One Little Word That Can Change Your Life

I've written previously about untestable beliefs that you can test personally but which are not subject to scientific validation or falsification.  Unlike science, which is a collaborative, cumulative enterprise of progress, personal growth depends on you alone and is a journey everyone makes from start to finish.  No shortcuts.  Or are there?

You alone can make the discoveries of personal enlightenment.  No teacher, guru, minister, psychologist, "self help" coach, parent or mentor can do it for you.  A teacher can at best give hints and encouragement.  I can only promise you based on my experience that there are discoveries waiting to be made which are immensely worthwhile.  Possibly the only thing really worth doing with life's short moment.

If you have ever wanted to change your life or if you ever desired to be happy, then perhaps you have tried taking a vacation, re-decorating the house, buying some completely different (yet somehow identical) shoes and clothes, getting up at an entirely different time, quitting one job and getting another, moving to a foreign country, reading completely different books, having a new relationship or a new child or a new divorce, or buying a totally different car to the one you have.  One with, say, four wheels instead of . . . oh, never mind.

You might be unusually lucky and have everything suddenly go your way.  All morons and idiots vanish from your life, bullies all get their come-uppance, your preferred political party wins the election, your chosen athletics corporation makes the playoffs, and all the TV shows you most despise get cancelled.

If you are fortunate enough to experience all that, then it might also be your good fortune to learn an extremely valuable truth:  You're still unhappy!

Then if you have the time, health and resources, you could keep trying to change your internal emotional state by continuing to re-arrange the world around you.  If you do this and if you live long enough, you might even discover something truly extraordinary:  You had what you were looking for inside you all along.

A person who can make that journey is lucky indeed.  How much luckier is the person who gets to the finish line in an instant without all that effort?  Such a person could live his whole life happy right from the get-go.  Wouldn't that be interesting.

So what is this one little word that can change your life?  It's just an untestable belief I have that says the way I ask a question determines the quality of the answers I receive.

Lots of people ask themselves, "Why is this happening to me?"  And the human brain is an answer-generating machine.  It is not a logical truth machine, however.  Answers only.  If you ask your brain a question, it WILL produce an answer even if it has to make shit up.

If you ask why awful things always happen to you, your brain will produce plentiful evidence that this assumption is not only correct, but has countless logical, inescapable reasons.  So be extremely careful what you ask your brain.

But if we change one little word in that question, it becomes a vehicle of power rather than self-pity.  It becomes the trigger for your brain to plan for your success rather than undermine all your efforts.

Change the "2" to a "4" and get:

Why is this happening FOR me?

Test it in your life and share the results.





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