The Best Years of Your Life… Now!

In my last blog I mentioned three steps you could take in order self-administer the washing away of troublesome thought constructs. The kind of attitudes, opinions and beliefs which act as barriers to the physical, mental and emotional direction you wish to take your life in.

Step one: Change your physcial environment.

To a greater or lessor degree this will immediately shift your attention away from a state of predictability. If you completely remove yourself from your current environment, by taking a two or three week vacation in a different physical place than your day-to-day reality, you immediately create a situation where you become much more aware. Your senses are heightened because nothing is familiar and nothing can be taken for granted.

Step Two: Controlled sensory stimulation.

Because you are in a heightened state of awareness while you are away from your regular environment, you will naturally absorb and retain more information than you would in your normal environment. You can choose to subject yourself to physical, mental and emotional input based upon what you believe would be most helpful to your cleansing process: Books, articles, dvd’s, cds, as well as seminars, personal training, etc., are all potential sources of controlled positive stimulation.

Step Three: Affirmations and reprogramming…

I call it spaced repetition. The more you verbally affirm what you want to believe the more quickly you will begin to believe it. If you say “I am prosperity” to yourself again and again over a period of time, you will begin to rationalize the affirmation into a belief. You have already been affirming your present reality both consciously and unconsciously everyday. It is possible to change that programming. It’s just a matter of shifting your attention to what you want to believe by affirming your “new” truth. You know, reprogramming yourself!

The simple three step process I outlined here can change the direction of your life. It is nothing less than self-administered brainwashing. Why not make your next vacation a life changing experience?

Start small…

Begin with a three day “brainwasher”. Gather up the necessary materials, rent a hotel room or a cottage, etc., for three days and nights. It’s important not to have any “familiar distractions”. Then immerse yourself into a banquet for the soul. A couple of books, some dvds, cds, maybe a seminar. Don’t forget to take a journal along with you and write down what you feel as you experience this wonderful experience you’re giving yourself.

We could all benefit from a total shift away from our comfort zones on a regular basis. You’ll be surprised at what you’re going to learn about yourself.

This is really doing something for yourself…

-Bob Baran

Brainwashing!

It’s a buzzword that immediately brings visions of Svengali like cult leaders to mind. Diabolical manipulators who prey on innocent victims… Controlling their minds, turning them into obedient puppets. Brainwashing as a form of control is a terrible use of what could be a useful tool for your personal growth.

Self-administered brainwashing on a regular basis is actually quite healthy!

Think of it as a conscious effort to remove those thought patterns, assumptions and expectations which you recognize and realize are creating barriers to your full enjoyment of life. Sometimes you have to engage in self-administered brainwashing techniques in order to eliminate the limiting effects of no longer valid mental constructs.

You’ve literally got to wash away the residue of attitudes, opinions and beliefs which no longer support your current world-view. This requires some self-administered brainwashing: The literal replacement of non-working mental constructs and the reinforcement of new attitudes, opinions and beliefs which support your current world-view.

When should you engage in self-administered brainwashing?

When you discover a pattern in yourself: The inability to manifest what you think you want out of life. If you find you are unable to reach the goals you set for yourself or routinely avoid taking action which would move you closer to what you desire, you have residual mental constructs which are acting to sabotage your dreams.

You’ve got to clean out the pipes which represent your mental plumbing!

I’ll give you three things you can do to begin the washing process in my next blog posting…

-Bob Baran

Once you embark upon the journey of changing your life, beware of the parting of the clouds and the giant hands…

I should say, don’t waste your time looking for all that drama. Real change doesn’t happen that way. Real change, which is the fundamental long term, adjustment to the quality of your day-to-day life, is a process of incremental steps. Many of which you don’t immediately notice. This means you could go for quite a while thinking nothing is happening, when in fact many changes are taking place.

This is the journey where you will face one of your greatest challenges.

