Reeta Luthra (Paradox of Reality) » Thoughts Create Reality

Feng Shui – Fact or Fiction?

Reeta Luthra — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:02:07 +0000

Two things you should know. First, I’m fascinated by Feng Shui. Second, I HATE to cook. I always said that my ideal house would be one that had no kitchen.

No, this article is not about how I used Feng Shui to make me cook. I would never deliberately torture myself in that way.

In my teens, I studied Feng Shui and decided to use it to get myself a nice Range Rover. I really, truly, with all my heart wanted this Range Rover. I found out which part of the house needed to be “addressed” for this and set up the appropriate bait. (magazine cut-outs of Range Rovers). Then I sat back and waited.

Nothing happened. No dream car materialised. Ahh… Never mind, no harm done, it was just an experiment anyway.

Then last year, I went abroad over Dec 08 and Jan 09. Returning in February, I was so sad to find my one and only beloved houseplant was nearly dead. I had left it by mistake in a darkened room and it had received no sunlight or water for two months. It had shed it’s leaves and branches dropped off when I touched it. I wanted to rescue this plant so I dragged it to the sunniest room in the house, which happened to be the kitchen. I gave it lots of water and a bit of talk therapy (Thank you Prince Charles).

A bit after that, I noticed I was spending more time in the kitchen and enjoying it!! It’s so bizarre – it’s almost like Reeta the anti-cook went to bed one night and Reeta the super-cook got out of bed the next morning. I say “super-cook” because it turns out that I can actually cook (my Mum will confirm). Most amazingly, I even do something that I never thought I would do in my lifetime – make sauces and freeze them!

Today, I see cooking as a normal activity and I can’t imagine how I hated it for so long.

Now I don’t know if this is just another superstition that I imposed on myself somehow or if I was lucky enough to inadvertantly kick-start some Feng Shui magic. Makes sense if you think about how a kitchen is the heart of a house and my sick plant received nourishment there. Perhaps I added to the plants recovery through adding more nourishment to the air through cooking and it returned the nourishment to me by allowing me enjoy doing something so fundamentally beneficial.

Or perhaps Feng Shui has absolutely nothing to do with it.

A more likely explanation is that I returned from my trip all refreshed and happy, got properly shocked by the state of the poor plant because I do genuinely have a soft spot for it, put it somewhere to give it nourishment and had a lightbulb moment regarding the relationship between nourishment and cooking and health. I don’t know.

What I do know is that changes in behaviour can happen very quickly and very dramatically when the conditions are right.

I don’t think we need to wait for fate to grant us a magic moment. We can create this ourselves through conscious effort by taking ownership of what we want to change.

Once you’ve identified a behaviour you want to change, start by fully understanding the ways you are self-sabotaging your efforts in changing this behaviour. This self-sabotage represents the things you value and to change a behaviour with integrity, you must honour your values.

Setting the right conditions in our minds provides the thoughts and hence the behaviours that make achievement and success possible.

PS: If anyone has a spare Range Rover, I’m providing the conditions by way of a contact form on this site for you to get in touch

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Declutter your mind, Achieve your goal

Reeta Luthra — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:56:39 +0000

One of the basics of better thinking is to acknowledge where your thoughts could be better.

If you’ve read any decent self development books, you know you’re supposed to turn these areas into goals to achieve – notice what happens to your thoughts as you read the following statements:

My goal is to be a confident public speaker
I want to start my own business
I’m scared of sweating, freezing up and making a fool of myself
I’m dreading being in this dead-end job forever

Chances are that you found the first two statements uplifting and the others less inspiring.

The idea of having positive goals is that they put an attractive vision of yourself inside your head, making it seem achievable so you can work towards it. The concept is sound and is an important part of the “Better Thinking, Better Success” model.

But identifying a goal doesn’t mean that you’ll automatically believe you can do it.

When you find yourself unable to move past the problem towards the goal you want, it’s because “mind clutter” is preventing you from consistently believing in this positive goal. This is what tells you that you need to redefine the area where your thoughts could be better. Mind clutter is often at odds with your goal.

