What We Focus On Makes Our Life By Dean Fraser

I met a woman at one of my events a few years ago who declared that she always imagines worst-case scenario or that things won’t work out the way she would like. I asked her how that life-plan was working out for her and she sadly said she felt constantly disappointed with life. And it could all be so different for her…

If we spend all our time consciously thinking about how stressed we are, how many problems we have and how we can’t cope…we are constantly adding all our energy to the situation.

I realise some of these things are far easier to write about than actually transform away from. What we will do throughout the rest of our time together is give you some ways to move away from any self-defeating thoughts and behaviours to take personal control. 

If we decide we just don’t care how is anyone else supposed to care either?

It seems like the easiest choice in the world to not care, after all we are never going to be disappointed if we decide nothing matters. 

Yet…and yet. The paradox here is by not really caring we are setting ourselves up for disappointment after disappointment, until unfortunately this becomes kind of the accepted normality for us. Learned helplessness.

Caring about our own life, our own future path, requires commitment and for sure although life may well still present challenges (it’s how usually we grow as people!) caring will ensure we find a way around, over or through the issue before us. And the reason is because we care to care, this involves us directly in the process of creating our own life.

We need to be bold enough to be in the driving seat of our own life…

FEELINGS ARE OUR FEEDBACK

The way we feel about a situation or indeed an individual is invaluable feedback about our stress levels relating to that exact thing or person. 

So, our feelings act as our feedback barometer. The emotions that we feel about anything or anyone tells us the effect the situation or person is having on us. 

Naturally we want to have all only those good feelings and buy out of all the bad feelings, right? 

Well partially yes, however, the things that we feel good about are those which do not usually require any work. We are perfectly happy with the situation and we need to treasure those moments, those things we feel good about - then more or less put them metaphorically to one side for now. 

Next let’s focus on the bad feelings, because our bad feelings are far more valuable to us when wishing to deal with stress. 

In fact truthfully there are not really any genuinely good or bad feelings. Feelings are only feedback from our subconscious minds. Our bad feelings really are invaluable as these show us areas of our lives that we need to work on, areas of our lives we now need to act upon and change. 

Feelings are energy. Now that we know those areas of our live that we feel worse about, bad about, there are strategies or actions we can take in order to transform them. It has long been scientifically proven that our thoughts are indeed an energy wave that emanates outward from our brains into the bigger world and then boomerangs straight back to us in the form of our experiences in our actual life…

THE POWER OF OUR MIND TO AFFECT HEALTH

To give an example of how this can affect us in a negative way, I have witnessed perfectly fit and healthy people who have fixated on the extremely unlikely chance of developing a certain illness. Perhaps someone in their extended family once had this illness, however, this does hardly compel them to also go ahead and develop it. What we think about constantly is what our life becomes, so these people fixate, they learn everything there is to know about the illness. They tell everyone about how much they don’t want to get this illness and imagine they can feel the first signs or symptoms in their bodies, often going to the point of visiting their chosen healthcare provider just to be sure they are okay. Sure enough, inevitably at some point, doesn’t always happen quickly, often it can take years, yet sadly the exact illness they so feared does develop in their body. The very illness they fixated on, which scared them so. Even more unfortunately they now feel vindicated in their original fear… 

At the other end of the scale, I found myself with a bit of a health challenge a few years ago. I will spare you the finer details, but needless to say a few specialists had “the conversation” with me, which certainly gave me plenty to think about! 

I quit work for a year to focus all of my energy on ways I might heal. Through following my intuition I adopted a new dietary regime, opted to become as physically fit as my current situation allowed me to be, spent many hours meditating (meditation will be covered shortly) and focussed my attention on all of those things I could feel gratitude for in my life. I recovered and now lead a fuller more contributory life than ever before. In fact I remain convinced this health challenge only occurred to lead to my own greater understanding and so I could then better help others!

About Dean Fraser:   My quest to learn more about human potential started all the way back in 1988 when in a bookstore I experienced what turned out to be a paradigm changing moment. Linda Goodman's Star Signs literally fell of the shelf at my feet, naturally I bought the book and so commenced the gradual opening of all of my eyes. Taking what I believed at that time would be a year out from my then corporate life, I read hundreds of books, travelled to visit ancient sacred sites and networked with fellow seekers of wisdom from around the world. Each year I write for around thirty magazines across the world on ways of living more authentically harmoniously within ourselves. And I never did return to the corporate world. 

Dean's website: www.deanfrasercentral.com