To Reach A Different Outcome, YOU Have To Be Different
If there is a central theme that runs throughout my writings and philosophy it is that there is only one basic choice in life.
To be right or to be happy.
There are many strands and ways that this choice shows up in and here we will discuss another.
No one ever really sets out to attack another. Every nation has their military force, but how many are called The Offence.
How many sides in a war, say we are going to go out and attack others?
I’m not aware of a single one. Yet we still have wars between all these military forces all ‘defending’ their nation. A sports game would not be possible without an attacking force, so how is it possible for us to have so many bloody wars if no-one is doing the attacking?
Why is everyone so worried about being attacked and invaded if there are no Attackers?
The reality is that one side will perceive that the other is attacking their interests or poses a future threat to their wellbeing and launches a pre-emptory attack that they believe neutralises a potential threat. The other side defends and so they both believe themselves to be fighting for their survival.
But how does this relate to you on an individual level wanting to be right versus happy?
To get to the point we have to take a little journey. Here’s where we’ll start;
photo credit: jurassicjim
There are certain ways that you envisage that your life could be better, more fulfilling, more pleasant and more comfortable. Maybe it’s a grander house, maybe it’s having a loving (or more loving) Partner, maybe it’s working for a more meaningful cause or maybe it’s starting a family.
photo credit: jepoycamboy
Whatever your goal, whether it’s having physical things or emotional states, the essence of it is to achieve more of the potential that you know you have locked inside of you.
We all know that our potential is greater than the level we currently exhibit, don’t we?
To exhibit our full potential, we would have to be perfect.
What holds us back from reaching this perfection are our limitations, our imperfections.
The life we live today is a reflection of our potential minus our limitations. Reaching the life that we aspire to, depends on us removing the limitations to our potential.
So in other words, to achieve our dream life depends on stepping up our game to a higher standard.
For example, if I want a bigger house and more spending ability, I have to raise my level of wealth. To generate more money, I need to become more productive in the quantity, or more likely quality, of work I do.
So by outputing more valuable work, I am rewarded with more money.
Or maybe I want to achieve more peace of mind and more rewarding relationships. In this case I have to become a better processor of life. I have to be able to take toxic emotions and difficult situations and clear them from my mind quicker and more cleanly. I have to have a higher level of integrity so that my mind is less taxed and so more peaceful. I have to be more open and receptive to others. I have to care more about them and so create the environment for warmer and more meaningful relationships.
Whatever the specific details you want may be, the result is the same. You need to change the quality of your output. But what usually happens is that people want the changes they desire to come to them without changing their output.
So they dream of winning the lottery.
Or Prince Charming charging in on his White Horse and sweeping them off their feet.
Or they rail against the world. Why is it so unfair? Why are people so nasty?
photo credit: Alexis Deadly
The simple truth is that, if you want to reach your dreams you have to start overcoming your limitations and so unleashing more of your potential. You then start outputting at a higher quality and so reaching a different level of being, which leads to you achieving your dreams.
It is true that some people do win the lottery. Some people are swept off their feet by Prince Charming. And some people do seem to live charmed lives.
However, most lottery winners are less happy one year after winning than they were before their win. Prince Charming almost always turns out to have flaws and problems of his own that prevent him from being the Saviour you dreamed he could be. And sometimes the people with charmed lives, do not feel as fortunate as they seem to be.
This is for many a hard thing to understand or believe, but you get the quality of life that you output. The problems in your life are a reflection of your self-imposed limitations. And to reach the goals you want to achieve, you have to remove the limitations.
Now here’s where the the idea of being right versus being happy kicks in.
Life will brutally show you where your limitations are. However very few of us are ready for complete honesty. And so we ‘defend’ ourselves.
We find reasons to explain why we can’t have what we dream of. We blame others for holding us back. There is no field that contains so much creativity as the ability to explain away our circumstances in ways that prevent us from being at cause.
And there is no secret, no law of nature, no magic bullet that will ever have more impact in your life than in the ability to honestly view the circumstances in your life.
In just the same way as a Nation goes to war and attacks another country, as Germany did in the world wars, as Al Quaeda did in the 9/11 tragedy and as America did in Iraq, we as Individuals attack each other to try to defend ourselves from the truth.
