COURAGE TO BE DIFFERENT AND THE POWER OF OUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND

Simon Drew

Courage - (NOUN: The ability to do something that frightens one; bravery) To - (PREPOSITION: Expressing motion in the direction of a particular location) Be - (VERB: Exist. Be present) Different - (ADJECTIVE: Not the same as another or each other; unlike in nature, form, or quality) An accurate definition of any statement allows us to relate with accurate context. Here I present a general held view of how individual human beings are responsible for creating their own identity in this lifetime.

By understanding this process, we can begin to understand the relevance and potential of the various options available to us ‘to be different’.

A little about human history… A lifetime as a modern human, living in a modern society such as we do, has become, for arguably most, a challenging journey. Our culture is generally not one of supportive connection, unlike the tribes we would have inhabited our whole lifetime, just a few thousand years ago. us to be more reliant on ourselves.

There is a lack of a broader support system in and around our modern families and communities. Think grandparents, aunties & uncles, cousins, brothers & sisters and those other closely tied friends and acquaintances. These are not literally within arms-length to offer a range of support options and care ‘on the fly’ as they were all those years ago within the tribes of our ancestors.

These tribal interactions were the foundations of how our ancestors got to experience a sense of a fulfilled life in harmony with nature and each other. They were at peace among their fellow tribespeople and were fully integrated in their own truth of their reality.

In our modern times the sense of being alone and being overwhelmed is truly tangible.

Taking a much broader view our current world from above, it is easy to see why many of us, in fact a vast majority of people living in the modern societies that inhabit much of our planet, have a deep sense of disconnection, loneliness, fear and lack confidence and power in ourselves.

The somewhat awkward truth is, we are intellectualised apes with an oversized, overthinking anxious brain trying to survive alone without the social constructs our nature truly craves.

A few questions

How can we as humans rise above the condition we see as life in our modern world? • Conditioning • Choice

How can we change our relationship to ourselves and have a new perspective on the beliefs we have about our world and how we perceive it and forge our ‘courage to be different’?

How can we take a stand for something that aligns with the visions we truly, deep down wish and indeed can create for the future of our own life, our relationships, our work, and life on this planet? Back to that English definition.

What makes a person different? Why would we wish to be different? And then there is another option here…how have we become different without consciously choosing to? For simplicity, let us assume there are two primary ways humans change their way of being:

Conditioning – Natural, unconscious change

To create real context here, I will relate to my own life experience.

As I grew up, I was almost entirely unaware that my circumstances, the family I lived within, the environment of school, my friends, and extended family etc, were causing me to naturally condition myself to be a specific way about almost everything. I was aware that from an early age I was being taught about right and wrong in a significant way. It felt like a big part of any conversations with my parents and brothers throughout my childhood.

My brothers and I were normal kids… and we were always afraid of our dad getting home and the consequences of his learning of whatever I/we had ‘done wrong’ that day was a high stress, anxiety filled time. Indeed, in my family home, we were all on constant alert to react accordingly to my dad’s seemingly unjustified, cruel words and actions. It made no sense at all at the time.

As time moved on, I continued to naturally learn how to adapt and survive. I had no idea I was forming my identity throughout the experiencing of my life’s events and my reactions to those events.

I do know that I related to almost every day as a negative day of suffering. My default became that I just pushed the days experiences behind me and tried to forget them.

Our human conditioning is mostly unconscious to us. We may have a brief ‘knowing’ that an event that has just occurred has or will change our behaviour into our future. What occurs next, is the unknowing or forgetting that we made that decision for ourselves.

This is humans being their true nature. We experience a stressful event and create habits and patterns to avoid that ever happening again.

Every single one of us begins anything in life by relating to ourselves inside our heads. Before this point there is only sensations and perception that cannot be understood and classified.

Once we have words, we use them to relate to our perceptions and feelings, define them (through repetition) and then file that information in our memory. We naturally create patterns of mental and physical responses that help us to avoid reliving what we perceive as threatening / damaging events or situations.

In my own understanding of my life, at the time of their inception, my filed statements occurred more like sensations that stopped me doing things.

As I have looked back in time to specific events, I’ve been able to pinpoint and define the statements by uncovering the events, the associated specific words, images, feelings and sensations I logged in my memory.

Some significant statements from my internal dialogue are:

• I’m not good enough • I’m worthless • I’m unlovable • Everything is pointless

The power broker in your life is the voice that no one hears. How well you revisit the tone and content of your private voice is what determines the quality of your life. It is the master storyteller, and the stories we tell ourselves are our reality. — Dr. Jim Loehr

Hearing the same, relatively constant, negative chatter in my head (and occasionally experiencing it leaving my mouth) over and over again has been so painful at times. My conditioning was deep and painful to live. And you the reader, I am sure, have experienced yourself in a similar, ‘worse’ or, ‘better’ way inside your own mind.

Choice – True courage: How to create ‘authentic’ choice to be different in your life

I believe the most courageous thing anyone can do is look inward to develop a strong understanding of oneself. Collaborations are more successful when those participating are aware of their own innate power. Your power lies inside you, not outside.

Please read the above sentence one more time.

That little voice will continue to say those things to you in your head and you will, very likely, at some point, find yourself disempowered by its compelling dialogue. This will happen because you still believe that little voice is you. It sits in the background, it’s you speaking to you in your head, like it’s the truth.

If you choose to begin your journey of selfdiscovery, understanding your own stories from the past and present, a sense of true ‘different’ then becomes available. It becomes a natural, evolving, and creative release of you.

You find the real you.

As your awareness builds you learn to unlearn and bring new context to the events of your past and your experience right now. You learn to rewrite your own stories of who you are and how you want to be. There are some really simple and easy ways to do this once you begin to recognise your patterns and that little voice more efficiently. If you choose to continue as your conditioned self, to some degree, you will always be a partially ‘compromised’ version of yourself. Many people are very happy with who they are and that is wonderful for them. A huge majority of the population lives here.

There is something else marvellous available in taking a journey down the highway of introspection and releasing any patterns you have, no matter how seemingly inconsequential they may be. In the context of being truly ‘different’, without this deeper work of introspection, anything you create is layered on top of the more fragile sense of who you are. Remember that time you thought of that great idea, then talked yourself out of it? This is the place you live in the context of the stories you’ve always told yourself, conscious or unconscious as ‘the truth of who I am’.

The ego (Yes, that little voice) can be your friend. I know this, as my own ego is now my friend.

I wholeheartedly hope you take on being courageous, work through your own stories and make that little voice a friend you can call upon when needed, rather than without question. Your ‘courage to be truly different’ lies beyond the listening of the little voice.

Which leaves one question. How could you embrace being different and change...

...your entire world?

You can contact Simon at:

Email: simon@saffronbootcamp.co.uk Telephone: 07971 037530 Website: www.fitrlife.net