SPECIAL OFFER

I have availabilty to coach for free one client in life mission coaching. It’s a package of 12 sessions, one session weekly for 3 months. Only serious people looking for change, inspiration and achievements need to contact me at robertomoussi@yahoo.com.

It only depends where you want to focus on!

Suppose you went to a restaurant and you only managed to sit on a table next to the smoking area. Two guys are sitting on the next table smoking. You are a non smoker. You can curse your luck if you choose to focus on the smoke that you hate a lot, or you may completely focus on the green valley you can see through the window and enjoy the best view you can ever find.

If you want to enjoy your life, you have to learn where to focus. You can focus on the good things, enjoy them, feel them, and live them. Or you can focus on the things that you don’t like and make your life out of them. It’s your decision. It only depends on where you want to focus.

Viktor Frankl was imprisoned in a Nazi extermination camp during world war two. People were dying around him from hunger. He also suffered from captivity plus he was assigned to take care of people with suicide tendencies!! Despite everything, he chose to focus on the good things happening in the concentration camp; the heroic action of a dying person offering his food for another person; the love a mother is showing to her kid. At the end of the war he wrote a book about the meaning of life and its beauty.

You can see clearly from above examples that, life is where you want to focus on; where your thoughts are, you are. It only depends where you want them to be. But, most important of all, you are where your thoughts are. You become where your thoughts are focused on. This example will help clarifying the issue:

Suppose that you had in your life a bad work experience. You can focus on it and tell yourself: “I didn’t achieve anything in my life; I am useless, incompetent or unsuccessful”. Your self esteem will surely suffer from this kind of thoughts. However, you can also focus on how much persistence, integrity and high moral values you showed in this same work. In this case you will feel very positive about yourself and add more growth, confidence and self esteem to yourself from this same challenging experience.

It always depends where you want to focus your thoughts. Where you put them, you become. Your thoughts shape you. You are where you want to focus on.

Can you control your emotions?

In life your senses detect a series of events. These events create impulses that are conducted through your senses to your mind. Your conscious mind interprets the events with a series of thoughts that continually flow through your mind. This flow of thoughts is called your internal dialogue. All experiences must be processed through your conscious mind and given a conscious meaning before you experience any emotional response. Your internal dialogue is made out of beliefs that you gathered through life.

Let’s take few examples in order to show you how your thoughts and beliefs shape your emotions.

You are sitting in a park. A couple is sitting facing you. They are cuddling each other. You look at them and feel happy. If you check your mind, you will see that you have interpreted the event in a way that made you feel happy: they are in love; they are very happy; you remembered the same beautiful experience with your wife. You just had many different thoughts that made you feel happy.

While you were sitting there, there was another man sitting across you. He was telling himself: how impertinent this couple is to show their love in public; they must not touch each other in public; she is so beautiful, how she can be with this ugly man? You bet, our man feels offended and unhappy.

Did you see? We had the same situation with two different opposed emotions. It only depended on how you thought about it and what are your beliefs.

Every event is analyzed by your conscious mind and must be given a certain meaning before you experience any kind of feelings. Your feelings are created by your thoughts and not by the actual events. Your thoughts actually create the emotion. Emotions are always preceded by thoughts.

Here is another example: You just went back home very tired from a hard working day. You don’t want to talk with your parents and just want to go to your bed. Your phone rings. It’s your close friend who is calling you to join him for a nice party and he wants to introduce you to a girl you always wanted to meet. You become so excited that you are not tired anymore. You are full of energy and ready to go out. Just a thought changed your mood and changed you emotionally and physically.

Did you see? Thoughts determine your emotions, your emotional state and physiological state!! Emotions are the physical materialization of your thoughts in your body. Your emotions result entirely from the way you look at things. You do emotions, they do not make you. You are the source of all your emotions. You are the one who creates them. You can feel anyway you choose at any moment in time.

