Filed under: Creating Your Dream, Uncategorized | Tags: Alan Watts, bliss, Chris Dorris, Christopher Dorris, Clarity, coaching, Creating Your Dream, Creating Your Dream Audio Program, discipline, dream life, dreams, Keynote Speaker, mental toughness, passion, Personal Coaching, personal growth, psychological strength
It’s true. Hiring a Personal Coach is totally unnecessary. It’s an entirely non-essential service. And that’s precisely why I got into it, and out of Counseling (although Counseling is also non-essential). I shifted because I no longer wanted to focus on ameliorating problems, but rather wanted to spend time helping folks manifest miracles and create dreams.
But none of that needs to happen. So why pay good money to hire a Personal Coach? Because you can. It’s that simple. The same reason you’d do anything in this miraculous life – because you can, but not because you need to.
We get to play the game of creating miracles with this highly improbable life we’ve got.
So coaching isn’t about fixing problems. It’s not about correcting inadequacies. It’s not about changing things in order to become happy (because you don’t need anything to be different in order to feel infinite bliss in this very moment, and every other.) Coaching is about playing the wonderful game of growth. Diving further and further into mastery and making magic – for its own sake. Because that’s fun to do. And the game of discovering new and deeper levels of potential and power never ends. And that’s pretty damn cool.
So why would I hire a coach? To help me free myself from the conditioned beliefs that prevent me from exploding into that greatness, that magic, the miraculousness. To help me liberate myself from the conditioning of my past so that I can experience reality AS IT IS, in all its infinite splendor, and so that I can manifest all my wildest desires with less effort.
That’s why. But I sure don’t need to.
P.S. If you’re not receiving my FREE weekly email bulletins entitled, Miraculous Life, and you’d like to, go here to subscribe…
Just click the blue “Join Our Mailing List” button at the bottom.
Be on the lookout for the new Creating Your Dream Audio Program. I just finished recording today. It’ll be a 5 cd set. You can find out more soon on my website:
Filed under: Creating Your Dream, Uncategorized | Tags: bliss, Chris Dorris, Christopher Dorris, coaching, dream life, dreams, emotion control, FIFA World Cup, intelligence, Personal Coaching, personal growth, psychological strength, toughness
Filed under: Creating Your Dream, Uncategorized | Tags: bliss, Chris Dorris, Christopher Dorris, Clarity, coaching, community, courage, creativity, discipline, dream life, dreams, Dynamics, emotion control, Fun, gymnastics, intelligence, Keynote Speaker, meditation, mental toughness, Michael Allen, Networked Blogs, passion, Personal Coaching, personal growth, PGA Tour, psychological strength, Tiger Woods, toughness
THE OUTER WORLD IS A REFLECTION OF THE INNER WORLD
Regardless of who you are or what you’re doing with your life, what’s going on around you is a product of what’s going IN you. More specifically, in your mind.
A few weeks ago I did an interview with Michael Allen (http://wp.me/psrwD-1C) in which we discuss the value of Mental Conditioning as it applies to success on the PGA Tour. Last week I recorded another video with my dear friend and mentor, Jim Myers, who has coached hundreds of CEOs on business, leadership and personal development. (That video was audibly challenged, so we’re doing it over – look for it next time.)
It might seem obvious to most people how Mental Toughness is essential to success in professional sports or big business. Every once in a while, if I’m in conversation with someone and happen to mention that I am coaching a youngster, they might say, “For what?! What could a 13-year-old possibly need Mental Toughness Training for?”
The simple answer: for LIFE!
THE OUTER WORLD IS A REFLECTION OF THE INNER WORLD
I often tell folks that I went through graduate school in Psychology and never once had a course – ever – that taught me the fundamentals of mastering my thoughts and emotions. I never had a class that taught me how to strengthen my inner world. It’s not in the curriculum. And yet it’s the most important variable in creating success on any and every possible level!
A strong inner world can effortlessly create confidence, competence, enthusiasm, focus, determination, perseverance, patience, peace and all the psychological states that lead to masterful decision-making, skillful action and phenomenal results.
Someone with all the traditional training, education or physical talent in the world, who doesn’t also have Emotional Intelligence as the foundation, will never sniff true success. They may figure out how to make boatloads of money, or how to accumulate lots of wins on the playing field, but they’ll never be able to enjoy that money or those wins, or what come of them. These folks wait for joy to come from some external source, like wealth, or a certain lifestyle, or a certain degree of recognition or fame, for example. And that cycle of waiting will NEVER end, because the programming of the untrained mind is that there’s never enough. And to make it even worse, they have to work 10 times harder to get there!
