Tag: Philip Dodson

What might have been

Posted on by philipdodson

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Life is full of them, what might have been.

We have all sat and looked at choices we’ve made in life and thought what if I had chosen the other option, the other path, to say something different, to not leave that job or person.

We can often allow this to weigh us down with regret. It can then affect our future decision taking as we fear repeating bad choices.

Well, no one knows in advance that they are making a bad choice, otherwise, we’d be unlikely to do it. Additionally, there are no bad choices.

We focus on what might have been, as in something we don’t have. We could instead focus on what we do have. The grass is rarely greener, it is just a different shade and we can not have every outcome. The colour of the grass is how we choose to look at it and we can see it however we choose to.

So be positive about the choice you did make and if it turns out not to be the outcome you wanted, then choose a different path, learn and move forward. There is no gain in regretting choices as time machines have yet to be invented.

If we could go back, we would make the same choice as we wouldn’t know the outcome of that choice. We can only make choices on our experiences to that point in life and the current mindset that we had when we choose.

So perhaps it is better to say with a spring in our steps ‘look what has happened’ instead of what might have been. Even if it is a bad outcome, nothing is forever, change it and move on. It is all part of a magical journey and if we could make choices without risk and with total certainty, then life would be dull.

Blockages

Posted on by philipdodson

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No matter what we are trying to do in life, we often come up against blockages.

These blockages are not real physical things very often, perhaps a tree might fall and block the road, but normally the blocks live in our heads.

No one else puts them there either, we put them there. We may try to blame others and say it was them who made us think that. But ‘them’ are not to blame, no one is, we choose to put the blocks there.

Sometimes they are obvious blocks, for example if we have a bad leg, then it is probably a good idea to block the plan to go tree climbing. Or if we can’t swim, then in the short-term it probably might be good to block the idea of a round the world sailing trip. Longer term we can learn how to swim, if we really want to sail around the world badly enough.

The more difficult blocks are the ones that are well disguised by excuses that our chimp, instant gratification brain, comes up with to block anything that will interfere with short-term reward and gain. Blockages in the head are often fear related, fear of failure, fear of being laughed at, fear that we aren’t good or worthy enough to do something.

Blockages come in all forms, but the good news is, like a blocked pipe or drain, they can be flushed out and cleared.

The key is to identify what the real reason is for holding us up from trying, starting or doing something. It is nearly always the thing that we think we most want in life that we have the biggest blocks about.

Sometimes the block is we kid ourselves that we want to do a particular activity or want to behave in a certain way, when really deep down we don’t.

If we find out who we really are, how we really want to be and why we want to do something or not, then there is a good chance of finding what the blocks are.

Then it’s a step by step process of removing the block by changing habits and the ‘truths’ we tell ourselves.

We all have blocks, find them, and slowly start to remove them. But first, make sure that you really, as in really, really want to do that thing. Then the inspiration is there to overcome any blockages.