sketches of the mind

You are in charge. That’s right, nobody controls your happiness but you.

It can be a scary prospect, wielding such influence over one’s own happiness. When we realize that happiness is within our control, there are suddenly no excuses, nobody to blame, no scapegoats. There is no more, “She made me angry” or “if only this would happen”.

We each control our own happiness, and we each choose when we will feel happy.

But sometimes it is easier to just let other people decide our happiness. That is why we so easily fall into reacting to others and their actions. But that puts our happiness in their hands. And if there is one thing scarier than placing our happiness in our own hands, it’s placing our happiness in somebody else’s.

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Courtesy of The Happy Guy (click for free positive thinking e-book)

This post is inspired by Gail’s post on her blog titled “A Critical Eye“. The post started off being about what one sees when taking a photo and then evolved into a discussion about perception and experience. So rather than clog up her comments box with a lengthy rant I thought I’d post about my thoughts here.

“Perception is projection” I was once told by Christopher Howard, a leading authority on the psychology of wealth and accelerated personal achievement.

What Chris is saying is that what we see is the result of the cumulation of our entire life experience i.e. of all the inputs into our psyche, our memory. It’s always fascinating how two people could look at the exact same thing and have different interpretations of it. So that tells us that it’s nothing to do with what is being observed but more to do with the observers themselves. Or as Gail so put it “and all of that takes place in the brain”.

So here’s the question: are we really in charge of our perceptions, and our thoughts?

Moving into the psychological realm now, Eckhart Tolle presents in “A New Earth“, the best-selling follow up to the powerful “The Power of Now“, his concept of ego. Note this is different to Freud’s explanation of ego.

As Tolle puts it:

The ego cannot distinguish between a situation and its interpretation of and reaction to that situation. You might say, “What a dreadful day,” without realizing that the cold, the wind, and the rain or whatever condition you react to are not dreadful. They are as they are. What is dreadful is your reaction, your inner resistance to it, and the emotion that is created by that resistance.

I am very concious of what Tolle is describing and have observed many occasions where myself and others have unconsciously reacted to situations and allowed the ego to take charge. Tying this back to the topic of perception before I digress any further, I would suggest that the eyes are the lenses, and the mind is the camera/processer.

What you see is what you want to see.

Two new documentaries that I’m excited to watch. Both are about raising social awareness to a new phase in humankind.

The Shift Movie

There is no release date as it appears the film is either still in production or is being scrapped/held due to lack of funding. I hope it gets completed!

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Dalai Lama Renaissance

I tried contacting the Toronto International Film Festival group to see if they are planning to screen Dalai Lama Renaissance and their reply was:

The complete list of films will be released in mid-August.

Hopefully I can see it sooner (even if that means I need to host a pre-screening myself!).

So how is it possible to attract wealth and money into your life?

I’ll answer that. First of all realise that it is possible to attract wealth and abundance into your life. Yes, it’s possible. If you don’t believe me, just ask somebody who’s doing it. Rags to riches stories are everywhere - Robert Kiyosaki, Donald Trump, those are a couple of guys who were able to do it, lose it, and do it again - so they’re great examples to learn from. I’m sure there are millions of others.

Ok so it is possible. Got it? Right.

Now that we agree that it’s possible, let’s shift your focus.

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