to me?”

By answering that question, you’ll be giving yourself a reminder of WHY you want to do this in the first place as well as all of the benefits, etc. that you’re going to get from moving towards and then achieving these goals overall.

Stage 5: Create a To-Do List

The final step is to get into the HABIT of keeping a To-Do List and then making sure you actually DO the things that are on it. How rigid you are about this depends on you, but I would personally recommend sitting down every morning (or whenever you start work) and writing down a list of tasks that you need to achieve each day.

Because you’ve already categorised your goals in Step 3 you’ll know what you need to be doing EVERY DAY but you’ll also know what you’re working towards as well.

Of course, as you move forward and start taking action you might uncover some new goals that are important to you and you might learn about yourself and realise that some of the things you’re chasing aren’t as important as you thought.

This is totally fine and healthy and just proves that your goals are there to SERVE YOU and your growth, not an end-in-themselves that you just chase blindly for the sake of it.

Either way, the To-Do List reminds you that the only way to get where you want to be – your REAL LIFE or to see that CREATIVE PROJECT become a real thing in the world – is to take ACTION.

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:

 

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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:

 

You might be interested in

The Faces of Humanity:  How We’re All Made Up of Different Versions of the Same Person

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Live Without Your Mask

There’s a (pretty) famous Japanese proverb that talks about how we all have 3 faces.  It goes like this:

“The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends, and your family. The third face, you never show anyone.”

I think it’s true, but – actually – we can take it a little deeper by exploring how there are more than three faces that the average person ‘has’ and also where they  come from and why.

Perhaps even more importantly than raising our AWARENESS of this ‘stuff’, we can also ask ourselves what we need to ACCEPT, in the face of these faces, as well as what ACTION we can take to improve our lives and grow more real accordingly.

(Awareness -> Acceptance -> Action – it works every time: see ‘Shadow Life: Freedom from BS in an Unreal World’ if you wanna apply this to your life as a whole).

If you read this article, it will help you to make sense of the MECHANICS of your relationships with yourself and the world and to start unblocking yourself and moving forward towards the only thing that really matters: an experience of WHOLENESS (or ‘connection’) to yourself, the world, and reality.

The ‘problem’ with all of these faces we each have is that we either think they don’t ‘exist’ or we think that only one of them ‘exists’ and try to ignore other parts of ourselves.

Actually, it’s completely normal and healthy to have multiple versions of ourselves in different contexts and situations because different contexts and situations allow us to express certain REAL qualities about ourselves that we might not otherwise be able to express.

Everything real about us is always within us – sometimes, it just needs a little bit of help to express itself.

The ‘FACES’ we show the world aren’t necessarily the same as masks (which mean that we’re ‘hiding’) – although, of course, they sometimes can be if we have an unreal relationship with our own emotional ‘stuff’ (shame, guilt, and trauma in the shadow or fear, pride, and desire of the ego, etc.).

All of us are FLUID because reality is in FLUX – sometimes, we just forget that and this can cause confusion if we think that we’re supposed to be ‘static’ (which is just UNREAL).

These are the most common faces of the ‘average’ human being (if such a thing exists). As usual, they fit into the only three levels that anything can fit into: The Self, the World, and Reality.

How many do you recognise in yourself?

Self-Facing Faces

At the level of our relationship with our ‘Self’ we have four faces (at least). Whatever it is that we really are is what EMERGES in the interplay between the four of them.

 

Face 1: Who You Wanna Be (To Yourself)

The first face we all have is the ‘Future Facing Face’ (or whatever you wanna call it). This is basically the face we carry of the person we want to BECOME.

This is comprised of all kinds of things that are related to the desired future we have for ourselves and we have to constantly SHOW ourselves this face in order to remind ourselves of where we want or even INTEND to be going.

It is comprised of things like:

-Our standards

-Our goals

-Our ambitions

-Our vision

-Etc.

Some people show themselves this face more than others and – indeed – you have to keep showing yourself this face in order to BECOME this face.

