Should you choose your friends for what you want to achieve in life?


When I first heard that some people actually chose their friends and connections based on what they wanted to achieve, I have to say I was quite shocked. My sense of loyalty was aggravated and I thought it was a shallow way to interact with people. However since my first introduction to this idea I have to say I have warmed to it for the following reasons…..

1.       If you are committed to growing as a person then the people you initially start out with are not all going to embrace the same journey as you. If they are not committed to this journey then you will find that they feel threatened by the changes that you make to yourself and might actively try to dissuade you from carrying on with your journey. Think for instance of a drug addict who hangs around with other drug addicts (yes, this is an extreme example but true of any group). If he/she decides to clean up do you think it would be easier or harder to do it in the company of those that are still taking drugs? My guess is that it would be virtually impossible for that person to stay their course. The people you spend time with bring you to their level, unless you have incredible inner strength which most of us don’t.

2.       The people you spend time with have an effect on your thoughts and what you think is possible. For instance if you were born into a family that was made up of doctors and lawyers and you decided to study  fine art instead there would most likely be huge resistance from the other members of your family (unless they were particularly progressive). They would worry that you might not make it in life and that making money being an artist would be too hard and so on. However if you had been born into a family of artists and you decided to do fine art I would imagine you would get a huge amount of support. To act against what others think especially in your immediate environment can be incredibly hard and I have witnessed many people who have done what others have thought they should do rather than following their own knowing, leading to unhappiness and lack of fulfillment. If you surround yourself with people who have already done what you want to do and know it is possible then your decisions and actions will be that much easier and more successful.

3.       Lastly, if you interact with people who know more than you about what you want to do you cannot help but learn from them. You will probably not get inside knowledge on finance from a secretary (although there may be some that do have this experience so please excuse the analogy if this is the case) so if you want to know about financing projects, find someone who has already done it and been successful. This part is very important- don’t ask someone who has not achieved what you want to, ask someone who has been successful. Otherwise you will be copying their mistakes rather than their successes.  If you want to find out about being an entrepreneur, find one that has already done it and been successful or if you can’t find one read books that have been written by them. I live in Botswana and we have a very small population of two million in a country the size of France. I haven’t always been able to connect with people who I admire and want to learn from however, I have been able to buy their books. There is no excuse in this day and age of knowledge.

Dr Bruce Lipton a cell biologist discovered that it was the environment that altered the cells more than their hereditary disposition. So don’t blame you circumstances -go and change them. 

Freedom from your programs

This is a big one! What would be possible if you did not doubt yourself?

A large number my clients have listed this as one of the goals they want to achieve and oddly enough this is normally the one thing that prevents you from achieving your goals.

Before I go into how to get over self-doubt you need to know a little more about it.

The very good news that nearly every person on the planet has suffered from self-doubt and the only ones not to are psychopaths. The fact that you are interested enough to be reading this is a good indication that you are not a psychopath.J

So why do you have self-doubt when all it really does is stop you from achieving things that you want to achieve? If you have been following any of my blogs you will have read about the conscious and unconscious minds and how your experience of reality is made up of the combination of these two parts of you. They do not play an equal part though as your unconscious mind contributes at least 95% to how you experience reality and your conscious mind only 5%. Your unconscious mind is very important as it directs and gives the instructions for your heart to beat, your lungs to breathing and maintains all of the bodies functions that it would be impossible for you to run manually.

 It also interprets all of the information coming in from your senses all of the time. It compares them to data it has already collected to assess whether they are dangerous or pleasurable. Anyone who has had young children will know that they don’t automatically know that some things are hot and can burn them. It normally takes one experience for them to develop a program that stops them from touching hot things again. How these programs work is that once they are triggered by the information coming in from your senses such as heat or steam this activates one of your programs which will send thoughts which activate feelings which in turn cause you to respond in a certain way. If you have ever tried to do something you are afraid of you will know how hard it is to act against your feelings and yet all they are -is feelings! For instance I will assume that you have at some point burnt yourself and developed the program to prevent this from happening again. So if you were to decide that you wanted to walk on hot coals (as some people do), the only thing stopping you would be your thoughts and feelings; and believe you me getting past these is tough! This is how powerful your subconscious mind is at controlling your experiences of life. You have 1000’s of these programs that control how you interact with others, how you communicate, whether you are outgoing or introverted self-confident or not.

I am telling you all of this because this is where self-doubt comes in. Generally when you experience self-doubt you are doing something that you have either never done before or something that you have not managed to do before. Your subconscious mind accesses its database of everything you have ever experienced and either says “Uh Oh we have no data -this could be a potentially life threatening or humiliating situation let’s put on the brakes and activate the self-doubt” or it will say “Ah Ha the data is not looking good we did this before and it didn’t work. Going on the data it won’t work again. This situation could be problematic lets activate self-doubt.”

I think it is so very important to know that self-doubt is not based on facts it is simply based on the past or on lack of information and it is something that most of us feel a lot of the time when we are pushing boundaries and growing.

This is why fear contracts your life because if you give in to self-doubt and fear you will stop pushing the boundaries and your life will become less because of it. However if you choose to see fear and self-doubt for what they are- just programs- you can then choose to live your life to the limit.

How do you get past self-doubt? You may want a magic pill but unfortunately life doesn’t generally work like that. The way I know how to get past it is to:

1.       Acknowledge it. This is a very important step. Without which you will be a victim of it your whole life.

2.       Make a decision. What do you choose to do? Remember that choice is a conscious decision and the only one you have to steer your life. You can choose to stop and retreat or you can choose to “screw it and do it” as Sir Richard Branson would say.

3.       The last step is to let it go. Once you have decided which action or inaction you are going to take it is to make peace with that choice and let go of the struggle. Every time you notice yourself engaging with the struggle just let it go and refocus on something else or preferably the actions you need to take to reach the stars!!

I would like to share an example with you. I am dyslexic and as you can imagine writing does not come naturally to me. It has taken me years to get to this place where I can sit down and rattle off an article without analysing it and tearing it apart, but the way that I see it now is that those to whom this is relevant will read it and those to whom it is not will have just wasted a few minutes of their time. Either way the world will not stop turning, life will not stop being lived and I am free of one less limitation, ye ha J

Wishing you a wonderful week and hoping that you see self-doubt for what it is - just an illusion.

 

With love

 Britt