Someone with a strong inner world, on the other hand – a trained mind – knows how to create fulfillment, bliss, reward and complete happiness from nothing but the decision to do so, and then prioritizes that choice, makes that decision every day, creates those masterful psychological states, and genuinely and fully enjoys the best results with the least effort. And then people call that person “lucky”. Because they seem to get all the breaks, or life seems to “come easy to them”. And, in a way, they’re right. Success does come easy to the mentally tough. But only after the diligent and consistent hard work of training the mind.
THE OUTER WORLD IS A REFLECTION OF THE INNER WORLD
I applaud people like Debbie Farrelly, the owner of Arizona Dynamics Gymnastics (http://www.azdynamics.com/index.htm) and her staff of coaches. These are people who are committed to teaching young children the importance and value of a disciplined mind.
Our school systems need to follow that lead and integrate formalized Emotional Mastery courses and classes into the curricula. These Mental Mastery tools, when learned at an early age, will beautifully and profoundly alter the way a child’s life unfolds. Because it will profoundly alter the way that child views life – from the place of a creator.
Here’s a profound exercise that we can all benefit from:
Start catching yourself complaining, and replace those complaints with expressions of gratitude. Literally turn the language around 180 degrees. Complaining is one of the weakest practices ever. It propagates the victim mentality. So start stopping. And switch into the high vibrational state of gratitude and appreciation. From that state, we activate creativity. We strengthen the inner world. Mastery ensues. And then the results. And it feels a hell of a lot better.
Filed under: Creating Your Dream, Uncategorized | Tags: bliss, Chris Dorris, Christopher Dorris, Clarity, coaching, community, courage, creativity, discipline, dream life, dreams, emotion control, Freddy Couples, Fun, intelligence, Keynote Speaker, meditation, mental toughness, Michael Allen, Networked Blogs, passion, Personal Coaching, personal growth, PGA Tour, psychological strength, The Gap, Tiger Woods, toughness, Waste Management Phoenix Open
BECAUSE IT’S FUN!
One of the most profound observations that I’ve made over the years in my work as a Coach, Mental Toughness Trainer, and even way back in the day as a Social Worker, is that humans are at their best when they feel their best.
Which means we all have tremendous incentive to become more masterful at creating the high vibe moods – feeling great.
The biggest mistake that I observe people making in the pursuit of excellence and their dreams is WAITING. We’ve been conditioned to wait for some set of circumstances to be different in order to feel the moods or emotional states that catapult us into creativity, greatness, success and the results we desire. We wait for a promotion or a stellar performance review before we feel competent. We wait for a victory before we feel athletic. We wait for the report card that shows a high GPA before we feel intelligent. And that’s a huge waste of time!
Ask the champions of the world, like Michael Allen, what the psychological key to their success is and they’ll tell you that it’s to reverse the equation. Instead of RESULTS –> FEELING GOOD, switch it around to FEELING GOOD –> RESULTS.
Often when people first hear this they say, “Yeah but doesn’t preparedness and talent have something to with success as well?” And the obvious answer is of course it does! But all that talent and preparedness goes right out the window when it isn’t supported by a disciplined mind – one that is willing to choose to start with the masterful moods.
I’ve come across some exceptionally skilled folks in my life that have never achieved or experienced greatness because they paralyze their talents with doubt, and by waiting for results – proof. And, I’ve met some remarkably successful folks who self-admittedly have very little raw talent who get much more out of the little skill that they have by prioritizing belief, and by not waiting for results to feel great.
So the bottom line here is simple: let yourself feel great first! NOW! Don’t wait. How? Like anything else that involves mastery – with practice.
If you’d like a suggestion for a specific Mental Toughness Tool that’ll help you out with this, click here http://bit.ly/cyHT3m to check out a recent Miraculous Life email bulletin I wrote on how to put your Game Face on.
When I ask Michael Allen these days why he plays golf, his answer is, “Because it’s fun.” When I ask him why he wants to be the first ever human to win his first event on the Champions Tour and then win a PGA Tour event he says, “Because it’s fun.” When I ask him why he puts so much effort into his preparation and physical training, “Fun.”
Let the intelligence of light-heartedness do its magic for you. Because it’s fun!
p.s. The video ends abruptly because the camera was full and it shut itself off during the recording. But what was missed in the video was captured in the writing.
p.p.s. I really welcome your comments and suggestions for content for future posts, so don’t hesitate to submit any thoughts you might have.
