At the end of each year I love to reflect back to the past 12 months. With Christmas and New Year happening this period is the closest to my heart.
We all have those moments of insights where we see life differently. Something in our perception changes, and we look at things from a new perspective. Those can be life-changing moments.
I had my own ones this year, and I gathered together the ten most important lessons. So let’s get onto them.
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100% of my feelings come from my thinking.
This year my own understanding of how we create our inner emotional experience of life has deepened greatly. And thanks to that life has become more fluid, less solid. My own experiences don’t seem that frightening anymore.
I know it’s just happening in my own head. We create our own suffering from the inside.
I finally understood Syd Banks’ words, a Scottish welder turned spiritual teacher:
“If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.”
The biggest misunderstanding in society right now is that life happening from the outside-in vs. the inside-out.
With the outside-in understanding it looks like my feelings are happening because of things outside of me. Traffic jam, a boss, a partner, the weather, a new business report… These are the causes of my bad feelings…
But it’s not what happens to us that matters, that is neutral, pure information, has no meaning. Our mind makes up the meaning and projects that onto the situation, and then that’s what we are feeling. We are feeling our thinking.
“No matter how scary, or oppressive, or insecure your experience of life may be, once you realize that it’s only your own thinking that you’re experiencing, that thinking loses much of its hold over you.” – Michael Neill
This insight has massively impacted my work with clients as well. A question I ask myself at the beginning of our work: “Does this person know where his inner experience coming from?” Outside vs. Inside.
When I help people get a different understanding about how they create their experience of life, then life becomes more fluid, and effortless. They become less entangled in heavier emotional states, and stay there less time, because those emotions and the relating thoughts loses much of their hold over them. Amazing, how our life can change once we see things differently!
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Inner well-being is our default state.
Did you ever see a baby depressed? Not really, right?
When we were small babies we were a clean sheet, looking at life with wonder and curiosity, engaging with the moment. We lived in our natural well-being.
And when something disturbs the baby and cries, they get back to this well-being really quickly. In one moment they might cry, but within moments they might be calm again, or joyful again, start playing or laughing.
They return to their natural well-being. Us, adults, on the other hand we developed our intellect so well, that many times we keep ourselves away from this natural state of mind, our default setting.
We might think that I will experience inner freedom, security, love, joy, peace of mind … when I get a promotion… when I meet the right person … when I will be acknowledged and respected by others … when I have x amount of money…
That’s the biggest illusion that keep so many people chasing after goals hoping that they will find fulfillment in the future, not realizing that all those inner states are already within them IN… THIS… MOMENT.
When we can separate our internal states from our goals, we become free to create from the inside out. Our inner well-being is not at stakes anymore, it’s not dependent on the achievement of our projects.
That takes a lot of pressure from our shoulders. It’s probably the biggest misconception I have seen while working with hundreds of people. Once we awaken more to our true nature, life becomes much more effortless.
We don’t feel that inner lack anymore, always trying to fill that hole within us. We instead realize we are whole already. And we are free to create an extraordinary life from that place.
No matter how depressed someone feels in the moment, I know if that person’s mind clears, they get back to their natural well-being and peace of mind.
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There is innate wisdom within us.
We have a powerful faculty called our intellect. This is the biggest gift and probably the biggest source of misery as well for humans.
I had many moments this year where I found myself in an inner conflict. Whether about getting into a relationship, getting out of a relationship, which path to take in business, what decision to make out of the many and so on.
I wrote “moments”, but if I’m honest I would rather say periods. Because some of these conflicts kept on for days or might even weeks, where I was debating in my head about the right choice.
I even did pro-cons analysis at times. With no avail. I kept thinking and thinking and thinking about a problem. And that’s what kept it alive.
I tried to solve the situation with intellect, and didn’t see that it’s exactly what created the problem in the first place. Our mind creates the problem with thinking, and then we try to solve it by more thinking. *Gooosh*
What’s a solution to a problem? A solution is nothing more than a new thought. One that we didn’t see before.
Until we are busy running our repetitive same thinking about a situation we don’t give space for this new thought to enter.
Where does this originate from? Thought comes from nothingness, which basically contains everything. We can call that nothingness the deeper intelligence behind life, and our intuition or wisdom or soul or heart has direct access to that. We can call it with different names. Nothingness can be god, spirit, or universe. Everything is made out of that.
So if nothingness contains all answers, how do we access that? By quieting our mind. That’s why people usually report having their big insights or inventions when they go for a run, take a shower, walk in nature, meditate, or any other activity where their intellect can calm down.
