The Many Roads Travelled…

The marvel of the human brain, the wondrous capacity for dealing with millions bits of incoming sensory data (sight, touch, smell, auditory, taste). Over the course of our life we will have had thousands and thousands of experiences, which are composed of trillions of sensory bits of information, all which are brain has recognized, catalogued and stored for future reference.

Most of this is done without our awareness and only the new or novel experiences stand out in our subconscious minds. Here is the interesting part, we can take a memory from 20 years ago, pull it back in all its detail and relive it with all the feelings, with all the sensory information it was stored with. This can be a wonderful thing or it can be an anchor around our neck. How so? Most of us have had wonderful child, adolescent memories of holidays, school days, first kiss’s etc. There are also some of us that have trauma, physical or emotional, during the years when we were first exploring the world as a child. Regardless of the experiences we have had, we use them as a blue print for how we view the world, the world we see as a safe place or a place to be wary of. Neither of these perceptions are true or false, they simply are our points of view. (note the visual sensory reference)

So what’s the point? The point is that as we live and breathe here today we can often hold the world accountable for our insecurities, for our happiness, for our well being. We hold others in our life responsible for all the variety of emotions we feel. “They make us mad” and “they ruined our life”, or “they are responsible for this and that”. Regardless what we think they did, all they did was to offer a variety of sensory stimulus in the form of actions, spoken words (symbols) which “we” “you” took in and gave your own meaning to. They really did nothing. They should not be able to “make you mad” “ruin your life” or any such thing.

So where to from here? Well, face the fact that you are solely responsible for everything that happens in your life (100%). Jack Canfield in his wonderful book “The Success Principles” offered this formula in chapter one “E+R=O, which simply means that the events of your life plus your reaction to them equals the outcome. Trust me, it is not easy to let things go, there will be a part of us that demands its pound of flesh for the wrongs we think were committed against us, but holding that in your heart does little more than blacken your soul.
The many roads travelled by you during your evolution as a thriving, growing learning human being have provided you with a variety of sensory stimulus in the form of life experiences.

What you decide to do with them, how you choose to react to them and the meanings you give to them is your choice. For good or bad, the decision is yours. If your life is not where you wish to be, if your heart is not settled and longs to a better place, then leave yesterday where it belongs, behind you. Look to today and every new day you have the gift of life as the opportunity to rewrite history with a life full of health, joy and promise. Be careful not to believe everything you think!

C. David Gilks Your Fellow Traveler