Key Number Two: You Must Choose What You Focus On

This second key flows from the first. It says that what we choose to search for we will find. What you focus on is what you will get. Think of a time you bought a car. Can you recall that before you decided to get the car you didn’t notice that particular type of car in your travels? What changed once you made the decision? How many of that type of car did you begin to notice?

Close your eyes once you’ve read these instructions. Think of all things in the room that are green. Think only of the green objects. Everything that is green. How many green objects are you able to count with your eyes closed?

Once you have completed that exercise, ask yourself, “How many objects are in the room that are red?”

Because you were focused on the objects that were green, you would have sorted for the green objects, You would have deleted all other colors. You would have been able to recall many more objects that were green than were red.

This simple exercise demonstrates how your mind operates. It sorts for what you tell it to focus on.

Focus on the hardships in life, and you will experience more hardships. Focus on life’s injustices and you will experience life’s injustices. Focus on ill health and you will experience ill health. Focus on  your weaknesses and you will experience disappointing results.

Focus on love and kindness, and you will experience love and kindness. Focus on the keys to health and vitally and you will experience the same. Focus on your strengths and you will experience even more success.

Because what we focus on is what we get. And what we focus on is what we get to the exclusion of everything else.

To demonstrate this, think about the times you’ve been on the world wide web and searched for something. If you type in “Poverty” you will find millions of hits for this one subject. Type in “Wealth” and you will find millions of hits for this.

What you search for is what you will find. One way to look at this is to realise that we exist within pure potential. ALL possibilities exist in every moment. The possibility you experience is based on what you search for.

If you focus on what you fear, you will only see what you fear. Focusing on your strengths is always to your benefit. What many people do is focus on what will be difficult or how they might fail, so they don’t even attempt the attempt the things they are sure they can do.

The secret to Level 1 living is to focus on where you want to go.

When I run trainings on Your Success I explain it like this. Imagine that your world exists within a warehouse where everything is contained. Health, wealth, poverty, sickness, happiness, sadness, loneliness, friendship, success, love and joy. You have a flashlight and you go searching in this warehouse. What you will find is determined by where you point your flashlight.Point it in one corner and you find health. Point it somewhere else and you find joy.

Point it somewhere else and find despair.

What happens if you turn the floodlight on? You suddenly see all possibilities. You exist with all of these possibilities at all times.

When I first learnt this I became immediately aware of how I had been choosing to focus on what my world lacked. And my results reflected my focus because it required a level of personal responsibility that I’d never before considered. But I knew that if I didn’t I was going to keep getting the results I was getting. And that was intolerable for me.

One of thing that is worth noting about this key is that when you shift your focus you may not see the change in your direction immediately. you may continue to see some of the old results you no longer want. Just as in life, there can be a lag time between when you shift your focus and when your life catches up.

Be aware of this and persist. Focus right now on what you do want to experience in life. Focus right now on your strengths and capabilities. The sooner you do this, the sooner you’ll get your desired results.

Ask Yourself these questions: .

• Does choosing to accept this key as true enhance my experience of life?
• Does choosing to accept this key mean I will choose a more empowering focus in some or all areas of my life?
• Does choosing to accept this key give me a powerful tool for transforming my life?

If you answered yes, then I acknowledge you, because this one key has the power to totally transform your life.

This one key has the power to allow you to see the magnificence in everyone.

This one key has the power to enable you to focus on your strength, thus allowing you to improve your results in whatever you do.

This one key has the power to release you from anger, because you will see the lesson in the situation, rather than the hurt.

This one key has the power to allow you to forgive whoever you believe has harmed you, because you’ll know that by focusing on love, rather than resentment, will allow you to feel peace.

This one key has the power to see that you are truly a phenomenal human being, capable of the most amazing feats.

People who live at Level 3 focus on what they can’t control and influence, and thus feel constantly overwhelmed and out of control. People at Level 1 focus on what they can control and influence, and thus feel empowered and confident.

Think of something you believe you do well. What is it you tell yourself about your abilities? What do you see in your mind’s eye? What do you tell yourself? How do you feel when you see yourself doing this task? Answer this question in as much detail as you can.

What have you noticed about the two experiences? What specifically is different about the two experience?

Think of something that you want to be good at or want to master. If your focus determines your reality, what would your focus need to be? What would you  need to see yourself doing? In your mind, create a successful attempt at this thing and see yourself doing it perfectly. Hear the seconds of successful attempt at how you would feel. Tell yourself what you would tell yourself as you did this thing with total mastery. Breathe as you would breathe. Look in the direction you would look. Be as specific as possible.

