Independence Day - Free Your Mind

---

"Happiness, like unhappiness, is a proactive choice."-Stephen CoveyI saw the movie Pearl Harbor over Memorial Day weekend.
Itserved as a good reminder of the tremendous cost of freedom.There is also a... "Happiness, like unhappiness, is a proactive choice."-Stephen CoveyI saw the movie Pearl Harbor over Memorial Day weekend.
Itserved as a good reminder of the tremendous cost of freedom.There is also a tremendous cost to not having freedom.In a physical sense, most of us enjoy freedom. In anemotional or psychological sense, however, an estimated 80%of the population puts themselves into a self-imposed prisoncell on a regular basis.
We forfeit our freedom of choicethrough our own thought processes. I frequently hear myclients say, "I have to" or "I gotta" or "I should" And whenI hear those phrases I often ask, "Do you have to or do youchoose to?" There are very few things in life that we haveto do.
Yet some of us forfeit our choice to the point ofseeing our options in life as limited. This generally leadsto a feeling of hopelessness.There are indeed times when you are not at choice.
When youare not at choice, you may be a victim. And sometimes youmight slip into the victim role when, in fact, you do havechoices.
The first step toward getting out of a self-imposedvictim role is to recognize the choices you have.Exercise Your Free Will"Independent will is our capacity to act. It gives us thepower to transcend our paradigms, to swim upstream, torewrite our scripts, to act based on principle rather thanreacting based on emotion or circumstance."-Stephen CoveyWe have been given the ability to examine our consciousthoughts and choose how we react in any given situation.
Welearn at a very early age that if we act a certain way, wewill achieve a certain result.Often the result we opt for is safety. And safety isnecessary to preserve our physical well-being.
However, ourdesire to be "safe" sometimes paralyzes our ability toexercise our free will. From childhood on, most of us havebeen programmed to "play it safe," and this often affectsthe choices we make as adults.
We tell ourselves, "That wasso disappointing before, so I better not take that chanceagain."Do you allow your fear of hurt, rejection, or failure todetermine how much risk you are willing to take? What is thecost of doing this? Perhaps you're stuck in a job or careerpath you hate, or you are in a relationship that does notserve you, or you've chosen not to pursue a relationship youwant. Do you struggle with low self-esteem and self-confidence? If so, you are probably severely hampering yourability to manifest what you want in your life by convincingyourself that you should not try, or that you do not deservewhat you really want.
Our choices are strongly influenced byour disempowering emotions. By learning to recognize andstep out of experiencing these emotions, a whole new worldof possibility will be available to you.I know this from personal experience.
For 13 years I choseto stay in a stressful career that I did not findfulfilling. The more time I invested in that career path,the less at choice I felt.
At one point I took an exam toreceive a special certification in my field. When I passedthe exam and was certified, I felt like there was no turningback! I told myself, "I can't leave this field now look howmuch I've invested in it!" And besides, I had no idea whatelse I could possibly do.
Fear held me back, until one daythe pain of not making a change outweighed the fear of theunknown.Susan Jeffers, author of Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway,teaches us how to stop negative thinking patterns andreeducate our minds to think more positively. In her book,she shows us how to risk a little every day, how to turnevery decision into a "No-Lose" situation, and much more.When my clients focus on their values -- what is mostimportant to them at the core -- they are more at choice andless at effect.
They recognize that they have the freedom tochoose based on their own values, versus being influenced bylimiting beliefs, circumstances, or the opinions of others.One of the great joys of being a coach is that I get tojourney with my clients as they create the work and playthey are most passionate about. When passion andtalents/skills intersect, there is no limit to thepossibilities!Inside-Out Thinking"If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks goodto the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is notsuccess at all." -Anna QuindlenMost of us grew up with an "outside-in" model of thinking.In other words, we have been influenced by the advice andopinions of others rather than trusting the answers fromwithin.
When we follow the outside-in model, the results donot usually bring about a deep level of satisfaction orfulfillment. Outside-in thinking means that we try tochange, improve, or transform ourselves and ourcircumstances based on what others think.
Outside-inthinking represents a reactive model, based on externalcircumstances. Not only is this less effective, but itusually takes more effort and energy.The "inside-out" model of thinking represents a proactivemodel, which is based on accessing one's own internal wisdomand core values.
