How To Proofread Your Thoughts & Transform Your Future

Most of us don’t consider how much our daily thoughts will have an effect on the future we create for ourselves. But that’s only because we don’t notice them happening. So here’s a simple suggestion:

Before you let your thoughts go, give them an audit. Correct, revise, and edit them if need be. Because when you get into the habit of proofreading your thoughts…

It’s Actually Quite Easy To
Shift The Quality Of Your Future.

For example:

Let’s say you get fired at your job. And rather than this being the first time it happened, it’s the third time – in just a year or two.

For most people, the event will trigger an emotion. And the emotion will then trigger a thought…

One possible thought that stems from this emotion might be, “Why does this keep happening?” or, “Why do I keep finding jobs or bosses that do this to me?”

Another one might be, “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I hold down a job?”

Whatever the thought that comes up — if you can proofread that thought, and give it a good going-over before you release it as truth, you have a tremendous opportunity to change what happens going forward.

In fact, when you get good at this, it’s a superpower.

Most of the thoughts we have from day to day are…

Encapsulated Emotion.

And if you go shooting your thoughts around all over the place without objectively bringing them into your awareness and analyzing them, you run the risk of creating a future you don’t want.

The vast majority of your thoughts start out as feelings. Even your thoughts while doing logical calculus homework, for example, have an emotion behind them that is motivating them to happen: Maybe it’s the fear of not wanting to fail your class. Or maybe you just get strange emotional satisfaction from doing calculus (that makes one of us).

So every single one of your thoughts is preceded by a feeling. (At the very least the important ones are, anyway.)

The trick is to allow the feeling to happen without rationalizing it with a thought right away. Especially not a thought that bypasses your awareness.

It’s important to feel the feeling. But it’s usually not helpful to allow that feeling to generate a thought without your careful audit.

When we get a feeling, then jump to a conclusion about what that feeling means… we run the risk of that conclusion being very incorrect, and hampering us from our goals.

We humans are too quick to want to “make sense” of these feelings by having thoughts about them – because it makes us feel a temporary sense of control. But in the long term, it’s not really resolving the feeling.

So what is the lesson in getting fired from your job?

It’s getting the feeling that comes with that event. Nothing more, nothing less.

When you feel the feeling without putting a label on it — you can learn the lesson and won’t get it again. But allowing the feeling to create the “why does this keep happening” thought that gets sent out into the world, that’ll pretty much ensure you create the opportunity for that lesson to return.

Another one of the thoughts we use to rationalize our feelings focuses around…

The Idea Of “Waiting”
For What You Want:

Waiting to be recognized for your talents…

Waiting for your opportunity to start a business…

Waiting for your “time to come”…

Waiting for the right moment to take the next step toward your dream life…

When the feeling of dissatisfaction comes up, we can rationalize it by saying we’re “waiting” for something to happen that will give us what we want. This quells the feeling a little bit and makes us feel better in the moment, PLUS we can keep the hope that it will happen in the future.

But long term, it’s setting us up to never actually get what we want. As long as you have that thought, what you want most in life will ALWAYS be in the future and never in the present — until you die.

And conceptually, the idea of “waiting” is a pretty disempowering thing to allow in your life:

When you’re waiting for something, that means a good chunk of your power is “out there.” It’s somewhere outside of you where it’s pretty much useless. You attached it to some imagined thing that’s “supposed” to happen but is outside your control.

If you really are aware, you can FEEL when this power leaves as you tell yourself you’re waiting for something. A space empties up in your gut and it’s replaced by this annoying gnawing feeling.

That’s “need” right there. And you created it. Congrats!

So take back your power. Bring your whole self back to the only thing you’ll EVER have in this world: NOW.

“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you will ever have.”
Eckhart Tolle

How about the fear of being different?

This emotion is usually masked-over by thoughts like, “No way, no one will take me seriously.” Or, “I’ll ruin my professional reputation”…

But the truth is, we short-change ourselves because we don’t let ourselves stand out in the world the same way we naturally do among the people we’re most comfortable with.

