Change your Perception - Change your Life

You are the sum of EVERY choice you have ever made in your life.

I want you to sit and think about that for a little bit. If you have a life that you are not happy with, which includes:

• Health

• Bank balance

• Relationships

• Achievements

• Employment

That means you have made decisions throughout your life that have put you into the position you are currently in.

This might be a tough pill to swallow for some people. But it's true.

The choices you make have a direct impact on how you feel. Those feelings will determine the quality of your life. If you always feel the emotions of:

• Stress

• Overwhelm

• Anxiousness

• Sadness

• Guilt

• Anger

Then it can be safe to say, that you are not happy with where your life is currently or the direction it is traveling.

You may believe that your life isn't how you want it to be because of your family, spouse, or your boss at work.

You believe that your ideal life is unattainable because of factors outside of your control.

So you have created a fantasy of how you wish your life to be or what it should 'look like'.

And because your reality doesn't match the life you have envisioned for yourself it makes you feel worse.

What you are doing is placing the responsibility for why your life isn't how you want it to be because of an external event or circumstance.

This is a victim perspective.

So you continue to make choices that align with how you feel at that moment:

• Scrolling through social media

• Procrastinating

• Binge eating

• Smoking/vaping

• Making excuses

Seeking immediate gratification so that you can escape the uncomfortable feeling.

Because that’s all we want in life right? More life. We want experiences that make us feel more positive than negative.

Think about it for a second. If I were to ask you, to name 4 things that you want in life, you might say:

• Owning a home

• A new car

• Travel the world

• Find my dream partner

In reality, when you look at it deeper, all you want is the FEELING that is attached to having those things.

• You want the feeling of security that owning a home brings.

• You want the feeling of status that comes from owning a new car.

• You want the feeling of freedom that comes from traveling the world.

• The feeling of love and acceptance that you get from an intimate relationship.

We go through life-chasing experiences that make us feel alive. We want to experience more of the feelings of:

• Love

• Joy

• Inspiration

• Awe

• Gratitude

• Enthusiasm

• Happiness

The more expansive the emotions we experience the greater our quality of life.

When we experience positive emotions it motivates and inspires us to take action toward our goals and aspirations.

Whereas negative emotions stop us from being able to achieve our dream life.

It causes us to doubt ourselves and our abilities, leading to procrastination and indecision.

It installs fear in us that prevents us from taking action. We have all experienced at least one of the following fears (I've experienced all of them):

• Fear of failure.

• Fear of what other people will think of us.

• Fear of not being good enough.

• Fear of the unknown.

• Fear of rejection.

It is your inability to deal with these fears that are holding you back from taking action toward the life you desire. It causes you to be in a constant state of survival. It activates the fight or flight response, making you feel like you are in danger. So you run away from it, seeking comfort and safety to escape how you feel.

This may feel good in the short term, but the more you run away from your emotions the more difficult they are to overcome. They develop a stronger hold on you, and over time you become a slave to your emotions. You become reactive instead of proactive.

If you are constantly reacting to your environment or problems then you will always be a victim of your circumstances.

• Forever locked in a self-inflicted prison of the mind.

• Perspective is what breaks you free.

The ultimate source of power in life is your perception of how you view the problems in your life. Changing your perception of life and how you view your problems will free you from the self-inflicted prison.

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” - Wayne Dyer

We all have a ‘lens’ through which we view the world. Human beings are biologically wired for survival. From a young age, our perception is shaped by our parents, peers, and other role models.

We need to make meaning of our experiences so that they can help us make sense of the world and our place in it. So you absorb information from your immediate environment.

• We learn how to interact with others through our relationships with our family, friends, or teachers.

• We learn about how to look after our health through our parent's eating and exercise habits.

• We learn about money and how to manage it by observing how our family or friends spend money.

• We develop our outlook on life, and our world view, through the values and beliefs of our family, culture, society, and personal experiences.

95% of your beliefs are subconsciously programmed during your childhood.

You have formed an identity (ego) and are living a life that aligns with what you believe to be true of the world. You attach to this identity because it is all you know and perceives to be true.

So when someone challenges your worldview, you perceive it as an attack on your sense of self, which makes you feel threatened and vulnerable. So you react emotionally and defend your worldview to reaffirm your sense of identity and to regain control over the situation.

So whenever a problem enters your life:

• Having an argument with your partner.

• Disagreement with a work colleague.

• Blow out with a friend.

You instinctively blame the other person for the way they made you feel. What you don’t realise is that by doing this, you are disempowering yourself. You are becoming a victim of your circumstances and letting the outside world dictate how you feel.

You will be in a constant state of survival, reacting emotionally to any event or circumstance that happens to you. It is going to bring more negative emotions into your life that will continue to make you feel anxious and stressed. You will start to create a disconnect from who you really are, forever suffering in a self-inflicted prison.

Don’t sit back and watch your life progressively get worse, when you have the power to be the creator of your reality. It’s time to regain your power back in life. No matter what you experience in life you can change your perceptions of it.

“You are disturbed not by things, but the views which you take them” - Epictetus

A perfectly balanced mind doesn’t have outside circumstances run your life. All distress in life is the perception of loss of that which you seek and the perception of gain of that which you’re trying to avoid. Whenever an event or circumstance enters your life, it invokes a feeling or emotion within you.

• You then create a story as to why it made you feel a certain way.

• You have a story for why you're not looking after your health.

• You have a story for the financial position that you are in.

• You have a story for working a job that you hate.

• You have a story for why your life isn’t the way you want it to be.

Are you going to continue subscribing to these stories?

The stories that you are replaying constantly in your head are the reason why you are stuck in this position and will continue to be stuck for years to come. Don't let that be your reality.

