At the end of a psychotherapy treatment, coaching programme or development training, I often ask my clients this question. Imagine you stumble on Aladin’s lamp and the genie gives you a choice between two gifts.
The first is you’re given all the possessions you ever wanted … the lottery jackpot, the big house and pool, the billionaire’s yacht moored outside, and all the other goodies that money can buy.
The second option is you’re given total control of your mind. You’ll be able to choose the way you experience every aspect of your life. You’ll eliminate stress, regret, disappointment, dissatisfaction, worry and other negative thoughts. You’ll have a powerful mind-set, meaning you can behave in whatever way you choose, achieve whatever you want to achieve and create whatever future you may desire. You’ll have the ability to deal easily with challenges in relating to others and relationships and be able to create whatever relationships you may choose.
Which option would you choose? Among my clients, all of whom have now experienced what the second option feels like, they all choose that option. Now here’s the good news. The second option, the one that’s chosen by practically everyone who’s begun to experience it, is achievable by everyone, without any need for Aladin’s magic lamp.
The three aspects of that option are resilience, power and relationship skills. All of this is about mind-set. In other words it’s about retraining our minds. Some of it is about changing the way we think at a conscious level, but a bigger part is about unwinding unconscious beliefs that drive our limiting thoughts, feelings and behaviour, and replacing them with powerful beliefs that drive more productive thoughts and behaviour.
For the small number of psychologists, coaches and trainers who know how to achieve this, it’s surprising to see a world so far removed from this state and exciting to know that this can all be changed. I have a fantasy that somewhere in the universe there might be a planet where everyone lives in this state, where life is amazing all the time, where everyone is highly resilient and powerful and enjoys outstanding relationships, and where everyone spends their time and energy exploring the extraordinary possibilities that life brings.
I imagine someone from this planet climbing on her spaceship and visiting earth. As she observes our planet, where most people are nowhere near achieving this state, she’d probably wonder how such an advanced civilisation hasn’t, long ago, acquired the knowledge and awareness to achieve this for everyone, and how so many people can still be living in a state of resistance, self-limitation and conflict of various kinds.
As she explores our culture, she might stumble on the words of a famous playwrite who lived 500 years ago and who inspired Hamlet to say “There’s nothing good or bad, only thinking makes it so”. She might wonder how it could be that 500 years later, there are still so few people who fully understand this truth (which admittedly has a few exceptions) and that it’s still not taught in schools. She might stumble on the statement by Helen Keller, blind and deaf from birth, that “Life’s either a daring adventure or nothing” and wonder how billions, with both sight and hearing, still don’t understand this. This can all change. I’ve no doubt we can become the planet in my imagination. I need people who’d like to become involved in generating this change. People who are willing to learn these tools by attending my free ‘Positive Mind Training’ (see www.positive-mind-training.com), and then pass it on to others. If you’d like to live your life in the way that Helen Keller described, join me on this free webinar-based training. I promise your life will change in very major ways, and then, with your help, so might everyone else’s.