Time for a New Start

This blog post has been growing at the back of my mind over the past few days, perhaps even weeks. But I've kept putting it off, partly because I haven't been up for the challenge, partly because I've been afraid it is going to sound dangerously close to one of those spiritual self-help guides that I'm not sure actually help.

So, first, let me say this: I've tried the law-of-attraction approach. You know, what you think, you create. Because it sounds so perfectly symmetrical and logical and beautiful: if everything consists of energy (which it does, on a purely physical level) even the slightest thought will set this energy in motion (this makes sense), and somehow shape the energy surrounding you into reality as you know it (it doesn't sound completely crazy, does it?). So the question is: do you want to shape your reality with positive thoughts, or negative thoughts? Do you want to put out positive energy, or add to the negative energy?

This, stretched out a little, is what has given rise to the notion that you can become the conscious master of your own physical experience by sort of manipulating the Universe into giving you what you want. And I mean this literally, physically, materially--not just "Look on the bright side, and things will seem easier."

I think different self-help books will tell you different ways to create your physical experience (and I don't think anybody actually uses the term "manipulating the Universe" by the way): either by simply blocking out negative thoughts, or by pretending you already have what you want, or by really, really concentrating on what you want to the extent where you are convinced that it is already yours, and it will come to you asap.

I read one particular series of books on this topic (this was years ago), and I came to a point where I truly and honestly believed 100 per cent that if I just really believed that I could actually achieve exactly what I wanted if I just set my mind to it, I would.

But then my life sort of crashed and instead of going, "Okay, so I wasn't convinced enough, let's try again with new, positive thoughts!" I went: this is crap.

After some time, things I had never even dreamed of in my wildest imagination happened in my life that brought me places, people and experiences that I wanted a thousand times more than the things I had thought I wanted a while back.

My conclusion was this: nuts to spiritual self-help rules! Regardless of how much you try to control your life, life will happen the way it happens--you will have to take the bad with the good, and in the end (if it hasn't left you completely broken, I suppose), you will look back and see that the series of events, places and people that you call your life is actually a perfect blend of just the right things and that nothing else would have taken you to where you are now, and who do you think you are to even imagine that you can outshine life as a designer of this intricate, complex web?!

I gave books a rest, realized my mind is limited, and started feeling content that there are other forces at work that seem to know better than me where to take me in life.

However. And this is where I'm at now. The blog post that's been taking shape at the back of my mind as a sort of resolution, or commitment, to take responsibility again.

Because seriously. Even though I've never gone quite as far as to suggest that "fate" or something like it is what controls our lives, I have been a little too lax with my mind lately. Let it think any old negative, destructive thought it wants.

"Alas! What good is a plan, when nothing ever works out the way I want it to anyway?"

But no more of this.

Because who am I kidding? Linear thoughts-create-reality theories aside, I do create my life (sort of) consciously by making the myriad of choices that I do all the time (and subconsciously because I can't possibly control where the combination of all my choices and the choices of everybody else will take me over time). Obviously, I can't control the outcome of my choices the way I might think I want to, but I can control the way I make my choices. The state of mind I'm in when I make them.

So today is the day when I finally step up to the challenge once more, and take my life into my own hands (resolutions have to sound a little ceremonious), and vow (pause for effect) to change the way I approach life.

Therefore, I, Ruby, decide to clean up my thoughts starting with:

Minimizing the risk for disappointment, because disappointment breeds negative thoughts that eat away at my confidence in my power over my own situation,

By reducing expectations for the future, that run the risk of creating disappointment if they are not met,

With this in mind, I urge myself to take the following steps:

a) Decrease amount of daydreams
b) Replace expectations with an open mind
c) Concentrate more on what is now than what might come

And call upon myself to take all possible steps to assist in the implementation of this resolution.

This, of course, is essentially the same thing as saying "Live in the Now." Which I could have just said from the start. But then I would have sounded like I picked out any old truism from any old spiritual self-help guide that don't really help, and the point is I really mean this. I will, for the first time ever in my life, really try to live more right now than put it off to "when things are the way I want them to be."