How To Live Wihtout Regret

Have you ever seriously considered what you would tell your younger self? If you were given the opportunity to go back and give your younger self advice that would change their world, what would you say?

My answer was break your conditioning so you can live an empowered life in alignment with who YOU are…..this is what I would tell her.

YOUR CONDITIONING

Our brain is our most powerful muscle. It has the power to influence us to lead a life we love or suffer through the life we have. But we haven’t been taught how to use it or why it’s so hard to change.

Our conditioning is established primarily by the age of 8. That is when our subconscious mind is running the show, absorbing anything and everything it can. During this phase the foundation of what we believe to be true about ourselves, others and the world is established.

Our brain consumes 74GB of information in a given day, but it doesn’t absorb all of it, it filters it.

Our filter’s main purpose is to weed through all the information we gather to select information that confirms what we believe/that we are right which provides the brain a feeling of “safety.” The sad truth is we have been conditioned so that most people are too afraid to look within themselves to do the deeper work.

If that is true, and the beliefs that most of us operate under are established by the age of 8, then that means we are going through life filtering information to confirm the 8 year old inside of us is right…. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to think I’ve learned a thing or two since I was 8.

BREAK YOUR CONDITIONING

Then the question becomes how can we upgrade our beliefs to confirm what we truly believe? The answer is we need to challenge them. It looks like this;

1. Identify limiting belief and associated thoughts/evidence confirming belief is true
2. Ask questions in a specific way aimed to create reasonable doubt in the mind about said limiting belief
3. Implant new, updated and believable belief
4. Identify new evidence to confirm updated belief.

If we want to challenge our beliefs we have to first be able to recognize them and that was never taught to us. But you probably have an idea if you listen to yourself. What thoughts do you hear often? What is the
pattern amongst those thoughts?

For example, the most common limiting belief is, ‘I’m not enough.” As a reformed not enough-er, I was able to recognize my pattern at the gym, with my weight, with my work and within my relationship.

Now that you’ve identified one of your limiting beliefs and the supportive
evidence then you select one piece of evidence and start asking challenging questions.

You are aiming to phrase the questions in a way that the answer will create mental doubt about the limiting belief, or you want to try and prove the opposite true.

Using the above example the supportive evidence I heard about work sounded like, you’re not smart enough, you don’t work hard or long enough.

Using that piece of evidence the challenging questions might sound like;

● How do I know I did work hard enough?
● How did my intelligence spark unique insights today?
● What was I able to accomplish today?

If you think about answering those questions the answers will create mental doubt, which is necessary to wiggle the limiting belief.

Then the easy part comes, what do you want to believe about yourself at work? For me I implanted the new belief that my best is always good enough.

To enforce the new belief I then reflected on my work efforts and how much I’ve been able to accomplish throughout my life by showing up as my best.

It takes some time and practice to upgrade your beliefs, but it will leave you feeling more aligned and empowered within the life you are living.

EMPOWERED LIVING

So how does this help you live without regret? Simply by going through the process of breaking your conditioning requires you to use your brain in different ways that strengthens specific mental muscles. This process allows you to see life through a different light. Open to more awareness and more choices and a greater sense of meaning within your life.