When you are aware of the reality that your emotions are not generated automatically but you create them, you will know that you have a great tool to control your emotions: If you Control your thoughts you control your emotions. Your emotions are the automatic response of your thoughts. This reality shows that you are the real master of your life. Your thoughts shape your world (Buddha).

Another application of this reality: If you want to know what kind of thoughts you have look at the emotions they are generating. Positive thoughts generate positive emotions, negative thoughts generate disempowering emotions. You have a great universal and divine tool to check how sublime your thoughts are: positive emotional and physical state means you are living and having positive thoughts. Negative emotional and physical state means you are living and having negative thoughts.

The power of meaning.

To understand the power of meaning we have to understand the human nature. All human beings want to be happy. This is our ultimate target. We feel if we fulfilled our needs we can be happy. That’s why, we Humans, are guided by needs. So what are people needs?

Each one of us has four needs related to: our body, mind, heart, and soul. Our respective needs are: to live, to grow, to love, and to have meaning.

The main concern of our body is to sustain itself, survive and have the pleasure of the senses. The main concern of the mind is to grow intellectually. The main concern of your heart is to love and connect with people. The more refined needs are those of the soul. They deal with the meaning of life and your purpose on earth. Bringing meaning to yourself and to your life will satisfy the needs of your soul.

Let’s take few examples:

If we look at the pleasures of the body, they are summarized by the pleasure of the senses. Sometimes we seek pleasure as if pleasure means happiness. For example we eat till explosion. Or we try to get some flesh pleasures through sex. We may get make happy for a moment. After that we are back to our concerns and dissatisfactions.

We can pleasure our mind by reading a book or getting a new life experience. We feel that we had grown in wisdom and we are happy for that. Because we carry our thoughts with ourselves we tend to get more pleasure from this kind of activity but the tornado of our thoughts is never happiness. Sometimes it’s deep anxiety!

We can pleasure our heart by falling in love or discovering a new friend. But are they a solution for our deep concerns and seeking?

Pleasure is not happiness! Pleasure never lasts. It comes for instants in case of bodily pleasures and may last a little longer in case of your mind and heart pleasures. Pleasure comes from an external event.

In contrary, happiness comes from inside. Happiness is a state. When you are happy, you are always happy no matter what. It’s something that comes from within and do not depend on any external circumstances. Happiness is related to the soul. When your soul discovers its own peace you become happy. To seek lasting pleasure or happiness you must look for the needs of your soul.

As dalai Lama said: “Our business is happiness”. Every person is looking for happiness and we cannot settle down until we find our ever lost happiness. And it’s only achieved if you take care of the needs of your soul. The best way to bring happiness to your soul is to bring meaning to your life. Bringing meaning is the “pleasure” of the soul. If you can bring meaning to every action into your life you start to be happy!!

If you bring meaning to your sexual relation by making it a way to “connect”, your little pleasure of the flesh will turn to be a more “pleasurable” experience and the rewards will last much longer. If you read a book in the purpose “to sustain your spiritual growth” you will hold this growth in you for much longer. If you love people and enjoy your friendships as if you have a mission to “bring inspiration to people through love” you will start to enjoy each and every interaction as it’s a part of your purpose in life.

As you can see, bringing meaning to your actions can give your life a more purposeful presence and settle yourself into peace, harmony and happiness.

How can you bring meaning to your life?

The best way to start bringing meaning to your life is to put a meaning to every major thing in your life. Bringing meaning is done by “labeling” the most important things with a very inspiring “metaphor”.  Each time you likened something with something else you are using a metaphor. A metaphor is like a symbol and, as such, has the power to trigger a very powerful emotional response. Example of a metaphor: describing your wife as your “best part”. In that case you likened your wife to a very positive and inspiring metaphor. Each time you are connecting to your wife you interact with her through the lenses of this metaphor: “best half”.

The most empowering strategy of using metaphors is to put a general life metaphor, a “life mission statement” plus metaphors for the sub parts of your life activities.

General life metaphors are the metaphors related to life and you:

What is life for you? Is it a gift? Is it a game? Etc.

