How You Create Your Reality
A Real-Life Example
That’s right.
You create your reality.
Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.
You create the life you’re living and everything you experience.
Or more precisely, you create the life you’re living by the thoughts you choose to think.
I have to admit, a few years ago I would have told you to jump in a lake if you had said that to me.
There’s no way I would have believed you. There’s no way I could allow myself to believe you.
The life I was living was barely a life at all, and to take responsibility for my embarrassing creation just wasn’t something I was willing to do.
There’s no way anyone would choose to create the life I was living.
So how could it be possible to have created the experiences I was suffering through by choice?
This idea was unacceptable. It just didn’t make sense.
Why would I choose to think all of those painful thoughts and feel all of the awful emotions that tortured me every day?
How on earth is it possible that I decided to feel ashamed, embarrassed, defeated, and depressed?
And where’s all my stuff?
If I create my reality by the thoughts I choose to think, then why aren’t there a couple of vintage Ferraris parked in my driveway in front of the family mansion in the Rockies?
(Photo by Joshua Koblin on Unsplash)
Explain that to me.
If that’s what I want and think about all the time, then why did I ever drive a car I didn’t like and live alone in a dark apartment in the city?
There’s no way this could be true because I never purposely chose to live that life. No way.
The fact is I did create every experience I had lived and would live.
I did it today with the thoughts I chose to think, and I will do it again tomorrow and the next day.
What do I mean when I say you create the life you’re living by the thoughts you choose to think, and how is that possible?
It’s a process that can be broken down into five separate parts.
In this blog, we’ll go through a general overview of the concept, and I’ll explain the first time I applied this information to my life, changing it forever.
The intent is to help you develop a basic understanding of this concept so you can begin to apply it to your life.
You may find this information interesting or even somewhat entertaining, but that’s not the point.
This knowledge empowered me to gain control over my life.
I previously thought having any control over my life was impossible.
Applying this concept to my life gave me hope where none existed before.
My goal is to help you take this information and USE IT every day to deliberately create the life you want, instead of living a life in default mode, believing nothing is in your control, and feeling like a victim of everything.
I hope you decide to make this your goal too.
So here’s the overview:
- We encounter a circumstance in our life.
- Next, we choose a thought about that circumstance.
- The thought we choose produces a feeling.
- The feeling we have drives our actions.
- The actions we take determine the result we get.
- The results we get form our life.
To say you create the life you’re living by the thoughts you choose to think is an accurate summation and the most awesome truth.
If I were you and I read the overview of the concept I just wrote, I couldn’t help but think it seems like a relatively simple life concept to have had so much significance attributed to it.
And you’re right.
The idea is simple.
Like every other simple concept out there, it’s the nuanced understanding and application of it that makes it significant.
The fascinating thing about concepts like this one is they will continue to evolve and reveal their meaning and value to us as our understanding deepens and we apply it more often.
If you enjoy the evolution of a life concept as much as I do, I promise you will not be disappointed by what you learn here.
This is just your first step into the most worthwhile goal of deliberately creating the life you want to live.
As I said, the acceptance and application of these principles of thought completely changed my life.
This opinion is not mine alone but is shared by those closest to me who have witnessed these changes firsthand.
The only reason I’m sharing this with you is to raise your awareness of what’s possible and to give you hope where none may have existed before.
This is the main reason I am a Life Coach.
I want to help others who are suffering like I was.
I want you to realize the power and control you have of your life, and I want to show you how the thoughts you choose are the key to all of it.
So here’s my story.
For over thirty years, I hated my life.
I hated myself.
I hated my father.
The hate I felt permeated every area of my life and affected almost every second of every day.
Occasionally life would graciously bring me a little relief for a moment.
The rest of the time I would try to find this relief in drugs and alcohol.
But more often than not, the shame I would feel about myself for taking the drugs and drinking would far outweigh any temporary benefit.
Over those thirty years, I tried everything I could think of to change, but nothing worked.
I had seen psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists. I spent twenty-eight days in a rehabilitation center and countless evenings in NA and AA meetings.
I even tried meditation, yoga, and seeing a medium, but nothing brought the lasting relief I desperately wanted.
(Photo by Ian Stauffer on Unsplash)
Relief finally came in the form of a Life Coach.
During our first session, I spent most of our time explaining where I was in my life and how I got there.
I told her about how I had moved a lot when I was younger and how moving affected me.
I explained each move made me more introverted and turned to drugs and alcohol to relieve the stress and pain.
I talked about how I had developed a habit of withdrawing and giving up when things got difficult.
I told her how depressed I became in 2009 when the economy collapsed and I couldn’t find work.
I told her my story, and then she explained what a circumstance was and the relationship between the circumstances I experienced and my thoughts.
I learned that all life circumstances are factual and neutral until we freely choose a thought about them, and the thoughts we choose determine our feelings, actions, and results.
My Life Coach explained we create our lives by the thoughts we choose to think.
So I took my life story and tried to process it through this new filter of information and newfound perspective, and that’s when everything changed.
My life coach and I worked together to identify what the circumstance was that I was choosing painful thoughts about.
I used to look at my past and tell myself and other people that we moved a lot when I was growing up. But that isn’t entirely factual or neutral, is it?
What does “a lot” mean? Would everyone agree that the number of moves I made growing up was “a lot”?
