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Are you at crossroads, with a significant decision to make and no idea which direction to take? Read on. Today I want to drill down on something I’ve mentioned a few times in past blogs. The states of Belief and Knowing and how they affect our lives and your decision making.
By the end of this post, you’ll have better clarity on what you need to do. Let’s dive right in.
We face life-defining Choice Points all our lives. For instance, do you stick to your current job or pursue a different career path? What should your degree be in college? Is it time to abandon your marriage or keep working on it? Should you take your finances and investments in other directions?
At each of these Choice points, what I call feathers, bricks and trucks show up in our life. These are nudges from your Unconscious on what you should do along your life path.
First comes the feathers. These are little nudges in the right direction. If we listen to the feathers, life becomes a lot easier. However, if we don’t, the bricks come along. The bricks are slightly more subtle than the feathers.
We would prefer it if the bricks didn’t show up. And again, if we don’t listen to the bricks, well, then, unfortunately, the truck does come along and believe me, we don’t want the truck along our way.
I use that as an analogy to explain the different nudges or the different ways our Unconscious mind is trying to show up in our lives to help us make a decision. And ultimately, it’s a Choice Point.
Now, we can have many Choice Points throughout our whole life, but some choices are a lot easier to make versus others.
What happens as you get to these crossroads? You fluctuate between a state of Belief and a state of Knowing.
It can be confusing for a lot of people. Now, you would have gone through many choice points throughout your life right up to this point, but they may have been easy choice points to make. You just saw it at that time as being just a choice.
However, for many people, what happens at a particular time as we move throughout our lives, and the challenges become a lot more difficult, is that the choices become harder to make. That’s when it becomes, “How do we make this choice? Am I going in the right direction? And if I make this decision, is it the right decision to make?”
So, let’s look at those elements you need to consider if you’re at a particular Choice Point.
As mentioned earlier, “feathers, bricks and trucks” show up in your life; little nudges to help you make a decision. If you don’t listen to the feathers, bricks and trucks show up. If you still don’t listen to those, then everything is stripped away.
Everything, in this case, refers to anything that’s most important to us, particularly our ego. Why? Because the ego is at its maximum or its highest when we’re in a state of Belief.
Put another way, everything you value most will fall apart – relationships, business, finances, even your health will have a significant impact, one you may never overcome for the rest of your life.
Ultimately, what’s happening is that the Unconscious mind is trying to strip away or to move you away from your conscious thinking. Move you from ego to faith and belief.
The only way your Unconscious can nudge you in the right direction if you haven’t listened to the other nudges is to make life so difficult that you literally have to make a choice.
Sometimes in life, you have this deep feeling that you’ve got to be doing something completely different. For instance, you’ve got to change your business and go in another direction, or you’ve got to change your career or go in a different direction. But we just don’t make the decision; we don’t change anything.
We have this inner sense that we should do, want to, and desire to, but we don’t change anything. Year after year, we continue doing the same thing. At some point, your Unconscious reaches its limit. The only way to get your attention is by stripping everything away from your life.
To get you moving in the right direction, the Unconscious starts at your highest trigger point.
For example, if your finances are your biggest trigger, meaning that if they deplete, fear starts creeping in, the Unconscious mind is trying to get you to make a decision.
Same for your business. You might be doing everything you’ve always done and seeing a decline in revenues, despite similar efforts having worked remarkably well in the past.
Even though you’re doing a considerable amount of activity by way of sales and marketing to bring that business back in, if that’s the case, ultimately, it’s your identification to say, “I need to do something completely different.”
And the thing that you need to do differently is listen to what the Unconscious is guiding you towards.
It’s only when you start listening and working differently that your course starts to alter.
Ultimately, your Unconscious mind is trying to get you to move from a state of Belief into a state of Knowing.
In a state of Knowing, it’s moving more closer to a state whereby you’re allowing your Unconscious mind to direct you more in your life. Ultimately in that shift, your Unconscious mind wants to be fully expressed.
To do so, it strips everything it needs to to get you to shift from operating from your Conscious mind to following your Unconscious.
In essence, we can continue doing whatever we’ve always done and get the same results (the definition of madness). Or, we can do something totally different guided by the Unconscious.
I use the analogy of the boat and pontoon when you’re at a particular choice point.
Imagine a rowing boat moored up against a pontoon. You’ve got one foot in the boat and the other on the pontoon, representing what’s happening in your life.
The pontoon represents safe ground – your comfort zone. It represents what you’ve always been doing, your career, business, and the life you’ve lived up to this point. It’s what you know inside out.
The boat represents the unknown. It’s a bit unsteady. You have a sense of where you want the boat to take you but don’t have the direction. You have a sense it wants you to step in to guide you towards that new direction.
Now, what happens for many people at this Choice Point is that they have one foot in the boat and the other on the pontoon. If the boat starts to move away, it gets very unsettling.
At this point, it gets uncomfortable for most people. You start to wonder, where should my life be going? Suddenly, the pontoon isn’t as safe as it used to be compared to the boat.
That’s what a choice point is in trying to move from the pontoon into the boat.