Continuing the example of confidence, some possible mind clutter could be:

It’s not polite… because Mum/Dad/Teacher said it’s showing off.
I don’t know enough to be taken seriously… Is this really true? Could you prepare? Is there more mind clutter underneath this thought?
My friends won’t like me if I change… Are you afraid you won’t be able to accept a more confident you?
It’s not me. I’m not meant to be the center of attention… because I had buck teeth when I was young and everyone laughed.

Dig into your thoughts about why you can’t believe in your goal and you’ll unearth the real blocks in your mind. Writing/journaling is an effective way to do this.

It takes courage and persistance to dig in this way – some thoughts are poignant, some silly and others still have sharp thorns. If you don’t acknowledge them, they’ll continue affecting you, perhaps limiting your opportunities, in subconscious ways. Acknowledging them means you can start working to dull their impact on your life.

This is something I started to do myself some years ago. I found that my “sticky thinking”, stress or fears often had some musty-dusty mind clutter hiding underneath. Identifying this mind clutter let me understand the specific areas that were keeping the problem alive.

Better Thinking. Better Success.

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Live the buzz about yourself

Reeta Luthra — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:48:19 +0000

Forget the British stiff upper lip for a moment. Forget the crassness of blowing your own trumpet. Forget the silly-billyness of positive affirmations. Most of all, forget everything you’ve been told about polite self-restraint.

Just for today, you’re going to enter a new reality and it’s one where you are on the cover of all the magazines (in a good way) and every single talk show wants to book you for the headline slot.

Your mission… if you dare to accept it… is to spend the day believing your own hype. The rules are simple:

1) Choose your persona
2) Dress in a way that makes this persona proud
3) Eat, walk, speak and make all your decisions using the mindset of your inner persona

Yes, you can sashay all day long if you want to… so long as at night-time, before you go to bed, you think about how you lived the buzz about yourself and note what you’d like to carry through into tomorrow.

I think I’ll do this one too – let me know how you got on!

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I'm not going to die until I finish all my books

Reeta Luthra — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:05:10 +0000

I’ve always been a bookworm and I have thousands of books – fiction and non-fiction.

Recently my husband observed I had a lot of unfinished books lying around.

“Huh?” I said.

I hadn’t noticed this but for many months, I’ve been leaving the last chapter of every book unread. The book simply “fizzles out” when I get near to the end and I start on a new one.

I thought this was very curious but didn’t think anything of it until I suddenly remembered a two minute “event” that had happened a year ago.

I was getting on a plane holding “The Tao of Pooh” and thought to myself “I hope this plane doesn’t blow up before I finish this.” Then I started thinking about all the lovely books I had at home and promised myself that I wouldn’t die until I’d finished all my books. (as one does)

Evidently, ever since then, I’ve been subconsciously assuring an eternal life for myself by leaving every book unfinished.

The amazing thing is that I’ve been doing all this without even being aware I’m doing it. No goal setting, no deliberate intention, no effort. I superstitioned (great word) myself while getting onto an aeroplane and now am doomed to never ever know how the story ends. (I’ve been leaving murder mysteries unfinished too).

We make an off-the-cuff promise to ourselves and our subconscious tries to carry it out for us. I wonder how many of our behaviours start so innocently and continue under the radar preventing us doing what we want to do.

It’s not always bad though- the right compliment at the right time embeds confidence. What’s the word for a helpful superstition?

A de-superstitioning has now taken place and I will definitely finish my current book (even if I have to superglue it to my hands) – “When Nietzsche Wept” – an excellent read by the way. I’ll finish ALL my books… except for perhaps one… well, you never know…

Do you have any superstitious behaviours that you are aware of? (or aren’t aware of…)

Photo credit: Lusi

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My Language Challenge: Part 4 – The Influence of Thoughts on Learning

Reeta Luthra — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:56:27 +0000

This is part of a series covering my challenge of learning Arabic in 2 months. I’m using lots of Peak Performance techniques and sharing them along the way. The series is filed in the “Language Challenge” category.

What’s Eating You?

So far I have covered Peak Performance states, Goal Setting and the motivating importance of Curiosity. Now comes a peek into subconscious influences that direct our behaviour.

