Written by: Derick Grant, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
This article will be hard to stomach for most, but nothing exists outside of you. Everything you experience or deal with is due to your internal processing of the external circumstances. The external environment reflects your inner state of mind. Below are 3 of the many reasons to prove it has only been about you in this journey called life.
There’s no such thing as good or bad. Every circumstance in your life just is. Your ability to add an emotional value to a situation determines if something is good or bad. I thought getting fired or losing my job was the worst thing an adult could encounter. It would have fallen under the category of something being wrong in my mind. Then it happened. Getting released from the professional basketball team I was playing on was one of the best things that had ever happened to me. I knew I had to figure out a way to provide for my family, and I eagerly jumped into the waters of being an entrepreneur. Becoming an entrepreneur something I would have never done on my own, so was my firing that bad? What's terrible to me, maybe good to you, and vice versa. A lion on the Serengeti wouldn't think what you're going through as good or bad; it would simply be what it is. Here's the point, your life, your situation, it won't be good or bad until you decide to look at it that way. There's your power; you have a choice as to how life feels.
Nothing exists outside of your awareness. If you're not aware of it, it doesn't exist. This article may be your first time reading content from me, so up until this point, you had no idea that I even existed. Think of your awareness as a circle on a piece of paper. The ring's outer edges are your physical environment, and the inner part of the circle is your awareness of your inner being. For something to exist in your subjective world, it must be on or in your ring of understanding. Your awareness is determined by where you give your attention. Here's your power; you'll only be aware of where you give your attention. Stop giving your attention to things that are not in line with your best version, and start sharing your attention to all things in line with the absolute best version of yourself. Where your attention goes, energy flows.
How you feel about someone is just a part of you. We get upset with our spouse or a co-worker because of their behavior. Our ego wants us to feel like they've done something to us, which bothers us. The reality of it is they haven't done anything to you internally without your allowance. For me to hurt your feelings or affect your emotions, you would have had to consciously or unconsciously allowed it to bother you. Things other people do bother us because we project our feelings or how we would treat ourselves if we were in their shoes. So, it would be like looking at someone else and saying, "I would've never said that to someone." You are projecting what you would do if you were in their shoes. Projecting is why things bother us so much. The ego wants you to be the victim, so we project how we treat ourselves from someone else's perspective. Understand this, now you won't allow someone else to bother you, and you can come from a place of empathy when someone does something that bothers you. They're projecting themselves and their views/beliefs onto you.
The fact that you read this should tell you that you desire to want more in life. That desire comes from deep inside because you know you can. So keep going, keep striving. It will always only be you versus you!
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Derick Grant, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
After traveling to 70 different countries, and playing 8 years for the Harlem Globetrotters, Derick Grant set out on a mission to help hundreds of athletes, coaches, and people tap into their infinite seed of greatness. His client base consists of but is not limited to the NBA, WNBA, NFL, executives at Fortune 500 companies. He is an author, TEDx speaker, and revered as one of the most powerful performance mindset coaches in the athletic world. His revolutionary approach to mindset by teaching what the mind is, and how to use it as a tool has helped influenced high achievers across the globe. His podcast, “The Pathway to Your Results”, helps teach people how to find this seed of greatness we all had inside of us.
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