Invent your Life

Everything we experience on the visible, or physical side of life is the result of the invisible or metaphysical side of life.

The easiest example of this is an inventor.  An inventor first creates the idea of his invention.  It exists only as thought, in mind.  This thought is invisible to the physical world.  It is metaphysical in that it must exist before the physical expression can be produced.  After the idea is generated, the inventor then produces a physical prototype.  First the thought, then the thing.  

This holds true in much subtler ways as well.  Imagine two people standing next to each other, watching the sunset at the Grand Canyon.  One of these people has an incredibly moving experience of the beauty of nature.  The other is focused on using their cell phone to post a status update, is frustrated from the lack of cell service, and misses it.  As silly as that might sound, the truth is that our thought directly affects our experience, NOT the other way around.

Nobody and no experience has the power to dictate to you how you think.  You get to choose how you interpret the events in your life.  You can choose interpretations that empower you or you can choose the let the outside world decide for you.  Ask yourself, especially when you feel frustrated, angry, stuck, or upset, “How do I want to interpret this experience?  Am I just thinking what society tells me to think, or am I exercising my authority over my thoughts?  What is another way I could look at this situation that is more empowering?”

Legend has it that it took Thomas Edison 10,000 attempts to make the first lightbulb. He is reported to have responded to a question about failure, “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”   What if he had let the outside world tell him how to think?  Would he have given up after 100 “fails?”  200?  5,000?  Rather than succumb to how society dictated he should interpret his experience, he made an empowering choice and became perhaps the most well-known inventor in history.

Where in your life are you allowing society to determine how you think?  What might be different if you made a new choice?