Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 125 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom.

Your Beliefs Create Your Reality (2)

Thank you for joining us for our 7 day a week, 7 minutes of wisdom podcast. This is Day 125 of our Trek. Yesterday we began down the trail of our reality, which is based on our beliefs. As humans, we are wonderfully created, but with our vast capacity we also have the ability to create our reality through our paradigms or belief systems. Our beliefs provide us with a life that is rich and satisfying or poor and miserable. To put it another way, our beliefs create a mindset of abundance or scarcity.

It is so crucial that your belief system is on a solid foundation of truth we will spend five days on the concept that our beliefs create our reality. If you miss any of these episodes, make sure you go back and listen to them all to get a complete picture. If you have any of your own observations, comments, or questions as we share time together on our daily trek, please share them in the comment section of our daily journal pages.

We are recording our podcast from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. It has been a rainy week so far, so I have not been able to get out and mow. I am hoping that it will dry off enough before we head back to Charlotte to be able to mow. The leaves on the big trees outside of our office windows are starting to change, and the beautiful fall colors are being painted on a few of them.

By the time that you listen to this podcast, I should have the dining room floor completed with two coats of polyurethane.  Our dining room has a special pattern in the floor that really makes it beautiful.  I will post a couple of pictures in tomorrow’s journal pages.

Let’s break camp for today and head back out on our reality trail as we realize that even though we may be traveling on the same trail, each of us has our own perception on what the trail looks like to us.

Understanding that our mind is very creative can help us grasp the power of how our beliefs shape our reality. George Orwell once said that “Myths which are believed in tend to become true.” This is especially true on an individual basis.

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

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By now, most of us realize that our perception of reality is heavily influenced by our beliefs, but the full extent of this influence is often underestimated. Each of us has a variety of methods for altering our reality, so it conforms to what we believe to be real. Each of us is a reality alteration expert.

Yesterday we discussed how your beliefs provide a structured process through which you evaluate everything in your life. Now it’s time to take that concept a step further and look at the influence of your beliefs on your reality.

Part 2: Your Internal Map of Reality

From the moment you entered this life, your subconscious mind has been busy collecting and processing information. Combined with your experiences, this information is used to create your beliefs about who you are as a person, and how you fit into the world around you.

Because these beliefs are based on your evaluation, and emotional conclusions of your personal experiences, they are accepted by your subconscious as being absolutely true. Your subconscious mind then uses these personal “truths” to construct your personal version of the real world. In other words, your beliefs become the foundation of your internal map of reality.

1. To the mind, your map is reality!

The way in which your map is constructed will determine many aspects of your life. It will be a major determining factor in your success or failure, your happiness or unhappiness, and your satisfaction or dissatisfaction with your entire life experience.

Remember when people believed that the world was flat? That belief completely changed the way they viewed and interacted with their world. It didn’t matter that the world was really round. They believed it was flat, and that belief had a powerful influence on their version of the real world. It changed the way they interpreted the facts.

 What we allow to be planted in our mind will produce the same kind of fruit in our lives. Luke 6:45, “A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good mind, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil mind. What you say flows from what is in your mind.”

2. We customize the facts to fit our map.

If you have created a map where opportunity is everywhere, that’s what you will see. When your map is based on opportunity, you won’t view challenges as obstacles because that wouldn’t harmonize with your map. So, you interpret the facts in a way that allows them to fit in with and support your internal map of reality.

Here’s the catch. For most people, the way the map creates their reality on a day-to-day basis is completely outside of their conscious awareness. And, because the process takes place on a subconscious level, they don’t see how they are creating their own reality. Instead of feeling like something they created, it seems like it’s coming from an external source.

 

If you have created a map where opportunity is everywhere, that’s what you will see.

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3. The map is not reality!

You also create an emotional attachment to your map. It’s your personal version of what is real and you have a vested interest in verifying its accuracy. You want it to be real because it’s familiar, and that makes you feel safe and secure. This is why you are willing to distort, or even ignore, almost anything that might undermine your map.

Despite your best efforts though, sometimes your map of reality comes unraveled. Usually this involves emotionally charged events that don’t fit the map and can’t be ignored. It’s like basing your map on a flat world and then discovering you were wrong. Now your world doesn’t make sense anymore and your map falls apart.

4. You are not the map.

For personal growth to occur, your map needs to be redrawn from time to time. The reason this change feels scary is because, like most people, you don’t realize that it’s only a map. You may feel like your actual reality is imploding. Like your life is coming completely unraveled.

What is actually happening is your map is being updated to include new information. Being aware that it’s just a map, and not actual reality, makes it much easier to just let it happen. You come to realize that the old map no longer serves you, and that the new one will. But this awareness requires the acknowledgment that you are not the map, and that you created the map based on past beliefs.

For personal growth to occur, your mind map needs to be redrawn from time to time.

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5. New beliefs are the key to a better map.

Updating your beliefs automatically changes your map. This is how you create a more truthful version. When you systematically dismantle your limiting beliefs and replace them with empowering beliefs, the topography of your map will conform.

When you replace self-doubt with self-confidence, fear with curiosity, or pessimism with optimism, your map will rearrange itself to support those beliefs. The world around you will look and feel different, and you will be more comfortable with your place in it. You will have created a better internal map of reality.

6. Let go of the old map.

On tomorrow’s trek, we will explore defending your beliefs, and we will take a closer look at how we alter the meaning of our experiences to fit our map. We will also discuss how we attract people and situations into our life in an effort to verify the correctness of our version of reality.

This was our second day on the trail of reality. If you would like to add to the discussion or have questions, please leave them in the comment section of today’s journal. In order to learn more about how our beliefs create our reality, join us tomorrow for another day of our Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy as we explore defending your beliefs.

That will finish our podcast for today. Remember to listen to your daily dose of wisdom on Wisdom-Trek.com or subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Spreaker, or YouTube so the episodes will be downloaded to you automatically.

I would really appreciate it if you would help Wisdom-Trek grow by sharing Wisdom-Trek with your family and friends through email, Facebook, or Twitter so they can come along with us each day.

The journal for today’s Trek can be found at Wisdom-Trek.com. Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most of all your friend as I serve you through the Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal each day. 

As we take this Trek together, let us always:

1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
2. Love Unconditionally
3. Listen Intentionally
4. Learn Continuously
5. Lend to others Generously
6. Lead with Integrity
7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

This is Guthrie Chamberlain reminding you to Keep Moving Forward, Enjoy Your Journey, and Create a Great Day Every Day! See you tomorrow!