Let’s go back to the job example. This can also apply if you’re a freelancer or business owner of any type. I firmly believe that the “way it’s done” in your particular industry cannot and SHOULD not be the way YOU do it.

Unless You Want To Be Invisible.

Deep down, YOU KNOW how to be different, unique, and valuable in a way that no one else is. You really just have to be your real self, unashamed of where you’re going, without exception.

The question is, do you have the courage to do it?

Do you have the courage to tell a prospective freelancing client you don’t offer free consultations or do “spec work”?

Do you have the guts to explain that full payment for a project is due upon commencement?

Are you able to confidently ignore or remove all of the folks trying to interrupt your day and the plan you have for yourself with emails or calls or texts?

Are you OK maintaining the boundaries you have set for yourself and others, and clearly articulating to the world what you are willing to do and what you will NOT do?

Because that’s really what knowing who you are, what you want, and taking control to go down the path to getting it looks like. And most people don’t do that. Inevitably, many will become angry at you when they see YOU trying to do it. Because it threatens their own lies they’ve been telling themselves, that they can’t do it.

But you should do it anyway. It might actually seem scary to do this, but…

It’s Far Scarier NOT To Do It

The world is created in such a way that it’s easy to get pulled into the rat race. It’s easy to feel the forces trying to get you to conform, to assimilate, to comply with “how things are done around here.”

But “how things are done around here” is a decision for only YOU to make. It’s something YOU have to consent to.

And, of course, it’s all too easy to not recognize you’re getting pulled into that. If you simply feel the emotions and allow them to become thoughts without carefully proofreading those thoughts, you’ll never even know it’s happening.

The reality is that no client, boss, colleague or friend gets to choose for you “how things are done around here”.

It’s a freedom you have, but only if you use it.

Otherwise, It Doesn’t Even Exist.

The #1 problem with accepting just how powerful YOUR ability to create amazing things in the world is that it comes with an enormous helping of responsibility.

When the feeling of piled-on responsibility comes up for a lot of people, it doesn’t always feel good. It feels like pressure. Like work. And they want to rationalize it with a thought yet again:

If you think you’re “just one person” and walk around with the mindset of “what can just one person do?” then what responsibility could you possibly have for improving your life, improving your health or relationships, or even changing the world?

Hey — all you really have to do is constantly remind yourself how weak and ineffectual you are, and you don’t have to hold yourself accountable for anything! You’re completely free to do that if you wish.

But YOU are in fact a POINT of creation — you were created by biology, nature, the universe, or whatever amazing force you would like to believe in. If you accept that you are a product of some kind of creation, then you acknowledge creation is possible. And you therefore have the ability to create your path.

And When You Look At It
That Way, It’s A Different Story:

All of a sudden, sitting around wondering why things aren’t better, or why X does Y to you, or why every time you try X, Y happens…

All of these things become extremely irresponsible given the real power you have to effect the change you want to see in the world.

The schools, institutions, and other establishments that benefit from your enslavement will tell you that if things aren’t as you want them to be, then there is obviously some deficiency within you that is keeping you from where you want to go.

And they’ll be happy to sell you the cure to that deficiency (which will never actually solve it, but keep you paying).

But what if you’re not where you want to be simply because you have not willingly shouldered the responsibility for getting yourself there — and taken the appropriate action that comes from that perspective?

Some people never even consider that.

Does that mean by accepting that paradigm, you’ll instantly “know what to do”?

No. It means you instantly accept the responsibility for figuring it out, failing, trying again and all of the thoughts, feelings, deeds and circumstances that you will create along the way.

This is the path of 100% responsibility for everything.

The idea of “limited liability” has infected our world ever since the East India Company (the first publicly traded corporation) wanted to protect their “assets” from the consequences of their actions.

The fact is, there IS no limited liability. It’s a farce. A charade. And it keeps people from their power.

You are liable. I am liable. You are responsible. So am I. We all are.

When you accept that and turn it around for good, amazing things will happen.

Hard things happen, too. But those are necessary. When you consistently proofread your thoughts in the face of difficult things… you’ll discover they’re actually the only things in life that serve as proof points that you are, in fact, a true force of nature.