The reason that a lot of people become stuck or stagnate in life is because they haven’t cultivated this ‘face’ and given themselves a direction to move in.

That’s when other less ‘positive’ (or – at least – future facing faces) faces tend to get a hold of them and weigh their sense of identity down in an unreal direction.

The only ‘problem’ with this ‘Future Facing Face’ is that if we have an unhealthy relationship with our own emotional ‘stuff’ (shame, guilt, and trauma etc.) then the future becomes a projection of our EGO, rather than anything REAL (because we are creating goals and a vision of ourselves based on the fundamental assumptions of denying who we really are as a way of avoiding facing our shadow ‘stuff’ etc.)

Face 2: Who You Think You Are Now (To Yourself)

The second ‘face’ that most of us have is the face of who we think we are NOW (i.e. in current reality). The keyword there is ‘think’ because it’s a product of our thoughts and mindset, not who we necessarily are in TRUTH.

Some of our thoughts might be ‘real’ or accurate (i.e. aligned with actual, valid truth) but often they aren’t because we get caught up in our INTERPRETATIONS of life, rather than life itself.

Anyway, this is the ‘Now Face’ and it’s a product of all of our self-assessments and conclusions about ourselves based on where we’ve been, where we think we’re going (based on the Future Facing Face), and the ways in which we JUDGE ourselves in the present to varying degrees of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (which is what all judgements deal with).

It’s ultimately, a product of the STORY we tell ourselves about who we happen to be right now.

The interesting thing (imo) – and the thing that makes the biggest difference to the quality of our lives – is not necessarily the STORY itself, but the WAY IN WHICH WE TELL THIS STORY.

If we tell the story in a way that is fixed as a FINAL DRAFT then we will stop ourselves moving and take ourselves out of reality (and be less likely to show ourselves a real Future Facing Face because we have conditioned ourselves to be PASSIVE).

If we tell ourselves the story in way where it is constantly being written and updated then we will be more likely to keep learning and move into real life (whatever that is in the context of our own lives).

Face 3: Who You Fear You Might Be

The third face is the ‘Fear Face’ – this is the face of who you FEAR you might be. This is usually shown to us when our emotional ‘stuff’ gets a hold of us and distorts our view of ourselves by our SHAME, GUILT, or TRAUMA (or a combination of the three).

When shame distorts our vision of yourself, it will affect your view of both your ‘Future Facing Face’ and your ‘Now Face’ because it will take unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ from the PAST and cause you to stop trusting and believing in yourself (so these three faces are ultimately about the Future, the Present, and the Past and your real or unreal relationship with each).

This SHAME will tell you that you aren’t the type of person to be able to get the future that you want.

It will tell you that who you are right NOW is no good.

This is just your FEAR talking and the unresolved emotions you carry within yourself that make you feel like you’re not good enough. The FEAR FACE is the one that you show yourself when you start to believe that this shame is the truth about you (because you haven’t started to DISSOLVE the shame by facing REALITY and have instead become driven by it).

It’s the same with GUILT and TRAUMA:

When guilt distorts your vision, you convince yourself that you’re a ‘bad’ person in the present and that you ‘don’t deserve’ the future that you want. This is just your emotional ‘stuff’ showing you your FEAR FACE.

Trauma – which makes us feel powerless – will  distort your ability to tap into your own power and will make you feel that you can’t CREATE the real future that your (real) ‘Future Facing Face’ wants to you to move towards (because it will distort your view and tell you that you’re passive).

There is more variation and complexity here but  – ultimately – you have a face you show yourself in your weaker moments that is purely comprised of your FEARS about yourself.

This is ‘normal’ and part of the human experience but the more overpowering your emotions are the more you will show yourself this face and start to believe that it’s who ‘you’ really are.

If you listen enough and believe it, that’s when you stop moving and stop growing REAL and hide behind ego instead (which is just a mental box you put yourself in to keep all your emotions and ‘shadow’ stuff at bay).

Face 4: Your Shadow Face / The Unknown

Beneath the surface of all of the faces we do show ourselves from time to time, there is another UNKNOWN FACE that bubbles away beneath the conscious experience of ourselves and that drives the course of our lives without us even knowing (not consciously at least).

