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Can Your Past Shape Your Future?

What if your perception of things that had occurred affect the future, you’re looking to create for yourself? Moving through life, you experience an event, and let’s say your perception of the event is that it was bad. Then over time you experience similar events which you also perceive to be bad. You learn to develop ways of dealing with these events some of them you may not even be consciously aware of. Then in the future even thinking you are going to experience a similar event causes you to start reacting in the same way. For some things, your reactions might be serving you well. If however things have changed in your life and your reactions are no longer serving you. Then you may want to change your reactions so that you can create the future you want.

When I was growing up on a farm in New Zealand, I didn’t have much exposure to the outside world. My exposure to people outside of my family was limited to going to school, Sunday school, church and occasionally visiting relatives. There was something about the way how the people at church, Sunday school, and many of my religious relatives behaved that made me uncomfortable. When they were talking with someone, they pretended that they were super happy. But whenever I saw them not talking with someone, they looked really miserable as if they had been faking being happy. I started to begin feeling uncomfortable and distrusting being around these people.

You can only lose what you cling to.
— Budha

Shortly after starting primary school, we got our first TV. This was back in the days when there were no mobile phones, no internet, and you were charged for every landline call you made. Being the early days of TV there was initially only one TV station and it only broadcast from mid-afternoon to mid-evening. TV started showing me a world to which I didn’t have any access. The world I saw on TV was bigger and seemed to be much better than the limited world I saw in my little isolated rural bubble. I noticed that the people on TV seemed to be happy most of the time and things always worked out. On TV things seemed to happen quickly, easily, and fast. As a kid I gradually started forming an idea of the world, that idea was what I saw on TV was the real world.

Decades later and I was being coached, and I’d decided to focus on growing my business. My coach asked me a question in relation to something that I’d said. What came up for me was the notion that growing my coaching business should happen quickly, easily, and as fast just as I had seen on TV all of those years ago as a kid. Somewhere inside of me, I was still holding onto this idea that things should happen easily and effortlessly. This was somewhat surprising as I am now well aware that TV programs are carefully scripted and are based on a formula and then painstakingly edited. Then what is shown are just some highlighted events as everything needs to move rapidly keep to people’s attention and reach completion within the time limit of the episode and leaving the viewer wanting more. At the end of the coaching session, I created action steps that moved me forward and helped dissolve those misperceptions I’d formed with a child’s limited knowledge and understanding.

If this article has resonated with you please feel free to reach out to me.