What have you notice about your physiology as you created for yourself this successful attempt? What have you noticed about how you feel?

For the next seven days, act as if what you focus on is what you get. Decide to search for evidence of your own strength and the strengths of others. Choose to see the positive in each moment. Focus on what you can do and what you can control and influence, rather than on what you can’t. Shine your flashlight on what you appreciate, what you can do, what you enjoy and what you may learn from every moment.

Give yourself the gift of living at Level 1 as often as you can, and if you slip, be aware of it and then step up once more.

Key Number One: You Must Take Control of How You Interpret Your World

Things do not change; we change. - Henry David Thoreau

Handy Tip: How do you break the pattern to telling yourself the old stories? It's easy. Think of an old story right now that you know has to go. As you think of that story, raise your left hand, wiggle your bottom, shake your hand, hold your nose and make a squeaky noise as you say "Poor me, poor me, poor me," until you laugh or feel totally ridiculous. If you do this each time you catch yourself in an old, unresourceful story you'll stop telling yourself and others about them!

Now that you know what you need to tell yourself to live a Level 1 like, here are the five tools to assist you to assist you to stay there. Each of these tools has been developed not becausee they are always true, but because by believing they are true people who choose them experiece extraordinary living. As you read each of them, ask yourself "What would my life look like if I chose to accept these beliefs a true?"

For lasting transformation to take place in your life, you must act as if these keys are true for you, regardless of the circumstances of your life. Every great story has a time when the hero is in despair, feeling that all is lost. The true hero then finds the resources that she needs to turn things around and emerge victorious. This is how you must play this game of life. To be a winner, there are certain keys that when applied consistently produce extraordinary results.

Key Number One: You Must Take Control of How You Interpret Your World

What determines the quality of your life is not what happens, your level of luck or hard times, your family, your income, your job or your friends. What determines the quality of our life is the meaning we give to the events that happen and the choices we make as a result of those meanings.

Throughout the world there are people who we know or know of who have overcome extraordinary hardship, loss or challenges and gone on to live remarkable lives. Despite their own suffering they have found a way to live lives of fulfillment and have made difference to our world. Throughout history people have made incredible sacrifices to achieve extraordinary success.

For years people held the belief that it was impossible for a human being to run the mile in less than four minutes. Then Roger Bannister did exactly that in 1954. He achieved the "Impossible" by mental and physical practice.

What is remarkable about this story foes far beyond what Bannister achieve. Within one year of his feat 37 other runners broke the four minutes mile. Another year after that, another 300 runners did the same thing.

Had four minutes become a longer time? No, had four miles shrunk to accommodate the runners? No. All that had changed was what people believed was possible.

What this tells us is that it isn't the event that has meaning. We can never see an event exactly for what it is. Our interpretation of an event, as we learnt in the Defining Moments exercise, is all we have.

Even if we try really hard to only interpret an event for what it is, we will still distort the event in our minds to conform with what we believe to be true.

This means that the map is not the territory. No mater how hard we endeavour to recreate an event or a situation, we will only be able to represent it based on our map of the world.

This one key has the power to totally transform your life. It is not the event in your life that shape you. It is the meaning you give these events.

Think about this for a moment. Think of what is happening in your life right now. Perhaps you're stressed or feeling overwhelmed or out of control.

What if you were feeling overwhelmed because of how you perceived the situation a certain way? Doesn't that mean you also have an equal power to choose to perceive the event in another way?

The first time I heard this key, I said there is no way anyone would say that if they knew what was going on in my life right now. I decided that the person telling me this must be heartless, because if they knew how hard things were for me, they would never say that.

Then I started thinking about it.

What if it was true? Just for a moment, I imagined my life with this key being true. I realise that it meant that how I was feeling about my life was entirely up to me. I had the power to change how I felt about it. Only I had the power to change how I related the world. Only I could change how I experienced this world.

And what I chose was going to shape my life.

It moved my illness into a completely different light. All of a sudden being sick wasn't a terrible tragedy that no one could possibly understand. It became an opportunity for me to learn about patience and compassion and forgiveness. My getting ill didn't have to be a barrier to my having the life I wanted. It was only going to be a barrier I chose to let it be.

I had the power to chooes.