You have the ability to have an event happen to you and turn it into anything you want. But if you continue to be conscious of the negative aspects of your life and unconscious of the positives, then you will never be empowered.

“You can make a heaven out of a hell or a hell out of a heaven” - John Milton

The only way to change your perception is by asking questions that make you aware of things you have been unconscious of. If you ask quality questions you can make the unconscious conscious.

The quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions that you ask yourself. When you ask questions that force you to look at an event from a different perspective, you gain new insight.

• Asking quality questions = Developing a New Perspective

• Different Perspectives = Change your Decisions.

• Change your Decisions = Change your Actions

• Change your Actions = Different Outcome.

You are no longer run by the world you are influencing the world.

• You start to pro-act instead of react.

• You live a life of intention.

When you start living a life by what‘s true for you and what’s inspiring to you, life starts to happen for you, not to you.

• You become more magnetic.

• You see more opportunities enter your life.

• You have more influence on those around you.

• You become more grateful for the life that you have.

• You become more centered within yourself and less distressed.

All of this is available to you and I will share with you how you can ask yourself the right questions and learn to build the muscle that is perspective. This isn't something that just develops overnight. You are challenging the years of programming that you have installed over your lifetime.

There will be times when you fall back into your old lens and that's okay. However, we want to reduce the amount of time we spend living through our old lens of the world.

Over time, your awareness begins to strengthen, and you can identify when you are falling back into old patterns. It is at that moment when you can begin to create a space between the stimulus and response.

Self-Awareness is a powerful skill to learn (something I will dedicate an entire newsletter to in the future). Be kind to yourself. Self-development is a lifelong pursuit, you need to be your own best friend along that journey.

4 Mental Models that will help you change your perspective

Throughout my journey, I have used these lenses of thinking whenever I encounter a difficult situation or problem in my life. They have helped me immensely to change my perspective at the moment, balance my emotions, and act with intention.

I encourage you to write these down somewhere and take the time to read them every day to familiarise yourself with them.

1) I am responsible for everything that happens to me

This might sound crazy to some people, but I accept blame for everything that happens to me, even when I know it isn't my fault.

I do this because it makes me responsible for my actions. When you accept responsibility for everything that happens to you, it forces you to reflect on what you could have done differently.

• Could I have communicated that another way?

• Could I have handled that situation differently?

• Could I have been more kind in my approach?

It gets you thinking about different ways that you could have handled a situation better. So when it happens again you know what you can do differently. As opposed to blaming the other person for the situation.

When you place the blame on something external, it is implying that you are 'right' and they are 'wrong'. When you think you are right, you are closing your mind only to what you believe to be true.

The ego loves being right because it gives you a sense of validation and superiority. This can be a dangerous path to go down as you will be unwilling to accept criticism or be open to new ideas.

2) Life has no meaning, only the one you attach.

This is a deep philosophical statement and I am going to break it down as simply as I can. Life "just is". The universe is 13.8 billion years old. It has existed long before the human race even existed and will continue to exist long after we are gone.

Everything that happens in life is neutral, without inherent good or bad, right or wrong. It is our thoughts or interpretations that give events meaning.

A metaphor to explain this would be looking at the Mona Lisa. One person might see a beautiful woman, while another may see a mysterious woman full of secrets. The painting itself is neutral -- it is the viewer's interpretation that determines the meaning.

This is the same for life. We can choose to interpret life in a positive or negative way, but ultimately life just is, without any inherent meaning. You have the power to create meaning in your life. Chose wisely.

3) You are complete at the soul level

This is something I recently learned when I attended Dr. John DiMartini's Breakthrough Experience and has stuck with me ever since.

Nothing is missing from us. Quite often when we feel the negative emotions of life, we perceive that something is wrong with us or that we are missing out on something. Negative emotions make us who we are.

Without negative emotions, we wouldn't know what positive emotions would feel like because we would have nothing to compare them to. They are a guidance signal to help us find our way back to our true selves and our inner peace.

By acknowledging, accepting, and learning from our negative emotions, we can use them as opportunities for growth and transformation.

4) Problems are on the way, not in the way.

I don't even like the word problems because it implies that something is wrong and needs fixing, but I will use it because it is a commonly used word amongst everyone.

I like to see problems as challenges. Challenges imply that it is something we need to overcome.

When you see problems in your life as challenges, they start to become on the way not in the way. It is a simple change in linguistics that can shift your perception.

If there is anything that is constant in life, it is problems. You are going to have to deal with problems whether you want to or not.

The reality is, how well you deal with problems will determine your quality of life more than anything you will do in your lifetime.

Problems are a lesson begging to be utilised. When you solve problems, you expand and become more.

If you are asking yourself "Why does this problem keep happening to me?" You will continue to bring more problems into your life because you are focusing on the problem and not the solution. Start changing the questions you ask yourself. Questions are the source of answers.

Questions help you change the way you feel, therefore the way you deal with problems.

Instead, ask yourself:

• "How can I solve this?"

• "How is this a benefit for me?"

• "What ways can I use this to my advantage?"

When you shift your perspective of problems as on the way instead of in the way, you will always find an answer.

" Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers" - Tony Robbins.

Final Words

As we wrap up this newsletter, remember that you have the power to change how you see things and take charge of your life.

By being more self-aware, learning new ways of thinking, and asking better questions, you can turn challenges into chances to grow.

Your journey to a happier, more meaningful life starts when you realize you can create the life you want.

It's time to break free from the limits you've put on yourself and become the best you can be.

Keep learning, stay curious, and discover the power of seeing things differently.

~Stefan Barbas