Here’s what is happening at that point: Your Unconscious mind is trying to ask you to trust it and put both feet in the boat. Once you get in the boat, it starts guiding you in the new direction of what it’s been guiding you all along to do. What you absolutely and totally enjoy doing and what will have the most significant impact, helping you reach your fullest potential and living your purpose with maximum fulfilment.
It’s just asking you to trust it, get in the boat, and head towards that new direction.
And that only happens when you make a decision.
By making a decision, it’s as if you are physically moving from the pontoon into the boat. A decision looks like you’re making a firm resolve to yourself that, “Yes, this is what I’m going after. This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to get in the boat.”
As soon as you make that decision in your mind, other things start to show up to check you have made that choice.
Sometimes, your conscious mind is trying to tempt you back onto the pontoon, to your comfort zone. That’s your ego wanting to play with you to get you back to what you’ve always known.
Other things also start to show up to tempt you back out of the boat onto the pontoon. For instance, you may question your resolve and direction, saying, “Oh shoot, do you know what? The world that you knew before is now left on the pontoon”.
The only way out is to burn the pontoon in your mind and know it’s completely gone. Now, you’re firmly in the boat itself.
How you communicate to the Unconscious about your decision is a firm resolve that says, yes, you’re committing to stay in the boat heading in the direction it’s guiding you towards.
How you continue to communicate that message is by taking action towards where the Unconscious is guiding you. For many people, it is a leap of faith. But, “As soon as you take the leap of faith, the parachute shows up” because you’ve always had it; you just didn’t realise it was always there.
Stepping into the boat means taking action in the new direction the Unconscious is guiding you towards. It’s a leap of faith because, in most cases, fear starts to show up. You start wondering, what about my finances? Where will the money come from?
Is this new direction going to give me the income that I need that I’ve always been used to? Could there be an impact from a reputational perspective? It could also be a fear of losing something in your life.
Each of those fears taps into your ego. Check out how to deal with fears in this blog. Ultimately, at every key choice point, you’re being asked to take a leap of faith and get into the boat so you can start moving towards where you’re meant and supposed to be.
When you finally make the decision, it’s natural for doubts and fear to crop up. Suddenly you don’t feel ready or competent enough to handle the new direction.
Most people also don’t have clarity on where they’re supposed to be heading. So, how do you proceed when you don’t even know where you’re supposed to go?
Here’s the thing, deep down, you have an idea of the direction you need to take. Therefore, the action you’re supposed to take is the action that comes up.
The more you listen, and the more you communicate with your Unconscious, the more those actions and inspired thoughts are going to come up. And those inspired thoughts create actions to be taken.
To understand this, imagine driving on a strange country road at night. There are no road lights on this road, just your headlights. It’s pitch black outside. All you can see is a few meters ahead.
You have a sense of where you’re supposed to go, but all you can see is just a few meters ahead because that’s all your headlights show.
When we’re at Choice points and need to take action, well, all we can see is those few meters ahead. By that I mean, just the few next actions you need to take. The next step you need to take is the next step that appears. The next action you need to take is the one that appears.
And even if there’s an element of fear, you take action anyway because you’ll always know the difference between a conscious thought and an inspired thought.
Inspired thoughts are intuitive. They can pop into your mind as soon as you wake up or even when you’re doing something else. They tend to be something you haven’t consciously been thinking about.
But, when an inspired thought comes up, the energy is very, very different. It’s a much more fun, lighter, happier energy.
Now, your conscious mind will rationalise inspired thoughts by imagining all the ways you can’t do it. So understand, yes, with inspired thoughts, fear can show up, but you’ll always only be given and encouraged to take the action of what you’re capable of handling at that moment in time.
The Unconscious is never going to ask you to do something completely wild that’s totally, utterly outside your competence level. You’ll only be asked to do something that you know, or that the Unconscious knows from your conscious perspective, it can take, and it can do. It’s up to you to make a firm decision followed by action.
Conscious thinking only knows black and white. It only understands things based on past experiences, knowledge and learning. However, the Unconscious part has infinite possibilities. The more you align your Executive Center with your Unconscious, and to the SuperConscious, the more infinite possibilities start to show up.
Ask yourself: What actions do you need to take to align with your Unconscious and the SuperConscious and also align with your Executive Center?
What actions are you being drawn towards? These are the inspired thoughts.
That’s how it works. It seems so simple.
It’s simple when you know how, but it’s also complicated for people to get around because they’re moving from a way they’ve always worked, to an absolutely new way of being and working.
When faced with a key Choice Point, make a firm decision. Put both your feet into the boat so you can start moving in the direction the Unconscious is guiding you towards.
You don’t have to know the whole plan. Take the next right step that shows up. Remember that it’s like driving down a dark country road. All you can see is just a few meters ahead. And when you take that action, the next step shows up until you’re where you need to be.
The more actions you take, and the closer you get to your end goal, the bigger the moves will start to show up. Bigger ways to bring you the recognition, reward or impact you seek.
So, the question for you today is: What are you being drawn towards to do differently in your life, career, or business? What are the next steps showing up for you?
And then, you must take action towards those steps.
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