Hi guys! Welcome to episode 295 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! How’s it going out there? Im feeling good. I hope you are as well. Ive been reading this book entitled Awareness by Anthony D Mello , I will put it in the show notes, it is sooooo good. He is very direct so look out if you decide to read it, but I like direct, I like getting right to the point. He talks a bit about our identity.
We go through life with a set of filters. It’s a lens of sorts. That lens can be ever changing. It can change day to day. And that lens can be set by your culture, by your family, by the movie you watched last night even. It can even be set by a book you’ve read or an experience you had. Now a days by social media. I will give you an example. At the height of Covid when people were fighting over vaccines, in fact it seemed like every topic of conversation included vaccines, people seemed to be either strongly for them or strongly against them. I’m more of a you do you kind of person so if you want it get it if you don’t don’t. During the height of this conversation Jarek Robbins, Tony Robbins son put a post in his story saying “I support mandatory vaccines”. I was quite shocked by that because he is a very spiritual guy and usually pretty open like I think I am. I quickly responded that I was shocked by his position. I scrolled to his next post and it said “read my previous post again”. And I was like huh? And so I went back and read it again and it said the same thing, then I went back a third time because I knew I was missing something and the wind was knocked out of me when I realized what it actually said. It actually said I support mandatory vacations. That was a big moment for me. I realized I was falling into a trap of tunnel vision. Everything I saw or heard was being funneled through a lens of my perception of what was currently the hot topic of conversation. The crisis of the day so to speak.
We all do it. Sometimes it’s worse than other times but we generally have preconceived ideas and lenses from which we view the world and they can be very very hard to overcome if we are living on autopilot especially.
So we have this lens and it’s clouding our vision. When we realize this it’s extremely eye opening. If you’re awake you might ask where else am I allowing this lens to cloud my judgement? But that gets too murky. It sends you down a different rabbit hole of trying to identify all of your preconceived notions. And Unfortunately there are a lot. So I propose simply being aware when something makes you uncomfortable, notice the thoughts that come with it. You don’t have to be a prisoner of your conditioning.
I have touched on this before but I believe we can circumvent a lot of these preset lenses by being aware that we have these filters in the first place. Whether it be a filter of past events, a filter of labels we have for ourself or others. A filter of stereo types. We like to put things in boxes. This means that. But does it? When you see a priest with his black coat and white collar, does that bring you comfort? You may say of course, it would bring anyone comfort, my husband was born and raised a catholic so when he sees a priest, he feels a level of respect. Well I grew up with religious literature showing a person wearing a priest outfit as evil and it usually included fire and tortured souls along with it. It was associated with something scary. So when I see a priest I still even after 25 years of not believing that way, I still want to steer away from him. That’s because I was conditioned for 30 years. There’s a big difference in how my husband and I were conditioned. I now notice it and my thoughts that come with it. Just noticing it and being aware of it gives me the chance to be open to change.
In America we label someone democrat or Republican. It’s getting to the point to where once you know what someone is, you think you have all you need to know about that person. I’m sad to say that that’s another reason I have gotten off social media is because I found myself wanting to judge people in that way too. I don’t want to look at someone through a filter of how they vote. I never used to even know the difference between a democrat or a Republican. My parents don’t vote at all because of their religious beliefs. So where did i get my beliefs? It had to be media. Social media. It could also be my peer group. I didn’t create my own ideas, I was influenced. I want to see people as You get to control that. Social media and the bias news media will have you hating someone you don’t even know and you don’t even realize it until you’re avoiding friends because of something they posted on Facebook. What changed? Your thought about them changed. Think about it. If you had never read that post, the next time you saw them you would feel the same way you always did because your idea of them is the same. We want to say no they changed. When in reality, Your thoughts about them changed.
Our conditioning is happening every day. Our strongest conditioning comes from the way we were raised.
Can you pinpoint at least one conditioning you’ve had that is stunting your growth, it could be a perception of how people are or a perception of the way life is. My family had a belief that the world is going to end soon, possibly tomorrow. That made planning for the future unnecessary. Can you see any problems with that? Big problems right? Maybe you believe something like my family is destined to have this disease or be this way or to not be successful conditioning could cause you to attach labels to yourself and others. For example if I see a woman in a burqa. I used to think something negative like she probably wishes she didn’t have to wear that. That used to be my thought. But Where did that come from? It was definitely not an original thought, I’ve never had a conversation with a Muslim woman who told me she wished she didn’t have to wear it so it came from another source. We do this all the time. This equals that. Every time you have a preprogrammed negative thought challenge it because it could be your conditioning.
When you are aware of that you realize You get to choose your thoughts. Which means you can choose thoughts that empower you or you can choose thoughts that weaken you, and a lot of that depends on what influence your under.
My challenge to you today is to be aware of what you’re allowing yourself to be influenced by. You’re not alone we all have conditioning but you’ll stand apart once you realize you don’t have to be a prisoner to it. I love you guys. I’ll talk to you in a few days.
