Great Thinking

Our Reality is Projected from Within Ourselves

I’m having a timely reminder that people who do not want to change will not get the results they want if they are any different to the ones they have right now.

There is no guarantee that change will bring happiness to someone who doesn’t have it – but I can guarantee that change is needed.  Without change, an unhappy person is condemned to a life of unhappiness.  Unfortunately, there is occassionally a pay-off for misery, like sympathy, assistance from others that enables the unhappy to stay in a static existence of sadness and disempowerment, and extra attention from others out of concern.  Choosing to feel grateful, joyful and hopeful may result in all of that attention and support disappearing.

Carl Jung (psychologist & sociologist from the early to mid 20th century) says that what we project, what we see, is really a reflection of who we are.  If we look around and see all things joyful, things to celebrate, things worthy of laughter, that is because we have joy, happiness and laughter within us.  If we see misery, a lack of love, and judgement, that is because we feel miserable, unloved/unlovable and are either judging others or ourselves.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (author of Flow) teaches that we have 2million bits of information presented to our senses at any moment in time.  If we were to pay attention to every bit of information we receive we would have a sensory meltdown! So we filter, distort and delete from those 2million bits of information through our internal filters so that we are only aware of 7 (plus or minus 2) ‘chunks’ of information at a time (about 156 ‘bits’).  What we choose to pay attention to, is what becomes our experience of the world.

There is a simple experiment which demonstrates that this is true.  Click on the link below and follow the instructions – count the number of times the people in white shirts pass the basketball to other players in white shirts.

http://youtu.be/vJG698U2Mvo

What did you pay attention to?  What did you notice?  What didn’t you notice?  If you’ve watched this clip (under two minutes short) you’ll understand that you delete, distort and filter information from your consciousness.  Your reality was shaped by your focus and attention.

So what does this mean?  It means that you create your reality with your thoughts and your focus.  No one controls your thoughts except you.  Therefore you create your own reality.  If you are thinking “If I could only find someone to love me, then I’ll be happy”, or “If I can only get a bit of money, then I’ll feel happy”, or ”If I can only lose some weight, then I’ll feel happy” you are putting the responsibility for your reality (and therefore, your happiness) outside of yourself.  In actuality, no one has the power to make you feel happy/loved/worthy – you need to choose to interpret the world in a way that supports your desired outcome in order to achieve the results you would like.

I know that I can choose to feel sympathy and a desire to help when someone I love is creating a negative reality in their life - but nothing I do/say/give will help that person to change their reality unless they are willing to change their thoughts, their focus and their attention.