Who are you? Are you a flower? Are you an inspiration? Are you a messenger? Etc.

 Life mission statement is a metaphor that answers this question: What is your mission in life? Is it to make difference in people’s life? Is it to be the change you want to see? Etc.

Sub metaphors are metaphors related to sub parts of your life as your work, employees, friendships, people, etc. Example of respective metaphors: My work serves the goal of creating abundance in the world. My employees are my assets. My friends bring me the opportunity to love. People are opportunities for my growth. Etc.

When you start bringing meaning to every aspect of your life, you will feel more engaged in everything you do, more present, and enjoy doing. No doubt, you will be a very happy person. You know it, I know it.

What is your attitude?

“Long ago in a faraway village, there was a place known as the house of thousands mirrors. A happily little dog learned of this place and decided to visit. When he arrived, he bounced happily up the stairs to the doorway of the house. He looked through the doorway with his ears lifted high and his tail wagging as fast as it could. To his great surprise, he found himself staring at a thousand other happy little dogs with their tails wagging just as fast as his. He smiled a great smile, and was answered with a thousand great smiles just as warm and friendly. As he left the house, he thought to himself,” this is a wonderful place. I will come and visit it often.”

In this same village, another little dog, who was not happy like the first little one, decided to visit the house. He slowly climbed the stairs and hung his head low as he looked into the door. When he saw the thousand unfriendly-looking dogs staring back at him, he growled at them and was horrified to see thousand dogs growling back at him. As he left, he thought to himself:” this is a horrible place, and I will never come back again”.

As you can see, you see the world as you are, not as it is; as Buddha said: your thoughts shape your world.

If this world were this house and the mirrors within it, and you were a visitor, which attitude you would like to have?

Your attitude determines your life experience.

You can make your life a heaven or hell. It only depends how you look at things.

“The mind has its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven” (Milton).

If you consider the world as a battle field, people are mean and nothing is good, you have already chose the perfect attitude to be always pessimist, stressed and closed. If you consider life as a gift, people are opportunities to express your love, and everything will end up good, you have chosen the best way to be always positive, happy and open to life.

It only depends on which attitude and you want to choose.

How judging affects our life?

In our life we tend to judge everything we see, hear, etc. We judge every person we see, everything they say, every situation we encounter, etc.

Our number one way of judgment is when think in terms of “good” versus “bad”. Making always our own judgments: “This is good, this is bad”, “he is good” and “he is bad”, etc.

I like to Challenge your belief about “good” and “bad” as a way to show you how being judgmental affects your life.

This old story will help me to challenge your beliefs about “good” and “bad”:

“An old farmer used a horse to till his fields. One day, the horse ran away, and when the farmer’s neighbors sympathized with the old man over his bad luck, the farmer shrugged his shoulders and replied: “bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?” A week later, the horse returned with a herd of wild mares, and this time his neighbors congratulated the farmer on his good luck. His reply was:” good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?” Then, when the farmer’s son was attempting to tame one horse, he fell and break one leg. Everyone agreed this was very bad luck. But the farmer’s only reaction was:” bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?” A week later, the army marched into the village and drafted all the young men they could find. When they saw the farmer’s son with broken leg, they let him stay behind. Good luck? Bad luck?

There’s only good and bad in your mind!!!! Shakespeare expressed in a similar way when he said: “for there is nothing either good or bad, but our thinking makes it so.” Your expectations drive you to label things as “good” or “bad”. If you want something to happen in your life, or you want to get something; everything that comes into your way becomes a problem a “bad thing”. Everything that happens in life that you don’t wish to happen to you is a “bad” thing. You are the only problem in life. Because you are the creator of the problems that you see; you create them by your expectations, by your likes and dislikes.

Few examples will convince you that your “old thoughts” are driving you to label things as “good” and “bad”:

Example one: You want to go by plane to visit a nearby city. At the airport you are told that the flight is cancelled. You become nervous and feel “bad”. Just a “bad” thing has happened. Your expectations weren’t met!!!

