Let it go

Who here, reading this, is perfect? Can I get a show of hands or, better yet, if you are perfect, please stand up and prepare to be recognized. Hello? Anyone? Take a good look around. Nobody stood up to get congratulated. I think it's pretty clear, but i'll spell it out anyways. Nobody is perfect.

Now that we have that outta the way, what does it mean that nobody is perfect? It means that everyone makes mistakes. We all fail sometimes. No matter how much time and effort go into planning, things are not always going to end up the way we envision them. We all screw up.

This is important news that some of you should re-read. Why? Because every single one of us at one time or another has been guilty of beating ourselves up over something that didn't go the way we had intended it to. We waste both time and energy, two things we have a limited and ever dwindling supply of, on being cross, angry, frustrated, stressed, displeased or whatever you want to call it, with our results.

Should we just lackadaisically traipse through life without a care in the world, never minding whether our plans succeed or fail? Surely not. But we also shouldn't be constantly rehashing our past failures and constantly raking ourselves over the coals because we didn't succeed.

How many times do you think you should be punished for each mistake? If you have negative energy attributed to your mistakes, you punish yourself EVERY time you remember your error. If we only fail once we should only experience the pain once, not every time we think about the incident? We don't need to be punished for it every time we remember. In fact that just leads to low self esteem which leads to more failure in the future.

So how do we balance this? Well, first comes the experience. When you make a mistake or do something wrong, acknowledge it. But instead of getting out the whips and preparing to flog, think about the circumstance, realize exactly what you did that was wrong and why it was wrong. Then decide what you intend to do differently in the future when that circumstance comes up. Doing things this way the negative experiences that you have are actually useful and can make your life better as time goes on.

It is natural to be hard on yourself when you make mistakes. You want to always do your best and when you see yourself not doing so, it creates cognitive dissonance. You believe that you should be doing one thing, but you have just finished doing a contrary thing. It is natural, but not useful.

Through conscious effort and observance you can break the cycle. Acknowledge your errors. Determine the action you will take in the future and then just let it go. Pain and suffering may be a part of the world, but they don't have to be part of your world because of mistakes that you have made.

I can't Let it Go

A little over a week ago we went and saw the movie Frozen. It's based on a story by Hans Christian Anderson. And by based on I mean if you have read the book there's a couple of characters that you might recognize in the movie. It's actually so different as to be ridiculous. The book is much more of an acid trip and the movie actually, kinda, makes sense, as long as you believe in both magick and the power of true love.

The point here is that even though the movie experience was over a week ago, the song Let it Go, is still rolling around in my head. I can't seem to get rid of it. But I don't really mind since the singer has a strong, powerful, beautiful voice and the song is very empowering.

We don't really get to directly pick what our subconscious mind focuses on. However, if Let it Go had a negative message or was filled with violent imagery then I would put in some serious effort to remove it from my mind.

Why? One because I like to think about happy positive things and two because what you focus on you tend to bring about in your life. You might say it's just a song, how much damage can it do? Well, it has been proven through multiple scientific studies that your mind can not tell the difference between an action you have taken and something that you have vividly imagined. And what is a song but something that you vividly imagine??

Or how about TV? Do you realize just how much violence, sadness and overall negativity are on television today? Most people relate somewhat to the TV that they watch. We tend to put ourselves into the shoes of at least one of the characters on whatever show it is. And then we react subconsciously as if the events were happening to us. Consciously we know it's not real, but we put ourselves through the experience anyways.

We program ourselves for the types of things that we want in our lives. The average person comes home and immediately either turns on some music or the television just to have something going on in the background while they go about their evening routine. Our conscious mind pays no attention to what is going on in the background, but our subconscious does. And since our subconscious mind makes all the choices for things like our self esteem and our outlook on the world shouldn't we want to fill it up with positive things rather than negative?

We can't pick what our subconscious mind focuses on but we can give it more good targets than bad. What kinds of things are there to watch out for? Violent imagery on TV, country music or gangster rap and believe it or not the news. It hardly ever has anything good to say. It's all about who is getting shot up or who is stealing from who, generally painting a bleak picture of life in this world.

Anything that focuses on the horrors of war, poverty, sickness, crime, greed, pain or loss should be things that we avoid feeding our subconscious mind in general, but especially just before bed or right after we wake up, as this is when our minds are most impressionable.

I am not saying don't listen to music or watch TV. But listen to and watch things that are uplifting and inspiring. There is nothing wrong with adversity. It is required for growth. However make what you focus on triumph over adversity rather than failure. That way you program your mind for success.