The Nature of Personal Reality

Beautiful art by my friend Claire

Why is it so that it sometimes seems difficult to get the world around us to work the way we want it to? If we are poor, many of us would much rather wealth. Those of us who are lonely may seek friends, and those who are under the grasp of illness most likely would desire health. But our desires are very often not represented in reality. Many of us who want to be rich simply aren't. Plenty of us desire that perfect body figure, or that new watch, or more happiness, a better social life, more time, better grades, etc, and a question that a lot of people may ask is 'why?'. Why aren't I rich? Why am I failing in ______? Why does everyone else seem better than me? But if we're looking for change, then 'why' is the wrong question to ask.


Instead we should be asking ourselves 'how'. How can I improve? How can I get better at singing so that my friends don't label my voice as 'unpitched percussion'? How do I convince my rich uncle to drink the delicious drink that I've brewed up for him? Although the question 'why' is useful for finding out what caused something or what the consequences/ relationship between two events were, it often invites a lot of blame and puts the power of your results in the hands of other people. That's not to say that we can't learn from whys, just that when we say that 'I'm ___ because of ____' it makes it incredibly easy to blame something and leave it up to them to fix your problems. And that rarely works.


Asking yourself how you can go about getting the outcome that you want is much more effective for change. Hows give us ideas on steps that we can take to consciously improv, gain or develop what it is that we want. How can I improve my drama skills? Take acting classes, comedy classes, sign up for Soapboxes, etc. How can I become more healthy? Get a gym membership. Go running. Change your diet. But I don't want to make this too much of a 'go do this' post. Instead, I want to consider a theory behind what a person experiences in life.


I've recently been reading a book on the nature of personal reality, which is aptly called 'The Nature of Personal Reality'. The book is allegedly a channeled work and the ideas within them originate from a multidimensional personality known as 'Seth'. What the book talks about, however, has an utmost relevance to our daily lives.


What The Nature of Personal Reality explores is the idea that you create your own reality through your beliefs and your actions. It sounds like common sense, but sometimes the most obvious things are the most elusive. Seth suggests that:

a) You Create Your Reality and
b) The Point of Power is Now


You Create Your Reality
What does this mean? First of all, think about everything that you do as being a choice.Even if you choose to do nothing, you've still made a choice, even if it may not be a conscious one. Our choices about everything in life, from where we sit, what drink we take, what we do when we are around new people, how we spend our money, what we decide to learn, etc. all bring about results and outcomes. Whether your outcomes are favourable (eg. finding a new friend) or not so favourable (eg. having a toast with yourself before you sip on your tears) are dependent on the choices you make in your life. 


The things that you experience in reality serve as feedback to the thoughts and choices you make. They are the outcomes that arise from the things you do. Say you're unfit and out of shape - that is simply feedback about the choices that you have made prior to right now. Maybe you chose not to work out and decided to try out a couple of the new McDonald's Oreo shakes (they're just a little too bit fancy) instead of downing down protein shakes from your local health store - these choices bring about the reality you experience right now. That's not to say that being out of shape is a bad thing to everyone, but if it is to you, then your choices brought you there.


The Point of Power is Now
This brings me to the second point - that if you want to change anything, then right now is the time to do it. Consider the idea that your current reality is one that has been chosen from the countless probable ones that could have resulted.

Let me say that again - your current reality is simply one chosen from unlimited probable ones.


Think about that. If you did things differently yesterday, how would your life be different today? If you had made a choice to do something different last week, last month or last year, how would your life be different RIGHT NOW? It doesn't even have to be something drastic - if you had chosen the red highlighter instead of the blue highlighter, you'd have a red highlighter instead of a blue highlighter - but what if it was? What if you chose to spend 20 minutes a day reading that book you've always intended to read? Or decided to catch up with people you've never had the time to? Or saved part of your salary every week for the last year? Life is like a Role Playing Game, where the choices you make will lead you to different realities, and if you're anything like me, then the reality that you want to experience is a good one.


The present is the point of power. Let me put that in capitals for you:


THE PRESENT IS THE POINT OF POWER.


