Una's Blog

24
Jan

78 Not living the dream yet?

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by Una Hearne. So, if you know my work, you’ll know it’s all about living our best lives. I’m all about re-connecting with who you really are and what you really want. And making Visions and plans to create the best life you can experience.

I also talk a lot about gratitude, about being grateful for everything we already have. I am sometimes asked if this is a contradiction “If I’m happy now, won’t I just sit back and not bother doing anything else?” As if unhappiness is the only motivator for doing anything!

Unhappiness and discomfort can motivate us, of course, but how much more pleasant to be inspired by things that will increase our happiness and quality of life, not merely decrease unhappiness. It’s the difference between working towards something as opposed to away from, very different motivation.

There is no contradiction whatever in being delighted with everything good in your life and in also wanting more, different or better. In fact, it’s perfectly natural. When you are happy and grateful for all you have now it does three important things:

  1. It puts more of your energy at your disposal – energy is not draining away in worry and negativity.
  2. You don’t ignore, take for granted, and frankly, entirely miss out on all the happiness available to you already, right now. You actually experience it. After all, if you can’t appreciate what you have now, what makes you think you’ll be able to enjoy the more, different or better you are working towards? You won’t know how, you won’t have any practice.
  3. You feel worthy of good things when you know/acknowledge you already have good things. It builds your sense of worthiness and confidence, which of course makes you more likely to succeed.

See, there is a bit of a bear trap with having a vision for yourself and setting goals. If you focus exclusively on your future goals – on the stuff that you want that you haven’t got now – there is a risk you will focus on lacking it now. This is subtle but important, given the way our subconscious works. If you focus on/picture/ruminate about what you currently feel you lack, you will tend to create more of this (a lack of money/ fulfilling work/ home/ partner/ friends). If you focus on/picture/imagine what you do want instead, you will create more of that. Your subconscious responds to the picture you feed it. This is why visualisation works. Create as clear an idea in your mind of what you want – full colour and surround sound, and how this feels – this connects your subconscious to the dream and makes a huge difference to achieving it in reality.

A subtle variation of focussing accidentally on lack is by saying to yourself “I’ll be happy when I have the money/work/home/partner/friends”. It’s just another way of saying ‘I’m not there yet, I’m not happy now, I can’t be until…’. There is no point in spending your whole life waiting to be happy and feeling anxious and a failure most of the time. It’s just a perspective, a view point. Easy to shift, profound in effect.

 

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