This is our SHADOW FACE and it’s comprised of all the different things about ourselves (qualities, goals, ideas, ‘parts’, etc.) that we have at some stage in our lives cast aside and disowned as being ‘unacceptable’.

This usually happens because the World CONDITIONED us to believe that certain things shouldn’t exist and then we hypnotised ourselves to live as though they don’t – this being the case, over the course of our lives we try and act like these things don’t exist or suppress them (with socially unacceptable emotions like ‘rage’, for example).

The TRUTH of the matter, however, is that these ‘hidden’ parts of ourselves are just as REAL as the parts that we do face and – as what’s real is always real – these parts never go anywhere.

In fact, they’re not even ‘parts’, they’re just certain EXPRESSIONS of what we are as a WHOLE. We just conditioned ourselves not to EXPRESS them.

Even though we try and hide this ‘Unknown Face’ from ourselves, the ‘parts’ that comprise it never go anywhere and continue to call for our attention (so we can integrate them) from beneath the surface of ourselves.

One of the most common ways that these parts ‘call out’ to us is through PROJECTION.

All that means – at the simplest level – is that we try and hide these parts behind the CONSCIOUS FACES we show ourselves but UNCONSCIOUSLY we project them onto the world outside of us.

A classic way of determining this kind of thing is to look at what annoys us in other people.  For example, if somebody’s RAGE annoys you – it’s probably because you haven’t ACCEPTED your own rage that’s bubbling beneath the surface of your conscious faces.

What this means in the context of this article is that we all have a FOURTH FACE: the Shadow Face that is shown to us as a reflection of ourselves in the world or as a projection reflected back from others (if we can decode the matrix).

Facing this ‘Unknown’ face is the best chance we have at growing more WHOLE (instead of just being fragmented by only facing the fragmented, surface level faces created as a response to keep the shadow ‘stuff’ at bay).

World-Facing Faces

There are two main types of World-Facing Faces that we show the world (and which are affected by our relationships with ourselves and our ‘Self-Facing Faces’):

Face 1: The Character You Play In MOST Social Situations To Survive Them (Who You Show To Strangers/People You Just Met or Want to Keep at A Distance).

The first face that we have for the WORLD is the default face that we want to show other people. This is influenced by all of the SELF-FACING FACES and how we ‘feel’ about ourselves but it’s also inspired by two other things:

  1. How we need others to see us (because of our emotional ‘stuff’).
  2. How we have LEARNED to survive social situations in the past

This ‘DEFAULT’ FACE is just the one that we use to make sure we can get through life on a daily basis and to interact with people we might come across like strangers we have to talk to (people that work in coffee shops, taxi drivers, people we meet for the first time at networking events, etc. etc.).

We will try and COME ACROSS in a certain light in order to reinforce the stories we tell ourselves because of our Self-Facing Faces and the ‘Shadow Stuff’ we want to keep at bay but we will also put on a strategic way of being based on how we survived social situations in the past.

This might involve using strategies like ‘being polite’ or maybe even something like trying to be ‘humorous’ and making jokes. Whatever strategy you use, it’s ultimately about gaining CONTROL of the interaction so that you show the face you want to show.

Everybody does the same thing and it’s something we have to do to keep ‘society’ going.  Depending on how REAL you are with yourself will affect how much of your real self can shine through(the most whole version of yourself possible in a given moment).

Even if you’re relatively REAL, there will still be a slight warming up period around new people whilst you figure them out – whatever strategy you use to ‘warm up’ is just your DEFAULT FACE for the world. It’s not ‘You’ – it’s something that you CHOSE based on your conditioning and expectations of yourself and others.

Face 2: The Face You Show The World In Different Partnerships or Groups (E.G. Might Be Different Among Friends That Parents).

This is where things get (more) complicated.  There are multiple versions of this face which is the face that you show different PARTNERSHIPS or GROUPS that you’re involved in based on your own relationship with yourself (and your ‘Self-Facing Faces’) and the EXPECTATIONS that whatever group you’re in has for you (and what you think about these expectations and whether or not you care about modifying the way you come across because of them).

