Like the old saying goes, one mans trash is another mans treasure. Whether you realise it or not, what you consider a good result is dependent on the view you take of it.
A man worth Billions of dollars could view a million dollars as chump change, while someone else could see it as the fortune of a lifetime.
This view of good and bad, success and failure takes place within the confines of our own minds. And no two people will ever see the same thing the same way.
Separate Realities
These views of the world are sometimes referred to as separate realities. It’s a way of pointing what’s personal to you, comes from you. And that although we often assume other people see the same world as we do, the simple reality is they don’t. Your personal reality is created from Thought in the form of values and beliefs that appear as truths. Whether these have been made from your own life experiences, or accepted as part of the story of your culture, your country, your family or one of the many ways we can form a view of the world around us.
In the world of computing there is a program called a daemon, that runs in the background, running a particular job out of conscious sight of the operator. Beliefs are much like this. If you’re anything like me because of the nature of our experience, you have no idea what beliefs are doing what because you’re not consciously aware of them. This is why willpower to make changes in our lives fails more often than not. Like the daemon on a computer, our operating programs run in the background. But all is not lost
Most coaching aims to swap out old limiting beliefs for more empowering beliefs that will enable us to take the actions we need to achieve the goals we’ve set our minds to.
It’s by seeing it for ourselves and then embracing the truth of separate realities that we can start moving down our own path, playing our own tune, and living a life that is meaningful to us, rather than playing the same game everyone else plays.
Uncovering the Blank Canvas
It’s taken me quite a few years of self examination and coaching to see through the beliefs that kept me stuck. Thinking life worked one way, even when I was constantly presented evidence to the contrary. Whether it was wanting to earn more money, have better relationships, better health and to look fitter and stronger. I could see other people moving ahead, making the changes they wanted, so I knew it was possible. The real shift came when I realised that it wasn’t that I was different, it wasn’t that things would never work out for me the way I wanted. The only difference between me and other people? I was fully invested in the thinking that kept me trapped. It was so real to me that I couldn’t see that I was the one painting the picture of limitation.
The truth of the matter is we’re a blank canvas. And through our experience of living that canvas gets filled with ideas and concepts about ourselves and the world and our place in it. The sad thing is, for the most part, what is represented on this canvas of our lives is created unconsciously, without us really having a say in it.
It’s only when we start to clear away the unconscious clutter and reveal the canvas underneath can we start to consciously create the life we choose.
