5 Golden Rules to create your golden life – Rule 1.
Is your glass half-empty or half full?I like to live my life assuming the best of people and of situations rather than assuming the worst, I prefer the sunny side of the street to the dark side and try to look for the positive aspect of as many situations as possible. I wasn’t always able to do this but since I have adopted a much more conscious & mindful way of living – which took practice to begin with – my life has improved enormously . I’m happier for more of the time, I feel richer & more abundant, I have more tolerance & patience and am far less likely to waste my energy being sucked into destructive patterns of behavior – either my own or others. This means I make far more constructive and productive decisions and am able to stay focused on what is important and meaningful for me and those I love – I’m much more in control of how I feel and react to any given situation in my life.
Much of this is because of 5 foundation stones or ‘rules’ that I live by since using QTT Methods, and most of the other practices and techniques that I have to sustain me are built on these 5 rules. Actually, if you were to adopt these 5 rules and did nothing else until they became instinctive and automatic to you, I guarantee that your life would change for the better. Since these 5 rules are the basis on which to build all other practices, I’m going to take time to explore them with you, and I urge you to take time out to really think about them and practice applying them to pretty much any situation.
Golden Rule Number 1 – Respect How others see the world.
It’s easy to say this without really thinking through what this actually means. We are all familiar with the expression ‘he’s a glass half-full kind of guy’ or the opposite, but how does this help us in our understanding and tolerance of others?
Julie comes from a family culture of poverty and witnessed her parents constantly telling her they were doing without, that food was scarce, money tight and the over-riding value system was centered around never having enough. It is very likely that Julie will have developed a belief that there is seldom enough and that her view of everything will be from a belief of ‘lack’. It is more than likely that Julie would always ‘see’ a glass of water as being half empty rather than half full because that has been her experience of the world. Her focus will always be on where there is lack rather than abundance, (unless of course she chooses to do any work to change her belief & alter her perception of the world!).
In contrast if Susan also comes from a background where money was tight but her parents preferred to behave as if their life was full and rich. They always focused on how lucky they were to have each other, a roof over their heads, food on the table and clothes on their backs. There was a general atmosphere of feeling grateful and celebratory over life in general. It’s likely that Susan’s focus will always be on the ‘positive’ – the glass will always be half full to her.
Both of these views are correct in a literal sense, neither are ‘wrong’ – they are just different because they are informed by each persons belief system. What is to be gained by Susan spending energy and time trying to convince Julie that her view is wrong or the other way around? Are either Julies view or Susan’s deluded or is it kinder and more appropriate to accept that both views are correct and can exist side by side without cancelling each other out or creating friction?
This simplistic example is easy enough to understand in isolation but obviously we come across hundreds of such different views on a daily basis and often the most challenging are in our intimate, family relationships. How many times have you thrown your hands up in the air with disbelief that your partner doesn’t even appear to notice the ever increasing pile of dirty laundry on the bedroom floor or that the loo seat has been left up – again!!
Perhaps your experience of money and finances is like Julies above, and that your belief is that money can disappear easily therefore it should be saved and you should live as frugally as possible? If you are living with someone who has the opposite value around money – that it is to enjoy, to make life easier and that it should be spent on whatever you want, this can create a constant source of friction, if we don’t remember that these are just different views. Neither view is right or wrong – it just is!
Our experience of the world will be totally governed by where our focus is eg. I know that if I’ve decided that I am going to buy a new car and I want it to be a VW Beetle, I will suddenly notice lots of VW Beetles on the road. It’s not because all of a sudden everyone has bought these cars – they have always been there, it’s just now I’m noticing them because they are in my mind. Chances are no one else around me will have noticed them at all. It’s this individual focus or vision of the world that influences witnesses to crimes and makes statements of what happened notoriously unreliable. Our attention is drawn to and influenced by our values, beliefs and experiences to date so my version of an event will be very different to someone else’s.
The best example of this is a research study done using a piece of film of a group of people throwing balls to each other – a white ball and a black ball. A researcher asked her audience to watch the film closely and tell her how may times the white ball was thrown and how may times the black ball was. After watching the film various answers were given and then the researcher asked ‘How many people noticed the man in the gorilla suit walking through the scene?’ Everyone laughed as they thought she was joking! She re-played the same piece of film and this time everyone saw very clearly the man dressed as a gorilla taking his time walking straight through the middle of the group! No one noticed it the first time because their attention had been deliberately focused on counting those balls! Just as our vision can be manipulated to suit someone else’s motives, we also set up our own ‘blindfolds’ or lenses through which we see and understand everything we experience. This is why siblings from the same family, all have different memories of the same family events.
We can spend hours trying to convince a loved one that our view is the correct one and that theirs is mis-guided or simply wrong, but if we understand why someone has the value or belief that they do, it is easier to find compromises or identify whether a value or belief is working for us or against us. Understanding what belief or Value is driving a loved ones behavior (or our own), is also key to working out whether we want to change that or flip it so it starts working better for us. Having a relationship with someone who has a different value system around money may be just what we need to help achieve a ‘middle ground’ and stop us from over-spending. If you understand the ‘value’ – (excuse the pun) – in having a healthy balance of views and finding a way that honours both, then you will have a far stronger relationship.
If we understand that the person we love – for whatever reason- doesn’t feel safe in the world and therefore will always see potential danger rather than excitement or challenge – we may be able to be more tolerant and patient. We can ask ‘What do you need to feel safe?’, rather than ridiculing them or forcing them to do something that will make them feel uncomfortable. This all applies to ourselves as well. We can always go further when it comes to ourselves and if we do identify a belief or value that is holding us back, we can choose to change that or let it go. I have yet to find anything more powerful or lasting or relatively quick than the combination of Homeopathy and QTT Personal Development Techniques to help instigate deep changes for people.
So start practicing straight away – instead of dismissing someone else’s view or opinion, ask yourself what could be driving that view, why do they have that opinion rather than yours? Can you honestly say that your view is superior to theirs? How might you work together to achieve the same desired outcome?
Nb. The ‘5 Golden Rules’ are a collection of concepts put together by Moira Geary ‘The Recombobulator’, My Mentor and Creator of QTT Personal development Methods. Please find links below to the rest of this Blog series:-
Golden Rules series:-
- https://rebecca-atkinson.com/5-golden-rules-to-create-your-golden-life-rule-1/
- https://rebecca-atkinson.com/golden-rule-2-practice-non-judgement/
- https://rebecca-atkinson.com/golden-rule-3-change-your-view-not-the-world/
- https://rebecca-atkinson.com/golden-rule-4-there-is-a-positive-intention-behind-all-behavior/
- https://rebecca-atkinson.com/golden-rule-5-everything-we-need-is-already-within-us/