What better response can there be to lousy winter weather than to grab a duvet and curl up on the couch to watch a good film? That’s what my friend Sarah and I thought we were going to do the other day, but we ended up gurning our way through a truly atrocious movie with intensely knitted brows as we tried to unravel the complexities of the time-travelling plot. There’s not enough Botox in Britain to undo the damage caused by the plotline of The Lake House. On the surface, it seems like a cute idea – Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock falling in love even though they’re living two years apart in time – but the execution is so ham-fisted, their heartache just gives you a headache.
That said, in an homage to Pollyanna’s positive thinking ways, I shall now attempt to extract some gold from that truly dreary celluloid experience. First of all, the house is fabulous – built in a very Frank Lloyd Wright manner, ie not so much by the lake as on it – the concept is quite romantic and the dog’s very cute. The less said about the acting, the better. Mind you, it’s not entirely their fault – if you’re given virtually no characterisation and have to wrestle with a bunch of complex plotlines travelling through time, I can imagine it would be a hard act to pull off – so let’s just blame the director, shall we? Must try harder, Mr Agresti.
What the film does touch on, to good effect, is that the different choices we make alter our future outcomes, for good or for ill. For one of the characters in the movie, what seems to be a simple choice has a life-or-death outcome. While our daily choices don’t always seem that dramatic, they certainly have a powerful impact on how we view ourselves and the world. The attitude that we then carry as a result of our personal world-view then has a major influence on our future experience. This is one fundamental way the law of attraction works, at a very unconscious level. It’s not magical and it’s not rocket science – what lies within your framework of reference is the kind of experience you’ll encounter.
Let’s say you lose your job in what you consider to be a very unjust way, due to some behind-the-scenes machinations by your former boss. At this point, you have a choice to make, even though it doesn’t feel like it at the time. Either you can decide that you’re better off without that particular Machiavellian environment and move on, feeling that there’s bound to be something better out there for you – which is a pretty strong demonstration of positive self-worth and standing in your own power – or go down the victim route, deciding that all bosses are bastards, the world is out to get you and nice guys finish last. If you take the first option, it’s likely that a new opportunity will open up for you quite quickly or that a new employer will respond positively to your attitude of solid self-worth. If you take option two, however, even if you do manage to find yourself another position, you’re likely to be defensive, untrusting and have authority issues, thereby unwittingly drawing toward you another circumstance where your job may be under threat.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it is never just what happens to you that really has the major impact on your life – it’s how you choose to deal with it. Part of that choice is making decisions about what certain events mean about you and the world. In the job loss scenario above, you could choose to make it mean that you’re no good at your job or, just as equally, that your boss was threatened by how well you were doing your job. Each option is possible, but the choice you decide to believe will be heavily influenced by what you’ve thought about yourself (and others) in the past. If you have a history of jumping to the conclusion that you’re not good enough, then there are no prizes for guessing what will happen when you next encounter a difficult issue.
This is why it’s so important to unravel the unhelpful decisions we’ve made in the past, by looking at some of the major events in our lives and paying attention to what we’ve made that mean about ourselves. If we don’t unwind that very bad habit, we’ll just continue to make the same, self-defeating unconscious choices every time. When we begin to make better choices about what we believe about ourselves, then we can start to see that reflected in our lives, in better relationships, more confidence and more opportunities that flow from a positive self-regard.
This week, take a look at some biggies you’ve had to deal with in the past in every area of your life: family, friends, relationships and work, for starters. When something major happened, like a break-up, what did you make that mean about yourself? Did you decide that you were inadequate in some way? What did you make it mean about the opposite sex? What nasty little thoughts are you harbouring about yourself (and others) that you’ve never really questioned? Sometimes it’s less of an event or trauma, but something someone once said about you when you were much younger, that you’ve come to believe as gospel, without ever questioning it. Are there any of those lurking about gathering dust in your brain?
When you’ve done some excavation and pulled out a few oldies from the vault, it’s time to play true or false. What are the assumptions you’ve made and are they actually true? You’ll probably see why you might have felt that way at the time, but in hindsight you’ll be able to catch the faulty logic. When you begin to release this kind of trapped, false memory, you free yourself up to a much brighter future, by making different choices in your life today.
If a conflict arises this week, try to take a dispassionate look at your emotions and notice what you’re making it mean about you or the others involved. Despite how you feel in the moment, is there any evidence that what you’re thinking the conflict means about you is actually true? Changing your mind could change your life.
