I don’t know about you but every now and then I just think “stuff it”!! I’m done!! Everything seems like too much of an effort and making sure you exercise enough, eat well, watch, read & listen to the right stuff, not drink, not smoke, meditate and basically live right is a pain in the arse! Excuse my indelicacy! You realise you only have one life to live and you want to enjoy it, right? Of course in reality we know that everything is about our perception of the situation and the meaning that we ourselves choose to give it. Sometimes we’re unaware that we’ve chosen to give it meaning as our subconscious is in the background reflecting back to us the beliefs about ourselves and our worlds that have been unconsciously conditioned to be in there.

Say what now??

We’re supposed to be in control of ourselves and our subconscious is there to serve us but yet we allow our subconscious minds to guide and rule our lives, based on what they THINK we want. Confused? You could be! So, for instance, your subconscious mind knows that you value your needs being met and knows that you value comfort and if possible no pain. Your subconscious looks for ways to meet your needs and those ways can be positive or negative ways. How we frame something in our minds also impacts whether we perceive some thing or some activity as being a chore and too much effort, or something we enjoy and want to do.

“People will give up their goals and dreams to meet their needs”

Tony Robbins

How true is that statement for you? Is there something you’d love to achieve or acquire but meeting your daily needs gets in the way of you fulfilling that long term dream? We all have human needs and we all need those needs to be met, but we can sometimes look in the wrong places to meet those needs. Life’s a journey and we’re constantly developing and growing and if we take time to develop awareness we can learn about our personal needs and learn how to meet them positively. But then something happens along the road which could be a challenging scenario or it could be boredom of the same things. We’ll look at the latter today. Now I’ve always disliked the word boredom, and all through my life I have refused to use it as it feels pejorative and I’d rather die than say “I’m bored”. “Oh for an opportunity to feel bored” (I would think, self righteously). The truth is we all have a need for certainty, but we also have a need for variety, right? We can do something knowing that it will meet the need for certainty but after a while suddenly feel that we need some form of change.

This is known as hedonic adaptation! As we get used to things that we enjoy then we start to adapt to them and then they no longer make us happy. Hedonic adaptation explains why we can aim for what we want and then once we achieve it suddenly NOT feel happy. We become fed up and lethargic, constantly looking for something else. The truth is if we achieved that something else, we’d likely experience hedonic adaptation again, and the cycle continues.

What can I do???

I hear you cry! You’re probably not going to like my answer. You’re going to want it to be something complicated and expensive … something outside of your reach that will excuse you from ever achieving it or acquiring it. I don’t want to make this weeks blog too long so I’m going to save the answers for next week. All I will say is they are not complicated or unachievable and it does involve working with your subconscious mind so that YOU are in control rather than your subconscious mind controlling you!

Have a meaningful week reflecting on your life and I’ll see you next week,

Love & blessings, Sam xx