Belief Makers

I was behind the wheel of my car the other day (as I often am) and was thinking about what the topic of this blog could be. I had just been thinking about how my life had been going lately and marveling at how much better things were going than I would ever have predicted. As I had tried to figure out what I thought was the single biggest contributor to that change I realized that I used to work on the assumption that I was fairly powerless to affect the flow of events in my life. I had felt that the best I could do was to try to react to what was happening around me and deal with the wants, desires and demands of those around me and in my life. It had never seemed feasible to insert my own wishes into the flow of events since I was convinced that no one would listen to me anyway and I was not a strong enough force in the world to shape my own experiences. As many of us do, I had proceeded from that belief to collect evidence that I was perceiving the world correctly by focusing in on every time I had tried in the past to get something I wanted and wound up not getting it. It really had never even occurred to me to assess my batting average by including those times when I did get what I had asked or tried for, I just jumped on the failures each time and said to myself "See, things just don't work out for me, why try?"

Then one day, about a year ago, I decided to try something different. What if I were to act out of the opposite belief and behave in my life as if my input not only matters but actually shapes the unfolding of my life's experience as it happens around me? What if it was actually worthwhile to speak up when I want something and ask for it out loud? What if I could actually get what I don't like to stop happening, even just sometimes, by telling the world around me that I don't want that as if someone, anyone were listening and might decide to accommodate my request?

So I did. And I learned two things. One is that it turns out I was wrong. It actually does work to approach life as an interactive experience, not just a spectator sport. I actually can take the initiative in setting the direction of my life and have a positive effect on people and events that I am involved in. While this epiphany alone was a huge bonus that i derived from my experiment, my second learning was much larger. I learned that it wasn't important for me to know for sure that my new belief would work in order for it to work! I actually started while pretty much convinced that this experiment would be a wipe out. But I was committed to looking at the results of my choice objectively and giving myself some time to collect impressions from what happened before I tried to draw any conclusions from this experiment. The results I got were nothing short of miraculous (particularly as compared to my expectations). It seems I was wrong on two counts, for all I needed to create the change in my life that I was looking for was to believe in and decide to hold open the mere possibility that my new course of action might work out. Certainty is nice, of course, but optional. Well, that certainly lowers the price of admission to effecting real change in my life and suddenly makes change seem much more reachable!

As I was developing the ideas for this blog in my head I came upon a third important learning. This particular experiment in change stared with me challenging what I thought I knew to be right and allowing for the possibility that a belief I had built for myself over the years was simply wrong. Had I not been able to entertain the thought that I might be wrong, I never would have tried something else. While I have spent much of my life playing it safe for fear of being "wrong", I see now that "being wrong" is one of life's greatest opportunities, and without that much less learning would take place. So I not only want to celebrate myself for finding a new belief that works better fro me than its predecessor, I want to celebrate here my willingness to let go of who I was so that my arms were free to embrace who I want to be.

Love to all of you, always.

Author's note: I want to express here my gratitude to Iris for this blog. I have in my life been a chronic procrastinator. I had promised Iris that I would post this blog about 48 hours ago and I left off writing it to the very last minute and beyond. I was tired when I got home late tonight and entertained thoughts of putting it off for another day, but I thought of Iris and how much I love her and how much I want to support her efforts to have this blog be a reliable and useful place for us to gather and enrich ourselves with the fruit of each other's lives. While I would normally have motivated myself to meet my deadline by feeling bad about screwing up and not keeping my promise to myself and to my friend, I found myself this time sitting down to the keyboard fueled by the warmth of the love I have for Iris and the love I feel from her to me. Thank you Iris for inviting me to participate here and providing me with a place to show up and a chance to show up there out of love.

Labels: all blogs, mark kaufman, philosophy