HILLIGraphy - Creating Your Own Life (Part 3)

Here's the continuation of Chuck Hillig's essay. Previous posts can be found here and here.

Creating Your Own Life (Part 3)

There are steps you can take to work toward changing your beliefs:

First, specifically list exactly what these old unproductive beliefs have cost you (emotionally, financially, physically, etc.) in both the past and in the present. Next, if you don't give them up right now, graphically describe what these old beliefs will probably cost you in the future. Finally, create and extremely compelling picture of the very positive changes that your new beliefs will bring into your life. Every day, vividly imagine yourself living in these exciting new realities. Remember that, if you don't change them, your old beliefs will just keep producing the same old results. New beliefs will begin to attract new results.

In order to begin changing your beliefs, though, you'll have to carefully examine your priorities. Are your goals specific enough? If they're not, the universe won't know just how to respond to your. For example, would you ever go into a restaurant and ask the waiter to bring you "whatever?" Wouldn't you, instead, place a specific order for what you wanted to eat? Since the same is true for the universe, your clear statement of your goals is, in effect, placing an order for Life to bring it to you. Consequently, the more precise and descriptive you are about your goals, the easier that it will be to attract them onto your path. For example, your goal should not be to "find a job." Instead, you need to be very specific in describing the kind of job that you want to attract. If you fail to do this important step, then you're surrendering your right to consciously choose the results that you want. When you do that, your vagueness and lack of clarity will invite the universe to bring you "whatever."

Secondly, you absolutely must make a convincing argument to yourself exactly why you want to achieve this new goal. If your "why" is big enough (i.e. both persuasive and compelling) then the ways and means for you to succeed in accomplishing it (i.e. the "how") will, quite mysteriously, show up for you. However, if your "why" isn't big enough, you won't likely be able to attract that energy into your life. Naturally, you'll also need to honor and respect your own values here because they must be in alignment with your goals. For example, you may discover that the "why" about getting a particular job has much less to do with the money you'll receive than it does with having a better opportunity to grow, share, contribute and serve.

Next, you need to decide what price that you and your immediate family are willing to pay in time, effort, resources, etc. in order to accomplish this goal. If you're not willing to sacrifice for your goal, then you probably don't want it badly enough.

The fourth step is to decide on a specific timetable in which to achieve this goal. Remember that there's no such thing as an "unreasonable goal;" only, perhaps, an unrealistic time frame in which to accomplish it.

The fifth step is particularly important: you need to write down your goals in long-hand each and every day. No exceptions! Your inner mind needs to know that you are absolutely 100% committed to having these things in your life. Writing them down makes it more real.

Finally, create a daily, short-term plan that focuses your energies towards achieving these long-term goals, and then follow through on the plan. At the end of the day, review your progress and be willing to make any mid-course adjustments to it in order to make tomorrow's plan even more effective.

Every day, learn to practice the art of focused concentration on what you passionately want in your life. Essentially, focus is "controlled obsession" while obsession is "uncontrolled focus." Remember, too, that there are the same 24 hours in every day for everyone so set your own priorities. If you just want to have an average life, then start spending major time on minor things.

Coming up in Parts 4 & 5 - successful people vs. unsuccessful people

HILLIGraphy - Creating Your Own Life (Part 2)

Picking up from Part 1 of Chuck Hillig's(ENFJ) 6-part essay:

Creating Your Own Life (Part 2)

This is a very important point. The past cannot be the true source of the present simply because it's just not real anymore. Only the present can be the source of the present. How your life unfolds (or unravels) is actually determined by the thousands of decisions, both big and small, that you make every moment, each and every day. And, since you're always able to choose your own responses to life, you are, ultimately, "response-able" or responsible. Others can advise you, of course, but only you have the final decision about your course of action. You cannot ever give away this ultimate responsibility. In fact, even if you decide to "not decide," that's still your decision, too.

Humans, however, often try to create a false linkage between what they did and why they did it. For example, have you ever heard this from one of your kids: "I hit him because he called me a name." The finger-pointing implication here is one of causality. The kid who threw the punch is implying that the name-caller is, somehow, the one responsible for his own violent response. However, the fact is that one kid chose to call the other a name, but then that kid chose to respond to the insult by hitting him. Trying to create a causal linkage between the two actions is to ignore the existence of free will. You don't do things "because" of what other people have done. You do things because you freely choose to do them. Period.

Your actions are triggered by your feelings, and your feelings are determined by your thoughts. However, your thoughts and the decisions that you make today are mostly generated by your deeply-held personal beliefs. Essentially, you are living your life out into your beliefs about "how things are." In fact, even life's so-called "meaning" for you finds its way into your beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, that you actually become the creator of your own experience in the world.

This is extremely important because the universe is compelled to support your definition of how you think life either is...or how you think that it "should" be. No matter how distorted your beliefs might be, the universe will automatically provide you with the validating evidence that "justifies" your continued support of those beliefs. For example, if you believe that "women will always betray me," then you'll likely create yourself to be around women who will prove themselves to be untrustworthy...at least to you. The universe, it seems, wants to make you right.

Because of this "law of attraction," you'll have to first change your distorted or unproductive beliefs if you want to attract new results in your life. In other words, you cant' get to the new results that you want from the old beliefs that you have. Whenever you become willing to change how you're looking at things, however, then the things that you're looking at will, quite mysteriously, begin to change, too.

Coming up in Part 3: Taking steps to change your "beliefs" about what's true for you.

HILLIGraphy - "Creating Your Own Life" Part 1

This is the first guest post from Chuck Hillig - ENFJ

Just for fun, we have decided to name his posts "HILLIGraphy." :-) I will be posting the following essay in six parts.

(Note: We can discuss his thoughts after I've posted all six...or along the way.)

Creating Your Own Life (Part 1)

Of all the people that you'll ever know in your life, you are the only one that you'll never leave or lose. And so, to the question of your life, you are the only answer. To the problems in your life, you are the only solution.

People often make the mistake of looking outside of themselves in order to discover the source of their own lives. For example, many of them point to their past in order to justify the things that are unraveling in their lives right now. How many times have you heard a variation of this same lament: "My life doesn't work very well because of how I was raised." Essentially, this familiar excuse is really an irresponsible cop-out. You are not so much a victim of your past conditioning as you are a product of it.

Here's something to consider: Although we all live on the crosshairs of life (the "here and now,") the only thing that's actually real is this present moment. For example, when you're remembering the past or imagining the future, you're referencing them both from the only place where you can actually exist in...this moment of "now."

Because the past does not "cause" the present moment, what happened to you back then is not very important. In fact, the events that occurred in your childhood...no matter how painful...are not nearly as deterministic for you in the present as are the conclusions that you've drawn from them. In other words, it's the interpretation or spin that you, yourself, have given to your earlier events that now shape how you relate to both the world in general and to yourself in particular.

But as long as you continue to blame your past experiences for your current life's conditions, you're avoiding your own personal responsibility for changing those conditions. Instead of acknowledging yourself as the creator of your own life, you'll spend your life waiting for someone (or something) else to change first.

to be continued...