You are in the driver seat of your own life. You control the way you behave, the way you perceive things, the way you react to the environment, and ultimately the way you lead your life based on the summation of all these things.
The now world-popular book and movie, The Secret, has one main theme that annoyingly repeats itself… You attract things to your life based on the amount of time, energy (even non-physical, such as thoughts) you allocate to these things. If you stress out too much about this or that, worry about this or that, bottom-line is you are attracting these things into you life. This was labeled as “The Law of Attraction” and it is underline in red as the main driving force behind life, fate, luck, and what gets served on one’s plate of existence. The book and movie go on to say that by changing the way we think we can alter our lives. By thinking positively and spending energy on positive thoughts, a person can attract these positive things in life. Pretty straight forward I’d say.
I was reading an article today on WikiPedia about self-fulfilling prophecies and how the disclosure of a prophecy becomes a driving force in many cases to make the prophecy become an actuality. The article states that this actualization of the prophecy is a result of mental and behavioral alignment with a perceived future that provokes scenarios and reactions to scenarios which ultimately bring the prophecy to life. Interesting no? It sounds very similar to the Law of Attraction with one major difference. Prophecies are usually not things a person decides for his or her self. They are, as in the times of Ancient Greeks, dictated by a second party, an all-seeing oracle, or as in Africa, by a wise tribe Shaman under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms or herbs. The more esteem given to the oracle or the Shaman, or the dispenser of prophecies, the more vividly and wholeheartedly the receiving end of their prophecy become aligned mentally and emotionally.
What the “Law of Attraction” thus is suggesting is that we become our own Prophets. The only thing that makes this task a bit difficult is the fact that we usually do not trust ourselves as much as we should. We would much rather give our faith to a famous fortune teller known to be dead on accurate than to trust ourselves. It seems we humans have a difficulty in accepting the fact that we are powerful enough to decide the future for ourselves that it is dismissed as an absurdity. The chasm we must leap across, in my opinion, lies in the breaking down of this insecurity and under-estimation of the power we wield when it comes to our future lives.
But we cannot blame ourselves for this lack of faith in our true power. As children we are raised to look up to our parents as caretakers, providers, and figures of authority. We enroll in schools and begin to find that there more authority figures out there than we knew: teachers. And these teachers adhered to even bigger authorities, scientists and mathematicians and engineers whose names are sprinkled across a curriculum of text books from which we are taught. Somewhere inside every one of us, a striking realization occurs: The world is already defined for us… and we are here to be fed what has already been cooked.
Religions also bring up the matter of fate and faith in the power of God. Life is his creation and thus in times of need one must look up and pray that God lend a helping hand, perform a miracle, ease a pain, or show us the way. We are shaped to instinctively rely on other humans and other religious forces. And this reliance breeds a sense of powerlessness.
So what’s the big deal? I hear you ask. Now that you’ve learned these things, go and control your life. I wish it were that easy. One of the major problems we face is our very own mind. We can read about something, learn about it, accept it as a very plausible theory, imagine ways of implementing in our own lives, see the benefits of it, agree with it, like it, appreciate it… but that is all cigar and no smoke. You can describe the cigarette for a thousand years… but if you don’t smoke it, you can’t hope for cancer. And I’ve likened this to cancer because that is what we seem to be treating this de-shackling force of freedom as. Our brain cannot seem to step on our side in accepting this as the way of life and keeps raining doubt on our other wise sunny theory and warm parade. Why does our mind do that?
because the brain that we have in our head is an ugly and insecure little bastard. He knows he is in charge. He knows he makes the decisions and he is afraid. He is afraid of being blamed down the road for a decision he has made; this more commonly known as regret. The brain hates to regret. Regret is basically the pain that is felt when the brain makes a miscalculated mistake and to the brain it is much like the dog that is forced to smell his poop when he poops in the wrong place. The brain doesn’t like to poop in wrong places. And the theory that he can control the world freaks him out, although liberating him for little intervals at a time. However is always reminded of the poop he will smell if he fails and thus abandoning a seemingly revolutionary idea is safer for our brain. He is a wuss.
And… That is why we want someone to tell us what we want to hear: The brain needs to feel that the decision was not his own before he unshackles himself. Our brain lacks faith in himself and we end up suffering the inadequacies of a lifetime because of a simple and single leap of faith that seems too large for our insecure-brain. That is why going to a doctor who tells you the same thing you thought about the acne problem puts you at ease. We are used to relying on other people for information and help that we got used to having no responsibility for decision making. And decision making is something we limit to colors, clothes, taste in music and food, but nothing major; or at least so we hope.
Just as psychiatrists sometimes issue placebo drugs, the majority of us need a major placebo element in their lives that can induce them to adopt a positive and reenforcing pattern of thought and behavior to steer them in the direction of the steering wheel: that of their very own lives. I’m now actively seeking a placebo for myself and I hope that I will be able to enslave my brain as opposed to being the slave of its weakness.
I’d like to start by saying that I do agree that we create our future; it’s not the things that happen to us but our reactions that define us and our lives. I also agree with you that we are afraid of admitting this hence use excuses such as the very same one you used.. “They raised us that way!”
It’s true we have figures of authority, caretakers and so on but this only helps pave our ways. Those figures aren’t meant to define our lives; their purpose is to help us define ours. They’re merely a tool to help us use that brain of ours, may they be parents, teacher, scientists or prophets! God asked us to think for ourselves, God asked us to give our best, to try as hard as we can, and only then will he help us.
We need to stop blaming others for our mistakes, we need to take responsibility for our actions and we need to learn from our mistakes and we need to learn to enjoy pooping from time to time. We all make mistakes, some bigger than others, some take longer time to fix and some might even hurt more than others but at the end they have one thing in common.. they are what drives us towards better choices and eventually a better living!
We need to man-up (gender irrelevant), and get our shit together.
I can say that Literary intelligence is that situation when you have an idea or thoughts but can’t express it in words , and someone comes and says what you have like he’s sitting in your head , In this Article You did the job !!
every body says take risks, fail, then stand up again
but there is always a dark zone between fail and stand up …. some can be left in this like forever , and some lights it with hope and sure im in favor of those with second , third and fourth hope
not to many articles i have red about this vague time of life , its never easy and you can’t estimate how long it takes( even to most successful and persisten men ), it consumes days , effort, and raise false and negative thoughts inside brain to protect the body and soul from another physical or emotional experience
agh if only there is a secret formula to cut this dark part of life stories short , my brain will leap thousand leaps of faith
”but that is all cigar and no smoke. You can describe the cigarette for a thousand years… but if you don’t smoke it, you can’t hope for cancer”