Stop Telling The Story Stupid!

“Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit”
Aristotle

Last week I wrote about the notion of being aware of the stories that you tell about yourself and how that influences your expectations which in turn impacts on what you actually create. This week I want to look at how you actually do it – how do you CHANGE the story?

So, STEP 1 – yeah I got it – you’re not stupid!

Changing the story begins with CHOOSING to love yourself no matter what. No benefit can come out of beating yourself up, berating yourself or belittling yourself in any way. Failure is a necessary step on the way to success. The only bad mistakes you make are the ones you don’t learn from.

We are already healed and we are powerful beyond measure – we’ve just forgotten how to access that part of ourselves and there is a part in all of us that wants to hang onto the notion of victimhood. The way it does this is by holding onto the stories that support that particular view of the World.

Look at it from an energy management perspective.

Researchers say we think about 50-60,000 thoughts per day but most of us are having 90 – 95% of the same thoughts today as we had yesterday!!!

Neurons that wire together fire together.

We are what we believe.

We create our world through the stories that we tell and the expectations that breeds.

So, every day we have a bank of let’s say 50,000 thoughts. How would you like to spend that? Would you consciously allocate 10,000 thoughts to telling yourself what’s wrong with you?

AND importantly you should know that every thought sucks up some energy and every thought pattern has staked out some territory in YOUR brain.

Ha, ha yes imagine it as a battle between the thoughts for brain territory! Right now who’s winning in your brain? The thoughts that are aligned to what you want and how you want to BE or the thoughts that are aligned to what you’ve got and why you’re a victim and will never get what you want?

If it’s the latter then it’s war strategy time!

STEP 2 – break the pattern – neurons that have been firing together for a while have laid down a nice set of shiny train tracks that guide you along the pathway you’ve travelled many times over.

Can we put on the brakes?

The Buddha taught about samsaric loops – a cyclic existence of endless addiction to going round and round the same patterns. The solution? Break the pattern by stopping the flow. Samadhi meditation - single point meditation designed to still the mind. One focuses on the breath, a mantra or an image and simply allows other thoughts to flow through without grasping onto them and creating further thoughts.

By stopping the samsaric loops one allows the old patterns to arise and unwind creating the opportunity to BE in the present.

“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make our world.”
Buddha

Carlos Castaneda wrote about his teacher Don Juan showing him how to stop his internal dialogue by walking along with his eyes out of focus whilst fixed on a point just above the horizon. The aim of this was to emphasize the peripheral view and in doing so overwhelm the tonal so that it was incapable of thinking other thoughts.

In Yoga one focuses on the breathing whilst holding poses that open energy centres. Whilst dancing or drumming one can also reach a state ‘beyond thinking’.

The point is that anything that takes all of your focus creates a doorway to a state of flow – the zone – where old stories can be starved of energy.

So, STEP 3 – create a daily practice – a habit – of getting beyond thinking.

Get used to stepping through the door and breaking the momentum of mindlessness.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Albert Einstein