Remember, the map is not the territory. No matter what is happening in your life, you can never interpret it accurately. You can only interpret it according to your map.

Your Map

Your map is made up of your beliefs, values and experiences. It is made up of other ingredients too, but we'll focus on these for now.

• Your beliefs are feelings of certainty about what something means.
• Your values are emotions that you want to experience on a consistent basis.
• Your experiences are what you believe had happened in you life up until now.

How you create your map is through what you see, hear, feel, smell and taste. These are all the senses we have to access our world. We can see an event, hear it as it unfolds, feel it happening, and perhaps we can also taste and smell it.

These six senses are all we have to record the world around us. We are being bombarded with an estimated two million bits of information every second. We could not possibly absorb and process all of this information. Most people can only mange 132 bit of information - or 7 plus or minus 2 chucks.

If we could suddenly absorb all of the information coming at us we would go made or would close down. Notice how you're sitting. Notice the sounds around you that until nor you may have been turning out. Notice any smells in the air. Notice the objects around you that you had deleted to allow you read this blog. If you were aware of all of this all of the time you would never be able to function.

So our minds protect us. It filters out what it considers to be irrelevant.

The question is: how does our mind decide what is relevant or not? What filter in is what we believe we need or will need for a future time. This explains why two people can view the same event - say, a car accident - and recall it so differently. They have recorded the event in their minds based on their own filters.

The filter in our minds constantly delete, distort and generalise about what an event means.

We delete what we decide is irrelevant. We distort what we experience so it can fit in with what we are familiar with and we generalise on thing to mean something we have experienced before.

For example, think about someone whom you don't like. They maybe do something that annoys you and violates your rules about how people about them that is likeable? Maybe they're loving to their parents or good you've magnified a habit they do that annoys you so that's all you notice about them. Perhaps you've exaggerated their dislikeable traits because they cause such intense feelings within you.

Finally, what are you generalising about them to cause you to dislike them? Perhaps they have a behavioural trait that you've seen someone else do. When the first person did they behaviour that did it to hurt you, so now you feel very strongly about what that behaviour means.

You can do the same exercise with tasks you don't enjoy, with places you've visited and felt strongly about, anything you experience in your life. 

Like something and disliking something is based on what we filter in and leave out. What we filter in and leave out is based on what we are deleting, distorting, or generalising. 

How your Filters Shape Your Life

Imagine for a moment you are faced with a challenging task. It's a task that you have never been able to accomplish successfully in the past. You feel intimidated by the thought of having to do it and you tell yourself you'll probably get it wrong. 

What are you filtering out to decide to be intimidated by this event? What are you filtering out to decide to be intimidated by this event? What evidence of your abilities are you deleting? What past events do you need to distort to give yourself the most anxiety? Aren't you needing to generalise about past results to make the decision to doubt your abilities this time?

Now think of a task that you know you are totally capable of doing. Something that you have has complete success in for a period of time. It could be tying your shoe laces or making coffee. 

What do you have to delete to decide you can do this task? Don't you need to delete evidence of when your first started doing these task? A time when you weren't totally successful? Aren't you needing distort your past results so that the times you weren't great at became simply"learning experiences"? To believe your ability to do these task take your decision to generalise that because you could do the task before you can do it again now.

Constantly, deleting, distorting, and generalising.

Think about this... what if what you are filtering out of your life are the very things that would mean your happiness, your success or your fulfillment?

Five years ago I was convinced that people were full of weaknesses and faults. I was sure that people were generally disappointing and incapable of anything except for selfish, self involved actions.

To believe this I had to delete any evidence of anyone's kindness, compassion or generosity, which I did easily. I had to distort their slightest comment to interpret it as thoughtless and mean. I had to generalis that because they would say one thing that I decided was mean that would equate to all of them being mean.

And this is how I lived my life for years. If you could imagine living this way for a moment, what do you think I thought about the world? About people generally? What relationships do you think I had?

If you've decided I didn't have many good friends, and that I had a poor relationship with my family, and that I was lonely, you would be right on track.

I realised that how I interpreted the world was up to me, and that id I wanted to experience love, happiness and fulfillment then I needed to start hunting for evidence of exactly that, instead of the opposite.

I had to change my map of the world.

Once I changed my ma, my entire experience of the world and of people transformed for the better. Since changing my map I have not met a single person I don't like. I have not experienced a situation I haven't been grateful for. I now only see the magnificence in others, even when they don't see it in themselves.

