***Sorting for the Good Stuff

I have been thinking recently, as I imagine many of you have, about what I envision for the coming year. What are my dreams and intentions, what do I want to create in my life and in the world this year?

Having spent the last three days in a personal deep winter retreat, I've been reviewing notes and thoughts from this past year, which I have a habit of writing down as they come, and sticking into a file folder for later perusal. This year, my file was a full inch thick and brought some nuggets as I excavated.

I found a page of notes I made as I read Ekhart Tolle's A New Earth, and was struck by the juxtaposition of these two lines:

"Awareness is the greatest agent for change"

and

"What you fight, you strengthen; what you resist persists".

It seems to me, that's a key combination of thoughts to talk about here at the very beginning of a new year.

Consider how powerful your thoughts can be. You may have heard the current buzz talk around all this, and if you think about it you may see the proof of this in various areas of your life: thoughts become things; what we focus on expands.

In this past year I have stepped into a much deeper understanding and acceptance of this idea: My thoughts become my reality. What we imagine, we create - especially when we add significant emotion - whether positive or negative - to our imagining. I have learned some of the pieces that explain why this is true, on a physiological level.

At any given moment, we're being bombarded with over 2 million bits of information. Our poor long-suffering unconscious mind (which handles 95% of our thinking and life processes) can handle 7 or so chunks of information. The vast difference in these two numbers (thank you Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi for this research, published in Finding Flow) means that our unconscious is constantly sorting information and being very selective about what it will take in. It does this by deleting, distorting, and generalizing, and working to make the world outside match what each of us has come to expect it to look like, through our prior experience.

So - our expectations create our reality.

This is not new news - it's been accepted by metaphysicists and seekers for hundreds or thousands of years. Quantum physics just happens to be catching up and explaining it in different terms.

Another way of describing this phenomenon is to think of your mind as a search engine on a computer. In your current world view, you are unconsciously inputting criteria that you're selecting for. If you search for despair and anger, you will find it. When you search for joy, you will find a whole different set of images and experiences.

The great news is, we can change what our unconscious mind allows in, by consciously changing what we look for.

A way to test this, is to consider buying a new car. You can pick the most unusual car imaginable - last year, I started thinking about a deep red Prius because I saw one and thought it an unusual and attractive color. All of a sudden, deep red Priuses were everywhere. (Darn, I should have chosen a different example because I truly don't know if the plural for Prius is Priuses or Prii...) I was sorting for them, because I had unconsciously signaled my deeper mind to start noticing them.

My invitation to you in this coming year is to be very intentional about what you sort for, and notice the difference it makes in your life.

As Mike Dooley says, "Thoughts become things. Make sure you choose good ones!"

Here's a way to start a new sorting/filtering process:

A
Gratitude
Journal

When we realize
that our thoughts become things
how do we consciously begin
creating great thoughts?

The most powerful way
I have found
is to keep a
Gratitude Journal

Each day, at the beginning
or the end
of the day
- or both! -
Write a list of the things in your life for which you are grateful.

You can challenge yourself a bit,
by asking for a minimum number,
or by writing for a specific period of time -
whatever works for you.

Try this out, and see how it can shift how you see your world,
and what new thoughts and ideas and RESULTS come to you because of your new perceptions.

See what happens,
as you begin to sort for things to be grateful for!

Happy New Year!