“You Create Your Own Universe As You Go Along”
~ Winston Churchill
So, this is a follow-up Blog to yesterday. Today is Part 2 of a 2 Part Blog. If you haven’t done so already, go back and read yesterdays Blog first so that you can understand what we’re talking about here!
So, after lunch with my friend, I walk down to Circular Quay. I usually get an Uber to get around but there’s really nowhere there for an Uber to pull up legally and I don’t want to put anyone in a bad situation, and there’s heaps of taxis at the taxi rank. So I decided to jump in a taxi.
This taxi driver was strait from Central Casting! From the moment, I got in the cab, he started talking like a million miles an hour and he was complaining!! He complained about this, he complained about that, he complained about Uber taking away all his business, but most of all, he complained about pedestrians! He said that pedestrians in the city were the bane of his existence.
Now, I agree there are some pretty crazy pedestrians with a death wish walking around the City, but this guy was just next level pissed off about it. And as we drove, I could see that he was indeed creating his Universe as we went along!
There were a lot of “crazy” pedestrians about, but not as bad as he seemed to think it was. There were a lot of people who were just trying to find breaks in the traffic to cross the road but not looking to take risks by walking out in front of someone.
But because he was so obsessed about how bad pedestrians were, he just assumed that everyone who was looking to cross the street was about to jump out in front of him. He’d see someone standing on the edge of the road looking for a chance to cross. They were standing there waiting for a break in traffic, they weren’t about to instantly jump out, but because he was so fixated he assumed they were. He would then brake violently to “miss” them even thought they never would have gone in front of him. Once he slammed on the breaks, he created the break the people were looking for and so they crossed. This, to his way of thinking, confirmed that what he had been thinking was right. He was creating his own Universe as he went along !
I don’t really like this kind of negative vibe and so as we went along, I thought to myself, I need to do something here to break this guys negative train of thought. Tony Robbins talks about breaking someone’s mental state to break them out of a negative train of thought. So that’s what I did!
I changed the subject. I asked him what else he did besides driving cabs. He started to tell me about some of the other things he did in life and his mood changed. He suddenly forgot about the pedestrians and became more positive. He mentioned that he grew his own tomatoes. I said, “That’s really cool! Tell me about your tomatoes”.
Once I said that, it’s like he became a totally different person. His face lit up, you could see the energy that started flowing from him. He started telling me about every little thing he did to grow the tomatoes from plating to picking them at the right time and how he cared for them and everything else. It was abundantly clear that he had a HUGE passion for his tomatoes!
And in the space of a minute, I was able to totally transform his psychology from totally negative, complaining, hating life, to one of ultra-happy person glowing with energy and passion. I bet the next person who jumped into that cab found a totally different person to the one whom I encountered when I jumped in. Perhaps I improved his whole day, maybe even his whole week, just by interrupting his negative thought patterns that weren’t serving him and replacing them with new thought patterns that focussed his attention on what he was passionate about.
Let's Look At You...
What are some of the things that really get you down?
What are the things that make you pissed off?
Ask yourself, is this really happening or is it a case of me creating my Universe as I go along by expecting it to happen?
Then ask, how can I interrupt these negative thoughts that don’t serve me, and replace them with positive thoughts that do?
Leave me your comments below…