July 4, 2009
Why Life Happens From You (and Not to You)
Build Your Life
HNLP Fundamentals
I talk about how our belief systems are the filters through which we experience reality.
THOUGHT POWER + BELIEF
= EMOTIONS
= BEHAVIOR & ACTION
= REACTION TO THE WORLD
= EGO IDENTITY
This formula explains how we decide who we are, who we have been, and who we will be tomorrow. How, then, can we redesign what is occurring in our minds so as to redesign our lives?
Through time we develop our own map of the world. This map does not represent the world in truth, yet it is the best map we have to assist us in surviving this thing called life. Our map is a culmination of every rationalization we’ve made based upon the evidence we’ve experienced. We are, in effect, meaning-making creatures.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending upon your point of view the meanings we create are not reality itself but serve only to paint our individual map of reality, flawed and limiting as it may be. At a very young age, we create these mind maps and set about using them to transverse life’s rugged terrain. As we encounter new experiences, we filter the resulting sensory input through what we have already learned about our world. Then one of three things happens:
- 1. We acquire new wisdom from the new experience.
- 2. We interpret the new experience as evidence that our map is true, that it is reality.
- 3. We reject the new experience because it does not fit into our model of the world.
More often than not, we choose either 2 or 3, continuing to navigate our world with an impoverished map of reality. In turn, we create a life with limited choices. This leaves us feeling, thinking, and acting like a victim. Is there a way out of the circle we have been caught in, this wheel that seemingly spins without purpose or direction?
YES! The answer lies within this simple formula and is the foundation of Humanistic NLP:
IMAGINATION + EMOTION + LANGUAGE = MANIFESTATION
A common example of how this dynamic plays out in life is if we have had to endure painful, even abusive, childhoods. It is important to honor the emotions we have carried from those experiences, but it is a further tragedy to spend our adult years continuing unresolved pains of the past as if they were still happening today. The one true thing we can say about the past is that it is no longer here. What is here now, in our adult lives, is our ability to ascribe new meaning to the past, a meaning very different from what we created as children. As children we function with a somewhat limited level of wisdom and resources. As adults, however, we have greater wisdom and resources at our disposal and thus the ability to create deeper understanding of what is possible, of what is real.
The only moment of power is NOW!!! We stand at a cross roads every minute, one road being the addictive thought processes that dwell endlessly in the past, the other road being the blossoming of our potential genius. Each one of us is a thread in the tapestry of Humanity. We have a Destiny to fulfill, a Genius to awaken within, a Potential to realize. Yet, until we master our imagination, emotions, and language, the tapestry continues to be degraded by the absence of our full participation.
Stop wasting time. Whatever has brought you to the reality you now experience, your life remains precious.
Your destiny is remarkable.
Love & Light
Gary De Rodriguez