The sudden, dramatic obvious changes we tend to look for as a way of measuring our progress are usually momentary. Exciting and distracting but not the long term fundamental change which permanently alters the course of our lives. Real change requires the necessary infrastructure to support it.

You can’t start with the roof of a building and then build down from there.

Looking for the big obvious sudden transformation is trying to find the finished roof before the building has even been built.

Stay focused and consistent with your life changing journey. One day you will find yourself standing on top of the roof of your new life. The view will be amazing… and you won’t have to worry about falling through a hole you overlooked during the building process.

-Bob Baran

Your day-to-day life can become a predictable stage…

It’s hard to imagine that your life can turn into the same play, repeated over and over again. You always know how the story is going to end… and it doesn’t matter that you labored to change the actors and the scenery. What doesn’t seem to change is the emotional landscape, which exists behind the ever changing actors and scenery. The emotional landscape which is the real story of your life.

You feel as if your life has come to a place where you are just going through the motions. You’re not fully present, your life feels likes it’s on autopilot. This leads you to feel disconnected from the world around you. You begin to feel that something more important keeps eluding you. Your life is full of activity but empty of fulfillment. You feel each day that goes by is another day wasted.

Wasted by pointless distraction.

You feel that you’ve lost your connection to the world because you feel less fulfillment. All of your energy is used up just maintaining status quo. The passion that once provided the drive to create the lifestyle you now live, has been dissipated in the process of “getting here”.

What you now experience as a disconnection from the world is actually the disconnection from your inner self. It’s only from living your life from the “inside”, through the ongoing discovery of your true self, that you will find the focus, drive and sense of purpose which gives meaning to your life. Without meaning, life feels empty. Without passion, you are just going through the motions and feel like you’re only putting in time.

Coming into the realization that you are missing something is a powerful indication that you may be ready to make a decision.

In music we call this decision the “crossroads”. It’s the point you reach in life where you stop being only an entertainer or performer and decide to become an Artist. You begin to understand that what you have is an opportunity to explore greater creative possibilities, than just pleasing your audience.

You can begin a process to reinvent who you are and what your destiny is. As you rediscover that which brings meaning and passion back into your life, the energy, excitement, focus and purpose returns to your life.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of individuals who come to the “crossroads” of their life, push down the feelings, ignore the warnings and fall victim to their fears, uncertainties and doubts. They choose to look away from those questions about who they really are and what their life purpose may be. It’s not surprising that they choose the predictable, safe, dead-end path they are already familiar with… and spend their time and remaining energy attempting to distract themselves from facing the reality of their current lives.

No matter what they do, always haunted by the feeling that something is missing and life is passing them by.

They choose to live their lives from the outside in.

Be careful to not miss the true promise of your life. Which is accepting the infinite possibilities of your imagination and embracing the responsibility to choose how you will use it.

-Bob Baran

There’s a phenomenon that takes place in a person who consciously undergoes the process of personal growth…

They find that they are no longer a part of the world they once knew. Their life no longer fits into the world they came from. No matter what they do they are never able to go back to the “place” from whence they came.

What I’m talking about is not some kind of science fiction story line. I’m talking about a very real phenomenon that has happened to many people but few are willing to discuss it. It’s a very difficult thing to admit when you no longer have anything in common with the people and place that was once, your life.

It has happened to everyone who has every moved away from their home town and created a life somewhere else. Every time they come back to visit there is a growing sense of alienation. They are less able to relate to what was at one time, their life. Then one day something happens and their hometown becomes just a place they once lived.

Divorced people and those who have broken off relationships with others experience it too. Ask anyone who has been apart from a former significant other for many years. There is a feeling that the personal connection never happened. How could it be possible for two people, now so different, could have ever been so close.

As we move through the pages of our life and end a chapter, that dream that was our life, dissipates and loosens our connection to it. When this happens we experience a transformation that literally changes our consciousness. Since consciousness can be compared to a vibration, and the life we were living creates it’s own set of vibrations you could say that they are no longer able to vibrate in harmony…

-Bob Baran