Here are some simple examples of your CONTEXTUAL FACES:

You might have a face that you show your parents that you wouldn’t show your friends.

You might have a face that you show your friends that you wouldn’t show your parents.

You might have a face that you show your boss that you wouldn’t show your wife/husband.

You might have a face that you show your wife/husband that you wouldn’t show your friends.

You might have a face that you show yourself (one of your Self-Facing Faces) that you wouldn’t show any of these people (not a group, just here to demonstrate the point).

The short-version of all this is that each one of these partnerships or groups forms a new SYSTEM and you need different faces to SURVIVE them because of the roles you’re asked to play and the EXPECTATIONS that come with that role.

You can still be REAL in each of these context but how much realness is able to creep out depends on the DEPTH OF INTIMACY in each of these relationships and whether or not you’re allowing expectations to be more main motivation or realness.

The number of these CONTEXTUAL FACES changes and varies over the course of our lifetimes depending on how many different groups we’re engaged in or how big our network is (or isn’t) etc.

Reality-Facing Faces

Even though in reality we are ultimately WHOLE (i.e. not divided into all of the different categories and labels that we use to make sense of the world – which we’re doing in this article too because it’s just how we make ‘sense’ of the world), we have at least two faces that show us a reflection of REALITY.

Face 1: The OBSERVER making sense of all this .

The first of our Reality-Facing Faces is the OBSERVING FACE.  This is just the version of ourselves that occasionally (for most) is able to STEP BACK from the complexity and confusion of the interplay between all of the Self-Facing and World-Facing faces and to watch things unfold.

This Observing Face is important because it is a version of ourselves  that we are able to show ourselves BEYOND JUDGEMENT.

All of the other faces mentioned so far – apart from the SHADOW FACE (which contains who we would be if we stopped judging ourselves)- are ultimately unreal because they involve JUDGEMENT at some level (which is always unreal because all you can do with reality is ACCEPT it – the opposite of judgement).

The OBSERVING FACE is an AWARENESS of what we have observed or are observing and allows us to hold space so that we can start to respond instead of just reacting to the promptings and conditionings of the other faces.

This comes from the place of WHOLENESS that is within us at all times (in fact, is what we are) and allows us to come from a place that’s REAL instead of being a fragmented consequence of our outdated biological wiring, emotional ‘stuff’, or social conditioning and programming (like the other faces mentioned at the levels of self-and world).

The FACT that you can OBSERVE all of the other faces is proof that they are not ‘You’. They are just survival tools that form the foundation of the EGO (which is fragmented, not the bigger which is an EXPERIENCE of being alive which always comes back to AWARENESS).

Face 2: The REAL self (who knows what to do with all this Awareness and to ACCEPT it and to take Action)

The final Reality-Facing Face that’s relevant here is the one (which is really part of the same process) that you show yourself when you ACCEPT what the OBSERVING FACE has become AWARE of and decide to take ACTION based on this (Awareness -> Acceptance -> Action, it works every time).

When you take this kind of REAL ACTION it allows you to stop holding yourself back based on the limitations of your Self-Facing and World-Facing Faces and to put yourself back on track towards a natural DRIVE towards wholeness that we all have.

By taking action you always learn more about reality and you always  become more whole because you  will eventually end up having to bring your SHADOW ‘stuff’ to the surface (as you find the EDGE – i.e. where all your ideas about yourself meet reality and you can grow more REAL).

In short, the realest faces you can show yourself are the ones that EMERGE when you are able to step back from the ‘other’ faces (Self-Facing and World-Facing) and to put yourself on the path of growing real.

When you do this, you realise that you have NO faces – you’re just FACING THE TRUTH and constantly moving forward and experiencing life as a WHOLE.

 

 

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Nothing is So Important that It Can Shake You From Your Roots.