First a confession - As far as studying goes, I have been slacking off all week, fitting in a mini-break to Barcelona and catching up with friends. I may not have studied much Arabic but I have been paying attention to improving the way I process information for this task.

Reading, Writing and Speaking are separate brain functions but they are all open to being influenced by our thoughts. Our thoughts – and our beliefs about ourselves – shape our behaviour.

As we go through life, we subconsciously pick up lots of different ways of relating to ourselves, to others and even the things around us. This affects what we believe and how we approach things. It contributes to our uniqueness, making us feel our thoughts are a solid, fixed and intrinsic part of our personality. Which they’re not.

In this article, I hope to show that through understanding and addressing what lies behind our thoughts, we can change our thoughts and shape ourselves to how we deserve to be.

Identifying beliefs behind our actions

Our beliefs about our abilities come from associations we’ve made through experiences we have lived through – either directly or indirectly through others. Some beliefs help us while others don’t.

To achieve peak performance in any given area, it’s useful to ensure that we are working with beliefs that support our goals. To do this, we first have to identify the beliefs (good and bad) that are having impact on the goal. This is what mine look like:

Goal: Reading
I was reading at the age of 3. My favourite place was in front of a book and I enjoyed the entire experience – turning pages, the mystery within them, following words with my finger, total absorption in the pretty pictures making up my own stories to go with them. I felt a genuine thrill combined with safety when I was reading and I still feel it now. I believe reading is desirable because I associate it with something good.

Goal: Writing
At school age about 8 and wasn’t allowed to write in ink until I could write neatly in pencil. All my friends managed it but not me. In the end I asked the teacher if I could give her an ink test page to prove I could do it. She agreed, I passed and became the proud owner of a fountain pen. It’s a memory I did not even know I had until I started practising writing Arabic. I believe writing practice is a pain in the proverbial because I associate it with a teacher who kept saying “no”.

Goal: Speaking
Nothing jumps out at me for this goal. To me it feels like an activity much like going to buy a stamp for a letter – you do it when you need to, no fuss, no mess, just functional. I believe speaking is ordinary and everyday to the point where I have nothing else to say on the subject.

Goal: Remembering
I’m going to throw in memory too because I’m discovering associations with it relating to exams and the sheer impossibility of remembering useless dates and facts. I believe I can’t remember facts because I associate it with fear of failing an exam.

If you try identifying your own beliefs, you may find that you come up with several associations or that your beliefs are caught in some kind of a loop. Take it gently if that happens – take a break and look at the resources mentioned below to help yourself or find someone who can talk it through with you.

The impact of associations

As I go about learning to read, write and speak Arabic, these beliefs are affecting my behaviour. I am automatically giving priority to the reading aspects, feeling nervous and “on my best behaviour” about writing and not paying any attention to speaking – after all, I don’t actually need to speak it right now. I am also nervous about being able to remember what I learn. It feels as if I should only study concepts and outlines because I will forget the details anyway.

My associations and beliefs around:

Reading… will help me so no need to worry about that.
Writing… have a motivating quality to them so will help me by making me work harder.
Speaking… will hinder me because I don’t view speaking as important. This means I won’t practice the words and won’t develop a good rhythm or accent. This will hurt my goal.
Remembering… could lead to procrastination or even giving up. Because I’m strongly attached to the feeling of being unable to remember, there may well be self-hypnotic undermining of my own efforts to remember. This will hurt my goal.

Understanding the influence of my beliefs to this level of detail helps me to recognise the ways that some of my thoughts have the potential to hurt my goal.

Breaking unhelpful associations

To be at peak performance, I need to change the way I think about speaking and remembering. I can do this with logic or I can use a combination of NLP and EFT techniques. It doesn’t matter how I do it so long as I end up being able to see things in a different way.

The actual techniques I used need a detailed write-up and because I won’t be able to do them justice in this one article, I am planning a series of step-by-step tutorials on the subject of breaking unhelpful associations.

**** Subscribe to this blog by RSS or email to stay informed of when the free tutorial becomes available. ****

In the meantime, if you want to get a start and read around the subject yourself, I recommend the following resources:

The NLP Workbook – I recommend this book to my clients as it’s suitable for beginners to NLP and also detailed enough to be valuable to practitioners too. The workbook format is practical and encourages you to put NLP into action yourself.