You're forming your reality now. What you do RIGHT NOW is going to have an impact on tomorrow. The choices that you make, the thoughts you think, the actions you take all will be reflected in tomorrow's environment. You are very literally choosing your reality as you read this. So choose well.


'You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.' - Abraham Lincoln


Peace,
Eric

Good Grades, Enough Sleep, or a Social Life... Pick any two.

Facebook 'likes' are the greatest little cold reads. They are little statements that seem like incredibly personal and precise descriptions of the things that happen to us in the world that no-one talks about. They can be general truths that happen to everybody and are described in just a way that makes us think 'I just did this haha' or 'That's what always happens!' or 'I thought I was the only sneaky bitch that did this D:' or 'haha i do this shit all the time' and the list goes on and on.

Good Grades at the expense of
Sleep or your Social Life?

One of my favourites, and one that really interests me is the idea that teenagers can pick two out of:

1. Good Grades

2. Enough Sleep

3. A Social Life

This quote implies that performing well academically and fostering a social circle require so much time that to have any quality in these would be at the detriment to a healthy amount of sleep. At the same time, if you want to have enough sleep, you're going to have to sacrifice either your social life or your academic performance. 

A quick look through the hundreds of comments to this statement easily reveal that the majority of teenagers believe that they can only have two. But I'd like to take a step forward and say that that doesn't have to be the case.

Can you, the person behind the screen reading these words right now, imagine a person who gets enough sleep, does well academically and has a social life? My guess is yes, and I'll even go as far to guess that the picture of this person that you have in your mind is of someone who is (or will be) confident and successful in the world. Even more importantly, and what I really want to talk about, they're going to be someone who has discipline and self-management skills. And what I really think the idea that you can only pick two out of Good Grades, Enough Sleep or A Social Life reveals that the majority of us don't have the self-management skills or discipline to allow us to have all three.

Every single person in the entire world has the same amount of time in a day as you, me, and the person standing next to you. Every person has 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week. Yet some people (whether you know them or can imagine them) have enough time for grades, sleep and a social life, yet you may only have enough time for two. What gives?

My idea is self-management and discipline. You can't manage time, since you can't change or influence it. Every day has 24 hours in it. Every week has seven days in it. No-one's going to change that (but when they do, my DeLorean shall be ready), but everyone can change themselves, and improve their self-management skills.

According to Roy Morgan Research, in an average week, Australians spend 21.8 hours watching TV and 9.5 hours on the Internet. That's about 31.3 hours a week that's spent not getting good grades, not getting enough sleep and not developing your social life (unless you're on Facebook, but I'll talk about that in a moment). So imagine that you're someone who, according to the statement, has good grades, a social life, but not enough sleep. What we don't realize is that it isn't only grades and sleep that compete for our sleeping time, but also our leisure. 

If the average Australian were to give up the hours spent watching TV and browsing the internet, an extra 30 hours a week. That's about 4 extra hours that could be going to sleep, your social life or your grades every day. Think about what this means as a teenager. Perhaps you only get 5 hours sleep a night --> giving up hours and hours of television would mean that you'd get a beautiful nine hours a night. How would 30 extra hours of effort into your latest assessment task reflect on your grades? How would 30 hours of hanging out with your friends deepen your emotional connection with them? 

How much of the time spent flicking through channels on TV, or liking 'likes' on Facebook really is worth it? Undoubtedly there will be some t.v shows that you want to watch, some people that you can only keep in contact with through Facebook, but at the same time, there are a lot of t.v shows we watch just to fill the time. There are games that we play just because we've nothing else to do (or because we're procrastinating), and there are hours of intensive photo-stalking that really don't matter that much, unless you're anything like my uncle, but that's another story. 

What I'm trying to say is that it is indeed possible to have all good grades, enough sleep and a social life at the same time. In order to have them, however, people need the self-management skills and discipline to prioritize their activities and cut out the things that aren't important to make time for the things that are. Watch the t.v shows that interest you, but consider cutting out the channel surfing that doesn't maximize what you want. It's about prioritizing the important things in your life, and then having the discipline to do first things first, without falling back into the routine of spending time on things that aren't as important.

How do do this? Well, I'll talk about what I've personally done to try maximize my time in a future post, but until then, my British telephone booth awaits me.