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Here’s some stuff you need to know about staying ROOTED:

1. If you’re feeling good and in the BUZZ then it means you’re being REAL.

That’s how you’re supposed to feel when all systems are GO:

ALIVE.

2. You’re always REAL because you’re always ROOTED in the truth about things.

In fact, we can go deeper, and say that you always ARE the truth and your connection can never be severed (how can you be disconnected from what you ARE?).

This being the case, if you feel ‘bad’ for a prolonged period of time it just means that you’ve picked up some LINGERING BELIEF in UNREALITY that’s made you forget who you are and the connection that comes with it.

But…WHAT’S REAL IS ALWAYS REAL.

So those beliefs have to be ‘WRONG’ at some level.

In fact, it’s not even about being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ – it’s about being real or unreal and either allowing you to SEE yourself, the world, and reality or blinding you to it because of your emotional ‘stuff’.

A key to breaking through these BS beliefs is to ask yourself a simple question:

“Is this really important?”

Get used to asking it because this is your key out of the Matrix and all it takes is a little acknowledgement of the TRUTH about things.

Most of the unreal beliefs we have are becase we’re treating things as being important that we would actually be INDIFFERENT to if we remembered that we were ROOTED.

That stupid argument you got in with somebody because they have a different idea about how something should be done or because they’re opinion about [whatever] conflicts with yours?

NOT IMPORTANT. Just opinions.

That HYPOTHETICAL “What if…?” thing that you keep worrying about?

NOT IMPORTANT. Just your imagination.

That shame somebody tried to make you feel because of your big nose/personality defects/funny [whatever].

NOT IMPORTANT. Just superficial fragments of the bigger picture.

That GUILT people want you to feel because of the way you’re growing/your ambitions/whatever.

NOT IMPORTANT. Your life is your business.

Etc.

The reality of life is that you’re always ROOTED in the truth about life and that’s the ONLY thing that really matters.

Anything that tries to seem more important than that is UNREAL.

 

My coaching can help you help yourself grow real.

 

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Stop Underestimating Yourself and Overestimating Others.

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Comparisons are odious (that’s how the old saying goes, anyway).

If you compare your behind-the-scenes footage of your own ‘stuff’ to somebody else’s highlight reel then you’re gonna have a BAD time.

In fact, you might not even have a ‘bad’ time because you probably won’t even get started – you’ll just kinda be…stuck.

A lot of you never get going because you’re too busy COMPARING your own perceived weaknesses to the strengths of other people.

Or you COMPARE the results that somebody else has got after years and years of working away at it with wherever you happen to be right now.

You compare superficialities like how good looking somebody is or how charming or how well they can speak or whatever else…

NONE OF THAT STUFF MATTERS, THOUGH.

That’s just your ego trying to keep you where you are so you don’t STRETCH yourself and start growing REAL again.

The TRUTH is that to get stuff ‘DONE’ you only need to follow a simple two-step process:

1. BELIEVE it can be done.

2. Do the WORK to get it done.

Yeah, there’s a few more things that take place somewhere in between – like TRUSTING and BELIEVING and allowing what needs to happen to happen as you take each step – but that’s the gist of it.

The main difference between ‘You’ and whoever you might be comparing yourself to is that they’re NOT comparing themselves to anybody.

The TRUTH is that you can’t compare anyway – we’re all on our own paths, we all have our own cocktail of strengths and weaknesses, we all have our own crosses to bear.

Comparisons are just a form of RESISTANCE – like we said, it’s your EGO’s way of trying to find reasons not to get started because if you do then the odds are you’ll succeed and so your ego will get a software update (which it can’t stand as that means learning and integrating our ‘stuff’ along the way).

Gain some PERSPECTIVE and see things CLEARLY.

If other people have found a way to do it, then there’s no reason why you can’t too – the only EXCUSES are the one’s you tell yourself when you’re trying to believe that other people are ‘special’ and you’re not.

If you do the work you’ll get there; if you don’t, you won’t.

Know your VALUE and share it.

Let me coach you and I can help you get where you know you can be.

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Action Kills Fear. Bullshit Makes it Worse.