Try it on Everything – EFT DVD and companion book set.

Introduction to EFT Manual by Gary Craig, the founder of EFT.

Thoughts Support Success!

So, having broken the associations, I now find my thoughts are stronger and more supportive of my goals:

Speaking seems more accessible and more vital in my goal of learning a language. I feel differently about it and practicing it every day actually feels more desirable… and attainable.
Memory has placed itself in context. Exam pressure is no longer the first thing I think about. I’m more attuned to my successes and am remembering very clearly all the times I easily learnt things. Coincidentally (or not), I am noticing that in all these times I was highly motivated, interested and curious. Remember from previous parts of this series that intense focus and curiosity provide the ideal conditions for information to be stored in long-term memory.

When your thoughts are on your side, you’re automatically more attuned to following through because you’re not sabotaging yourself.

Next time I will be talking about the mental patterns of Reading, Writing and Speaking. If you enjoyed this article, please feel free to subscribe by RSS or email to receive updates.

Language Challenge Part 5 – Allowing the Brain to Read, Write and Speak

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7 Ways Role Models Influence Your Success

Reeta Luthra — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:01:38 +0000

This post has been moved to Reeta Luthra’s site about Stress and Your Health. You can find the post here.

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IBS, Incontinence and a Bad Marriage

Reeta Luthra — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 22:50:57 +0000

This post has been moved to Reeta Luthra’s site about Stress and Your Health. You can find the post here.

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4 Reasons Behind Your Procrastination

Reeta Luthra — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:34:21 +0000

My friend Raju is pleased about his redundancy as it means he can start the business he’s always wanted.

“So, why is it,” he asks “that all I do these days is things around the house. I’ll do anything for anyone rather than sit down and get on with starting my business.”

Raju knows the benefits of making lists. He knows that one small step each day towards his goal will eventually lead him to where he wants to go. He’s made a list. He’s read “The Secret“, knows all about the Law of Attraction and even made a vision board.

He has periods when he feels on track. But these periods cannot be predicted and more often than not, something “urgent” comes along to distract his focus. Notice that Raju is very diligent about his distractions. He never finds himself procrastinating over fixing the oven or checking email.

But then of course, fixing the oven doesn’t pose a threat to his identity.

Where our identities are secure, we are confident go-getters.

What could be causing Raju to procrastinate?

1) Boredom

Boredom is an energy sapper. But it responds well to a bit of mental readjustment on how we see the task. “I don’t want to do this” becomes “Doing this will allow me to be/have that”.

2) Knowledge Gap

When we don’t have all the information we need, learning or developing an ability, can seem a chore. Especially when we don’t know what information we are lacking or when there are no guarantees that the effort of learning will actually pay off.

While learning is an investment of time, energy and possibly money, that knowledge stays with us and the actual process of learning keeps our mind active and exercised. As to whether or not the skill will pay off, that’s where personal responsibility and due diligence come in. Researching and talking to others helps you decide where best to apply your efforts first.

Don’t like the thought of personal responsibility and due diligence? See point 4.

3) The Hump

There’s an obstacle in our path draining our emotional energy. Maybe Raju can’t get funding without a business plan but hates having to commit his plans to paper. Surely this means giving his business over to “bean-counters” who will stomp on his creativity.

Raju knows getting over this hump would bring his energy back but can’t make himself do it. He sees it as “selling his soul”. Humps are closely related to the next cause – Meaning.

4) Meaning

Procrastination can provide deep insights into ourselves. Candid thinking clues us in on what we are afraid of and this can come as a surprise. Raju is creative. If he believes that business threatens his creativity, he will subconsciously sabotage his own business efforts because creativity means more to him.

Once Raju brings his two goals (creativity and business) into alignment, he’ll notice that not only does his business plan stop being a chore, but other areas in his life seem to incorporate more of his valued creativity too.

Procrastination due to ability and boredom is easier to overcome than the other types of procrastination. You can use lists and willpower to “brute-force” your way through them.

