Don’t we all love the conversations we have in our own heads?
Honestly, I’m an olympic medalist in beating the sh*t out of myself! I live in the past and also in a worst case scenario future. I’ve been doing a LOT of studying and research how to calm the conversations in my mind. One big thing that was a total game-changer for me was forgiving myself for the really stupid, unthinkable things I’ve done in the past. I’ll get into that in next week’s email some other tools I have.
If anyone is severely struggling with that, PLEASE email me, I’ll be happy to share those tools now.
The other thing I’ve learned is the best way to predict the future is to create it. I’ve been literally visualizing a movie in my head of what my future can be, and putting my intention on those efforts. This isn’t all about wishing for something and hoping the universe will drop a perfect job or a perfect person in your life. You need to put attention on it to make it happen. Examples of some of the “I could do that if only….” conversations in my head have gone something like this:
“It’s too late.”
“I’ll wait until I have enough money to do something I really love.”
“I need to make sure I put others dreams ahead of mine.”
“If I want to go just be a teacher, my friends, family, and colleagues will think I’m crazy.”
The conversations in my head could go on and on and on. What conversation are you having in your head keeping you from truly doing something you really love?
Take a minute or so and finish this question:
I can either be financially successful or ________?
It truly is quite possible you can do both. I’d like you to have fun with this next little exercise. I really enjoyed sitting down and creating a couple imaginary lives. It goes something like this, and I got this idea from a book called The Artist Way, which was referred to me by Tim Ferriss.
If you had five other lives to lead what would you do with each of them?
Would you be a pilot, or Ranch Hand, a psychic, a monk, a teacher, a cop, a writer of children’s books, a professional athlete, a painter, a coach, a scientist, a doctor, a Peace Corps worker, fisherman, a minister, an auto mechanic, a computer hacker, soap opera star, a country singer, whatever occurs to you, just write it down. Don’t overthink it. The point of these lives is to have fun with them, more fun that you might be having in this one.
A few of my imaginary lives when something like this: I’ve always wanted to be a teacher and a coach, and growing up I was somewhat of a half decent athlete, but a horrible, horrible student. I always wanted to teach High School, in fact was a secondary education major until I got my girlfriend, now wife of 27 years, pregnant my junior year in college. Because that’s just what you do when you’re in college is get your girlfriend pregnant.
Another one of my lives, oddly enough, is I always wanted to be an actor and comedian. I just loved entertaining people and I thought that would be just a blast.
I would love to hear some feedback from the group, and please share these emails with others and if you’re benefiting from any of this please let me know.
See you next week.
-Phil