ReMindEd   •   April 8, 2017

It has been an interesting week for my extended family this week just gone. A significant birthday. A significant breakthrough. A significant battle. The interesting part is, although they each happened this week for different members of the family, they are also ongoing things: birthdays, each year; constant breakthroughs towards realising a dream, as risks are taken and decisions made; and ongoing battles, some of which have been fought for decades now. Ongoing.

Birthdays, breakthroughs and battles: all ongoing, yet each can be faced with fear or faith.

The definition of responsibility I use all the time with clients is: your ability to choose your response. To choose how we respond. A choice. Is it really that simple?

Take birthdays, some consider getting older a privilege as they blow an extra candle out each year. Others, dread another year having passed, another year closer to death perhaps, or an array of other reasons, noted mostly as fears.

Is fear the difference in how we respond?

Take a breakthrough. For some, it reenergises them to know they are through a season of difficulty or waiting. For others, it fills them with anxiety at what the next battle may be, as they barely have any strength left. Anxiety = fear. Yep, there it is again. It’s fear. 

And battles… some fight through, others fall within and reside there. The difference? Whilst there are many reasons, excuses, patterns at work, the common theme… fear.

So what is the opposite of fear? I suggested at the start of this blog, faith. The other ‘f’ word no one likes to say anymore for fear (!) of offending someone. I’m not talking about religion. I’m talking about belief. 

What do you believe? About yourself. About the world. About yourself in the world?

It’s the foundational beliefs we have that determine how we live, what is watered within us, what we draw unto ourselves through subconscious permission. Our beliefs have power.

If we believe something as true, it becomes our truth. But that doesn’t mean it is true. 

I would suggest there are very few truths that actually exist. Truth is therefore about perception. What we perceive to be true. Which is how trauma works also. We have the same physiological and psychological response to perceived trauma as we do to actual trauma. It’s about what we lay down as the belief in what happened that impacts how we remember it, and how we respond to it. And what is planted continues being watered by other things in life simply because it exists there. If there was nothing to be watered, it wouldn’t have the same impact upon us because there is nothing there to be triggered. Which is the reason two people can experience the same thing, and respond in two completely different ways.

What is within us, as a seed of belief, gives permission to draw from life things that water that seed as true. It therefore continues being fed as life randomly happens with the seee drawing unto itself the meaning that reinforces its own truth. That’s why these things keep happening. And that’s also why we believe these things as true, because they keep happening, so they must be true…true? We certainly think so.

Whether a man thinks he can or thinks he can’t, he is right.

Heard that quote before? Our thoughts hold so much power. Why? Because we believe them as true.

We can change our thoughts by changing what we choose to believe to be true. 

My encouragement is this:

You can choose yourself free by choosing what you believe to be true, and thinking about these things, on purpose. 

The power of conscious intention is amazing. That’s a fancy way of saying choice. Choose what you think. Choose what you believe.  It really is that simple.

Of course that doesn’t mean we automatically know how to do this. But we can learn and it’s easier than you may think. And once you get it, it’s a life long series of choices that bring change straight away.

As I began this blog, I put a quote at the start. Go back and have another read…

The depth of the water is irrelevant when we know how to swim.

The key word there is know. We need to believe we can swim before we actually can. And once we know we can swim, the depth of the water is truly irrelevant, is it not?!

And that’s what we do differently at Reminded. We teach people to believe they can swim rather than sifting through every drop of water in an attempt to process it all and get rid of it.

If you believe you can swim, the water tends to take care of itself.

It’s about the belief we hold that contains the water (permission). Once the belief is challenged and consciously changed to be more helpful, permission is removed, so is the containment of the water, and it tends to dry up, as most of it is always fear.

And with one change of mind, the water is released, the trauma healed and restoration takes place. And we haven’t had to delve into the depths to re-live or remember the trauma and subsequent watering of the seed, as the whole tree was removed once it’s permission was removed.

And that is why we do what we do!

Freedom is possible. You can swim. This need not drown you any longer. Choose how you perceive ongoing things that happen in life: like birthdays, breakthroughs and battles. Choose how you will perceive them. Choose your response. That way, even the inevitable no longer gives you a reason to fear. Whether it’s ongoing or not. And trust me, do this work, and it’s irrelevant whether it’s ongoing or not…but it won’t be!

Swimming the depths without fear together,

Sal

#alwaysforfreedom

#bravenewyear

#remindedmind