perception

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Wake Up and Change Your Life

November 5, 2010 in Inspiration, Uncategorized by jensincero | No comments

Last night I dreamed I was driving this huge machine through a crowded warehouse and before I go any further with this I want to acknowledge that I’d rather sleep under a pile of wet dogs than sit around and listen to some ding dong go on and on about their dreams like any of us care, but this one brought up a good point so I’m going to do it anyway.

So, where was I? I’m driving this machine and it keeps growing and growing and the little seat I’m sitting on that’s perched on this skinny little pole keeps going higher and higher and I’m about to hit the ceiling of the warehouse and am all terrified that I’m going to run over things and kill people because I’m so high up I can’t see and then all of a sudden I think, wait a minute….

I think this might be a dream.

I don’t have to take this crap.

In fact, I think I’ll see if I can fly.

So I jump off my little seat, praying praying praying that I really am dreaming, and viola! I spend the rest of the night flying around the world.

I’m gonna go ahead and announce that I’m going through some pretty gigantic changes in my life right now. Some pretty gigantically AWESOME changes – I’m stretching my belief of what’s possible on such a regular basis that the miracles and manifestations and “coincidences” are coming at me from all directions. I am in The Zone shall we say, and leaping off that chair was a great reminder of what it takes to get there, and what it takes to stay there.

Which is why I wanted to share it with you.

If you have done your hippie homework, you understand that our lives are dreams. They’re not “real,” but rather a version of reality created by our perceptions. If we shift our perceptions, we shift our realities and enter a different dream.

So, if life is but a dream, why do so many people choose to suffer instead of fly?

One of the 8 billion answers to this question is that they don’t know how. Or rather they aren’t aware of how to do it. I realized when I woke up this morning that so many people think “oh, wow, yeah, I totally get it” when it comes to this whole thing about perception, but so few actually DO anything to change theirs.

So I thought I’d spend a little time pointing out some things you can do to stretch yourself into a new dimension. Legal things.

1.) Be The Witness
Pay attention to how you react to things in your everyday life. Take a pause before speaking or doing and ask yourself, why am I saying/doing this? To be right? To stroke my ego? So I won’t get made fun of? Watch how you move through the world, without judging yourself, and see where you could act with more integrity. Once you start noticing where you’re being lame, you will have the power to knock it off.

2.) Screw The Small Stuff
If you want to make major change in your life, don’t do your laundry/dishes/emails/errands first, do the big scary major stuff first. Everyday tasks are distractions that can, and will, keep you from moving forward. Take actions that will move your forward first, then go shave your legs.

3.) Scare Yourself
If you want to change your life, you have to change your life. And right now, the way you’re living is familiar to you which, sucky as it may be, is more comfortable than jettisoning yourself into the unknown. If you do not do stuff that freaks you out on a regular basis, you will not get out of your rut. Approach people who can help you, ask for things you’re scared to ask for, take chances, go places you don’t want to go but know you should. Growth is not comfortable. Birth is messy. Change is a freakshow. Sitting around in your unsatisfying life is easy in comparison.

4.) Trust Your Instincts
I think one of the most destructive expressions in the English language is “I don’t know.” It exempts you from deciding, taking action and, most importantly, admitting that you really DO know, you’re just being a weenie. Yes, it can absolutely be challenging to laser through all the layers of confusion and denial that you’ve built up over the years to protect yourself from living full out (which is why there are coaches and therapists out there) but I demand that you stop saying “I don’t know”. That just slams the door shut. Instead, say “I’m open to finding the answer.” And then listen to your gut. If your gut is out of your earshot, spend time connecting with it. Meditate, journal, breathe into your body, study hippie books on the topic. It’s SO important to trust yourself and to be able to tune into yourself that if you’re having trouble, work on it. It’s one of the great keys to living an authentic and powerful life. And then once you do tune in, act immediately. Don’t give The Squirrels of Doubt, Fear and Worry time to wiggle in and present their many reasons why you shouldn’t move forward.