And then we can hear our deeper wisdom which always guides us, always knows what’s right for us.
This year, every time the solution that appeared to my inner conflicts, it arrived when I stopped pondering the problem, and checked in within myself for my wisdom.
Towards the end of the year once I became conscious about this I already cut the process by turning sooner towards my wisdom. I believe it’s a process to learn to hear wisdom’s voice better, and trust it, but such a valuable thing we can focus on.
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Don’t think too much about your moods, feelings, and thoughts. Let them be. Get out of your head.
Becoming aware of our thoughts and feelings can bring with it extra concerns.
I definitely had my share with this. Many times I got lost in my head not only thinking about situations but thinking about thinking, and feelings:)
Yes it’s important to become more conscious of these, so they don’t run the show automatically directing our lives. But thinking endlessly about them is so unnecessary.
I decided to take my moods, feelings, and thoughts as part of the human conditions. My moods are changing, and that is the dance of life. I don’t have to resist my moods, or fight them. I can let them be, and still live my life, still take action, still create awesome things.
The problem is not with our low moods, or heavier emotions, which we call “negative”. They are neutral. The problem is if we resist them, suppress them, or overly identify with them and get lost in them. But when we learn to let emotions be and be processed within, life goes to the next level.
“The only trick in life is to be grateful for your highs and graceful with your lows.” – George Pransky
I learned it the hard way, but it’s something I remind myself: don’t think too much about them, just let them be.
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Don’t take yourself, or life too seriously.
This was a big one for me this year. Not that I was overly serious, but in certain areas I could give up more of the inner analysis, the thinking.
So I started to take myself less seriously. In the past when I found some aspects within me that I felt is not serving me, I was taking it as a job to understand it, get over it, eliminate it or something else.
Now I just decide to laugh at those reactive patterns when they show up. Laugh with empathy. Like “ohh that’s silly to think that, because in the end it’s all just in my head.”
I laughed more at myself, and this in turn brought me closer to myself, bringing deeper self-love and acceptance with all I am.
This applied to life as well, though during the past years I already became less concerned about future, and outside situations. My kryptonite was more the fights within me. And I just decided to give up that fight, laugh and have a good time with myself.
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Engage with life, live fully.
I used to be a person wanting to grow constantly, pushing the limits, facing my fears, becoming more, doing more. Mastery is one of my top values.
And 2015 brought a big shift in me. I could see that many times I was driven from fear. Running from something, trying to avoid something. And that propelled me to move forward, and be a high achiever.
I turned more towards eastern philosophies again which I neglected for years. This helped me give up that sense of urgency, and need to always be productive, and underlying uncertainty about life.
It was just so much freedom that I experienced from this. I wasn’t even aware how it is living without that background noise.
This brought many great things in my life, like success became more effortless, I had much better balance in life, my relationships deepened, I appreciated the moment and life’s beauty around me more.
However I had periods where I get into these slumps, where I lost meaning. I lost the urge to do things.
And at times it was painful, because I had this dilemma within. I was afraid to go back to my old self with all that background noise, but also I wanted to push my limits more again.
And then I realized it’s not about judging the source of my motivation, but about just engaging with life knowing that I’m already alright within, and well-being is my true nature.
I could live and create from this place, from inspiration. And be engaged with life, where my small self gets melted away, I am just throwing myself into life fully, experiencing every ounce of it.
Engage with relationships, engage with business, engage with fitness, engage with the moment. Engagement. Living fully.
This brought a new sense of aliveness to me. I could create awesome things, go for mastery, whilst being more centered within, and not thinking that my own well-being is at stake.
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Integrate the disowned, rejected parts and emotions within you, stop avoiding them.
A deep insight for me was how I was trying to get rid of certain aspects within me, or certain feelings I judged as bad.
Our shadow contains the parts which we have disowned within us. It unconsciously directs our life through shaping our decisions.
It shows up in situations where we become reactive, and defensive, or we project things onto others.
For so long I was just trying to avoid the parts within me which I didn’t face.
I did that by becoming a high achiever, by thinking if I achieve more, then I can avoid my deepest fears of unworthiness.
I also tried to avoid by self-help and personal development. If only I develop myself more, then those unwanted parts will be eliminated, and I can avoid my fear.
I tried to avoid by spirituality, which I later found out there is a nice term for that called ‘spiritual bypassing’. It means the use of spiritual practices/beliefs to avoid dealing with painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs.