Procrastination due to humps you can’t get over and threats to your identity needs a bit of tender loving care. Don’t give yourself a hard time; have a think about how the procrastination is helping you hold on to something important.

When we address the stubborn forms of procrastination through what the blocks mean to us, we have the opportunity of not only achieving the task, but achieving it with enjoyment.

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The Power of Self

Reeta Luthra — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:11:37 +0000

Life is something to be lived in, not something to be lived through.

Taking control over a certain problem area in life can be quite tough. Obstacles appear bigger and hope dissipates as we make undue associations. Understanding that we are separate from this problem that haunts us helps our sense of deserving the solution. This helps our determination to do what it takes to gain control.

To illustrate this, Oprah Winfrey comes to mind.

Born in poverty, Oprah was sexually abused from the age of 9 into her teens. She was a runaway, experimented with drugs and lost a baby at the age of 14. You can read more about Oprah Winfrey here.

Despite being a victim of an overtly dysfunctional start to life, she seems to have grown up with three keys that she would later take full advantage of.

Key 1: A loving grandmother who looked after her until the age of 6, teaching her to read, recite and speak in public.

Key 2: A loving but very strict father with high standards who sought to break through her rebellious behaviour and prioritised her education.

Key 3: An ability to recognise and use keys 1 and 2 to unlock doors to overcome the dysfunction that caused her so much misery.

Keys 1 and 2 contain so much more than just the physical process of education. They contain role models. Attitudes and beliefs to learn from and grow with. Oprah has said how her father and grandmother inspired her confidence to achieve more from life.

The first black female news anchor in America, she has become one of the richest and most influential women of the present day. Economists have estimated that Oprah’s endorsement of Barack Obama was worth over a million votes.

It is however Key 3 that unlocked the door through which the other two keys could be accessed. We all have this key, although the ease of using it can depend on the level of anger or resentment or fear that coats it like a layer of rust.

Often, blaming other people, circumstance or even ourselves for stopping us doing something blinds us to our own potential as it leaves us waiting helplessly for outside forces to change.

Wayne Dyer met Oprah to congratulate her after a particular success. She listened to him list out her achievements and when he asked to whom she attributed her success, she took a moment to think back on her rocky path, looked at him with eyes glittering with joy and quietly said “I did this”.

“I did this”. Powerful words indeed.

For help with finding your key, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. http://www.paradoxofreality.com

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A Goal by Any Other Name

Reeta Luthra — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:07:57 +0000

The first time that the word “goals” entered my everyday vocabulary, I was in my first job after Uni. It was a word used liberally amongst managers and at meetings and soon it became associated with work.

So later, when I thought about my personal goals, I had a lot of trouble because “goals” to me, was all about work and at that time, work seemed to be all about rules and I surely didn’t want my personal life to be about rules!

But I knew having goals and a direction is important so I tried hard to get over my aversion to goals. I tried many things, and particularly enjoyed making and keeping lists. However, my lists would mysteriously disappear and there I’d be, goal-less and free of rules again. And unfocused too because I was drifting with no real direction of where to go next – direction requires planning and planning requires goals!

Then Bill Gates launced Windows 95 and a genius working with him came up with the slogan ”Where do you want to go today?”. This slogan captured my imagination and all of a sudden I was thinking in terms of what I wanted to do and how I could do it. I was finally free of the procrastination-inducing, nightmare clutch of that awful Goal word!

I could see and feel that the future is filled with stepping stones of the things we want to do and these stepping stones are connected with flexible bridges called Where-do-you-want-to-go-today.

Each stepping stone and each bridge has its own particular make-up; some are sturdy like rocks and others are wispy rope structures much like something out of Indiana Jones – and boy, don’t these ones give a heart-racing ride!

While the word “Goal” doesn’t carry the same negataive associations for me anymore, it’s that Windows slogan that actually makes me feel free and fires me up to set up my stepping stones and bridges.

The universe of the mind is a little bit exciting with dimensions we can’t put words to yet. Perhaps that’s a good thing as there is a power behind words and a power behind labels – what works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another.

If you are struggling with a word or a label, give this a go – try on a different word and see what changes.

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