Life Can Be Exciting

There is nothing more exciting than being in a life that is going and blowing! I think that term, ‘going and blowing’ is an old railroad analogy, it describes a locomotive that is racing down the tracks full speed with a steady stream of smoke blowing out of the stack. We can use this to relate to living a life of constant self-discovery, personal growth and development.

Now I’m not implying that you should be pushing yourself all the time. There is a big difference between moving forward consistently and confidently, and in being in a hurry, rushing around. Rushing is when you are late for work or are trying to cram too many things into a short time frame, this is not freedom! This kind of behavior comes from a lack mentality, usually including the feeling of not enough time, among others.

When you are in a mode of consistent self-discovery and growth you get very excited with what is going on. You see new possibilities for yourself on a regular basis, which lead to more and more. You feel more and more freedom, the feeling of really being alive and unrestricted.

Even discovering what in your thinking has been responsible for an undesirable condition or behavior is exciting as this opens up your understanding and what you can do about it. You will see first hand how life works, what your role is and how you can best participate. You find out more of what you are capable of, which opens even more possibilities.

Your confidence rises substantially as you take command of your thinking, as well as responsibility for it. Your vision expands greatly as your faith in both your abilities and the possibilities available to you grows. Your ability to just accept your current situation along with taking responsibility for it becomes easier and easier. You see how change is more about choices and faith than about current conditions or past experiences.

You become more open to the new and different, and less attached to your existing beliefs and perceptions. You become comfortable with change as that is really life, always evolving. You stop trying to create a perfect, set, predictable life situation for yourself, as that is just fighting the natural flow of life.

You learn to know the difference between guided and inspired thought and the ego based protection thoughts. You take purposeful action based on the correct thoughts knowing that this is what you ought to do in order to have the experience meet with the idea, your role in the law of attraction.

Human history has shown that all this does not happen very often accidentally, although it does. But if you make it your intention to live your life in constant growth, you will. It is really an every day activity that you will have to develop into. Your days are already full, right. You will want to gradually make room for YOU time to do something related to your self-discovery and growth, and you will see that it will expand into everything that you do.

One thing that can help is to get a picture and even the feeling of what you want, because you will actually want to think, feel and act like the person doing and having what you want, in this case a lifestyle of consistent growth and development. Back to the train analogy, we can elaborate on this picture of the train going down the tracks and how it can relate to our life. It can be useful to have mental pictures that you can relate to as a way to further engage your thinking and enhance your feelings.

• It’s steadily moving forward.
• The scenery is always changing.
• It’s moving confidently, it knows where it’s going.
• It’s being guided on it’s way.
• Moving is what it was created for.
• It’s getting something done.
• It’s involved with people, things and places.
• It has purpose, taking purposeful action.

And maybe there are more aspects we can relate to, what do you think of when visualizing a fast moving train?

You will find that in choosing constant growth rather than trying to create a ‘perfect’ life, life is much more comfortable and satisfying. You will be less likely to be rushing around and more likely to be calm mentally and physically, getting more done – of what you want and enjoy.

Experiencing More Self-Discovery

Self-discovery happens as the result of conscious mental and physical action. Doing the same things over and over is not conscious mental action, it’s passive unconscious automatic beahavior.

We think we are thinking because our brains are working, that is not thinking. Real thinking is active curiosity, analysis, planning, dreaming and questioning. When you carry on only doing the same things each day in the same ways, you are essentially living one day many times. But when you are actively thinking, you are living a new day each day. And your personal growth and development is based on self-discovery. If you don’t find out more about yourself, who you are and what you can do, there is nothing to grow into. Becoming aware of yourself right now is the first important step- you can’t do anything about what you aren’t aware of.

I learned this lesson in my early 20’s when I was the night shift foreman in a precision sheet metal shop in the Silicon Valley during the initial electronics boom of the 70’s. The owner of the shop had hired a new brake operator who said that he had 20 years of experience doing the job. In this shop situation we did many small run jobs so there was always a lot of setting up the machines required all day long. The idea of someone with 20 years experience excited me because I was the main person doing all the set ups at the time, which kept me running from place to place to keep everyone productive.

When I was introduced to this new man, he looked at me, the 20-year-old, and gave me this look like, who are you to be my boss? I didn’t let it bother me as I had been working with others much older than I for some time. I showed him the machines where he would be working and gave him a basic run down of the current task at hand, and left him alone figuring he knew what he was doing. After about 30 minutes I got a chance to go to see how he was doing, I figured he would be well on his way.

He had not done anything! And guess what, his demeanor had changed. Right then I found out that here was a guy that had been using this kind of machine for over 20 years and did not know how to make a simple set up for one. All he had done for all those years was to put the parts in, hit the pedal to make it operate, and pull the part out – someone else had made the set ups.

Now I am not saying this to brag rather to illustrate the difference in how we can spend our time. Here was a man that essentially lived the same year 20 times, never progressing with his knowledge, skills and activities. Then, I was a 20 year old who started this kind of work when I was 16 and at this time had been doing prototype work and now running my own shift making most of the set ups for everyone there. My previous 4 years were each different as I progressed through the learning and skill development process.

My point here is not to judge someone for wanting to remain doing the same things for years but rather to illustrate how we can look at our use of our time. Everyone has their own life path and certainly can choose as they will. But if you are not experiencing life as you have dreamed, you can do something about it. It comes down to choice, if you are enjoying your life as it is great. But if you have been thinking about wanting your life to be different and you can see that you have been doing the same things in the same ways for a long time, you can do something about it.