This kind of mental clutter is what holds us back from reaching out to others (forfear of rejection) or taking a brave step in our work (for fear of failure). We look back to the past to what we consider is real ‘evidence’ that we can’t achieve something and yet the ‘evidence’ itself is highly suspect. Henry Ford said “Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you’re right.” What’s your choice going to be?
Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com.
For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk.
All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 5 Mar 07)
That said, in an homage to Pollyanna’s positive thinking ways, I shall now attempt to extract some gold from that truly dreary celluloid experience. First of all, the house is fabulous – built in a very Frank Lloyd Wright manner, ie not so much by the lake as on it – the concept is quite romantic and the dog’s very cute. The less said about the acting, the better. Mind you, it’s not entirely their fault – if you’re given virtually no characterisation and have to wrestle with a bunch of complex plotlines travelling through time, I can imagine it would be a hard act to pull off – so let’s just blame the director, shall we? Must try harder, Mr Agresti.
What the film does touch on, to good effect, is that the different choices we make alter our future outcomes, for good or for ill. For one of the characters in the movie, what seems to be a simple choice has a life-or-death outcome. While our daily choices don’t always seem that dramatic, they certainly have a powerful impact on how we view ourselves and the world. The attitude that we then carry as a result of our personal world-view then has a major influence on our future experience. This is one fundamental way the law of attraction works, at a very unconscious level. It’s not magical and it’s not rocket science – what lies within your framework of reference is the kind of experience you’ll encounter.
Let’s say you lose your job in what you consider to be a very unjust way, due to some behind-the-scenes machinations by your former boss. At this point, you have a choice to make, even though it doesn’t feel like it at the time. Either you can decide that you’re better off without that particular Machiavellian environment and move on, feeling that there’s bound to be something better out there for you – which is a pretty strong demonstration of positive self-worth and standing in your own power – or go down the victim route, deciding that all bosses are bastards, the world is out to get you and nice guys finish last. If you take the first option, it’s likely that a new opportunity will open up for you quite quickly or that a new employer will respond positively to your attitude of solid self-worth. If you take option two, however, even if you do manage to find yourself another position, you’re likely to be defensive, untrusting and have authority issues, thereby unwittingly drawing toward you another circumstance where your job may be under threat.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it is never just what happens to you that really has the major impact on your life – it’s how you choose to deal with it. Part of that choice is making decisions about what certain events mean about you and the world. In the job loss scenario above, you could choose to make it mean that you’re no good at your job or, just as equally, that your boss was threatened by how well you were doing your job. Each option is possible, but the choice you decide to believe will be heavily influenced by what you’ve thought about yourself (and others) in the past. If you have a history of jumping to the conclusion that you’re not good enough, then there are no prizes for guessing what will happen when you next encounter a difficult issue.
This is why it’s so important to unravel the unhelpful decisions we’ve made in the past, by looking at some of the major events in our lives and paying attention to what we’ve made that mean about ourselves. If we don’t unwind that very bad habit, we’ll just continue to make the same, self-defeating unconscious choices every time. When we begin to make better choices about what we believe about ourselves, then we can start to see that reflected in our lives, in better relationships, more confidence and more opportunities that flow from a positive self-regard.
This week, take a look at some biggies you’ve had to deal with in the past in every area of your life: family, friends, relationships and work, for starters. When something major happened, like a break-up, what did you make that mean about yourself? Did you decide that you were inadequate in some way? What did you make it mean about the opposite sex? What nasty little thoughts are you harbouring about yourself (and others) that you’ve never really questioned? Sometimes it’s less of an event or trauma, but something someone once said about you when you were much younger, that you’ve come to believe as gospel, without ever questioning it. Are there any of those lurking about gathering dust in your brain?
When you’ve done some excavation and pulled out a few oldies from the vault, it’s time to play true or false. What are the assumptions you’ve made and are they actually true? You’ll probably see why you might have felt that way at the time, but in hindsight you’ll be able to catch the faulty logic. When you begin to release this kind of trapped, false memory, you free yourself up to a much brighter future, by making different choices in your life today.
If a conflict arises this week, try to take a dispassionate look at your emotions and notice what you’re making it mean about you or the others involved. Despite how you feel in the moment, is there any evidence that what you’re thinking the conflict means about you is actually true? Changing your mind could change your life.
This kind of mental clutter is what holds us back from reaching out to others (forfear of rejection) or taking a brave step in our work (for fear of failure). We look back to the past to what we consider is real ‘evidence’ that we can’t achieve something and yet the ‘evidence’ itself is highly suspect. Henry Ford said “Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you’re right.” What’s your choice going to be?
Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com.
For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk.
All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 5 Mar 07)
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