Change Your Story, Change Your Life
It sounds cliche, I know. But it’s the honest-to-God truth.
Your life, as you’re currently experiencing it, it’s the direct result of the story you have been telling yourself.
Remember when we talked about the unstoppable power of your imagination in our last newsletter?
This is the uncomfortable secret that have been eluding you all this time:
Your imagination not only has the power to create the reality around you while you’re sleeping, or during a meditation or a hypnosis session…
It’s also creating the reality you’re inhabiting right now… that that you call “your life”!
Stories are powerful.
Almost Mighty Powerful.
And the reason why they are so powerful is because stories are the language of your unconscious mind.
And as you know, your unconscious mind is the place where all your treasures and resources reside… and also all the hidden causes of any current physical, psychological, or even spiritual issues you might be experiencing in your life.
Your unconscious mind is the invisible Director of your life’s movie.
But how does your unconscious mind perform her directing job?
She uses, of course, the most powerful magic tool of all: IMAGINATION.
Have you heard about the “Simulation Theory”?
That theory put forward by some members of the scientific community who believe there is proof that we might be living inside a simulation?
It’s funny, because they postulate this theory in the technological realm, like the possibility that we’re living inside some kind of digital simulation, akin to a video game being run on a supercomputer created by some unknown advanced civilization…
As weird and improbable as this sounds when we look at the Simulation Theory from that strictly technological point of view, something about it rings true…
Something about it is undeniable real:
We are, indeed, living inside a simulation!
Our brains are simulation machines!
Thanks to the advancements of science we all know by now that nothing around us, none of the objects or people we perceive, are really the way we perceive them.
“Perception”, as in anything we “capture” from the physical world around us, is nothing but a sophisticated lie.
Our brains cannot perceive “reality”, the world around us, as it actually is.
The only thing our brain has from the world around us is electrical signals coming from our “senses”.
So what does our brain does in order for us to be able to move and function in this world?
The best it can do: it interprets the signals, and creates a picture, a virtual reality inside our own mind, a reality that, contrarily to the physical world around us, is completely internal.
This inner world our brain “hallucinates” is the world we actually live in: a sophisticated simulation.
This simulation is not perfect of course, and there is no guarantee it will match one-to-one with “the external reality” (if something like that does exist).
The information coming from our sensorial organs is messy, and incomplete, so our brains have learned to fill-in-the-gaps for us, so that we can function properly, and be effective, in the world.
That’s also the reason why our brains –and our senses– can be so easily fooled, like demonstrated in any magic or mentalism show.
Can you see the uncomfortable implication of all of this?
“Reality” is just a convenient concept our brains made up.
A useful “hallucination” if you will.
That’s WHY Imagination is SO POWERFUL!
After all, if we are imagining our reality anyway…
Wouldn’t it be smart on us to start imagining a more empowering reality?
I’m not trying to imply here that the physical world is a illusion and doesn’t exist…
Not at all.
What I’m saying is that we cannot fit whatever is out there inside our brains…
The only thing we have from the “reality” out there is “our perceptions” of that reality, whatever it might be. This is, the electrical signals, and the best guesses our brain utilizes to “construct” our reality.
That explains why, as many scientific studies have proven, our brains cannot tell the difference between an activity that’s being performed in the real world –like moving our body and exercising, for instance– and the same activity only being performed in our imagination.
Brain scans clearly show that the exact same areas of the brain are activated during the both, the actual physical activity, and the imaginary activity.
Not only that, but the same hormones, neurotransmitters and physiological processes are triggered and released in both cases!
In other words: for your body, and your brain, BOTH ARE EQUALLY REAL.
This is fascinating in and of itself.
But not that surprising when we fully understand the fact that, for the brain, these two “realities” are being constructed in exactly the same way.
Except that there is a difference…
A subtle, but extremely important difference:
In one case, the brain is taking in electrical signals originated by one or more of our senses of perception: sight, hearing, touch, smell or taste.