The word "proactive" means more than merelytaking initiative. Our behavior is a function of ourdecisions, not our conditions.
We can subordinate feelingsto values. We have the initiative and the responsibility tomake things happen.
When we align our actions with theessence of who we are and what we value most, we are usingthe inside-out model. As each of us more fully honors ouressential selves and our values, outer conditions begin tochange, improve, and even transform.One of the best illustrations of the power of "inside-out"came to me when I was a child.
I went to see the moviePapillon. For those not familiar with this story, HenriCharriere was a Frenchman who was convicted in 1931 of amurder he did not commit.
Sentenced to life imprisonment, hespent 12 years in the penal colony of French Guiana. Aftereight unsuccessful attempts to escape, he finally got awayto Venezuela.
More than 20 years later, when he was 60,Charriere wrote his story, which became an internationalbest seller and was made into a movie. One scene from themovie has stuck with me all these years.
Charriere waslocked in a dark, small cell in solitary confinement almost24 hours a day. The only living things sharing the tinyprison cell with him were the roaches.
He chose to makethese roaches his "friends" and actually looked forward toseeing them on the occasions when a beam of light would comeinto his cell so he could see.Now, if you're like me, I was taught that roaches were notmy friends. This scene in the movie taught me a veryimportant lesson in life: It is not our circumstances thatmake or break us, but rather our response to thosecircumstances.
Jack Canfield illustrates this beautifully inhis book, How to Build High Self-Esteem, by sharing thissimple equation: E (experience) + R (response) = O(outcome).In Charriere's case, the experience was that he wasimprisoned in solitary confinement in a very small roach-infested cell with little or no light. The response was thathe chose to think of the roaches as welcomed guests in hishome -- his way of honoring his own value of havingcompanionship in his life.
The outcome was that he was ableto maintain his sanity by inviting the roaches to providehim with the companionship he so desperately craved while insolitary confinement. Had Charriere's response beendifferent, I'm certain he would have experienced acompletely different outcome.
As I recall, the movieparalleled Charriere's life with that of another prisoner inthe same penal colony. Although the two prisoners sharedsimilar experiences, their responses were quite different.The other man ended up losing his sanity and dying during anattempt to escape.Although we may never find ourselves in Charriere'scircumstances, I believe most of us are mentally imprisonedby our own response to experiences in our lives.
When weexperience emotions like fear, anger, and jealousy, we havechosen thoughts that put us in the smallest of jail cells.These emotions completely paralyze our freedom of choice.We have the ability to be completely at choice about how wesee things, how we feel, and what we do as a result. InStephen Covey's book, The Seven Habits of Highly EffectivePeople, he explains how these things are all connected: Ourparadigms -- the lens through which we view things -- informour thoughts.
Our thoughts inform our feelings. Our feelingsinform our response.
Our response affects the outcome. Thisexplains how two people working from different paradigms canexperience the same event and yet experience completelydifferent outcomes.
To illustrate, Stephen Covey tells of anexperience he once had:Mr. Covey was sitting on a New York subway one quiet Sundaymorning when a man and his children got on his subway car.The man sat down next to Covey and closed his eyes, whilehis children immediately began yelling back and forth,throwing things, and even grabbing people's papers.
Althoughthe children were being very disruptive, the father made noattempt to control his kids. It appeared that he wasoblivious to the situation.
Covey grew more irritated by theminute. Clearly everyone else on the subway felt irritated,too.
So Covey finally turned to the man and said, "Sir, yourchildren are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder ifyou couldn't control them a little more?" The father liftedhis gaze as he became conscious to the situation, and hesaid, "Oh, you're right.
I guess I should do something aboutit. We just came from the hospital where their mother diedabout an hour ago.
I don't know what to think, and I guessthey don't know how to handle it either."At this point, Covey shifted from feeling irritated andjudgmental to feeling compassion, concern, and empathy. Inother words, as Covey got more information, it shifted hisparadigm, which shifted the way he thought about thesituation, which shifted his feelings about the man and hischildren.
And all of these shifts helped Covey to choose adifferent response, which changed the outcome for both Coveyand the other man. Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com .