We are born to a world where we experience good and bad. However, our social world is structured by being constantly stimulated by the negative song of the news and negative influence of people around us. It is essential to realise that life is a matter of perception where we can look at any marvel that life offers us to instill us with hope and determination to grow as human beings. This growth in essence is to move us to a plain of becoming free thinkers and following our own life philosophy so that our life truly is OUR life and not just a blueprint of someone else’s impositions. 

Making the transition and not engaging with negative stimulus daily is a horrendously difficult task in itself. As a test, delete your social media for a month and observe the manner in which you relate to the world around you. It wont be easy this can be assured. The key here is that we engage too deeply with this stimulus and instead of having some perspective on life where we can stand back and observe in a unaffected manner with a clear and rational mind, we are caught being too close to the experience and engulfed in a manner that prevents us from having any foresight or ability to reflect. We become sheep. We become voyeurs and are more interested in others and their successes than taking the time we have and investing it into our own growth. 

By investing our energies into this manner of relating to the world, we soon become slaves to our lives and its many masters (the people we observe) rather than taking ownership of our lives and making informed decisions to change today.  The mere act of reflecting on oneself has been lost, and it would be easier to follow the advice of someone else than making your own informed decision and see where your path takes you. 

I often wonder how the real adventurer’s and explorers of the world managed to hold it together and not be impacted by their emotions to such a degree that they become incapacitated to push forward. Imagine Marco Polo on his quest for new lands waking up one morning and saying it’s raining and the weather is making me depressed. The likelihood of him living an extensive life as an explorer would in reality be short lived with that attitude. A reality of life is that no matter where you are in the world, no matter what circumstance you find yourself in there will always be a rain storm which will happen. The dilemma is whether you allow the rainstorm to remain outside of your head or whether you allow it to enter your head. The key is not allowing it to enter your head. 

I believe that we have all at some point allowed this to happen and what follows is disastrous. I am always intrigued by those individuals who are able to process their emotions quickly so that they can get themselves back to a rational mindset which is functional and keeping them on the path of achieving their life purpose and creating the experiences they want to encounter. The question you need to ask yourself is what are the preventative measures that you need to implement or introduce into your life to stop you from allowing the rain to enter your head. How do you waterproof yourself in a metaphorical way of speaking?

When we are too close and enmeshed in our experience, we encounter the saying “I cant see the wood between the trees”. We have no perspective. We have no objective view of the world or our situation which leads to stuckness and with continued reinforcement eventually depression.  Depression is the continual choice of focusing on past experiences we have had no power to change and we ruminate until we slow ourselves down to such a degree that our body actually ceases to function at a normal rate. 

This is not normal functioning. The worst aspect of this is that we stay focused on the depression and lack of movement for such extended periods of time that we completely stagnate. Then to make matters worse we allow ourselves to believe that this is how it is and we lose sight of how we once were. 

A key solution is KEEP MOVING! Keep reading, keep exploring, keep asking the necessary questions, keep getting out of bed and facing the day, keep looking for all the nuances in life that instill gratitude, keep being appreciative, keep reinforcing that you have a choice, keep introducing stories that keep you inspired, keep deleting any negative or aspects that do not bring value or function to your life, keep realising the value you bring to world, if there is no value find it in every action you create, JUST DO IT, stop asking why and ask what would happen if I did, ask should I do it and what will change if I do, realise that there is nothing you cant do, its you wont because you're making a choice. 

We are so lucky to be in a world saturated with information. If you want to learn it, it is there for the taking. The desire has to come from you to want to change something in yourself otherwise I guarantee you that depression will find its way into you. The reason is that depression is the polar opposite to happiness. They both exist in you and there is no running away from it. It’s a process of management and its only until you figure out your own life philosophy that’s when things will change. You will be directed to invest in yourself in any way shape and form to get the best out of yourself. 

There is a natural flow to your thoughts. They are not as chaotic as you may think and it is only until you take the time to sit with your thoughts that some order to them will be established. The second we fight ourselves and our thoughts there is an inevitable chaos. The mind does not work in this way naturally. Imagine yourself on a deserted island after being the only survivor in a plane crash. Although you will be immediately panicked as to the magnitude of what happened to you, soon hunger will set in, and then thirst, and then the inevitable moment when you will move into survival mode. Once you have activated survival mode, your main thoughts will be focused on shelter, food, water and making yourself get through every moment as best you can. Gratitude sets in almost immediately when you’ve learnt how to make fire, a tool for cooking raw food… where even more gratitude sets in when you can actually cook something raw and feel warmth. 

Can you see how simple this process is and how basically beautiful our mind is to simply get by in the most balanced fashion?

Organizing thoughts is about going back to basics and not complicating things. The irony is that the solution to most of our thinking problems is usually the simplest of answers but we are almost always tied into the problem because of the emotions binding us to the experience. This is reinforced by a lack of flow and when we begin to question our judgment, gut, our perception and ourselves then we second-guess the real mechanism of knowing what is best for us. 

What reinforces these thinking mechanisms and sabotages we create is through reinforcing them with our behaviours. By acting on thoughts we create experience, and it this experience that we create that erases past experiences both good and bad. This process is called “Experiential Deletion”, a term coined by Massimo Stocchi, explaining that any past experience will be deleted if the new experience has a larger than or equal emotional reaction. The emotional reaction or impact is what we remember and this is what either deters us from facing the situation and moving on or disables us from acting. When it is suggested that the emotional content needs processing, this is what actually needs to be processed, dissolved, eradicated. The simplest (not the easiest) route to follow is by creating new experiences constantly to press the Experiential Deletion into overdrive and instil new affective emotional content, which erases past thinking traps. This works! Test it out and it is guaranteed to work. 

Your essence is what defines you. It is what needs to be nurtured and pressed to grow continuously. Without engagement with it, there will be constant boughts of stagnation and limited growth. I would openly suggest that you sit with this question “what does my true essence look like?”, and then decide what needs to be adjusted in your life. Sometimes the most drastic decisions are the ones that are the most beneficial, because they are simplistic yet the most emotionally challenging. Once you overcome the fear of making the choice, and then acting on this choice you have allowed yourself the opportunity to create yourself anew. 

Points to consider:

• Depression

• Reflecting on oneself 

• Standing back and getting perspective 

• Ordering your thoughts 

• Ordering your behaviour 

• What motivates you 

• Going back to basics 

• The essence of what you are 

• The love of your family 

• Allowing yourself to be open to the change and ending 

Vaya Con Dios