Well, no. I’m sure someone who grew up in the military could look at the actual number of times I moved and not think it wasn’t many moves at all.
I had to find a new, factual way to express this circumstance.
The only way to do it was to say I moved from this city to that city when I was three, and I moved from this city to that city when I was seven. And I moved from this city to that city when I was 11, and that city to that city when I was 15, and again when I was 19.
When I removed that subjective description of how I viewed moving plus many others, it eliminated any power I had been incorrectly attributing to moving.
Moving had no power to make me think, feel, or do anything at all.
For the first time in my life, I was able to view the moves I had made as neutral events devoid of the terrible, life-destroying power I had been giving them.
The next thing my coach and I focused on was the thoughts I was choosing between the circumstance and the feeling I had about it.
I could select a thought about the circumstance that led me to feel depressed, angry, neutral, happy, or whatever else I chose to feel.
As simple as this idea is, to me, it was revolutionary.
(Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash)
I used to think there was a direct, causal relationship between the circumstances I experienced and how I felt.
I believed the moves made me feel hate, anger, and depression. But that wasn’t the truth. Those feelings were a result of the thought I chose.
The question she asked that changed everything for me was, “are the thoughts you’ve been choosing serving you?”
And the answer was no.
The thoughts I was choosing were terrible.
They led to awful feelings about myself, my dad, my past, and my future.
I was choosing these thoughts.
Let me say that again so it sinks in. I chose thoughts that led to me hating myself, my dad, my past, and my future.
I chose thoughts like I’m never going to fit in and be normal. I had been choosing thoughts like my dad doesn’t love me.
I chose to think I was broken.
I choose to think there’s something wrong with me because I didn’t adjust well to the moving we’ve done, and I thought there was something wrong with me because I was using alcohol and drugs to cope with my pain.
These thoughts weren’t serving me at all.
For the first time in my life, I understood that I had all the power and control to determine exactly how I felt, how I acted, my results, and ultimately my life.
What I had been choosing to think was awful.
I honestly didn’t realize before that it was a choice, but now that I did, there was no way I could continue to inflict so much pain and suffering into my life deliberately.
The work I did with my coach to apply these new concepts changed my life permanently.
I would never have believed it possible, but this simple exercise changed not only how I viewed my past but my present and future too.
I can’t emphasize enough how powerful it was for me to redefine my circumstance of moving through this new, factual filter, and to combine this new view of my circumstances with the freedom to choose how I felt about them was mind-blowing.
This new way of thinking took some time to adjust to, but I felt a huge weight lifted off my shoulders when it took hold.
I finally felt free of all of the hate.
I no longer hated myself, my life, or my dad.
I didn’t replace the thoughts I had been thinking with new thoughts immediately. I didn’t even feel like I needed to.
Just knowing I could choose to think about those moves anyway I wanted to was more than enough for me.
The freedom of that realization was overwhelmingly powerful.
In all honesty, it wasn’t until about a month after my last session with my coach that I even realized what the new thought was.
The best way to explain my new thought is to describe the old one. I hadn’t even realized there was an old thought or what it was until the new thought came to me.
I used to think my entire life was a waste.
I thought I had no purpose, and my existence was nothing but a painful, unwanted experience.
I didn’t want to be alive.
It occurred to me the last thirty years of my life, all the alcohol and drug abuse, suffering, hatred, depression, and pain was precisely the thing that makes me relatable to a large group of people.
I had been looking for the solution to free myself from this awful pain and finally found it.
I realized there’s a group of people out there just like me who need to know what I know, and I want to help them.
I’m the perfect person to relate to them and show them a new way to think so they can free themselves from the prison they believe they are trapped in, just like I did.
That’s my new thought, and I love it.
(Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash)
The point of discussing all of this is to demonstrate how you can and do create your results by the thoughts you choose to think.
All of the power and control of your life comes from your free will to choose those thoughts.
You are not a victim of circumstance. You get to choose how you think, feel, and act every second of every day.
No one and nothing determines the life you’re living except YOU!
If you don’t like the results you’re getting, it’s time to examine the thoughts that created those results.
You have all the power and control to change your thoughts, feelings, and actions to create a new life.
My life is entirely different now.
I recognize the truth of these principles, and I do my best to deliberately create the life I want by choosing the thoughts that will lead to those results.
Do I use these principles every second of every day? No.
The difference for me now is I don’t dwell and suffer in the unwanted thoughts, feelings, and results like I used to.
I still encounter neutral circumstances that I choose thoughts that lead to results I don’t prefer, but I don’t stay there.
My awareness and acceptance of my thoughts, and my application of these principles, allow me to mold my life into what I prefer.
More than ever before, I believe I am self-determined. I create my life, and I can make it everything I want it to be.
Am I living in the Rocky Mountains with a few vintage Ferraris in the driveway? Not yet, but soon.
A couple of years ago, I didn’t even want to be alive, and now I can’t imagine not living the life I am creating, one deliberate thought at a time.
My mission is to help everyone who wants it to realize and use the power and control they have to design the life they want deliberately.
The only question is, when do you think it would be a good time to take full responsibility for the results you’re creating in your life?
Increasing my clients’ awareness of how these principles are affecting their lives and teaching them how to use them to their advantage is precisely what I do every day.
I’d be happy to help you too.
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