Filed under: Creating Your Dream, Uncategorized | Tags: bliss, coaching, creativity, discipline, dream life, intelligence, meditation, mental toughness, personal growth, psychological strength, The Gap
THE GAP
Stop thinking. Stop reading this for a second and stop thinking.
It’s not easy, is it? And why would it be? After all, it’s your brain’s job to think. But with practice, it can be trained to be quiet.
And why would I ever want my brain to be quiet? A few reasons:
- Increased ability to experience peace
- Reduced anxiety
- Increased confidence
- Better health
- More efficient access to memory, ideas, creativity
- Increased physical coordination
- Increased problem solving ability
- Increased levels of patience
- Increased levels of compassion
- Increased ability to manifest more of what you want with less effort
- Increased productivity
- Increased levels of energy
- Relaxation
- Heightened awareness to thoughts and emotions
- Less defensiveness
- Less anger
- Increased focus
- Present Moment Alertness
- Improved job performance
- Improved athletic performance
Imagine that your brain has two settings, ON and OFF. We’re quite familiar with the ON. It’s how we spend the vast majority of our existence. And thank God for the ON, for if we didn’t have the ability to think, we’d be totally dysfunctional. But there’s a whole other realm to be explored. The OFF. Also referred to as the discontinuity, or The Gap, it’s a magical state where we transcend thought and enter the world of infinite possibilities. The realm of pure potentiality.
In this state of stillness and spaciousness we remember that we are inextricably connected to all that is. We experience infinite peace. Fear is a product of thinking. Specifically, thinking about what could go wrong. In the absence of thought, there can be no fear. And in the absence of fear, there is only peace, compassion, love, and lightness of being.
Practicing creating stillness doesn’t actually result in stillness in all areas of the brain. In fact, it activates one part of the brain (the neocortex, or frontal lobe), but it quiets another part (the thalamus). The result is called coherence. And the benefits of coherence, as you see in the list above, are numerous. This practice of getting in the “OFF’, so to speak, results in mastery in all forms.
And the practice is so simple.
How do you get in the Gap?
Give yourself twenty minutes to do this practice. Sit quietly somewhere you will not be interrupted or distracted. You will do this practice silently in your mind with your eyes closed.
1. Begin the practice by taking a couple deep breaths and then ask yourself and answer the following 3 questions:
- Who am I?
- What do I want?
- What is my Life Purpose?
Reflecting upon these three questions will serve to remind you of who you are and want to be, what you desire for your life and for others’, and of your ultimate mission – that which is more important to you than anything else, something that you will be proud to say you honored consistently as you grow older. This life purpose will involve in some way, making a contribution to the world.
2. Once you have reflected upon those questions and answered them, it’s time to begin the actual gap meditation.
Simply sit comfortably with your eyes closed and begin to quiet the mind. Become an observer of the mind. Observe the thoughts that arise and remember that you are not those thoughts.
3. As you notice the thoughts that your mind is generating, simply and gently release them as if to release the pressure of holding onto a small helium filled balloon. And simply continue to repeat that practice for the duration of the meditation. It’s simply a practice of noticing and releasing the thoughts that our minds create. It’s a practice of conditioning the mind into a higher functioning state of coherence. Ultimately, you will experience gaps in thinking, spaces of thoughtlessness. That happens spontaneously as a result of the practice. Notice those gaps and over time experience what it is like to permit yourself to stay in those gaps longer and longer before exiting it by generating the next thought.
ENJOY!
You’ll notice many things as you practice the meditation, but one thing to pay particular attention to is the lightness that you feel when you release an unpleasant thought. You will invariably get caught up in some disturbing or anxiety provoking thought. Then you’ll remember that you don’t need it. You’ll release it. And the subsequent experience will be that you return to peace and lightness. This peace or lightness of being is your natural state. It never disappears. You are eternally enveloped within it. You can only render yourself incapable of experiencing it with negative thinking. As you practice The Gap, you’ll be strengthening your ability to make that same shift throughout your day. The shift from unnecessary suffering back to peace. And as a result, you’ll feel better, and activate mastery in all you do.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bliss, community, courage, discipline, dream life, mental toughness, personal growth, psychological strength, Tiger Woods
Since the whole Tiger drama initiated last month, I’ve been getting countless emails , text messages, and hearing jokes and criticisms about him and what’s gone on. With such world-wide fame comes enormous public scrutiny, and his decisions and behaviors have resulted in, among other things, a lot of finger-pointing. A lot of judgment.
I was amazed at how quickly people went to the effort of creating photoshopped images and posting condescending YouTube videos about him and the drama he created. Tiger has given us an infinitely convenient opportunity to practice something here that it simply not useful – aligning through negativity. More specifically, his story has given us the opportunity to pretend that we , ourselves, are beyond transgression.
