Posts Tagged Positive
Leave The Past In The Past
Hello friend 
I was out for a walk this morning when I remembered about one of the first lessons I learned from Tony Robbins.
Before I get started I’ll tell you a little tale from my past.
I was 17 and had recently passed my driving test. I was out for a drive with my girlfriend when all of a sudden I noticed the car behind me getting closer and closer. As it started fill my rear view mirror I noticed that the guys driving were threatening us.
I was concentrating so much on what was going on behind me that I started to drive erratically and swerve all over the place. I managed to mount the curb and once I even crossed the white line which resulted in furious horn blowing from the oncoming vehicles. In short I was all over the place and out of control.
In that sense life and driving are much the same. I spent a lot of my life living looking backwards and re-affirming how bad everything was and more importantly how I didn’t like myself or the way I dealt with certain situations. Trust me when I say that you can never move forward whilst you are looking backwards - you will crash eventually. I know this all too well - on many occasions.
So I can imagine you’re thinking what should I do then. That stuff really did happened to me - I can’t just erase it.
This is true but it is a fact that you can only look in one direction at once. If your looking to the future then you can’t look back into the past at the same time. Makes sense right? There is a great way to use this which is to design your ideal future, then to live there by visualising it in as much detail as possible. Try to imagine what it would look like, smell like, feel like, sound like or maybe even taste like - get all of your senses involved to make it as realistic as possible.
I wrote down everything that I would want in the life of my dreams. Where I wanted to live, my dream car, the kind of house I wanted, what I wanted to do, my ideal weight, my ideal fitness level, the kind of people I would want to be friends with - everything I could think of. I then spent a fair amount of time visualising and being thankful for having these things in my life already. I would imagine I was driving my dream car - even though mine was an old banger. I would look through design mags for house ideas. I would even visualise myself speaking in from of groups of people.
As you can imagine you start to get a pretty vivid picture in your mind after a while. So much so that after a while I would have periods where I didn’t even think about the bad stuff. There were also times when I realised I had achieved one of the things that I had written down originally which gave me a huge boost.
This brings me up till today - about 7 years since I heard this lesson for the first time.
I’m by no means perfect but I’m a 1000% better than I was back then. I have my own house where I wanted to live near the country. I had my dream car but didn’t like it so got a regular one for now! I am my ideal weight and fitness. Most importantly - I am happy
Oh yeah - to finish the story….
In the end I had to stop at some traffic lights. Even though I was scared - I had a good look in my mirror and it was then that I saw it was two of my crazy friends, showing off in their Dad’s car. They had chased us for a laugh, so there was never really any threat - apart from the threat I was to myself (and everyone else). Again, not unlike in my life!
So I ask you - Would you set off for a car journey without a destination? I don’t think you would, would you? Of course not - so why do we journey through life without a clue where we are going, with no destination?
I would like to ask you another question - Have you got a destination, a vision of where you’re going? If so then why not review it, give it a spring clean then reaffirm where you want to be.
If you haven’t got one then now would be a great time to start thinking about where and who you would like to be. After all - you are worth it my friend
I’ll be going into much more detail on the power of visualising and goal setting in future postings - I hope this story has whetted you appetite.
Have fun
Tim xx
The positivity challenge
I thought I would start off by setting you the first challenge that was set for me.
My first taste of self improvement was dealt by the world renowned Anthony Robbins. My friend Faris gave me one of his CD’s and urged me to listen to it. The CD was about positive thinking (something that was quite alien to me at the time) and in the middle of it was a challenge which was quite simple and went something like this …
You must think positive for seven straight days.
By that I don’t mean that you can’t have any negative thoughts, but if one pops into your mind then you are not allowed to hold it there or to talk about it. What you must do is to immediately change what you are thinking about or do something to break your pattern or to distract you. This of course includes those times when people do things to upset you or when they let you down. It includes when that idiot pulls out in front of you and nearly knocks you off the road. It includes when you try your very hardest at something but it just doesn’t work. Basically you must be ready for anything and any situation. Now, you must keep this up day and night for seven straight days – even when you’re tired and the going gets tough. Failure to do so means that you have to start again – and not to think negatively about that either :o)
I’ll tell you – this was a revelation to me. Negativity was something that came so naturally and I don’t mind telling you that this exercise took me quite a few weeks to complete. What I noticed almost at once though was a big improvement in my energy levels and the way people were towards me. I found myself having to look for the good in everything and what you look for you tend to find - don’t you?
Over the next few weeks this exercise alone started to lift the black mist of depression from above my head. I was a dance DJ at the time and I played back to back with my incredible friend Wayne. We played in Birmingham the same night that I listened to the CD for the first time and that night I decided to give this crazy stuff a go. To cut a long story short – the night was far from perfect. We had been promised a sell out night in a club that hold 2000 people. The truth was that 120 people turned up and the club was empty. Do you know what though? I had the best night ever. I was so focused on what was good about the night that I totally forgot that I should be moaning and complaining about all the “bad” stuff :o)
We were driving home and Wayne said – there was something different about you tonight dude. He didn’t need to say anything as I could feel it in my heart but it was nice that he noticed it too.
There is a popular saying “what we focus on expands”. I never really got that until I started doing this exercise. I will go into the power of focus in future postings but I think this illustrates the basics principle very nicely.
Please try this exercise out my friend – it sounds so simple but it works like magic.
Have fun and thank you for your valuable time
Tim xx
ps. Please add a comment and let me know of your experiences