Had the word suddenly replaced itself? Of course not.  All that had changed was my map of the world.

For the next seven days, act as if the map is not the territory. Decide to give the best possible meaning to everything that happens and everything you see, hear and feel. Make the effort t filter in everything that is good, positive, and a learning opportunity our of everything you experience. Give yourself the gift of living at Level 1 as often as you can, and if you slip, be aware of it and then step up once more. 

The Three Levels of Thinking

There are three levels at which we can be living our lives. Whichever level we decide to live determines the quality of our life. Whichever level we live our life is a choice.

Look at each of these levels and determine which level you are choosing to live. You may be living at different levels depending upon the area of your life you think about. For example, you may be living at Level 1 in health and level 3 in relationships.

Each of these levels is an archetype, and doesn;t portray everyone all of the time. We might spend some time at level 3 and some time at level 1, depending on where we are in our lives and what we are experiencing. We might even experience all three levels at the one time.

LEVEL 3 THINKING

Level 3 living is where we are invested in the stories of why we can’t, and these stories prevent us experiencing the results that we desire. A story is anything we tell ourselves to justify not creating transformation. For example, someone may say “I can’t be a successful saleperson because my parents never taught me how to communicate.” Or “I don’t success in relationships because my work is too important.’ Or  “may bad back stops me working.” Or “If you’d been abused like I was you wouldn’t be happy either.” Or “Life is hard and that’s why I don’t success.”

Anything that you tell yourself as a reason for not being able to act or to be happy is your story. It is what you drag around with you as you escape clause. I don’t say this to be harsh, because I have done this myself and I still do. Learning this stuff isn’t  a one-time deal. You don’t learn it and then everything is perfect in your life. We each need to hold ourselves accountable to being aware of when we buy into these stories. The story I dragged around for years was “I can’t be happy because I have too may issues from my past to deal with.

The amount of time you spend investing in your stories is the amount of time you aren’t investing in your life. The more time you spend at this level is less time you have to build your build your ideal life, because I have too many issues from my past to deal with.

People who live mostly at this level tend to wonder why they are stuck and can’t get on with their lives. They hope things will get better. They don’t believe in much because life has given them so little to believe in.

Level 3 living means taking responsibility when it is convenient and surrendering responsibility when the going gets tough.

Level 3 Living includes why we can’t be our ideal weight, have an extraordinary relationship, what we tell ourselves people have done “to us”, ill health, what we tell ourselves prevents us getting ahead i.e. not old enough, too old, not enough training, not enough education, not good enough parents, no money.In fac, that last story… not enough money… is one of the most sommon stories I hear.

Level 2 Thinking

If you are living at level 2 you are aware that there are some areas in your life that need changing but you’re not sure how to go about creating the change. You would experience confusion and self-doubt. Level 2 people create change for themselves if they are presented with how to turn things around. Level 2 people often think life could be better, but rather than just hoping it improves, like level 3 people, they seek out the answer, as long as they don’t have to change too much themselves.

Level 2 people might be into alternative remedies and alternative solutions, because the mainstream answers have proven disappointing. They might believe in astrology & psychics.

Whilst Level 2 people have stories they tell themselves about why their life isn’t exactly as they want it, they still experience levels of happiness and fulfillment. Their stories haven’t  become all they have, so their level of skepticism and disappointment in the world isn’t as ingrained as it might be for someone at level 3.

Someone at level 2 might take responsibility for some areas of their lives, especially the areas that they are good at or which they feel most comfortable. When they take responsibility they like how it feels and want to do it more.

Level 1 Thinking

Level 1 people know that it is entirely up to them what happens in their life. They hold themselves 100% responsible for the results they get, regardless of what the results might be, because they know that anything less is giving away their opportunity to affect change.

Someone living at Level 1 would never indulge in blame or justification, because they know that doing that simply stops them learning and growing from a situation. They know that through growing and learning they become even happier. They aren’t interested in who to blame, but rather how to turn the situation around.

Level 1 people feel gratitude for what they have in their lives, including their opportunities to learn and grow. They see problems as gifts for them to take their lives to the next level.

Someone at level 1 doesn’t bemoan the past, but has forgiven whoever they perceive harmed them, knowing that the act of forgiveness is a gift for themselves.

Level 1 living is an extraordinary level of self-responsibility. It isn’t about blame, but choice.

Level 1 living is about taking yourself lightly, and looking for the good in every situation.

