Your Ultimate Self

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Tag: awareness

  • Perception and Emotion

    When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

    —Max Planck

    The way we look at things tends to define how they appear to us in our reality. The most used example of this is looking at a glass half full or half empty. Usually it is a way to create a distinction between the perception of those who are optimistic vs those who are pessimistic. The problem with this example is that it is emotionally neutral and so we can clearly understand how people can see it either or. 

    Emotions change the entire meaning of perspective. When we perceive situations in our life that we cloud with emotions it becomes very hard to see a clear objective picture like in our glass half empty half full example. Emotions introduce a sense of rigidity in our thought patterns and even the meanings we make behind the events in our life. 

    In this way our emotional foundations are what assigns positivity or negativity to a circumstance or situation in our lives. For example the way we view challenges; some people can look at a challenge positively as a means of growth through the lens of optimism, hope, gratitude. Take the same challenge, a person can view it negatively as if it were a problem that they need to avoid using the lens of pessimism, fear, shame. I’m sure you can come up with many examples in your own life where you have seen this but an easy example for us to sit with is the idea of public speaking. Just reading those words may have spiked some of your heart rates; positively for some – negatively for others. 

    Regardless of how we are emotionally tuned to create meanings and stories about the challenges we experience and face, we all have the power to change the effect and outcomes in our lives. The first step requires awareness of our own internal processes; whether it is through self reflection or having someone skilled in reflection shine a light on how your emotions influence your stories which ultimately influence your outcomes. 

    Once we introduce consciousness into the emotional machinery of our behaviors, thoughts, and actions we can understand the choices we make that lead to where we are in life. Nothing in life is static or fixed, we only believe that because we are unaware of the background programs running in our mind that guide our decisions; for the better  or worse. This should be good news to those who want to change where their life is and give some framework on how changing our perception of the events and circumstances in our life can be used to transform our lives for the better. 

    Dr. Shaikh M.D

  • How Awareness influences Outcome

    Just how much of our thoughts and actions are we truly in control of? During our waking state we consciously make the decisions to plan our days in a certain way. We can plan to structure our day down to the hour precisely or take a more free flow approach. Regardless, we are making a conscious decision on how to spend our time and construct our day. 

    However, most of the decisions we make or don’t make go through an audit system in our mind. We determine what is a good and bad use of our limited energy. Who or what then makes that decision of what is worth spending time pursuing or not? A great many of us think we are still acting from the layer of the conscious, but I would argue that the filter that determines what is good or bad for our time is actually at the deeper layer of our subconscious and even unconscious. 

    You see, we have been conditioned at an early age by society, friends, family, and even our selves to create judgments – rationalizations – values – beliefs that have been molded by our internal and external environment. These intrinsic properties that are working underneath the hood of our mental engines are not apparent to us when we make a decision to eat fast food after work or have a sugary snack after we feel upset. These conditioned values and beliefs lay at the core of our decision making and go beyond just dietary choices – starting your own business, asking your boss for a raise, starting an exercise routine; doing these or not are all examples of how our subconscious properties guide our decisions and choices in life. The sobering part of this realization is that we aren’t even aware about these processes working in the background of our psyches. 

    On the bright side, these conditioned and hidden internal systems that are created inside of our selves are not fixed. They are ever changing and evolving – for better and for worse. The fact that they experience plasticity is great news to us, only under one circumstance. If you do not know something is working in the background how can you change it? For that we need to bring these subconscious systems in the mind into our conscious awareness so that we may interact with them and reflect on how they are working towards or against us. 

    “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

    Carl Jung

    Are you interested in learning about your hidden judgments, values, beliefs, and rationalizations that have created the life you are currently living? And if so are you interested in bringing this awareness into your life so that you can change the outcomes you are observing? If so then reach out and book a consultation session today.

    Dr. Shaikh M.D

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