I want you to think about the people you talk to the most for a second.
When I told John to do that, he started naming all the people he can think of. By the time he stopped, I realized that he forgot to mention the one person he talks to the most… Himself!
The problem is, he is not even aware of that. This chit chat we hear behind our ears to tell us to behave in a certain way is a loud fr*eaking conversation sometimes.
Imagine for a second, you’re standing in front of the washroom mirror in the morning, getting ready to go to work. In front of you, is the person you talk to the most.
Now your reflection, instead of reflecting your body, would now reflect your thoughts. So what would you see? Instead of seeing yourself brushing your teeth in the morning for example, you see yourself getting fired from your job because you’re always late. Your body is busy with getting ready to go to work, but your mind is milestones ahead, and you’re already fired.
Now when this chit chat stops, and you focus on the moment, you start consciously seeing yourself standing there and brushing your teeth. You feel the cold water on your hands, you smell the fragrance of the soap that you’re using. You are present.
Then something magical can happen. As you’re brushing your teeth, you glimpse at your phone as you get a notification. You get an email that says congragulations, we want to hire you. You finish brushing your teeth, you dry your hands and you look at yourself in the mirror. Once again, you don’t see your reflection anymore, the chit chat is back, but it’s different now. This time, something magical happened. You’re not seeing yourself being late to work and stressing about it, you’re seeing yourself walking into the new office where you’re going to be working now, and you feel inspired. You leave the washroom a different person ready to write a different story.
As I explained that to John, I asked him:
“ What do you usually say to yourself in the first few minutes after you wake up?”
He giggled and said: “I have a hard time waking up on time so…”
“Well how do you manage to do it when you need to wake up early?”
John giggled again: “It’s a blessing that you can set 10 different alarms 5 minutes apart on your phone!”
Now let me ask you, when you have 10 different alarms set apart, you know that even if you sleep for a little bit longer, there’s always another alarm to save your ass. Put if you were to put only one alarm, you know that when you turn it off you better be up.
But there’s an interesting thing about waking up in the morning. Those few minutes when you start your day where you can either set yourself up for creation, or stress. You are the creator, you are the author of your life, and if you start your day with stress, you’re most likely going to start writing about stress. When you have ten alarms, you need to realize that there’s something not right. To have a life where you create, you need to learn to wake up in a state of creation.
Let me put it in simpler terms… If the first thing you say to yourself when you wake up is: “Oh f*ck.” You’re up for a rough start. Now we all have the occasional f*ck ups, but when this becomes a lifestyle you need to step in. I don’t care who you are or what you do in life, you need to set yourself up for a state of creation when you wake up.
When you wake up in the morning and you stress out about your job, or school, you will automatically start stressing about other things. You’ll start worrying about the traffic as you see cars piling up… And after a long stressful day, you want to leave and distress.
Imagine for a second, how this world would look like if there were no creations. This article you’re reading, the chair you’re sitting on, even you, wouldn’t exist.
A state of creation, I came to realize, is the utmost blessing that each and every one of us have.
“It’s over, we broke up.” Said John on the phone as he giggled and sighed.
It was the fourth time I was speaking to him that day. The first time we talked in the morning he wasn’t feeling that great. Pursuing his passion in Web Development, he was facing a lot of problems with clients, payments, and work.
Do you remember that day when you woke up on the wrong side of your bed and said: “Oh boy, this is going to be a bad day.” Only to be proven right…?
Well, that was the last thing John said to me as he hung up in the morning.
Problems snowballed throughout his day and after every phone call, I can notice him stressing even more. Now of course, he didn’t notice it. He was feeling angry towards his work, his relationship, and most importantly himself.
It’s interesting how we often feel that the entire world agreed on giving us a sh*tty day or a sh*tty life, and we don’t think for a second that maybe we agreed to give ourselves a bad day.
My question was very simple:
“If you’re upset about work, why are you upset about your relationship?”
At this point, John started becoming conscious of his subconscious behavior. He started seeing how stressing about work made him unknowingly stressed about his relationship. When he started admitting that he overreacted, he started feeling guilty about what happened.
Of course, he starts thinking about how he can make things right with her. Now what really happened was that he started stressing about feeling guilty. He doesn’t like how it feels so he starts stressing about it to know how he can get rid of it.
He was successfully able to transition himself from a position of stress, to another. Yet the outcome of stress has changed. Instead of stressing about everything that’s wrong about his girlfriend, he started to worry about everything that’s beautiful that he might lose. The transition is not ideal, the ultimate goal is to go from a state of stress, to a state of creation, but what really caused his transition? It was that conscious moment of realization. What love meant to him and how it made him feel. He took a decision to create a new outcome… He got into a state of creation.
There’s an interesting thing that happens when we feel stressed. Your body shifts into survival and your main focus is to survive, not to thrive. Most of us are constantly living in a state of stress, where we live to survive. But what happens when you flip the coin? Well that’s when you get into a state of creation.