Is the glass half empty, or half full? In the quest for positive thinking, you try to catch any negative thoughts and turn them around to a positive. You watch warily for the harbingers of doom, and flood your mind with positive affirmations. You make a point of smelling the flowers. This is, after all, how to manifest good stuff.
Glass half empty is negative. It doesn’t allow the universe to give you gifts. It is the opposite of gratitude. Glass half full is positive. It is receptive to gifts from the universe. It is the place of gratitude. The problem is that you can only be grateful in the context of the glass.
The moment you restrict your view to the glass, you’ve blocked a million possibilities of what the universe can give you. Start by smashing the glass. It’s a great process for identifying the limits you didn’t even realize had hampered your thinking, your energy, your possibilities, your creation. You can’t even know the limits it puts on your thinking, because it’s your thoughts that are limited.
It’s so natural to look at the world from your perceptions, and your circumstances, that it’s difficult to detect the limitations. How can you remove the blocks if you can’t find them? Here’s a great tool for finding the limitations you don’t know you have, called Sherlocking. The Sherlock technique is based on that famous quote: when you eliminate the impossible, what you are left with is the truth.
Start by picking a goal that isn’t on your list in any way. You could use climbing Mount Everest, or becoming a brain surgeon, or walking the length of Canada on the cross-Canada trails. You could use becoming a sidewalk artist, or a shoe salesman, being an accountant or a music teacher or a bus driver. Do not pick one that makes you think ‘I’d like to do that.’ Instead, pick the one that makes you wonder why people are so crazy.
Given that you don’t actually want to achieve this goal, it’s much easier to make a list of all the reasons it wouldn’t happen for you. For example, for the brain surgeon thing, you might have a list like this:
- I don’t want to.
- I’m too old.
- I don’t want to be in school for years.
- I don’t want a job that requires being on my feet for hours on end.
- I don’t want to be part of ‘the system.’
- Eww. Just eww.
Here’s the bonus. Every item on the list of why you don’t want to become a brain surgeon is actually a block for everything in your life. The reasons may not be obvious because they’re in your subconscious. If you do the work to clear the blocks, you’ll experience all sorts of wonderful results. It will unblock things you actually do want. It will release anchors for those issues that you keep working on, to help them clear deeper.
The most obvious item on the list is ‘I don’t want to’ because you’re deliberately picking a goal that you don’t actually have. That’s one of the ones that’s hardest to accept as applying to all your goals, because you do want your own goals. The problem is, not all of you wants your goals. If you were truly congruent, it wouldn’t be a goal, it would be an accomplishment.
It’s so easy to dismiss this when you know what you want.
It’s so easy to dismiss the voices of protest, because they’re just silly fears and programs. The problem is, they’re in there, deep inside, and they influence what you manifest. Any time you’re not manifesting what you choose, you have an internal conflict. An internal conflict occurs when some part inside you has a different opinion about what is good for you. It can be maddening.
Let yourself have a tantrum about that frustration and conflict so the emotion can flow and go, and you can get on with clearing the block so you can actually have what you want. It’s much more effective than denial, which doesn’t change anything.
Allow yourself to use tools like Campfire and Unlock (check osloda.com for information) to clear all the blocks to becoming a brain surgeon, and unblock your whole life. Then you can celebrate as your goals manifest.
Don’t settle for half a glass of anything. Smash the glass.
Insights Column
July/August 2011
Tone Magazine
