It is not good circumstances that create a positive attitude (although they obviously influence this), it is the positive attitude that creates good circumstances.
When I tell someone today that risking and pursuing our dreams is the path to fulfillment and happiness, it is possible for some to think or even tell me in response and almost contemptuously:
S, but you have a life of scandal and you can consider doing anything. You have money without working, so does anyone speak
Well, it is true that today I do not have the need to work to live, today I can dedicate myself to what I want and what I like, it is true that I have money, a house of my property, a woman who supports me and share my ideas and also a clear artistic ability that not only opens doors for me but makes me immensely happy when I believe with her
But ... Isn't this perhaps a clear proof of what I am saying? Or is it that I have had all this since I was born? Even my artistic ability has had to work and I continue to do so in order to realize its full potential! How has luck been? What have I married a woman with money ??? Of course, as many attractive, intelligent women abound with money that also have a path and a spiritual philosophy so similar to mine, desperate to marry someone without a career or a future ... or a vividor or ...
Let's be serious. Does anyone really believe that? If so, he simply does not know me, or what is safer, he does not know himself.
Whoever thinks that is unaware or has forgotten or has not even thought that not all my life my circumstances have been this way. That many years ago I believe and affirm that we all have the power to change our destiny, and that when I first realized it and decided to live accordingly, my circumstances were very different. As well as all the other times in my life later that I had to make a decision based on this vision of life.
I want to say that I believe this that I affirm not because my life is as it is, but that my life is as it is because I have believed and I believe this that I affirm.
The Way of the Heart is not only the only thing that can give us inner peace and authentic happiness but it is also the only thing that can additionally make our deepest desires come true.
Sometimes we forget (and I include myself in the forget) that I was born and raised in the Pópulo neighborhood, one of the neighborhoods until recently poorer in the city of Cádiz. That I grew up in a humble, good and honest but poor family and even took pride in being so. A family that not only suffered from economic problems but from serious disorders in the family as a result of having a head of household who, according to doctors, suffered a mental illness and subsequently a daughter with mental retardation and behavioral disorders.
It was at 28 when I first met this way of seeing things. I was so convinced by this new look that I decided to live my life 100 × 100 according to her.
Then I had no money in the bank, a house of my property (I still lived at my mother's house in the Pópulo neighborhood, although my girlfriend at the time and I had just gotten into a mortgage), nor could I dedicate myself to what I wanted (I worked in a job that did not inspire me in the least), and although I did have an artistic ability that stood out from the average I did not think I could live on it, and if I exercised it so little I was losing more and more brilliance.
I must confess that although as a child I had been told about miracles and the power of faith, I had also been taught that this was a matter of saints or very special people and not of ordinary people. I remember how much I liked the book of the Alchemist and especially his most remarkable phrase that "when we follow our dreams the whole Universe conspires to come true", but at that time it was still a wonderful fantasy. I really didn't get to check the truth of those words until I hit bottom and decided that I didn't know how but my life obviously had to change and that I would do my best because that was the case. The circumstances of my life had become so heavy and suffocating (especially a poorly paid occupation that I disliked and invaded virtually all of my time) that I had almost completely lost the joy and illusion of living.
That was when I gave up. I couldn't keep living like this. Stop fighting, complaining and resisting and I told myself that I didn't know how but that was going to change and that happened. I took advantage of my summer vacation to disconnect from everyone who was overwhelming me. I didn't know how, but I was sure that when those vacations ended my life would not be the same. Would I quit my job? Would I leave everything? I just knew that it would somehow be a new beginning.
It was only a week later, when what until then had been a wonderful fantasy, the possibility of realizing all our dreams, came unexpectedly into my hands as a real possibility, as a logical, practical and authentic philosophy of living. I didn't even have to move from my house, in the same room, on my mother's book shelf, I had always been there but I had never seen it before before. His title literally jumped before my eyes: "You can heal your life." That book by Louise L. Hay miraculously came into my hands when I decided to change my life firmly, and showed me the door to what I was looking for.
He taught me mainly that the change I was looking for outside was within me. "I am willing to change" became one of my favorite mantras.
But although his philosophy and his teachings (and that of many authors like her) had a logic that over the years science is increasingly corroborating, it was not until I decided to trust her and risk and experience and live it until its last consequences that my circumstances really began to change. I had to put into practice in my day to day, minute by minute, the knowledge that I had just acquired and bet totally on it.
Nor is it that he made great and tragic changes immediately. Although I was willing to do it, I didn't quit my job immediately, but I stopped working overtime that also didn't pay me. I stopped complaining about my clients and decided that while I was working there I would stop considering myself a victim and use my time as an aid. I entered an association of artisans where I began to project and practice my dream of being an artist. I continued to live with my mother and my family, but knowing and trusting that this was only circumstantial and temporary and that when the opportunity came to become independent I would take it without hesitation. He knew and was totally confident that the process of change had begun and that from that moment everything would be better and better.
