Why less is more...

“If I didn’t care what people thought, I’d quit my job and open up a shoe shop” said Cindy, with a brief sparkle in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before. As an intelligent and hard-working young woman, Cindy swiftly made her way up the corporate ladder. She comes from a long line of successful and wealthy doctors, lawyers and businessmen, and her family are very proud of her recent promotion to join her company’s Board of Directors at the young age of 34. But she’s never been particularly passionate about her work, and since her recent promotion, she’s really struggling to motivate herself at work, suffering from daily migraines, and finding herself fantasizing about quitting, and starting her own business. “If I can just think of something more... you know, important, to do... then I think I’ll be able to go out on my own. I just think that owning a shoe shop would seem really superficial. And I really should be putting my engineering degree to use. I’m thinking of doing an MBA so I can learn about running a business, and hopefully by then I’ll have come up with a better business idea.”

And then there’s Sipho: “All this ‘change your beliefs and you’ll change your life’ stuff sounds great - if your biggest problem is that they’re trying to get the courage to leave their comfortable, lucrative corporate job and start their own business. But is it really relevant for real problems, like the problems we have in South Africa - unemployment, crime, poverty..?” Sipho was resistant, even angry, about my prosaic suggestions that just changing your thinking could change your life. And understandably so - Sipho grew up in Nyanga, brought up by his grandmother while his parents migrated to Joburg in search of work. In spite of the lack of parental support, lack of study facilities, and the burden of parenting his two younger siblings and caring for his gran, he pushed his way through an under-resourced school system, and managed to get a job as a tele-consultant in a large corporate, making him the highest paid earner in his family for 3 generations. At 23 years old, he aspires to becoming a successful businessman and leader, but he feels held back by his lack of tertiary education, the financial burden of supporting his extended family, and the belief that perhaps he’s reached the ceiling of what’s possible for someone coming from his background.

At first glance, Cindy and Sipho seem worlds apart. When you look at their life circumstances, they’re certainly being presented with very different challenges. but when you look a little closer, you’ll find that they’re both being held back by the very same thing - their thoughts. And they both think that gaining further knowledge is the only route to their dreams. What they don’t realise is that, while furthering their education might be one useful step towards making their dreams a reality, the most important step they’ll both need to take is to let go of what they “know” - their current beliefs about their own identity and what’s possible for themselves. Knowledge is gained when ideas are added. Enlightenment is gained when ideas are dissolved.

Angelina Nofolovhodwe is one such enlightened South African woman. At the age of 43, she was an uneducated and unemployed mother of 7 children, living in rural Limpopo. She was virtually destitute, recently separated from her husband, and relying on relatives to support her family. Since she had only attained a grade 6 education and been a housewife and mother her whole adult life, she had very few job prospects. To even the most optimistic observer, her external circumstances would have seemed pretty dire. If you had met Angelina at this time and you were asked to suggest a big, yet achievable goal for Angelina, what would you suggest? Most people tell me that, if Angelina could just believe in herself and have a big vision, she could hope to start an informal business - a spaza, a creche, a sewing or beading business, or a small catering business. Some people suggest she could even take night classes and further her education so she could hopefully get some form of semi-skilled employment that might enable her to earn up to R4 000 a month.

Well let me tell you where Angelina is today. The Independent (17 Feb 2007) wrote that Angelina is “well on her way to becoming South Africa’s first self-made woman mining magnate.” She has 13 prospecting licenses to her name, mining gold, manganese and coal. She has offices in Sandton and regularly travels the world to negotiate with investors. She made all of this a reality in only 7 years... and she did it without furthering her formal education.

Angelina didn’t change her life by gaining more knowledge, she changed her life by removing any thoughts that could have separated her from her destiny. There are a lot of very rational and believable thoughts that could have held Angelina back - I know nothing about mining, mining is for men, mothers shouldn’t work, you have to have a formal education to get into prospecting, educated people will think I’m crazy... and much, much more. And that’s what a lot of other people thought. Ross Rankopole, Deputy Director of Mining Licenses in Limpopo Province was quoted as saying, “I thought she was crazy. You must understand, we deal with geologists and engineers. Then suddenly, there comes a woman who can’t express herself properly, and tells us she’s going to own a mine because that’s what she’s been told in a dream.” If Angelina had been attached to these seemingly reasonable, rational thoughts objecting to her dream to mine gold, she’d still be destitute in rural Limpopo. In her latest book, Steering by Starlight, Martha Beck writes about the way we keep ourselves in “mental dungeons” by being attached to our thoughts and beliefs, and how this gets in the way of us living our true destiny. She says, “To say that you can “find” your destiny is misleading because it never goes anywhere... you don’t have to learn your destiny - you already know it; you just have to unlearn the thoughts that blind you from what you know.”

