Joe Post - Dont Believe Everything You Think: Change the Way You Feel by Changing the Way You Think!

D ont B elieve E verything Y ou T hink

C hange The Way You Feel
BY
Changing The Way You T hink!

By

J oe P ost

Dont Believe Everything You Think

All Rights Reserved

Copyright 2016 Joe Post

Cover photo by Amada44, available under a Public Domain license

All Rights Reserved. This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Booktango

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.booktango.com

877-445-8822

ISBN: 978-1-4689-7274-0 (ebook)

Contents

I n 2001 I was going through a divorce and was an executive for a large management consultancy when Enron and WorldCom imploded, which slowed and changed business to consultancies. As a result, I was let go and was free to find a new challenge while at the same time navigating the turbulence of a divorce.

I was checking my mailbox one day and found a postcard for a coaching school addressed to my next-door neighbor. The fact that it was a postcard allowed me to read it, and the concept intrigued me. After delivering the postcard to my neighbor, I decided to look into coaching. I didnt know then but certainly realized later that the postcard was meant for me to see.

A fter speaking to many coaching schools, one of my last calls was to iPEC. I actually reached Dr. Bruce Schneider, the founder and president, and we spoke for a while about his views on coaching and the approach his school took. It felt right, and so I went for it, not knowing what (if anything) Id do with it but more for a personal journey given all the changes I was in the midst of.

T he class took seven months to complete and was the most amazing learning I had ever gone through. It was cathartic and caused a huge shift in the way I thought and subsequently felt about almost everything. The training was geared toward being in the moment and to suspend the need to react to or judge events. I speak about these things in this book in more detail and believe these concepts are critical to finding personal freedom and happiness in ones life.

A fter I graduated, Bruce and I became friends and business partners as I entered the iPEC family as a vice president of operations, and together we grew iPEC until 2006. Bruce and his wife Deb and I remain good friends today, and iPEC continues to grow and impact the energy of the world, one person at a time.

I ve often heard people talk about reality as if theres just one universal version. How many times have you heard a person say, The reality of this situation is ? My view is that they are espousing what they believe the reality is rather than there simply being one explanation for whatever they were speaking about. When whats being discussed has a legal or man-made law associated with it, there will always be a perfectly black or white reality because it is written although even that is subject to interpretation by police or by the courts. Every one of us has beliefs based upon life experiences or bias that lead us to conclusions and therefore our own unique realities. Don Miguel Ruiz brilliantly describes the bias and beliefs we develop as the domestication of humans in his bestselling book The Four Agreem ents .

M any needless arguments occur because people sometimes vigorously defend their beliefs/realities among each other. We have a basic need to be right and sometimes sacrifice a great deal in our lives trying to achieve it.

W e are here to learn from each other, and without experiencing the contrast of success, failure, pain, joy, and suffering either firsthand or through the observation of others experiences, we couldnt learn and evolve. Our world unfolds in an amazing way in that we must have contrast so we can learn what we do want based upon what we dont want. In this way, life allows us the opportunity to modify our reality/beliefs over time, and that is as it should be. I think of the contrast that comes our way as life lessons we need to learn in order to grow, evolve, and better know and understand what we do want.

P erhaps you have noticed (or if not, can you see the possibility of it now?) that the same types of things happen to you (i.e., come into your life) until you learn something? It has been my experience that once you learn a lesson, those types of things no longer come your way, or if they did, you navigated around them successfully.

T he idea that one focuses too much on what one doesnt want versus what one does want has strong parallels to the writings about the law of attraction in that what you focus upon and think about constantly will find a way into your life.

I n essence, the more you know what you do want and focus upon it, the universal law of attraction will bring the cooperative components to those thoughts into your life. This is also true of the converse in that if your thoughts are focused upon what you dont want, those unwanted things will be summoned as well. This understanding is part of my belief system and may or may not be part of yours, which is of course perfectly fine, but it has been my observation that most people spend way too much of their time thinking about what they dont want or what they wish they had (i.e., point being you dont have it now), which invokes all the cooperative parts to that thinking to be active in that persons life, which of course supports his or her reality.

I t occurs to me that our individual reality is subject to change depending upon a persons growth capability and willingness to change the way he or she thinks. Learning and growth are the foundations for evolution.

H ow would you define success? What do you picture in your mind when you think of success? Most people think of success as an end state where they have attained financial freedom, a home at the beach, etc. I maintain that those material things are the fruit of success, not success itself.

I f you were to break down the things you need to do in order to harvest the fruits of success, you would come to the repetitive actions you would need to take day in and day out until such time as you achieved the results necessary to start eating the fruit of success.

A s an example, salespeople would need to create a steady pattern of increasing sales and customer service so that their sales goals were consistently being met or exceeded. The daily and weekly tasks they might have to engage in might entail making phone calls hunting for new opportunities, calling on existing customers to ensure that projects in motion are going as planned, and to keep an ear to the ground for any new opportunities that might be developing.

T hese tasks must be engrained and delivered with passion and dedication, and in doing so, those salespeople are in the midst of being successful. They can and should feel that success right now. They dont need to wait until they harvest their fruit. They can enjoy the feeling of success right now because they are doing everything they need to do to maximize their efforts by meeting or exceeding their performance.

D uring my coach training, I learned that there were four things that hold people back from what they want or desire and for all intents and purpose are the causes for our disagreements, arguments, and foundational unhappiness. Fear and negative-based thinking are at the center of all of this.

T he components of GAIL are what we self-impose on ourselves.

G = Gremlin

G remlins are a part of the human psyche and are born at the moment we experience a disturbing event by the mind taking a snapshot of how we were feeling at those moments and filing it away as being associated with a very troubling/hurtful event. The intention of the gremlin is to protect you from feeling that way again, but the natural human reaction to it is fear. The gremlin is invoked automatically every time the mind makes a similar association to a new event or experience. An example of this could be that a person was once in love at a very deep level and the relationship was ended by the other person. A protective gremlin was born at that moment, and the next time the person who was hurt entered into a meaningful relationship, this gremlin surfaced, possibly causing the person to not fully commit and be in a steady state of fear as a result of the potential hurt that could ensue. A gremlin is an emotionally charged limiting belief, making it the most powerful of disablers.