It goes without saying that this change of attitude alone generated a radical change in my confidence in myself and in life, reinforcing it more and more in the process. But if you realize it was this change in my attitude that generated the changes that happened and not the other way around, and this is what I want to reinforce and highlight with all this dissertation:
My attitude did not change because my circumstances improved but my circumstances improved because I changed my attitude.
I stopped thinking negatively, either as a victim or as a failure, and practically reprogrammed myself to see life and myself as something positive and constantly evolving. Something that was already valuable, that it was already perfect and that it deserved all the love and gratitude possible. Something that was impossible not to fall in love if its true essence was known.
I watched the thoughts that came to my mind and every time I saw a negative one, I changed it to a positive one and repeated it again and again until it became part of my new way of thinking.
Example:
"I am stupid" for "I love and accept myself as I am and I am willing to change"
"Who do you think you are?" By "I am a divine creature of the universe living a physical experience, I am a gift to the world"
"I am a disaster" for "I am able to carry out everything that I propose in life" or "Life is dangerous" for "Life is a wonderful adventure and Everything is perfect and complete at this time, Everything is fine in my life ”or“ I can't do this, it's very dangerous ”by“ I like this and I am convinced that it will make me happy, the only way to know if it will work is to try it, I'm going to get into it 100 × 100, if not I can always go back and at least I will have taken the experience out of it. Life supports me in everything I undertake. ” (The books of Louise L. There or anyone else who works the affirmations has many examples of how to do this personal work, which practically consists in a reprogramming of our way of thinking towards something more constructive and assertive).
But if anyone has doubts about whether it was my attitude and my decision to risk trusting in myself and in life, what caused the change in my circumstances, I will give some more examples:
Risky decisions you made at the time:
-Decided to risk, trust and lend my time, dedication and energy to put into practice what I and other self-help books taught me.
-Decided not to hide it and show me how I felt and talk about it with anyone who related to me, without fear of looking like a weirdo.
-Decided to change my attitude towards my clients, my bosses and other coworkers of the Insurance company, going from being a victim to being a help, without receiving any No material benefit for that, when the easiest thing was to keep doing things as usual.
-Decided to stop staying extra time at work and dedicate it to building my dream or simply doing what I liked knowing that it would immediately contradict my bosses.
I decided to confirm my position and refuse to reconsider even when they urged me to do so. I decided to continue with it even when my family and my fiancee and my friends were fearfully pressing me to reconsider.
-Decided to continue refusing me even when my bosses two weeks before I got married, they gave me an ultimatum and three months to think about it or say goodbye, with all the pressure of the wedding, the invitation, the new life that awaited me and that in theory should ensure and stabilize. I finally decided after three months agreed to leave my job fixed and accept the unfair dismissal offered to me against the opinion of the company, my family, my wife and my friends.
-Decided to totally ignore my change of social image and start selling my works with the artisans in a stand in the middle of the street going from looking like an elegant and administrative cramped to a street vendor.
-Decided to ignore the opinion, fears and prejudices of my loved ones and others and start doing yoga, meditate, vegetarian diet and fast in times when all this was considered things of sects or crazy . Careful!, some people told me, remember your father's illness !, They will believe that you are crazy !! .
(Someone talk about madness.)
-Decided to end my first marriage when I realized that our differences weighed much more than our similarities, and face what I already assumed although I could not even get close to glimpse, it will be to one of the biggest bombs I would throw in my social environment. The consequences that this had with the affective relationships that it had then even though they have softened over time, still last to date.
Do I need to continue? I need to talk about my decision to reject a year after a stable job at the Treasury, only in the morning, with a good salary, with good companions, and choose Did he change for the first time at that time still almost unknown Camino de Santiago? After leaving my home and my city and going to work alone in Valencia? And then to Germany? And then risk everything again for that unexpected (and incompressible for all) "call" to make the Way for Peace to Jerusalem? And then to Canada, and ...?
Yes, but it's not the same, you were alone, you didn't have a family to support, some children who depended on you ...
The family to maintain is not true, it is true that I had no children and that made things easier, but I had a wife that I loved and responsibilities that I did not want to abandon. If it happened later, it wasn't because of the risks I took, but because my new self and that old life were no longer compatible.
And about the children ... although my circumstances have changed, today I do have children and if I had to choose again the question that would ask me would be this: What do I want to teach my children? What example do I want to give them? Do I want them to live in fear of life or do I want them to take life as an exciting adventure and dare to try to achieve what they want ???? Tell me which attitude is what will lead you to happiness. Because if life consists of conforming, defending and surviving, I prefer not to live, much less bring children into the world.
But today I know that life is not that. I have had the courage to risk and discover it for myself. And I invite you to do the same. Not that you follow my path but that you throw yourself to discover your own. For your own good. For your joy, for all the potential that is within you ... For all the good that can bring you, those around you and the world ...
A big hug,
Alberto
Source: http://conlaluzenlamirada.blogspot.com/2011/06/una-mirada-al-pasado.html