That’s not to say that each of has broken our marital or relationship agreements and had affairs. I have heard jokes and criticisms, however, offered by folks who have. The hypocisy seems ironic. But when I think about why any of us have the inclination to cast such judgments, regardless of whether or not we are guilty of the same charges, it seems that we’re just doing what we’ve been told. We have been conditioned to believe that there’s something inadequate about us, something not good enough, or that we should be better in many ways than we are, or that we’re just flat out bad. And what accompanies that conditioning is the unconscious desire to deny ourselves any acknowledgment of our own dark sides. And instead, to cast judgment outwardly.
RADICAL ACCEPTANCE
Why is it so much easier to point the finger at someone like Tiger and cast judgment than it is to turn my attention inward and ask myself questions like, “How am I breaking my word in my own life?” Or, “How am I out of integrity right now?” Or, “How am I breaking agreements or commitments with people these days?” It’s because I’ve been taught over the course of my lifetime to be ashamed of myself for my bad decisions and behaviors. I’ve been taught that there is something inadequate about me and my truth. So now I have the incentive to deny it. And instead to cast judgment outward. When I do this, I’m missing out on an opportunity for potentially tremendous growth.
I was working with a healer a few years ago, with the intention of examining my own decisions and behaviors within relationships. He taught me something profound called Radical Acceptance. He taught me that when I can stop judging myself for my bad decisions, my undesirable qualities or behaviors, and instead can practice literally LOVING them, by “radically accepting” every single part of myself completely, only then am I free to transform. As long as I put effort into defending, shaming or denying my “dark side” then I am incapable of growth.
Carl Jung, one of my favorite teachers in history, spoke about the “dark side” as that equally perfect side of our selves that simply has yet to have the light of consciousness shined upon it. Much like the dark side of the moon. Since our moon is locked in synchronous orbit around the Earth, we only get to see one side of it. The other side, the side in the “shadow” is dark. But that doesn’t mean that evil is occurring over there. It’s simply in the shadows. And so it is with our own selves. We have the lightness (consciousness) and the darkness (the unconscious). Both are beautiful. And as Alan Watts said, “Each of us is an aperture through which the universe observes itself. Only the game that we’re playing is to not know that.” Which conversely means that the game we get to play in life is to gradually come to know that each of us is the entire universe pretending to be human; to shine more and more light upon on own dark sides and bring more of the unconscious into the conscious. To grow. And we can never do that if we’re denying ourselves our dark sides as if they were bad, or evil, or inadequate.
By radically accepting ourselves as expressions of Divine Grace in human form, with human fallibility, and practicing loving the parts of ourselves that we’ve historically hated, we are free to grow beyond them and to transform. To move toward God Consciousness and Unity Consciousness.
TAT TVAM ASI
It is said that all human suffering arises from the illusion of the separate self. Suffering originates from the belief that we are disconnected from source and from each other. So when I say to someone, “How the hell could Tiger Woods do something like that?!” The answer is simply, because he did. And hopefully he’ll experience great growth and transformation as a result of it. But it does me, nor anyone else, any service to engage in judging him for it. Nothing of value comes from that. No growth. No expansion. I’m just making it easier for us to experience separateness amongst ourselves versus sameness or connectedness. And it’s that separateness that leads to hurt, crime and war.
In the ancient language Sanskrit, there is a phrase, Tat Tvam Asi. Loosely translated, it means That Thou Are. Another way of saying that is, “That’s me.” The useful alternative to acknowledging separateness (through criticism, condemnation and judgment) is, of course, to practice acknowledging sameness.
Each of us contains the seeds of everything within us: compassion, hatred, generosity, greed, appreciation, resentment, honesty, deceit, etc. That’s not to say we are acting on each of those qualities. But in order for me to even make observation of something in another, I must also contain that something within myself. So the alternative practice is this:
Whenever you feel emotionally affected by someone else, in either a pleasant or an unpleasant way, recite the phrase to yourself, “Tat Tvam Asi”, or, “That’s me, and thank you God for making me exactly like that.” When you hear a criticism or a joke about Tiger’s infidelity, silently say to yourself, Tat Tvam Asi. Because you too contain the seed of incongruence or unfaithfulness within you. And love that seed. When you witness a young boy unconditionally offering an elderly woman assistance with her groceries at the store, say Tat Tvam Asi. Because you too contain that seed of unconditional love and support within you. And love that seed. When someone cuts you off and flips you off on the highway, say to yourself, Tat Tvam Asi. Because you too contain the seeds of urgency and anger. And love those seeds. And when you hear a story about a woman giving her rent money to her neighbors so they can buy their children food, say to yourself, Tat Tvam Asi. Because you too contain the seeds of abundance, generosity, non-attachment and compassion. And love them.