How this all fits into self-discovery is this, when your mind is actively working with questions, finding solutions, being creative, and trying new things you are setting yourself up to discover more. Just ask yourself this question, if what you are doing and how you are doing it is working and satisfying, why would you seek a different or better way? You wouldn’t. You mind is designed to help automate as much as possible for you so doing simple tasks and operating your physical body do not require a lot of conscious thought all the time. Can you imagine the mental burden if you had to consciously think about all this basic stuff?

Your mind is consciously engaged as you choose to engage it. Your conscious mind does always have something going on, but if you do not actively engage it, this thought tends to be mainly repetitive, as you know.  In order to engage your mind you are actually asking it questions or giving commands. Your brain will serve to solve these questions and fulfill the commands. And this is when you really discover many things. You discover more about yourself, more about how to do something, and more of what is possible for you. All this because you are engaging your brain with active thought.

Take a look at what you are doing? Enhance your self-awareness. Are you moving forward at the pace you are happy with? Do you feel stuck in a repetitive cycle? Do you like where you are, or not?  Asking questions of yourself is a great way to stimulate self-discovery and get your life moving in the direction you want. And, to find out what you are truly happy with right now.  Personal growth and development is a daily ongoing process, to keep it going, pay attention every day.

John Halderman

 

Your Brain Stores Memories and Recalls With The Same Neurons

A recent study has proven that your brain uses the same neurons when you
recall a memory as it did when you initially had the experience. This
has been thought to be the case for some time but the study now shows
scientific proof. This is good news for your personal growth and
development.

For the brain, remembering is a lot like doing. This is powerful! When
you realize this is how the brain works, you can use this knowledge to
your advantage. It has been believed that your brain does not know the
difference between an actual occurrence, a memory or specific thought
about a possibility.

In this new study conducted by a team of American and Israeli
researchers, they were able to pinpoint the location of mini-storms of
brain activity that occurred with the initial action as well as the
later recall of it. They were able to show that both occurred in the
same brain cells concentrated around the hippocampus region of the
brain.

It has been found in other research that the brain does not really know
the difference between an imagined action, a real one or the memory of
either. Similar to how you can affect your body and mind from input to
one or the other. It has been commonly known that you can train your
body to do specific motions through your thoughts, and it has been shown
that you can affect your thought by specific physical movement of you
body. In other words, an athlete can train their mind to control the
body by physically doing an activity in exactly the way you want and the
brain will learn how this is done.

All of this continues to build support for how you can direct your
thoughts and actions through visualization and affirmation. There is now
more proof that the memory of and the actual occurrence of something are
no different in your mind. This leads to your being able to pre-program
your mind to ‘know’ specific things without them actually happening yet.
Your brain will allow you to do something, which it knows, easier than
an unknown.

When you create a powerful vivid imagined scenario in your mind, backed
by appropriate emotions, you can program your mind much like it has
actually occurred. Your mind likes to do what it is familiar with, so if
you create this familiarity with clear emotionally backed thought your
brain acts as though it has happened. It is easier to do again what you
are familiar with. There is a natural hesitation to what your brain does
not know, so make it known and familiar through your imagination.

Familiarizing your brain with what you want through emotion backed
visualization and affirmations acts to program it for desirable
situations making them easier to do again and again. Also your
unconscious mind and inner self attempt to support and assist the
thoughts you hold. Just like the more you physically practice a sports
technique the more your mind helps you fulfill the desire, your mind
will attempt to help fulfill thoughts of any clear desires.

Learning how your brain works helps you to understand how you can use it
to your advantage. After all, it will be doing these things anyway, why
not direct them to your wants and needs? Use tools such as affirmations,
visualization, treasure maps, writing your story, act as though, or
anything that can help familiarize your mind with what you want.
Remember, use thoughts of what you DO want, not what you don’t want or
like. Your mind will act to support whatever you think about with
emotion and clarity – good or bad!

John Halderman, for more daily growth and self discovery tools and
methods – https://www.effectivepersonaldevelopmentblog.com

 

Stop your busy activities for a moment

Take a look at what you have been doing and thinking for the last few hours or day.

Are you supporting what you want in your life or are you caught up in hectic reactive behavior?

Of course there are many things which you must do,

But in order to enjoy more of what you want,

You must gradually insert it into your life – yourself.

Ask yourself,

How could I have done things a little differently?

What can I do now, and tomorrow that will bring in a little more of what I want into my day?

Come up with a simple plan of how you will do it.

Schedule it in, go over in your mind what and how,

Use reminder notes, set your watch or phone alarm as a reminder,

Whatever you can use to jog yourself out of the routine just enough to insert a little something different.

Change is usually done little by little more often than through a big event,

Yet we tend to hope for the big event.

While you are waiting you can do it a little at a time and before you know it – you are there!

Checking up on yourself everyday is a good way to discover what to change and how do go about it.

Come up with a balance of doing what is necessary along with a continuous process of growth.

The growth part can very easily slip away, getting consumed by all that you think you need to do in a day.

The power of the human mind is in the ability to exert command over your thinking and what you do.

Choose to step in and be the director of your behavior.

Enjoy the discovery,

John