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The more time you spend away from reality, the greater your FEAR of returning to it.

The TRUTH is that you know deep down when you’re being UNREAL – even if you hide behind layers of masks and BS.

The REAL you is ALWAYS calling to you beneath the surface of yourself and will show up in all kinds of CREATIVE and DESTRUCTIVE ways to get your attention and bring you back home:

-Maybe it’ll call you through the whispered sympony of your own restlessness.

-Maybe it’ll PROJECT the parts of yourself you’re trying to disown out into the world around you so you have to EMBRACE them anyway.

-Maybe it’ll DERAIL or sabotage your goals and relationships because it KNOWS that you got into them for UNREAL reasons and it wants to show you something TRUE.

One thing for sure is that you’re ALWAYS involved in the process of RETURNING BACK TO WHOLENESS whether you know it or not – the problem is that you BLOCK it by resisting life but you can only resist for so long and you can’t hide behind anything REAL (read that again).

When you’re trying to resist the return back to the TRUTH about yourself then you get involved in all kinds of CONTROL FREAKERY, HOLDING BACK, and HESITATIONS.

All of these patterns are just your EGO’s attempt to try and keep the REAL YOU at bay so it can keep tricking itself into thinking it exists.

When you get CAUGHT up in this state, then your overall state becomes a FEARFUL one.

It’s fearful because everything about it is rooted in BS:

-The BS that you carry about yourself and keep hypnotising yourself with.

-The BS that you carry about the world that stops you showing up in it.

-The BS that you carry about reality that stops you moving and pushing through.

This FEAR is about taking the first steps and returning back home because you have become DEPENDENT on all of the illusions that stop you going there.

The more you resist, the worse it gets, until eventually that REAL SELF will EXPLODE from beneath the surface.

To KILL the FEAR, you need to start RESISTING YOUR RESITANCE and taking ACTION – only then will you see that there is nothing to fear.

Once you’re home, you’re WHOLE, and everything else is just gravy.

 

Let me coach you and help you take actions that will change the game for you.

 

 

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You Were Born Wild then Made Crazy.

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There’s a wildness in you that can set you FREE if you unlearn to RECLAIM it.

This is because – no matter who you are or what you think your life is about – you were born to survive and THRIVE on the earth and the earth is a wild place.

It’s easy to forget about the WILDERNESS inside us all and the WILD CHILD that’s screaming for attention from deep down in the SHADOWS of ourselves.

It’s easy to forget about all of the PASSIONS, DRIVES, and INSTINCTS that have been buried down there in the depths.

It’s easy to forget who we are when we live in a ‘World’ that’s built only for the little ‘parts’ of who we are and never the WHOLE thing.

When you were born you came with EVERYTHING that you needed – yes, you needed the protection of your parents but the seeds of who you were had already been planted and just needed nuturing and nourishing so the FRUIT could RIPEN.

The problem is that a lot of the ‘WILD’ stuff that you need to channel and transmute to GROW REAL and get where you need to be was DENIED in the face of ‘The World’ and so you started to go a little CRAZY.

What is “crazy” when you think about it?

Crazy is just a lack of alignment with the TRUTH.

If the TRUTH is WHOLE and you begin to identify with just parts of yourself and deem the ‘socially unacceptable’ parts of yourself – like your joy, creativity, and spontaneity; like your anger, drive, and passion – just so you could fit in and identify with a limited interpration of the truth to be of ‘the world’ then tell me…

Is that not ‘crazy’?

Your craziness is ANYTHING that makes you believe that all of the WILDNESS and chaos within you is to be AVOIDED.

That’s just the LIES you’ve been told and then started to hypnotise yourself with so that you can be easier to CONTROL and so that the other crazy people in your world can keep up their own ILLUSIONS about things.

Growing REAL is about ACCEPTANCE of the TRUTH and if the truth is WHOLE that means accepting and embracing the whole of who you are.

There is so much POWER within you but you need to stop being CRAZY and embrace the fact that you were born of the EARTH and that means that you have the wildness within you.

Get ROOTED in the REAL.

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