Example two: You always expect to be happy. So being “depressed” or in “pain” is a “bad” thing. But if you look at your depression in the mirror of your soul, the “pain” that you passed through ten years ago has made you grow and made the proud person that you are now. There’s no “bad” thing in the mirror of time, because with time “expectations” change and “attachments” get dissolved.

Example three: Someone is dead. The air is filled with sorrow. You feel compassion. You think death is a bad thing. But you also know, if you are never challenged you will never achieve anything. Death is the biggest of all challenges in your life. Isn’t death that drives you to achieve things and be aware of every minute of your life? Isn’t death the biggest driving force of your life? Imagine that you can live forever. Imagine the feeling that time has no meaning. You don’t need to achieve anything “now”. Life itself becomes without a meaning. If there’s no death, I bet you will say that you are doomed to live forever. Better to appreciating death, this way, you will start appreciating life.

Conclusion:

Everything comes from our thoughts. Friends and enemies, virtue and vice are in the mind only. Every man creates a world of good and evil, Pleasure and pain, out of his own imagination only. Bitterness and sweetness do not lie in the objects, but in our thinking that brings these emotions to us, they lie in our mind.  

There’s no such thing as” good” or “bad” in life. They are the creation of our expectations, likes and dislikes. When we drop this two labels, we start to experience life in a new way; a life full of acceptance and detachment. Accepting everything as it is without judgment. If we want to be open to life and experience it with love and joy, we must stop judging. Good and evil, pleasure and pain do not proceed from objects, these belongs to the attitude of our mind.

How labeling affects our life?

Once an experiment was done on children .They were asked to play monopoly for fun. They really enjoyed this “play” until one day they were told they will be paid for playing it. They never enjoyed playing monopoly again. It became “work”.

What has changed? What changed is their mental disposition; the way they labeled their time. At first it was a “play” now a “work”.

The way we label things affects the way we experience them.

You are dreaming to spend your weekend in a mountain house. You took with you some books, music and movies in order to spend a nice time in the nature. You are delighted and so happy. Suddenly a storm raged in the mountain but you weren’t disturbed at all. You have plenty of things to enjoy your time. In addition, you can now watch the storm from the window.

The big storm forced a man to knock on your door to ask for a shelter. You surely said yes, but you became gloomy. This “intruder” has just spoiled your privacy. Despite being usually a very friendly man who likes to be around people, you are so unhappy to have an “intruder” breaking your privacy. You are frustrated, down and little talkative. You just want him away. Despite his tentative for being kind you didn’t appreciate anything coming from his part: He is just forcing himself on you. You are not enjoying any minute of the remaining time in the mountain. When the storm went by, the man excused himself and said goodbye: “If you ever need anything please give me a call” he said while handling you his visiting card. You murmured few words and let him go. After a while, you looked at the visiting card. You were surprised to see that this person was exactly the same person you were trying to get from an important business meeting. Surly when you meet him again you will be very sweet and charming with “your prospective client”. You may even enjoy your time with him find few things to praise him for. Your attitude towards him had totally changed. What changed is your preconceived label: It shifted from “intruder” to “prospective client”.

“Labeling” is a pre-judgment we make towards something before we start experiencing it. This preconceived judgment affects our whole experience because we live it through the biased perspective of our labeling, not as it is.

We have too many labels in our life. Practically towards every usual work we do. For example, let us take our work. How do you label it? Read the following story to know how labeling affects your work experience:

3 workmen were building a church. When asked what they were doing, the first one said: I am working for the damn money; the second one said: I am working to sustain my family; the third one said: I am building a beautiful church for people to come and celebrate the creation.

The first one labeled unconsciously his work as a core, the second as a duty, and the third as a creation. As such, everyone is experiencing his work in a different way.

Labels are preconceived mental attitude toward things we are experiencing. From now on, if you are experiencing a negative experience just ask yourself what kind of labels are you using. Maybe you can find the solution inside your own mind.