From Experience To Outcome - The Creation Cycle
When I was at the beginning of my transformation and rebirth, a mentor told me these simple words: "If you want to create better outcomes, understand that you're never a victim." Since he told me those - at the time strange - words, I've learned to comprehend, embrace, and use them for my benefit.
Believing or feeling I'm a victim has never helped me in my life. Being a victim only caused me more pain and suffering, and only helped me to hold on to the pain and suffering longer than necessary.
So how does this concept make sense? Let me explain.
Experiences Shape Your Beliefs
When you were born, before you could differentiate truth from falsehood, and before you could decide on your own whether to believe something, you believed everything you saw, heard, experienced, or were taught. You were an empty canvas and people could expose you to anything and you believed it and made it your own. This started the cycle of creation in your life.
Someone says that you are dumb when you're a kid and you believe it. Someone says that you are ugly, and you believe them. You see violence in your home and family, and you believe that the world is a dangerous place. Your parents tell you that making money is hard, so you believe them. You take whatever you're exposed to, and this becomes your baseline worldview. These beliefs reside in your subconscious mind, and you might not even know they exist - or that they vary so widely between people. You see your beliefs as "the way things are."
When you were a child, you were a sponge. You absorbed your environment. You weren't a victim. Every single person in the world is doing the best they can right now. No one wants a crappy life. They just believe what they believe from their experiences, and that's how they live their lives.
Beliefs Generate Thoughts
From your beliefs, thoughts arise out of your subconscious mind. Most of the times you are not thinking, thoughts are happening. You are not thinking on purpose, you are watching and listening as one new thought after another pops into your mind. You have between 80,000 and 120,000 thoughts per day, most of these are unconscious, but you can look at your life to understand your thoughts.
You can certainly assume control of your mind and begin to process, plan, or problem-solve, but when there's nothing for you to actively think about thought doesn't cease, right? Thought keeps happening.
Here's probably the most powerful part of this entire sequence: wherever your thoughts point, your life follows. Your beliefs attract everything into your life, because beliefs are the seed, and thoughts are the fruit. Beliefs create thought, and thoughts point towards the direction you are headed.
Thoughts are your beliefs speaking through your mind. They appear as arguments with reality, judgements, and fears. They are showing you your beliefs. Take some time to observe them sometime. It's fascinating that thought just happens, and if you allow, you can become the observer and disassociate with your thoughts instead of participating.
Thoughts Trigger Emotion
Have you ever noticed that one thought can turn a great day into a bad day? One thought can take you from celebration to fear, or triumph to panic. Thoughts happen, and then your body responds to thought by sending emotion - energy in motion - through your body. Emotion is simply a reaction to a thought.
Try this: think a pleasant thought and allow the pleasantness of the emotion from that thought to consume your body. Imagine winning the lottery, and realizing that you'll never have a money problem ever again! Feel the financial freedom in that statement!
Now, think about and picture losing everything you own. Think about bankruptcy, homelessness, and absolute despair. From that image or thought, you will probably feel fear begin to consume your body. Thought triggers emotion. Emotion is merely a reaction. You can control that reaction - you just might not allow yourself to choose your thoughts and emotions - yet.
Emotions Fuel Action Or Inaction
Have you ever noticed that some people get paralyzed by fear while others get motivated by the same feeling? Do you ever notice that anger might cause you to say something that you don't mean, or cause you to completely disengage?
Everyone responds to emotion differently. There's usually a habitual way that we react to emotions. You might do something, say something, or behave in a certain way - then blame it on the emotion.
Emotion is simply a feeling in your body. The emotion can't cause you to act or not act. The emotion simply causes a feeling sensation in your body, then you do or don't do something. But you can change this by understanding your patterns and reconditioning yourself to respond instead of react.
Repeated Action or Inaction Becomes A Habit
Have you ever noticed that you likely wash your body in the exact same sequence every day? You might not have noticed it because it's a habit that's unconscious. You've repeated it so often you don't even think about it. This is what happens when you repeat action or inaction over and over. A pattern builds. A habit forms.
From this habit you might begin to identify this as just "how I am", "what I like or dislike", or "what I prefer." These are just habits formed from repeated patterns. You can break the patterns and habits anytime you want by realizing that you are living unconscious when you are in the groove of your habit. It takes awareness and effort.
Habits Mold Your Character
When you assemble all of your habits and patterns - your eating choices, relationship patterns, drive, ambition, exercise routines, etc. - you see the construction of your character. Your character is formed on the foundation of your habits and patterns. You've simply identified all of your habit as "me." You have personalized the accumulation of your repeated patterns, and have identified with them.
You've likely heard the expression that you can have either "comfort or growth." That's what this means. When you are resting in the familiarity of your habits and the grooves of your patterns, you are in character and you are not growing. Growth requires doing something different - outside of your normal operating limits.
Character is who you identify as yourself. To grow you must break character and redefine yourself. You need to be willing to allow a piece of you to die. It's a choice. You are not forced to continue being the same person. It's totally up to you.
Character Creates Outcomes
The person you have identified as you has created every single circumstance in your life through your habits and patterns - your character. Your character is the reason you do what you do, have what you have, and choose what you choose. The character you play right now is perfectly suited to create the outcomes you have created - because you have. Your character created your outcomes and circumstances. The sooner you see this as truth and realize that you're not a victim, the sooner you'll create new outcomes and circumstances.
Putting It All Together
I hope by now that you are seeing that you are responsible for creating your outcomes and circumstances, no one else. You might point back to your experiences and blame others, and you most certainly didn't openly choose every belief you hold. But playing victim to others just keeps you stuck.
The same poisonous beliefs you hold have created something good in your life. Nothing is all good or bad. Nothing is good or bad at all. Wherever you can point to a painful belief you can also find beauty. The most egregious act can have awesome constructive impact in the world.
If you start owning that you're creating everything in your life, you'll begin to constructively change your perception of even the most painful experiences. When you do, it will change every aspect of you in a more constructive way, and your outcomes and circumstances will shift in the same direction.
Look, being a victim will only get you one thing - more victimhood.
Own your experiences and begin detangling the entire cycle of creation. I promise you that owning yourself and never being a victim is a lot more fun, prosperous, and successful than playing woe is me.