Hey beautiful,
You’ve probably heard the saying you create your own reality countless of times before. And you’ve wondered, but how!?
In this blog post I will break down for you exactly how your mind works and exactly how you create your own reality.
The majority of people think that what happens in the external world is just by chance. I’m here to tell you that this is not the case.
Reality is Completely Subjective
The truth about reality is that there is no truth. Reality is completely subjective and therefore your reality looks different from my reality. What you experience in the outside world is actually a reflection of what’s going on inside your mind. This is why you and your friend could both witness the exact same thing happen, yet you will have two completely different stories to tell of what happened.
It’s as if we all have different pair of glasses through which we see the world and experience reality. Like an internal projector, that is projecting and reconstructing outwards into the external world the very things that are going on inside our heads.
How is Your Reality Created?
We are constantly bombarded with countless streams of information flooding into our minds. Just think about walking in the city, where there’s different colors, smells and sounds constantly around you. The daily newspapers outside shops, ads on billboards, people talking around you, the traffic lights and the smell of cars passing by.
At any given time there is over 2 million bits per second of information coming into our mind from all of your different senses. If we consciously were to take in this much information per second we would go nuts and feel overwhelmed. That’s why we have a filtering mechanism, called the reticular activating system. It helps our mind process the incoming information and filters it based on our internal subconscious filters. So every second our brain deletes, distorts and generalizes the information input based on our internal values, beliefs, identity, decisions, past memories, as well as our mood and the location and time. It’s constantly filtering and separating unimportant information from information that it deems as important to us and thinks might be useful for us in the future. The information it deems is important to us based on our subconscious filters like beliefs and past past decisions, it then brings to our attention. All of this happens unconsciously and it’s based on what we recently have been focusing on and what our pre-existing beliefs are.
Have you ever noticed that when you purchase a new item, let’s say a Louis Vuitton handbag, suddenly you see everyone around you wearing the same handbag? It’s not that they all decided to purchase the same handbag the same day or week as you, it’s just that now your mind filters your reality in a different way because it deems the handbag to be important to you so that’s what you will see in your reality.
The image above depicts how reality is created. It's based on the NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) model.
Your Mind is the Storyteller That Creates Meaning From Everything
Everything in our external world is completely neutral, yet we don’t perceive anything as neutral because our mind loves to give everything a meaning. Our mind will give meaning to events and experiences based on our internal filters. This is all happening unconsciously and automatically. Because all events are neutral, it’s just our interpretation of the events and the meaning we give them that generate our feelings about those events.
The meaning that our mind gives influences our state of mind and in return our behavior and actions. For example… if you’re having a bad day and you receive a compliment, you might interpret the compliment being negative or rude because everything that you hear, see and experience will be filtered through your current bad mood.
How to Create the Reality You Desire
By now you know that your beliefs are a self-fulfilling prophecy and so whatever your internal filters are you will see more of as evidence in your reality to prove that they are true. The way you can create change in your life and create a desired reality is by first becoming aware of your current beliefs and internal filters. After that you can create your reality by shifting the way you perceive and interpret the events happening in your outside reality. Basically shifting the way you see things and think about these things. This is why becoming aware of how your mind works and changing your internal filters like beliefs are so important when it comes to changing your reality.
For example if you’ve always been telling yourself that money isn't that important to you, your reticular activating system will filter out all of the money-making opportunities and better-paying jobs and promotions so that you cannot see them. Therefore this is exactly the reality you will create for yourself.