Level 1 living embrace the five keys we are about to look at all of the time, not just when it is convenient.

Your aim is to live at level 1 as often as you possibility can. Your aim is live at level 1 not just when the going is good… anyone can do that… but especially when the going is tough. Extraordinary people live at level 1 regardless of  what is going on in their  lives, because they know that it isn’t the circumstances of their lives that shape them, but what they think and choose as a result of those circumstances.

• What level have you been living your life unit now? 
• What has living at that level cost you?

Oprah Winfrey grew up in the South of North America and says that the only evidence she has of anything except poverty was the books she read. She was sexually abused and has a miscarriage in her teens. You could argue that Oprah had some pretty good “stories” she could have dragged around as reasons for not living a full life. Maybe she still some stories we’re not aware of. But no one could say this woman has become anything except for an extraordinary example of what is possible,

The quality of your life is a direct reflection of how 

many stories you have chosen to cease indulging in.

Stories are anything we tell ourselves about, why we can’t be, do or have whatever we desire. For example, if you are shy and you use that as reason for not go for a promotion, that is your story. They question is, is your story for you or against you?

The only thing preventing us from be who want to be, doing what we want to do, and having what we want to have is the stories we tell ourselves about why we can’t

What stories have you indulged in until now Give details about what you tell yourself and others about why you can’t be, do, or have whatever you want.

You May want to revisit previous exercises over the next few days and add to the stories as you notice yourself using them. For example, it took me a while to realise that one of my stories was that people are in this world for themselves so no one will help me.  When I realised that is what I’d trunked began aligning themselves with me.

What have these stories prevented you from being, doing, or having?

Why would you let go of these stories right now? Give yourself as many compelling reasons as you can as to why you would dump these excuses. Write down what you would see, hear, feel and tell yourself if you dumped these stories once and for all.

If today was the first day of your life, and you could create any story you wanted for yourself about what you are capable of, what would you say? For example, once I had identified the story I had been carrying around about other people, I change it to "people align with others when they believe in them and when they can also achieve their goals. It's about creating a win/win outcome for us all."

Another story I dumped was that it's hard to succeed because I didn't have the ideal upbringing. My new story became "My life is entirely up to me."

Write new stories that will mean you are committing to living your life at ! regardless of the circumstances of your life. Make the commitment to live at Level 1 even when the going gets tough, knowing that as human beings is not our ability to shirk challenges but to handle them, thus settling an example to ourselves and to those around us.

The Power of Choice

Life is nothing more than a series of choices that we make for ourselves to meet our needs. even not choosing is a choice. Every choice we make has consequences, and these consequences can be empowering or disempowering. The important thing isn't to blame ourselves if we've made a poor choice, but to become aware of the choice, the thinking behind the choice, and to notice any patterns in our choices.

Once we've done that, we can see a blueprint for how we shape our life.

If we life the blueprint, we would keep our pattern of choice.

What are the choices you have made?

Take the time right now to write down the positive choice in your life today? What choices have made you happy, proud, joyful?  For example, I chose to marry john, I choose to start a business, I chose to get fit, I chose to learn more about myself…

I chose to…

What great things are in your life now because of these choices? For example, because I chose to marry John, I got to learn what unconditional love was, and I have a best friend and lover who supports me in everything i do.

Write down the choice you have made in the past in your life that you perhaps don’t like or don’t make you happy. What choices are you unhappy about?  For example, I chose to quit a job because I decided it was too hard, I chose to not take care of myself when I was stress...

What are the consequence you have noticed because of these negative choice? What have they cost you? For example, by not taking that job I convinced myself that being a “success” was hard work and not worth the effort, and that means I don’t try my best any more, so I keep missing our on being all I can be. This makes me really sad.

How have you tried to or succeeded in turning around these choices? What have you noticed within you as a result of this effect? i.e. Resources or attributes like courage. For example, I got a part time job to turn it around and met a great friend, and I also noticed that hard work is rewarding when I like what I do and that people appreciate my efforts.

What are the positive learnings you have made or could make as a result of these choices? For example, I learnt that people will support me if I put myself on the line and that sometimes hard work is good to do. I learnt that I like to help people. I learnt that I’m pretty good at woodwork.

.

It’s now time to make new, empowering choices…

If everything in life came down to being a series of choices, would now be a good time to make choices that empower you? That make you happy? That would propel you closer to where you want your life to be?

