The Earth is Flat, Isn’t it?

Imagine meeting someone who truly believed that the world is flat. Truly Believed. For whatever reasons of their own, this person believes like you believe grass is green that the earth is flat. And this is a person you respect, someone you look up to, whose opinion and advice you have sought out in other matters. What they think has always had value to you before and now here they are telling you the world is flat.

 

And nothing, absolutely nothing you say can convince them otherwise. They have evidence of scientific cover-ups, government conspiracies whose sole purpose is to hide from the world’s population the simple truth that the earth is flat.

 

That belief probably seems somewhat ridiculous to you. (And apologies to Flat Earthers, but yes, it is ridiculous) 🙂

When a person holds a belief, it’s almost impossible to change it simply by demonstrating arguments that contradict it. No matter the evidence you share with them, you’ll never prove that belief to be false.

 

Most of us tend to believe the same things in broad strokes; the sky is blue, the ocean is vast and unknowable, we’ll die of thirst if we wander off into the desert, the rich are different, I can’t live the life of my dreams, I’m small and insignificant and unable to change to have what I want, I’m unable to make it happen.

 

Now undoubtedly the sky is blue for most of us, except for the Himba people of Namibia who don’t have the colour blue in their heritage and culture, they simply don’t see it and have no word for it. Nor did most of the Ancient World until the Egyptians developed a blue dye and blue was given a name and seen for the first time in the world. 

 

And it may seem like the ocean is vast and unknowable but the indigenous tribes of the Pacific Islands were able to traverse that vast empty expanse of water using the stars, the wind, and the sun to navigate, something modern technology has not been able to replicate until very recently.

 

And you may well die of thirst if you wander off into the desert but there are many peoples who not only survive but are capable of thriving in all the various deserts of the world because they have ancestral, tribal knowledge of how to find sources of food and water.

 

Do you see where I’m going with this? Beliefs aren’t necessarily the truth, not even one as simple as the sky is blue. Beliefs are simply things that we tell ourselves are true, and we say it over and over again. And we create our circumstances and experiences based on our beliefs and we see those circumstances and experiences as evidence of their truth and so we ourselves reinforce our beliefs and then fall even deeper into believing their truth.

 

A self perpetuating story, one we tell ourselves over and over again because we create the evidence that makes it true.

 

The rich are different. Are they? Really? I mean surely you know someone who’s just as much of a selfish, greedy, venal asshole as Jeff Bezos, boss of Amazon and richest man in the world? You don’t have to be rich to be a complete jerk, just means more of us know about it.

 

And you must know someone with the same sense of self promotion as Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian? Many people use their looks to get ahead in life, to snag a wealthy partner or get a better job, they simply haven’t reached the same heights of exploitation as those two ladies.

 

And there’s people like Richard Branson, those of whom my mum used to say could ‘fall in shite and come up smelling of roses.’ They might not be doing it on the same scale as Branson, the man who turned a cancelled flight into an opportunity to start his own airline, but there are plenty of those who have an uncanny knack of turning a disaster into good fortune.

 

The rich aren’t different, they are human like us all. With the same balance of strength and weakness, they might have simply been able to focus clearly on what they want and stayed the course to build their wealth. Sticking the course creates opportunities, following your intuition directs you in the creation of your dream life.

 

What were the other beliefs I listed at the start of this piece? They started getting more personal and intimate, striking closer to home for many of us. ‘I can’t have the life of my dreams, I’m small and insignificant, unable to change, unable to make it happen.’

 

Just like the other beliefs I pulled apart to reveal their lack of solid foundation, these are simply words put together in a way that you have given a particular meaning to. And you can feel that meaning as you read those words can’t you? You feel it, you believe it and how does it make you feel?

 

I’ll tell you how those words make me feel: sad, hopeless, daunted by life. Unwilling to put myself out into the world after reading those words, scared to even try because I just know I’m not going to make it. How can I? I already believe that I can’t so I won’t even make an effort to try.

 

Now often in a piece like this, you’d be told to just turn that thought, that belief around, to think about the opposite of the belief and to put all your power and energy into thinking that. 

 

The opposite would be ‘I can have the life of my dreams, I am a huge presence, I am significant, I am able to change easily and can make life happen for me effortlessly.’

Wow, yes, that feels better, doesn’t it? So much easier to breathe, so much easier to motivate yourself and yet…even saying that super positive statement over and over and over again as soon as you come up against an obstacle of some sort, you hit the brakes and stop moving forward, maybe even go backwards.

 

Because the opposite of those positive words still lives inside of you, lurking there, waiting for the moment when they swing back into dominance because they always do. Every time you face something tricky, you will once again have to overcome those old shitty beliefs because they are still inside and they rise again and again.

 

But what if you didn’t have either the hopeful or the hopeless words rattling around in your mind? What if you didn’t spend your days, weeks, years pushing one away, pulling the other closer? We all know how exhausting that fight is. 

 

How about instead, if you got up every day, noticed the circumstances you live in and accepted it as it is without judging it,with deciding that it’s wrong or right. Instead you take note of what isn’t serving you, what you want to change and start following your inner guidance as to what to do first and next and next, one step at a time.

 

What if you simply say today I will do xyz, and and you do it without all the angst of thinking about whether or not you can, whether or not you’re good enough, wondering what other people might say? No need for worry, nor for affirmations and pep talks.

 

Doesn’t that sound easier? Less emotional, less work, less heavy lifting.

 

What then, do you need to do to stay neutral in the face of challenges and triumphs?

 

You start with losing your old belief system. This system isn’t something you consciously decided on, designed for yourself as the best way to build your life. It’s something you inherited, it comes from the past, your past, your parents, your grandparents and even further back. 

 

It’s not even yours and yet it decides your life!

 

To avoid following your old belief system you need to stay in a conscious state, and I don’t simply mean to stay awake, I mean to stay aware.

When you stay conscious, when you are alert to life and the choices you face you avoid drifting into the subconscious programming that tends to run most of us into safety, security and a life of mediocrity.

 

Start accepting everything that happens to you, happens because it does, for no other reason, because life is not personal, not even the things other people do to you are about you. 

 

Nothing is personal, not the good nor the bad. Things happen, accept it all with equanimity and step off the emotional rollercoaster of judgement and blame.

 

It helps to have unshakeable self confidence, to be grounded in your body and to stop living up in your head. Some people are naturally good at this, most of us have to unlearn the lessons of our childhood and relearn the art of living that we once knew when we were babies.

 

Live in the moment. Wake-up! Out of the trance you are existing in. You can create the life of your dreams, you simply have to stay conscious to do so.

 

What I mean by that is that for most of our lives, we live by rote, playing out the patterns recorded in our subconscious that we learned in childhood. Look back over your life and you’ll see the same patterns of behaviour over and over again.

 

The simple fact is, we live in a state of hypnosis, we are going through life in a trance. All of us, almost all the time. That’s why it’s so hard to change, because we are fighting our internal programming.

 

Drop the programme. Stay alive and alert to life as it happens. Make conscious decisions that serve this new living -on – purpose version of you. And remember nothing is as you believe it to be, nothing that happens is ever personal and you can make anything happen when you apply yourself to change, when you devote yourself to taking inspired action, when you follow your soul’s longing and your intuitive guidance.

 

Make life happen the way you want it to be. Live it. You deserve it.

 

Love, 

Cynthia xx

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All you need to build your life without limits is inside of you. Release the brakes, set yourself free.

A life with no limits, let’s go for it.

Cynthia xx

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