With all this stuff, there’s a moment of uncertainty that you have to plow through if you’re going to get to the other side. Leap first and the net will appear. And when it does, it’ll be so frikken exciting you won’t believe it took you so long.

Now, go be huge please.

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This Is SO Not About You

August 27, 2010 in Inspiration, Uncategorized, Writing by jensincero | 2 comments

I recently had a friend, a brilliant writer, call me in a panic because she suddenly became frozen with fear over the subject matter of her book and could no longer bring herself to write it.

Her book is, among many other splendid things, very personal, dark, and twisted, and my friend was concerned that it was too much. That it was crossing the line.

That she was exposing herself as a giant pervert freak weirdo.

This brings up a concept that’s SO important to have a firm grasp on if you’re going to get anywhere near reaching your full potential in this life as a writer, an entrepreneur, an artist and actually, as a fully realized and evolved human being in general:

One of the greatest, most powerful ways you can spend your time is actively practicing not giving a flying crap what anybody else thinks about you.

Other people’s opinions motivate every decision we make in our teens and our twenties, and as we age, if we’re moving in the right direction, our obsession with how we look to others slowly trickles away, but most people spend their lifetimes under its pointless grasp.

Meanwhile, the only questions you ever need to really consider are:

Is this something I want to be, do or have?
Is this going to take me in direction of my goal or purpose?
Is it going to violate the rights of others?

Yes, it is part of our survival instinct to care – get booted from the tribe and you will freeze or starve to death or be eaten by bears. But because we have big brains and the ability to manifest anything we set our minds to, there is another version that’s equally as plausible: get booted from the tribe and be forced to start one of your own, and even though you suffer through struggles and failures and fears, you prove yourself and create something that’s unique and exciting and more in line with who you really are and suddenly there’s a coin with your face on it or a rest stop named after you or something equally as awesome.

We all long for the comfort and safety of fitting in, and if that’s where you’re truly happy and fully realized, then bravo, but nobody who ever accomplished anything big or new or worth raising a fist in the air and screaming “hell yeah!” about did it from the comfort zone.

They risked ridicule and failure and sometimes even death. Take the Wright Brothers for example. Can you imagine how that whole thing went down?

Beula: Did you hear about poor Susan?
Agnes: Susan Wright?
Hattie: Such a disgrace! Poor thing.
Agnes: What happened?
Beula: Well, her two boys…
Hattie: As if Susan hasn’t suffered enough. Tiny little thing birthing three boys as big as buffaloes, then croup, shingles and now this…
Beula: Seems her two sons…oh dear.
Agnes: Her two sons what?!
Hattie: I heard she has bunions too…
Agnes: Spit it out already Beula!
Beaula: Well, this is going to sound as crazy as it is but they….
Hattie: And now her sons think they can fly. Such a shame.
Beula: …they think they can fly.
Agnes: Think they can fly?
Beula: Yes, her sons think they can fly. They talk of nothing else.
Hattie: She just had the house painted too. They’ll probably have to move out of town now….

Once you step away from the herd and let yourself be seen, you put yourself in front of the opinion firing squad, which is why so many people run screaming from the lives they’d so love to live.

But here’s the thing that’s so critical to remember: It’s not about you anyway. What other people think about you has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.

I’ve gotten emails from people telling me everything from I can’t write to save my life to I’m an insensitive jerk to, and I quote, “your last name is interesting. Some people may see ‘sincere’ but all I see is the ‘sin’ part. Your life will be nothing but pain and heartache if you keep living it this way”.

I’ve also had people write in about the very same book gushing that I changed their life, that I’m their favorite writer, that they would like to get to know me in the biblical sense, etc.

So it couldn’t possibly be about the book because the book stays the same. It’s the reactions that differ.

The trick is not only not buying into the criticisms, but not buying into the hype either because neither of them are the truth. Once you do, you hand your power over to other people’s fears and insecurities and needs and stories and spend your life desperately chasing down something that isn’t even real.

All that matters is what’s true for you, and if you can tap into that and follow it without straying, you will be a mighty superhero. Everything else is just other people’s perception of reality, and that is none of your business.

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