I could see that no matter which route someone takes, either chasing money/fame/success, entrapping themselves with self-help, or trying to find salvation with spirituality… until we face our deepest fears, and wounds, and create a new understanding about our true nature and innate well-being, they all just become ways of avoidance.
It was all these realizations that got me into doing shadow work. Facing those disowned parts within me. And it was so healing, so freeing, that it’s hard to express. Especially that I also did it with a close group of friends, where we created a safe place to work through this.
And since our shadow contains parts within us which we don’t really want others to know about, it was double useful to do it with a safe group environment, so my brain could see I am okay with all that I am.
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There are certain principles behind how we create our external life conditions.
This was a big one as well. There is a book/concept called ‘Reality Transurfing’ by Vadim Zeland, a quantum physicist. The way he explained how we create our own external reality just made so much sense to me.
What are the underlying principles behind successful creation/achievement on this physical realm?
That was the question I pondered in my head. And I could see certain characteristics by studying and working with many extraordinary achievers, and listening to enlightened teachers about how we create by the power of thought.
So seeing both the western and eastern way of understanding about how we can create things in this physical realm, called life.
And Zeland’s book just made all those things into a clear understanding for me. Life is so simple. We create our life through the direction of our attention, or I could say by the power of thought.
When we understand the big picture, the underlying principles behind life, we are able to shift the direction of our life much easier.
The main idea is that there is a place where potential future realities already exist, and we can choose how we want life to unfold. It all comes down to which one we put our focus on. Giving up resisting what we don’t want, and choosing a new reality, and just going towards that.
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Look at people as friends, not strangers.
This great advice I got from a great friend of mine, Sam Ryter, who is a relationship expert.
“Perception is reality.”
How I perceive the world, that will be the reality I live in. Since everything is neutral, and only my own mind colors it, I can choose to color it differently. People are not strangers, or friends. People are people. My mind is the one that decides how I interpret them.
And I decided to give it a try. Look at people as friends. It immediately shifted how I looked at them, how I interacted with them, even with people I just met.
I didn’t feel like putting up a wall, for self-protection, but I could choose to engage the person with more love, acceptance, fun, and ease.
I feel this is not always natural for me, but I’m in the process of internalizing this new perception deeper week-by-week, and this brought me closer to people everywhere I go.
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We have multiple personalities.
This idea came from Tony Robbins, who had a big impact on my life in the last couple years.
Every single person had moments where they were fun, loving, caring, giving, empathic … and everyone had moments where they were jealous, procrastinating, selfish, mean, anxious …
All of these qualities are within us. But based on which one we identify with, that determines which of these we act upon most of the time.
If someone’s identity is that he is lazy, jealous, mean, antisocial, probably most of the time he will show up like that. But in certain moments he is also motivated, action taking, giving, social, fun. He just doesn’t identify himself with those.
We don’t have to fix ourselves, or get rid of certain aspects within us. We can just accept everything, and choose to show up from the self we want.
In certain situations it might be the lover self, in others it might be the leader, in others it might be the fun, social, and so on.
To make it simple though Tony and also I believe it’s a good one to uncover two different parts within us. One is where we might be stressed, anxious, or fearful, and what aspects show up there, writing it out in detail. The other is when we are alive, confident, engaged with life, and what are we like then.
And naming those two personalities, and understanding them more deeply. For example we can see that the personality we might like less shows up in situations where we have underlying fear (even if on the surface it comes out as aggression).
We can understand this part within us, what do we need at these moments, where did this originate from, and learn to accept it and not fight it.
This way we can give up the inner fight, and the need to fix ourselves. We are already alright; we can just awaken to our more true self, and choose to live more from that place.
This was a big insight for me personally, that impacted my life. And also professionally taking people through this process was super valuable.
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So here they are. You know those articles about what people on their death bed wish they did differently?
It’s kind of like that. We can hear all the great advice, but it’s just information. Until we internalize it, and insightfully see it for ourselves it doesn’t mean much.
That’s why the biggest teacher is life by the struggles, the hardships, and the experiences. We naturally grow. And if we are open, and willing to question our old ways of thinking we can learn so much from these experiences.
These are there not because the universe or god wants to screw with us, but wants us to learn something.
If we don’t learn, we keep getting it to our face by life more and more powerfully, until we see the lesson. So it’s better to look at these as a gift trying to reveal itself. How exciting!
Life happens for us, not to us.
I’m curious. What are some of your big lessons in 2016? Let me know in the comments.
Tamas