Pick something you want to change about your experience. It could be something big or small. After reading this post, if your excited about it, try out your three tools and see if you notice having more influence on stuff changing in your life.
We are all born with three tools that allow us to change our experience. Learning how to use these three tools in the most effective ways is the key to our life continuing to improve.
The three tools are:
Where we focus our attention
The meaning we give to stuff
The actions we take
Any other choice we have in making changes to our lives is a subset of one or more of these three tools.
Where we choose to focus our attention is what determines what information we have access to.
The meaning we give to stuff are the definitions we put on things, and most importantly, how we define our relationship to everything we experience.
The actions we take are simply what we do with our body, which includes what and how we communicate.
We have two main choices in using each of these three tools. One choice allows us to improve our experience and the other does not. Becoming clear on what these two choices are for each tool is essential to us continuing to allow the changes we want most to happen and to avoid living in patterns of frustration and stagnation.
The two choices we have for tool #1, about where we focus our attention are:
Choice 1) We can focus on the stuff: We can choose to focus on the matter; the people, the places, the things, the events, the circumstances and our thoughts about these or
Choice 2) We can focus on the space in which everything is: We can choose to notice the space in which all the stuff is happening right now. In art they call this negative space – it’s the area in a piece of art in which the objects in a picture or painting exists. Great artists learn that the negative space often times is more important to the beauty of a piece than the objects themselves. When you focus on the space you are simply putting more of your attention on all the space in between and within all the people, places, things, events, circumstances and our thoughts about these.
The two choices for tool #2, the meaning we give to stuff are:
Choice 1) We can assume that we are not in charge of our experience improving or
Choice 2) We can assume we are in charge of our experience improving
The two choices for tool #3, the actions we take, are:
Choice 1) To NOT act on our experience improving or
Choice 2) To act on our experience improving
The three choices that allow us the most influence to change our experience are:
Focus on the space in which everything is.
Doing this allows us to access all the information, new ideas and energy of what else is possible. The space in which everything is is where every creative idea exists. All that has yet to be is showing up in the space in which everything that is here now is. We can gain access to all these choices sooner by focusing more on the space. You might experience it as getting the right idea at just the right time, or it might feel like an “ah ha” moment, or you might see an image flash in your mind about what something could look like. All the best improvements are already in the space in which everything is now.
Assume you are in charge of your experience improving.
Every teacher knows that the main key to helping someone learn how to do something new, is to make sure they believe they can. Without assuming that we can do something, it is almost impossible to do it, or to keep doing it. Knowing that our brain will be assuming something, assuming we are in charge of our experience improving actually makes it true and it gives us the power to do it.
Act on your experience improving.
This is a no brainer right? We can’t expect things to improve in the ways we want by not doing anything towards them changing. We all know this, but it’s easy to forget, especially if we don’t make the two other choice above.
I’d love to hear how this effects your experience.