Take the time right now to write down some new choices that will empower you , lead to new learnings, allow you to get rid of some things you have been to tolerating, give you the freedom to explore, to love, to learn, to grow. Write each new choice as… I now choose…

i.e I now choose to believe in myself

I now choose to have more fun

I now choose to take myself lightly

I now choose to share my smile with others.

I now choose to give myself a break

I now choose to laugh

I now choose to stay committed

I now choose to love my family even more

I now choose ...

What are the positive consequences of these choices? What will your life look like in three years? Five years? Ten years time if you keep making choices like this?

Your Defining Moments

I've come to learn that what may seem of little consequence to one person can literally turn someone else's life inside out. i experienced the power of this when I was coaching a client recently.  They shared how a teacher had made fun of one of the students when they had been in school. This event had happened over thirty years ago, but my client remembered that event as being hugely significant in their life. Because of the teacher's seeming thoughtlessness, my client had become a teacher... they wanted to show the world that teachers can be kind.

One event, and an entire future shaped.

We all have significant emotional events in our past that have shaped who we have become and the choices we make. If it's important to you then it's important.

A defining moment in my past was when I became ill. I gave it was that I didn't have to work at a career, because I would be too sick to do a great job. That attitude kept me doing very little for years, long after the original level of debilitation had gone.

Another defining moment was when I realised I was thinking about killing myself. That wake up call go me realising that it wasn't life that had given up on me, it was me who had given up on life. After that moment, I did everything I could to learn how the keys to happiness. It became one of my primary focuses in life.

These moments altered my perception of myself. They had consequences on the choices I made in my life. Regardless of the accuracy of my perception of these events, they are real to me. Someone reading these defining moments and saying "She should have done this instead" has no relevance. It is only interpretation of these events that matters in my life.

The same as your interpretation of the events that shapes you only have relevance to you.

Some of our defining moments can be positive, and influence our choices in ways that empower us. They can inspire us and show us what we are truly capable of. Some events are going to be clearly negative, However, the meaning we give these events is entirely up to us.

Memory give us the ability to recall these events, but our ability to recall the events accurately is difficult. What we always keep, however is our feelings associated with the event. Recall a moment of exquisite joy in your life, and notice how the feeling is close by. Recall an event that caused you great sorrow, and the feelings of that sorrow are there.

Defining moments anchor our reactions to the world today. These significant events determine the feeling we have to the inevitable stresses and strains of our lives. This makes them essential to uncover and explore. Until we do this, we are separate from who we truly are.  How can we understand what motivates our choice unless we understand what created those choices in the first place.

Imagine that someone challenges you to do something you don’t want to do. What do you do? Your choice will be partly determined by what you did in your past that resulted in a strong emotional response. perhaps in the past you were punished for not doing it. How will that influence how you respond today? Perhaps you were praised for standing up for yourself. Your reaction will be different.

For this exercise to be truly effective, make sure you recall as many specific memories as you can. Facts, feeling, beliefs need to be fully described as much as you can. It helps to recall the what you told yourself. If you can include what you smelt and what you tasted in your mouth.

Ideally, aim for at least eight significant emotional events, or defining moments.

1. Where are you as this event occurs? How old are you and what do you look like?
2. Who is with you?
3. What occurs that makes this event a defining moment?
4. What are the emotions you are noticing you are feeling?  
5. How would you change this situation if you could?
6. If someone asked you what you would want to say at this moment, what would you say? Who would you say it to? How would you want them to respond?
7. What are you telling yourself about this event? About Yourself? About the other people?  About what this means to you?
8. What is it that you need right now?

Once you have done this for the first event, answer these question:

1. What feelings are you noticing you are experiencing right now?
2. What are you telling yourself about that event right now?
3. What did you give up, what did you surrender, in the form of power and self determination, as a consequence of this event, if it was negative?
4. If the event was positive, what did you gain? What did you discover about yourself that you still call on?

Do this for each of your defining moments, and once you have completed this part of the exercise, check to see if there is another significant emotional event that you hadn't noticed, that now needs to be added.

If you have been honest with the exercise, you will have identified moments that have become important in the development of who you believe you are and what you believe you are capable of.

Now for each defining moment. ask yourself what aspect of your self was affected by this moments? Write at least a paragraph for each moment…

Maybe it was your belief in your belief in your ability to be loved, or it caused you to question your intelligence. Perhaps one of your defining moments led you to doubt your ability to stand up for yourself.

