This post will be an added bonus to the previous one. And this is because, one of the immediate effects of the breathing exercises is that will help you realize one of the major keys to living the life of your dreams…
And that is: To RECOGNIZE and GET OFF Of Auto-Pilot!
You see, one of the most important observations that helped me in the area of profound life transformation is that most people are walking around IN TRANCE. And even more importantly, these trances that they are walking around in are trances of fear, of doubt, of limitation, and of lack.
And these trances are really Not Serving Them!
Actually, these trances serve the “structures of power” that profit and feed off of a society of weak, programmed, obedient and fearful robots, who will look up to the “authorities” on how to live an “acceptable” life.
One of the big pieces of getting off of autopilot and having real choice is becoming aware of your fixed patterns of perception, response, action, etc.
To develop this awareness is a very powerful tool to peel away old, trapped ways of thinking, acting, responding and believing. It makes it MUCH easier to move up ANY learning curve for any skill set.
Now, is important to have technical skills. Many people offer fairly good models for technical skill (how to succeed, how to get fit, how to sell, etc) in different areas of life, yet few people get real changes or the huge leaps they want from following their advice.
And just as often, even with good “advices” and good models for new technical skills, the person trying to follow these advices has a bigger problem: they want to really change an area of life that has been deeply emotionally challenging, evoking lots self doubt, fears, personal limitations etc.
What can often happen is that the new advices, the new skills, the new ways of thinking, feeling, acting and believing are filtered THROUGH the old emotions, beliefs, experiences, etc.
This means that people will seldom consistently act out the new skills from the right frame of mind. They will be just fighting themselves, their tendencies, habits etc.
A metaphor we can use to illustrate this is that, if I give you a pair of glasses dipped in horse shit, EVERYTHING YOU SEE WILL BE BROWN. So, that is why methods that assist in building clear awareness can help us keep old responses, behaviors, choices and beliefs in control. And if they can keep them LONG enough for the new ways to take hold, and long enough so they can move up the new learning curves, they will most likely succeed because they can see the new skills, beliefs, responses THROUGH CLEAR EYES.
This is especially necessary when the new ways are very different from the old ways and require a major shift. Remember, the further something stands from how you are used to, think, feel, act and believe, the greater is the chance you have for HUGE leaps. Also, the greater the chance for old ways to leap back up, more you have a practice and discipline to deal with them.
I will say this again: practice and discipline. Forward… Anything you do to bring your habitual patterns into your awareness (without anger, fear or reaction) is useful. This is why I am challenging you to go from one extreme to another and to pay attention to flows of feeling that trigger all of it. The awareness of feeling this flow is the key to knowing when you are slipping into old patterns of behavior and is also the key to designing in NEW ones!
Does this make any sense? Now, go back and read again my last post and do that 10 minutes breathing exercise!