In the second case though, those same electrical signals are being produced without contact with the external world, entirely inside our brains, thanks to the power of Imagination!
There are many experiments that confirm this is true, but one of the easiest to replicate and immediately understand is the “fake hand” experiment:
As you can see, reality is not that fixed, unmovable thing you’d imagined.
Rather, it’s quite flexible and fluid in nature…
I’m sure you start seeing now why hypnosis is such an effective tool for change.
So let’s bring all of this back to our subject of today: the power of stories to create -and modify– your reality.
If you reflect deeply, you’ll soon realize that that every aspect of your current life originates, and has been fabricated, by a story.
Sometimes, these are stories you have told yourself:
“I’m weird”, “people don’t like me”, “I’m smart”, “I’m broke”…
Many other times, it’s someone else’s story: someone told you something about yourself, or your life, that you ended up believing.
Can you see how dangerous this can be?
Your entire experience of life has been defined by other people around you… but ultimately, by the stories you’ve told yourself.
This is also hypnosis, by the way. The bad kind!
So let me teach you now how to take back control and start using this mighty power you’ve in your hands to help yourself instead of harming yourself…
Let me teach you how to use it to build the life of your dreams!
The first thing you need to understand is that NOBODY has power over your mind.
I know what you’re thinking:
“But you just said that my life has been defined by what other people has told me!”
Actually, I did not.
What I said is that your current life has been defined by what other people have told you and you’ve believed, and ultimately, by the stories you tell yourself.
We’ll have time to talk about the many wonders of your unconscious mind, and how you can access them in future newsletters, but today, I want to leave you with an AHA moment… and an invitation.
If I’ve done my work right, you’ve experienced the AHA moment already.
So here’s the invitation:
From today on, I invite you to start telling yourself better stories.
Stories that empower you, instead of making you feel weak and miserable.
Remember: your entire reality is built upon these stories you tell yourself.
So make every story count!
See you next week…
Leonardo
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Love you,
Leonardo
A footnote on “Aphantasia”:
Some people cannot see “images” in their minds’ eye.
Or so they believe.
This is a condition called “Aphantasia”.
Personally, I don’t agree with a lot of the things “aphantasia experts” are saying… and I’m an expert in aphantasia myself, simply because I’ve lived with this condition during my entire life.
I could talk about this subject for a long time, but these are just the important bits for this conversation:
Whoever you are, don’t let anyone tell you –nor ever tell yourself– that you cannot imagine.
That’s simply not true.
As you surely understand after our conversation above, imagination is such a vital process in our existence that, I dare to say, life would be impossible without it.
Imagination is just another name for inner perception.
But there are “different modalities” of imagination.
Just like we have 5 senses, not just sight, and some people are more “visual”, while others are more of the “auditive” or the “kinesthetic” kind…
Imagination also has different modalities in different people.
Some people “see” in their imagination…
Other people can hear instead…
Others, like myself, tend to “feel”, or “get a sense” that something is happening.
Whatever your imagination style is, it’s always the best one, since that’s they way YOUR brain is wired!
Personally, I LOVE my style of imagination, and I wouldn’t change it for anything!
I’m the more imaginative, unimaginative person you’ll meet!
I feel like I’m not limited by images, which usually only allow you to perceive an object or situation from a certain angle.
Instead, when I “get a sense” of a object in my mind, I can “see” it, or better said, “experience it”, from all angles at once.
That’s why I sounds weird to me when “experts” talk about aphantasia like is some kind of handicap or “condition”.
So if in any of my sessions you hear me saying “imagine this” or “imagine that”, and you happen to be like me and can’t conjure images in your mind… don’t stress.
What I really meant was “get a sense of”.
Finally, always remember that it’s not what you’re told what can limit you; it’s only what you yourself believe to be true.
So stop believing limiting stories, and DREAM BIGGER!