When we remove the resistance to who and what we are, and instead radically accept and love all parts of ourselves, we are free to grow. When we replace the practice of recognizing how different we are with the practice of recognizing sameness, we are free to grow together.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bliss, Chris Dorris, Christopher Dorris, Clarity, coaching, community, courage, creativity, discipline, dream life, dreams, emotion control, Freddy Couples, Fun, intelligence, Keynote Speaker, meditation, mental toughness, Michael Allen, Networked Blogs, passion, Personal Coaching, personal growth, PGA Tour, psychological strength, The Gap, Tiger Woods, toughness, Waste Management Phoenix Open
T.G.I.F.?!
What do you call a life that reserves joy for maybe 2 of the 7 days of every week? I call it hell. The hell that we experience as a result of the conditioning that led us to choosing to create a life that leaves us longing for Friday afternoons and vacations.
“Thank God It’s Friday.” That this saying has become popular enough to result in a super successful restaurant chain is a clear indication that we have permitted ourselves to settle for a life far less rewarding, exciting, invigorating, stimulating, magical and desirable than each of us deserves. We’ve been programmed to reserve our most pleasant psychological states for such a small percentage of our waking existence. We reserve joy for the weekend, or for vacation.
Let’s consider that word “vacation” for a moment. This is another interesting indicator of how we’ve come to settle for mediocre (or worse) lives. Most people work hard all year and accumulate vacation time. This vacation time is the time they spend the rest of the year looking forward to, because it’s the only extended time of the year when they’re going actually enjoy themselves the way they wished they could all the time. So they go on “vacation”. That word actually means the act of vacating. To vacate. We vacate our every day hellish lives in order to escape them and go experience the bliss we wish we could have instead every day. And toward the end of the “vacation”, most people start feeling depressed again because they’re preparing to “go back to reality”, or “go back to the grind”. How depressing is this?
If you use the phrase, “Thank God it’s Friday” or if at the end of your weekends and vacations you loathe “going back to reality”, then change that reality! And you can do that in at least one of the following two ways:
1. Create a new life. Every one of us is a creative genius, and we can all create the lives we want regardless of how overwhelmingly unlikely that may seem at times. Change your life, do whatever it takes to fill your life with the reward and the joy and the light-heartedness that you feel when you’re on a dream vacation. Literally make the changes in your outer world that will result in it being easy for you to wake up and say, “Thank God it’s Monday, because today I GET TO…” The only thing stopping anyone from making these changes is the belief that it’s not possible, so if that’s your story, change that first.
2. Change the way you’re thinking. As one of my favorite teachers, Wayne Dyer, always says, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” Say right now you’re choosing to be the caretaker of your elderly mother who has Alzheimer’s and consequently you don’t have the freedom right now to move to Belize to open your dream wellness center. If you’re feeling burdened by your situation, change the way you’re viewing it. Find the beauty in that. Find the meaning and the reward in that, because it’s there. In any situation where you are making the choice, for whatever reason, to postpone a desire in order to attend to a greater need of your own or someone else’s, love that choice and permit yourself to experience the bliss within that. If Viktor Frankl (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl) can accomplish that in the concentration camp, then we can do the same in our lives.
ON PERMANENT HOLIDAY
The reason I’ve entitled this post “ON PERMANENT HOLIDAY” is that, first, I really love the term “Holiday” over “vacation” and second, we have the ability, every one of us, to live as if we were on permanent holiday. Because, in fact, we are. One way of defining heaven is: THIS. One way of defining hell is: not believing this is heaven. The likelihood of any one of us ever being born is incomprehensibly small. We got into the big party called life. We won the biggest lottery in the history of existence. We’re on permanent holiday, and we get to act that way, and get to feel that way, every day.
Imagine the best moods you have ever felt on your best ever holidays (vacations). Recreate that mood now. See if you can feel it. Go back to those places in your mind and see if you can, right now, remember those moods or states of being – those infinitely light, joyous, celebratory, free feelings. If you can’t, keep trying until you can. If you can, you’ve just demonstrated your ability to choose that mood at any given moment in your life. We don’t need to be on Holiday in oder to feel those great feelings. We don’t need anything to be different in order to experience those high vibrational states – that total joy and bliss. Except our thinking.