The fact that you’re reading this blog means you’re probably not sitting in a hut in rural Limpopo, with 7 hungry children to feed and no source of income. But if you’re feeling a bit stuck in your job or relationships, or just have a sense that you’re not living the life you want, you can be sure that you’ve got some limiting thoughts that need dissolving. So here’s an exercise to help you find and dissolve the thoughts that are blinding you from what you know:

1. Think of an area of your life where you feel stuck or unhappy.
2. Ask yourself, “Why am I in this job/ relationship/ home, etc. What will it get me? And what will that get me? And what will that get me?" (ask, “And what will that get me?” a few times until you feel you’re at the thing that’s most important to you. Hint: it’s always a feeling)
3. Ask yourself, “Why do I believe that the actions I’m taking are the best, or only, way to get what I want in life?” What do I think is blocking me from taking another route to getting what’s important to me?” For each thought that you write down, ask yourself, “Why?” four or five times, until you get to a core belief.

You should now have a list of thoughts or beliefs that are blinding you from knowing your destiny or preventing you from creating what you really want in your life. Read what you’ve written and choose one of the thoughts that you feel elicits a strong emotional reaction in you - one that really gets you in touch with fear, anxiety or pain. Now it’s time to do the dissolving. Byron Katie, Martha Beck and Jamie Smart offer some powerful questions for dissolving your mental dungeons:

1. Ask yourself, “Is this thought true? Are there any circumstances where this thought would be untrue? How would you know if it wasn’t true?”
2. Ask yourself, “How do I react when I think this thought? How do I think, feel and behave when I think this thought? How does that impact on my relationships and my results?”
3. Ask yourself, “Do I know anyone else who seems to tell themselves a different story and yet gets the results I’d love to get? Is there anyone I know who provides an example or evidence that’s contrary to my current thoughts?”
4. Ask yourself, “Who would I be without this thought? How would I think, feel and behave without this thought? How would that impact on my relationships and my results?”
5. Turn the thought around. The thought you’ve been having is just a story you’ve been telling yourself. What story would be more useful? Ask yourself, “What story, or set of thoughts, would support me in creating the reality I want?”

I’ve often been asked by friends and family, who know me well (and see me fumbling with my own life!) how I know what to advise my clients about their lives. Well they’re right to be anxious about me giving advice to my clients. Having never experienced what most of my clients have been through, I usually have no idea what to advise them - which is why I rarely give advice. The coaching I do is less about giving people answers and adding to their knowledge and more about helping them become enlightened by identifying and dissolving the thoughts that are blinding them from the answers that have always been in front of them.

I'll be happy when...

Michael is young, intelligent, attractive, and highly successful in his work as a financial advisor. He has the ever-expanding property portfolio, the beautiful home on a golf estate, the expensive German car, the yacht, and the gorgeous wife and 2.5 perfect little kids. Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? “So what do you want to use coaching for?” I asked. Michael explained that what he’d really like to focus on was the creation of a 5yr financial plan that would enable him to be financially secure enough to quit his stressful job, start spending more time with his wife and kids, improve his golf, maybe even write a book.” “And what will that do for you?” I asked. “I won’t be stressed out anymore. I’ll be content. I’ll be happy when I’m financially secure enough to be able to start doing those things I’d love to do.”

As a life coach, I often hear the words, “I’ll be happy when...” This is usually followed by a list of material things that must be obtained, changes that have to be made to job tasks, responsibility or status, weight that must be lost, relationships that must be resolved, other people who must change and behave better, and of course money that must be made. We’ve been conditioned into deferring our happiness, by telling ourselves the story that things make us happy. This is supported by mass media, which is obviously keen to ensure that you keep spending your hard-earned money on the lipsticks, shoes, homeware, mobile phones, grand cars and even grander homes on offer. But the truth is that, just like Michael realised when I probed, people don’t want things - we want feelings. We want the feelings that we think those things will make us feel.

