New Year's Resolutions 2

2020 was a tough year, it started fine but in March the year blew up and everyone had to cope with a new world, Some did it well, others had problems coping and some are still hiding away. 2021 gives us a chance to continue to build our new world and to write our story with us as still the heroes of our own story. To do this is where the visualizing gets serious. Your thoughts if you think them over and over, and assign truth to them, become beliefs. Beliefs create a cognitive lens through which you interpret the events of your world and this lens serves as a selective filter through which you sift the environment for evidence that matches up with what you believe to be true.

So, when you understand "thoughts become things," you visualize, and you begin saying and doing things, every day, that you've never said or done before, the onslaught of serendipities and coincidences are immeasurable, and this is to be expected.

This is because of the brain's selective filtering system, often referred to as priming. When your brain is primed by a certain belief to look for something, it shuts down competing neural networks, so you have a hard time seeing evidence to the contrary of an already existing belief. That’s why people who are optimistic have an optimistic view of the world. It’s also why we are so convinced that our view of the world is the “truth.” What most people don’t realize is we are participating in creating our own version of the truth.

What you take in from the environment through your belief filter becomes your self-concept. Your self-concept is made up of “I am” beliefs about who you are presently, and “I can” beliefs about who you are capable of being in the future. From these “I am” and “I can” statements we create stories and narratives about who we are, that we tell ourselves and other people all day long. Some examples are I am not good enough, I am not lovable, I can not do it, I am smart, I am capable, I can achieve my goals. Remember you are the main character in your story and you write the script based on your self-concept that is self-created.

You write the story of what you think is likely and/or possible based on what you believe is true and then you take actions consistent with those expectations. When we act on what we expect will happen before it happens, we participate in creating the experience. For example, if you don’t have a positive self-concept and you fear rejection when you go to a job interview, you are not likely to present your best self by acting calm and self-confident; you are likely to be anxious and act in a way that is more likely to result in rejection. Hence, the self-fulfilling prophecy. We act in ways likely to bring about what we believe is true. That is the very definition of creating your reality.

Every day we are participating in creating our reality whether we know it or not. There is nothing magical or woo-woo about it. It is simply the way our brains operate. When we deny, reject, or are unaware of this, then we have little power and will feel like the victim of our life. But with awareness comes choice. When we start to understand the process and make it work for us, we are empowered to be in charge of the life we create.

What we do control is how you think and feel, and what we subsequently do about those uncontrollable events—that is how we shape and create our life. There are always people who thrive in times of crisis. Is it because they are lucky? Most likely it is because they choose to see opportunity as opposed to a disadvantage.

Since it is your life, and no one else will ever be as invested in it as you, it’s probably at least worth trying to change it for the positive. As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you are right.”