Never go on vacation again. You don’t need to. When you take a trip somewhere, consider it an outing on your bigger permanent holiday. And stop reserving those amazing moods for such a small percentage of your life. And when you do, you’ll benefit in two ways:
1. You’ll simply feel better more. Much better.
2. When we feel better, we ARE better – at everything. One of the most magical elements of our human experience is that the better we feel the better we are in every possibly discipline. The better we feel, the better our health, the better our memories, creativity, athleticism and coordination, capacity for compassion, social skills, emotional strength, and the list goes on.
Enjoy the Holiday!
Filed under: Creating Your Dream, Uncategorized | Tags: bliss, Chris Dorris, Christopher Dorris, Clarity, coaching, community, courage, creativity, discipline, dream life, dreams, emotion control, Freddy Couples, Fun, intelligence, Keynote Speaker, meditation, mental toughness, Michael Allen, Networked Blogs, passion, Personal Coaching, personal growth, PGA Tour, psychological strength, surrender, The Gap, Tiger Woods, toughness, uncertainty, Waste Management Phoenix Open
CHOOSING PEACE AMIDST CHAOS
One of my favorite definitions of enlightenment : “The ability to embrace paradox, contradiction and uncertainty.” Another: “The ability to choose peace in every moment of your life.”
So if we marry those two definitions, then we can surmise that in order to be able to choose peace, we also need to be able to embrace uncertainty. Not just deal with uncertainty, but embrace it. Love it. Genuinely feel gratitude for the unpredictable nature of life.
We have challenges right now. Times are tough. Everyone’s feeling it somehow. Some more than others. Some are feeling inconvenienced by the economy while others are feeling pure panic. Some are finding this time to be an unprecedented opportunity for investment. Others have lost everything that could be invested and are in survival mode.
What I find remarkably interesting, however, is that there are extremely wealthy people who are in panic mode and extremely poor people who are in peace. Which supports the fact that the variable of how financially set you are is totally irrelevant to your ability to choose peace, embrace uncertainty or activate creative genius. The only variable that matters now, or ever, is your EQ, or Emotional Quotient – your ability to choose how you view the world and its current state.
Uncertainty is the design of the universe in which we exist, from which we emerged. It’s the nature of our universe, and is also therefore our very own nature.
We’ve been taught to fear that uncertainty. And that’s bad teaching. Because of the conditioning we have experienced in our lifetimes, as well as our thousands of years old conditioning that we’ve inherited from the collective human experience, we have been taught to pay great attention to what could potentially go wrong as an effort to avoid it. We’ve been conditioned to selectively attend to the fact that, under certain circumstances, if certain things do or don’t happen, we’re not going to be OK. In fact, we very well may be screwed. And we’ve become very sophisticated at creating supportive arguments for that notion. For example, I could effortlessly argue that if this economy doesn’t turn around soon, I’ll lose everything and could go homeless. I could make that argument. Convincingly. If I had to argue that in a debate, I could do it, and win. But WHY would I ever want to do that?! That thinking doesn’t serve me. It leads to fear, and fear disables creativity which is the failure of intelligence. And I need my creativity and all forms of intelligence to create wealth, or anything else that I wish to manifest now or ever. So my convincing argument is unintelligent. And that argument is the product of my conditioning. I’ve been taught to think that way.
WHAT I THINK ABOUT, I BRING ABOUT
The great irony within this is that where I put my attention, I also put my energy and what I think about, I bring about. So, is it potentially true that if the economy doesn’t recover soon, and then this thing happens, and then that doesn’t and then this and that…then I could end up homeless? The best answer? Who cares? That’s a waste of my time. It leads to nothing creative or solution focused. It’s also the kind of thinking that creates heart failure. It’s infinitely unintelligent.
THRIVING vs. SURVIVING
So then what IS intelligent? It’s wise to feel good. And how then do I feel good? By thinking well. By choosing to change the internal dialog that I am having with myself all day every day. To make the content of that inner conversation one that is inspiring. To talk to myself in a way that leaves me feeling excited about thriving, not worried about surviving. I want to focus on my desires as opposed to my fears. Again, whichever one I choose to give attention to, is the one that I’ll give life to.
This kind of disciplined thinking is easy when things are going our way. But despite the fact that it’s tougher to think well under challenge, it’s more critical than ever to be a great thinker under duress. This time is one that I refer to as a collective critical moment. It’s popular these days to be worried and to complain. But that kind of thinking is actually, if anything, prolonging the struggle and return to abundance.
As Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world. Don’t contribute to the fear consciousness. Practice activating your creative genius by feeling gratitude for the challenges that we are experiencing right now, and choose enthusiasm. Choose creativity, innovation. Choose peace. Choose to embrace the uncertainty of all of this. That’ll never go away. Once the economy recovers, the uncertainty will still be there. So why wait? Practice starting to love it now.
