The power of belief and expectation

Your past really doesn’t equal your future.

Sadly, it seems that a great many people seem to think that their future is determined by their past.

You hear them say things like.

You wouldn’t say that if you knew what I went through as a child.

You haven’t faced the challenges that I’ve had to endure in my life.

At some level, it’s understandable as psychiatry has lived by this philosophy for a great many years.

However, I don’t accept this as true as in my studies I know for an absolute fact that the things we see are based upon what we focus on.

And I can prove it to you.

Have you ever bought a car just to notice that you immediately begin to see the same model everywhere?

What about this example for all the ladies that have been pregnant before, Now I know I didn’t know you when you became pregnant (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it)

But I can tell you a conversation that took place between you and the people that are close to you.

It went something like this.

“There must be a baby boom on at the moment as everywhere I look I see pregnant women”.

However there hasn’t been a baby boom since the end of world war two!

So why does this happen?

Its because that is what was important to you and as a result it was what you chose to focus on. Then as a direct consequence your reticular activating system which is also known as your RAS for short acted on whatever you were focusing on and bought more of the same into your conscious field of awareness because it is what you unconsciously accepted as important and significant to you.

It works exactly the same way with opportunity as if you focus on what you want to achieve, opportunities and conversations will begin to take place that will help you move towards whatever you are wishing to achieve .

Why does this happen? Because we are bombarded with two million bits of information every second via our five senses. But we can’t process that much information every second, so our reticular activating system looks to what we are focusing on so it can select what to allow into our conscious field of awareness. It does this so as not to overwhelm us by only allowing what we deem to be important by acting on what we focus on at any given time.

Most people have never even heard about the RAS, but it’s always been there.

Henry David Thoreau referred to it in this quote, but I doubt he had ever heard of the RAS.

 “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life that he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

Henry David Thoreau, American Philosopher (1817 to 1862)

So, if you accept this as true its not difficult to understand that if we dwell on the misfortunes of the past, we will invertedly attract similar situations in our lives because that is where we have placed our focus.

I learned this when I was just about to do something stupid and subsequently  embarrassed myself to myself. I don’t know if you know what I mean but it’s when you say or do something stupid and immediately blush and feel ridiculous even if there isn’t anyone else around to witness it.

I was an eighteen-year-old drunk skinhead who was in a telephone box pleading for a lift home. But just as I was about to put the phone back in its cradle, I found myself just about to rip it out of the wall. Then I heard a voice in my head say “Who would blame you after what you have been through” I found myself blushing with embarrassment as I caught myself thinking these words. I realised in that moment that I was using my past to justify bad behaviour and potentially ruining my future in the process.

I was physically and mentally abused by my father. He did many awful things to me as a young boy such as lying across my head with his sixteen stone frame then pretending to fall asleep as I kicked and flailed as I desperately tried to break free before I suffocated, then he`d roll off my head just as he felt my resistance weakening as I began to fade.

He even hung me from the gutter of our bungalow from a butchers hook whilst I was in  one of my mother’s dresses that he had placed me in before clipping my hair back like a girl. Before putting lipstick on me just because I wouldn’t get my hair cut at eleven years of age. The irony was that I just had long hair because I wanted to be like him as I thought that if I were, he would accept me just as he had accepted my brother.

I can’t afford to live there, had I done so I wouldn’t be able to be a positive influence in the lives of my children, Had I done so they would have embraced the same victim mentality and it would have become the driving force in their lives.

The past is a learning experience not a place to reside in for the rest of your life as the future you desire is unattainable if you choose to live there.

Face the future with belief and expectation and in the words of Thoreau Go confidently in the direction of your dreams!