Now write down where you  were in terms of that dimension before the event, and then after.

For example, a defining moment for me was when I became ill. The aspect of self that as touched by this event was my sense of confidence about the world. I decided it was a harsh place. Before my illness, I’d been fun loving. During the illness that stopped and I became untrusting of the world.

Once you have done this, write a paragraph to describe what the long-term effect are of that moment. What have you decided to believe as a result of this event?

The long term effect of my illness for the longest time was that I would play it safe, stay out of life’s way, stay invisible, and play small. I decided that it was all too hard and I was better off not even trying. The consequence of that was at least ten years of frustration and disappointment with myself.

I developed the attribute of blaming life and others for what was or wasn’t happening in my life. I developed the habit of finding fault in everything around me, instead of taking responsibility for what was happening.

The first time I did this exercise, I realise how distorted my view of the world had become because of an event that had happened years before. I was shocked to discover that I had let an illness play such a powerful and influential role in my life, even when the illness itself no longer affected me on a daily basis.

The next thing to do is to take the time to ask yourself why this defining moment contributed to your sense of self. Once you have done that, write down whether you now think or believe this view of yourself, of the world, of those around you is accurate.

The reason I believe (remember this is only my interpretation, you might have has an illness as a defining moment and record a totally different reason) my illness became a defining moment for me was because of the lack of control I felt I had over it. I felt I had no influence over body, almost as if it was my enemy. And if my body couldn't be on my team, then who could?

I believe this view was distorted and inaccurate. I now believe that the view I chose meant I didn't have to take responsibility for my life, and instead could turn over the reins to others.

Now write what that old distorted view has cost you>

The cost to me of my old beliefs is missing out on life and love for at least a decade. It also cost me friends who didn't want to be around someone so negative. It cost me income, because I spent years at home telling myself it was too hard to get a job with this illness. It cost me my self confidence, my happiness, my sense of self.

Write down why it’s time to now change your interpretation of this event to something that supports you and your concept of who you want to be instead? What will your belief become now?

When I got to this part of this exercise, I cried because it finally occurred to me what I had sacrificed to keep such a limiting sense of self. I had given up almost everything to stay safe and live a life of lack.

I realised that there was no way I was going to keep my original interpretation of this event. No way. It had to change because if it didn't I was going to end up dead. If I didn’t change it was going to spend the rest of my life playing it small and complaining about how disappointing the world is. It had to change because if it didn't I was going to lose whatever I had left, which included a loving husband. It had to change because he deserved so much more that I was giving him.

I decided to believe that whatever limits my illness forced on me, there was still a way to live an extraordinary life. My limits weren't my illness, but were those of my mind.

Remember when you do this exercise that you were younger that you are now when your defining moments occurred. For many of you your events will be in childhood. You gave meaning to those events as a child doing the best you could to survive, to be loved and to belong. You did what you needed to to avoid feeling.

You are older now; you can look back on these events knowing that the person you are now is capable of making decisions not just based on what will cause the least fear, but on what will support you.

If your defining moments are when you were a child, then acknowledge the child you were, making decision as best you could.

Now acknowledge yourself for the new empowering choices you can make today.

The choice is yours. An extraordinary life means making extraordinary decisions. Only you have power to choose.

Once you have decided on your new empowering beliefs it’s important to keep them close to you, at least for the first month. I laminated mine and placed them in my wallet, so each time I reached for money I was reminded of what I now chose to believe.

If you find yourself reverting back to the old limiting and destructive beliefs, then answer this question:

What is the pay off for me of playing at this level? For example, if you choose to keep the belief that I am too shy to talk to anyone, your payoff might be that by keeping that belief you don’t have to make the effort with anyone, which prevents you from feeling the fear that you might not belong, or that you won’t be loved.

My payoff is?

Now, write down the benefits of letting go of this destructive choice.

Once you've done that, ask yourself, is that something you really want to change? Why? The amazing thing is that some people, no matter how much it costs them to hang onto a painful or destructive belief, will still keep it. They would rather feel the pain of what they know than risk the pain of the unknown. Even though the unknown is only going to stay unknown until they decide to explore it.

Note: It’s worth revisiting this exercise at least once a year. You will notice that your beliefs have changed and need to be updated to include the new level that you are now living your life.

I discovered after a year that what I had thought was difficult to believe to believe in the beginning… that I can do whatever I put my mind to…had become more of a reality for me than I had ever dreamed possible.