SOME MANTRAS TO REPEAT A HUNDRED TIMES A DAY:
“EVERYTHING IS UNFOLDING AS IT SHOULD.”
“THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH THE WORLD; WHAT’S WRONG IS THE WAY I VIEW IT.”
“I CAN CHOOSE PEACE RATHER THAN THIS.”
“I AM THE SOURCE OF INFINITE CREATIVITY.”
Filed under: Creating Your Dream, Uncategorized | Tags: bliss, Clarity, courage, creativity, discipline, dream life, dreams, emotion control, intelligence, mental toughness, passion, psychological strength, toughness
This is the third in the initial triad of posts. The first was on Clarity – knowing what you want, the second on the Courage to believe your dream is possible, and this post will address how to develop the Discipline to do what it takes to make that vision a reality.
The reason I use the term “discipline” here is because it derives from the word disciple, which means open to growth. And one who is disciplined in mind knows that no matter how well they may be doing at anything, there’s always another more efficient way to be discovered. And that’s encouraging, because we will never be finished with the game of growth. And as humans, we are designed for growth.
In this context, I also use the word “discipline” synonymously with Psychological Strength, or the emotional fortitude to deal masterfully with the unpredictable nature of life.
It takes a disciplined mind to be able to return to the creative state – the state of mind that is necessary to create the life of your dreams. And we must return to it again and again, as we experience the challenges that life brings. In fact, the disciplined mind is not only less vulnerable to such challenges, the disciplined mind is enthusiastic about them. To the disciplined mind, life would be boring without the downs that give meaning to the ups.
And where does such discipline come from? It comes from mindful conditioning, or psychological exercise. Just as you would go to the gym in order to condition your body, you must condition your mind in order to achieve psychological strength – a disciplined mind.
These psychological exercises have been absent from our educational systems, and thus the vast majority of us have never been introduced to them. Consequently, most of us have been poorly conditioned, or even negatively conditioned, and live in a victim state, without even knowing it. We have been taught to believe that we live in a “happening to me” world, as opposed to being taught that each one of us is capable of creating the life of our dreams, regardless of circumstance. This might explain why 84% of Americans report hating their jobs. We don’t believe that what we want is within reach. If we’d been properly taught, or conditioned, then we would have the mental strength to not only believe in the accessibility of our desires, but also we would have the strength to view challenges as entertainment as opposed to road blocks, or as evidence of immenent failure.
The great news: if you’re reading this, you still have the ability to strengthen your mind.
As is the case in physical conditioning, there are many, many exercises for psychological conditioning. If, however, as a coach, I was only able to teach ONE exercise, it would be this: Emotion Control.
One of our greatest attributes as humans is our creativity. Each of us is infinitely creative. And that creativity can be activated or deactivated, depending upon our emotional state. An undisciplined mind is not capable of managing emotions from moment to moment. Instead, the undisciplined mind is entirely vulnerable to circumstance. The undisciplined mind reacts to challenges with fear (or any of its derivatives, like anger), which deactivates creativity. When creativity is deactivated, we are significantly less capable of manifesting desired outcomes, or getting what we want. And we have to work 10 times harder. On the contrary, a disciplined mind is capable of creating the emotional states that activate creative genius (enthusiasm, confidence, competence, compassion, and energized curiosity, for example), and therefore is significantly more capable of creating success and doing so with much less effort.
So here is the most fundamental Mental Toughness Tool that when practiced will give you the power to activate your creative genius:
CATCH –> OWN –> REPLACE
CATCH!
The first step in this practice is to CATCH yourself whenever you are complaining. About ANYTHING! Complaining is by definition an undisciplined behavior that is the product of an undisciplined thought process which is the product of an undisciplined mind. Complaining is useless. And it instantly deactivates creativity. So the first step is to heighten your awareness to the frequency with which you complain about life throughout your day. Be diligent, and you’re likely to be amazed by how often that is. Catch yourself complaining about traffic, about co-wokers, about your partner, about the weather, about an errant golf shot, about poor customer service (I’m not saying, by the way, that you’re complaint is illegitimate! I’m just saying it deactivates creative genius and problem solving ability!), about the economy, about the government, about yourself even. Each catch is the equivalent of one repetition, and as the reps add up, so does your strength.