In any circumstance the solution comes from changing ourselves. From seeing the limitation and working on overcoming it. But for the most part, we seek to explain away causality from ourselves. As a result we see that since the blame lies outside of ourselves, that the control and so the remedy must lie outside of us and so we feel powerless to exert any control over the circumstances in our life.
We attack others, we feel hurt and attacked because we seek to maintain the Status Quo. In other words, we do not want to have to make any change to our output. And so we remain trapped in a substandard level of life because it is more comfortable than to have to change. Thus we choose being right over being happy.
Nowhere is this seen more evidently than in the field of weight loss.
A person’s weight is a clear reflection of a simple equation. The level of calories they intake minus the calories they expend. Yet people seek to change this basic truth and continually seek new diets. They continually seek new diets because none work for them. Why don’t they work for them?
Because what they are looking for is, to be able to eat what they want and be the weight that they want to be.
Yet nature cannot be subverted. And so when all else fails they seek to explain it through hormone problems and digestive difficulties. So every now and then some Scientist will announce a grand reason for this widespread Obesity epidemic. This finding will lead to new pills and miracle cures. Only to lead to health problems and ultimately failure.
The truth is that nature is simple and has a simple equation. Any excess calories will be stored as fat. Look at pictures of starving areas, at people in starvation camps such as Belsen and find the fat people with hormone deficiencies.
And the field of slimming is the field that really gave birth to the Self Help Industry. Our relationship with food is mirrored in our relationship with others, with money and with ourselves. And so now we have tons of books that exist to give us excuses to prevent us from having to face up to the truth and change.
But they only validate our seeking to be right, so they will never provide the solution. Just more frustration.
The issue is do we go with the way of Life and so live happily or do we insist our way is right and fight life?
Changing my output and getting beyond my (seemingly) ingrained self-limiting behaviors, has been a struggle I’ve certainly not overcome yet. Deep down I still perceive I’m ‘not good enough’ to occupy the real level of success in life I desire. I have a picture of the kind of people who ARE good enough to enjoy that life and it doesn’t match with the person I decided I was when I was a kid.
Throughout my adult life I’ve assumed that when I discovered where my self-imposed limitations started, I would logically be able to remove them. A while back I finally figured it out. Nevertheless, the years of “living” those limitations have subsequently created a powerful habit of perceiving myself in this way.
I really don’t blame anything, except my lack of being able to cope with the shame I felt because of a bedwetting problem as a boy. It continued through sleepovers, summer camps and of course at home, until I was 12. It wrecked my pride and my self-confidence in my formative years.
Not surprisingly I was picked on when I was a kid, but I know it was because of that low self-confidence I displayed. I don’t think my Dad knew how to handle my bedwetting and the resulting low esteem problems, so he dumped on me rather than assure me. I don’t think he had it in him to know a better way, so I don’t put blame there. I think I just suffered what most kids suffer in that circumstance. Unfortunately I took a lot of my sense of self from that experience.
I feel I’ve reached the point where I’m honestly viewing the circumstances of my life. I don’t think that my “problem” was anything more than a physical challenge, shared by many children. I should have shed the old limitations by now, but still I feel the ‘not good enough’ shadow dogging me. When you think of yourself in a certain way long enough, it almost seems disingenuous to become otherwise.
I know that’s flawed somehow, but it is powerful nonethless.
I did an interview last week where we talked about trying to be better versus ‘being yourself’. What you have written reminds me of that conversation.
If you get the wider point of that idea it completely negates the idea of not being good enough.
Hopefully I’ll get it posted up this week.
Thank you, I enjoyed the message. Arabs were used on 9-11-2001, but were not the planners. If you have an open mind:
Watch Loose Change, Final Cut online here in high quality. http://loosechange911.com/finalcut/
Aloha
At a similar point with Brian, I’m soon to turn 39 and doing a lot of introspection (i.e. why did I spend all these years unhappy, and pinpointing events, etc. – we’d think that recognizing the negative thoughts/behavior would allow us to remove it as a root cause for unhappiness). ‘Self-imposed limitations’ are difficult to overcome even as we recognize them. I believe we’re all our own harshest critics, and could be our own best friends as well, but aren’t sure how.
Thanks Rob.
I look forward to the post.