So I told Michael a story I’d heard some time ago, about a businessman who came across a fisherman, who was basking in the sun, on a beautiful beach, with his fishing rod propped up in the sand. The businessman noticed the fisherman sitting on the beach and wondered why he was fishing instead of working harder to make a living for himself and his family. “You aren't going to catch many fish that way,” said the businessman to the fisherman. “You should be working rather than lying on the beach!” The fisherman looked up at the businessman, smiled and replied, “And what will that get me?” “Well, you can get bigger nets and catch more fish!” was the businessman's answer. “And then what will that get me?” asked the fisherman. The businessman replied, “You’ll make money and you'll be able to buy a boat, so you can catch more fish.” “And then what will that get me?” asked the fisherman again. The businessman was beginning to get a little irritated with the fisherman's questions. “Don't you understand? You can build up a fleet of fishing boats, sail all over the world, and let your employees catch fish for you!” Once again the fisherman asked, “And then what will that get me?” The businessman was angry at the fisherman’s ignorance, and shouted at the fisherman, “Don't you understand that you can become so rich that you’ll never have to work for a living again! You can spend all the rest of your days sitting on this beach, looking at the sunset. You won't have a care in the world!” The fisherman, still smiling, looked up and said, “And what do you think I'm doing right now?”

Alot of people think that happiness is all about changing your external reality and getting your life to a place where you can have whatever you want. But what we really want are feelings - and we already have feelings, and the capacity to create all the feelings we want to feel. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that you should quit your job and start painting or surfing or reading cheap romance novels (or whatever makes you feel relaxed and happy) all day everyday instead. What I’m suggesting is that you can have happiness now already - while you continue to work towards changing your external reality. What I’m suggesting is that, contrary to popular opinion, our external reality doesn’t create out internal reality. If there’s any connection, it’s the other way around - our internal reality creates our external reality.

A key principle behind this “Law of Attraction” that everyone’s talking about is the idea that “thoughts become things,” and that, whatever we’re focusing on, we’re attracting into our lives. Emotions are the super-charger, so the more intense our emotions, the more powerfully the things we’re focusing on are drawn into our lives. Now, to be honest, I think the Law of Attraction is a load of hog-wash, wrapped in celebrity kitsch and mass media hype. But the problem I have is that it seems to work. Our internal reality really does seem to create our external reality. And, as a highly practical person, it goes against my grain to ignore something that works.

Now I’m no scientist, so I have no idea whether the “scientific” explanation that “like particles attract like particles” has any scientific basis. As far as I’m concerned, all the explanations of the Law of Attraction are just stories that may or may not be true. So here’s my story: We like what’s familiar. In fact, we like it so much that we do our best to repeat what’s familiar. So if you’re familiar with feeling financially insecure and thinking, “I don’t have enough,” you’re going to create more financial insecurity in your internal and external reality - just because we like what’s familiar. In fact, we like what’s familiar so much that, even when our external reality changes for the better, if we don’t change our thinking to align ourselves with our new external reality, we’ll end up changing our external reality back to the way it was before. In the USA, they found that most lottery winners were bankrupt within 5 years of winning the lottery. As a result, they now provide all lottery winners with a counseling program, to help them transform their thinking.

So how can you change your internal and external reality, and create more happiness and other great feelings in your life?

1. Start with feeling the way you want to feel. Feelings are what we want, so shortcut your external reality and go straight to the feelings. If you’re unsure how you want to feel, then think of the things you want, and ask yourself, “And what will that get me?” repeatedly, until you get to the feelings you want. Get familiar with the way you want to feel. Practice generating the feelings you want, rather than telling yourself that you can only feel the way you want to feel when something changes in your external reality. There are many ways you can generate feelings. Here are a few to start with:

• Remember a time when you felt the way you want to feel now. Choose a specific moment, a specific context or specific interaction with someone. Go there mentally now, and re-experience the event as though it’s happening right now. Ask yourself, “What am I seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting... and what am I feeling? You’ll notice that you can generate those feelings now just be remembering and re-experiencing the event.

• Imagine some of your specific goal/s having been achieved. Create a clear visualisation of the outcome, including as much detail as possible. Go there mentally now, and experience the event as though it’s happening right now. Remember to include all the sensory-specific detail. Notice how you can feel now the way you’ll feel when you’ve achieved those goals.

2. Once you’re feeling the way you want to feel, continue working on changing your reality to bring it in line with the things you want to manifest in your life. Create a really clear, specific and compelling visualisation of the way your life will be, when you’ve changed your external reality. Repeat this visualisation in your mind on a regular basis, in order to get familiar with your new life as it will be. Get so familiar with your new life, that it becomes more familiar than your current reality, and you’ll find that you can’t stop yourself from “repeating” in your external reality what you’ve been visualising in your internal reality.

3. Keep a gratitude journal. Gratitude journals are a great way to remind yourself to focus on feelings instead of things, and gratitude is just a fantastic feeling to feel. Let your gratitude journal remind you that “Happiness isn’t having what you want, but wanting what you have.”

Michael seemed to have it all. But he could have so much more if he realises that he doesn’t have to defer his happiness while he works on changing his reality - he can create all of the feelings he wants, now.

What experience have you had with changing your internal reality? And how did it turn out for you?