OWN
The second step is to take enthusiastic ownership of your emotional state. You are NEVER feeling upset about anything because of the thing itself, you are only ever feeling upset because of the way you are choosing to think about it. And you have the ability to change your thinking at any time. To practice taking ownership of your emotional state, simply say to yourself the following sentence:
“I am not feeling this way because of what’s going on here; I’m feeling this way because of how I’m choosing to think about it.”
REPLACE
And finally, the third step in the practice is to change the content of your thinking. Literally change your mind. Change the way you are thinking about the event. Take the example of traffic. If you catch yourself saying or thinking, “This traffic is killing me!”, and then own it, the last step is to replace that thought with something like, “It ain’t bad; it just is.” Moments later you might find yourself thinking, “no, this really is bad. In fact, this totally sucks! I’m going to be late again!” Own it again and replace it again with something else like, “It’s just a bunch of people trying to get where they need to be, I’m one of them, and from now on I’m leaving earlier to give myself more time.” And that’s one more rep. You’re stronger and more disciplined.
Even though in many of these cases you could establish a very convincing argument for why this is a legitimate complaint opportunity, it doesn’t matter. It’s still a useless complaint, and it’s weak because it changes nothing. So utilize each situation as an opportunity for disciplining your mind.
And even though many of these events may seem ultimately inconsequential, each is a very valuable opportunity to further develop your discipline so that one day, when you find yourself in a not so inconsequential situation, you’ll have the psychological strength to activate your creative genius in a critical moment – one that could forever change your life in a magnificent way.
This practice by itself will ultimately result in two things for you:
1. The ability to control your emotional states, and your creativity, so that you are profoundly more likely to create your dream life,
and
2. Much more peace in the process.
If you’re enjoying these posts, please post a comment of your own or a question, subscribe to the blog and/or forward it on to your friends/colleagues.
Until next time…
Filed under: Creating Your Dream | Tags: bliss, Clarity, courage, discipline, dream life, dreams, intelligence, passion
This is the second installment in the initial triad of posts. The first was Clarity. This one is on Courage. And the next will be on Disicipline.
Without Clarity on how it is that one wishes to most profoundly use their life, they certainly cannot create the dream. But that clarity is not enough. In order to manifest the life of your dreams, you must also establish the Courage to reprogram some extremely powerful conditioned beliefs that tell you you can’t have what you want, or be who you want, or follow your passion and still thrive.
One of the most profoundly debilitating beliefs that we pick up along the way is that it is not practical, or in many cases even possible, to expect to be able to commit one’s life to their passion and simultaneously thrive. We’re told that we need to be “realistic” with our goals and aspirations, and to have “back up plans” that are more likely to come true. This advice comes from a place of scarcity thinking – fear. And it’s handed down generation to generation. And it is precisely why 84% of Americans report hating their jobs! We’re directed by “Guidance Counselors” and “Career Development Advisors” to take tests that will tell us what we should do with our lives. We’re offered a menu of options to choose from and we’re actually encouraged NOT to rely on our fantasies of our perfect futures, because those fantasies, those vibrant, creativity packed visions, aren’t practical or dependable and won’t result in our ability to survive. And then we spend the rest of our lives coming up with excuses to justify why we are settling for less than what we truly desire.
Well, it’s time to adopt the courage to put aside the desire to “survive” and replace it with the decision to thrive. And in order to do that, we need to challenge the belief that there could possibly be anything more intelligent to do than to trust the infinite organizing intelligence inherent within our passions!
For two decades now, I’ve been working with folks on creating dreams. And in every bit of observation that I have ever made, read about or heard about, it remains consistently true that those people who have demonstrated the COURAGE to believe in the resource inspiring power of a passionate vision, are the people who create the greatest success, both emotionally as well as financially.
There was a Harvard study conducted that involved 1500 subjects who were about to graduate and go off into the real world. They were each asked if they were going to pursue a career for money or for passion. Two thirds answered money. 20 years later, the follow up was conducted and 101 of the 1500 respondents had established a net worth of $1 Million or more. Of that 101, only ONE of them came from the group that pursued money. The other 100 came from the 500 who had the courage to pursue the passion.
As humans, we are designed for passion. The better we feel about where we are in our lives and how we are using them, the more we activiate the creative genius within each of us. And as we tap into that infinite source of creativity, we discover the resources to create miracles.
This Courage I speak of is a choice. It’s nothing more than a decision. Most people wait for evidence of success before they permit themselves to feel the courage. And most therefore spend their entire lives waiting and wishing. Don’t wait. Choose the courage now.
To reprogram your beliefs, repeat these mantras to yourself a hundred times a day:
I trust the intelligence inherent within my passion.
There is nothing wiser for me to do than to follow my bliss.
Chris Dorris' Blog 