Creating an Abundant Mind and Life

Over the past few months, I have done a great deal of personal change work, including getting some NLP coaching from friends at Radical Change Group, and subsequently sharing experiences with like-minded others. That work began with a deliberate shock to my neurology, while creating new imprinting with a new powerful stance and outlook on life. That imprinting became the foundation for what was to come next.

Then, having created space for new possibilities and from a position of strength, we worked to clarify and prioritize several values, which I have since rigorously tested by future pacing, and in real time, all with a goal of distilling everything down to a single tagline that summarizes how I view and move through the world:

Abundant Mind and Abundant Life

While this may not mean much to anyone else, it is a hard-won and rigorously tested breakthrough for me, whose outlook on life at 43 had shrunk through years of taking on more and more obligations in the service of many masters at work, at home, at church, with the bank, and with extended family, while also coming to grips with the effects of gravity on my body. I had come to fully accept that there was not enough time, money, love, joy to go around, and as the meaning of life ebbed further away, it felt as though the walls were closing in. The future was dim indeed.

I was unable to think my way out of my perpetually cynical state, though that was my intention. The cynicism was simply too rooted in my neurology to make room for a real and lasting shift. In fact, that cynicism was quite boundless at times, and towards some folks and groups.

The Shift from Scarcity to Abundance

Helping me to identify what one thing to shift for the biggest effect was also inspired by the work of Dudley Lynch and Paul Kordis in their work "Strategy of the Dolphin", which clearly characterized my world view as that of a Shark, with back up views of Primary Dolphin and Carp. All of the outlooks and behaviors of the Shark (and Carp) are scarcity-based, which explains the underlying motivation for alternating between roles of victim, persecutor and rescuer from time to time in life.

Other profiling work by Lynch and Kordis echoed back to me that I tended to be a seeker... always looking for new explanations for things, and impatient with others who were less open to new ideas.

This analysis convinced me of the value of finding one thing to change that would give real results in every context, and would also be "sticky" enough to last through the transformation (the rest of my life). In other words, something that I would throw out eventually in lieu of more novel thinking.

So I decided that I would begin by changing my view about everything by changing my view about one thing... my world is a potentially abundant place, and I can create abundance by updating my filters. For me, this is not simply an affirmation, but a serious commitment to forge new distinctions in every area of my life, such that I will either create the resources to get what I want ethically and ecologically, or adjust my needs to fit leaner times until the resources become available. Further, this is not meant for anyone but me. I will not simply believe in abundance, but embody it.

There are goals with numbers and dates to be sure, but these are a product of my abundant outlook, and not an end in themselves. Also, I am not ignoring that there will be times of loss, sorrow and setbacks, but I will commit to extracting the maximum value from each of these experiences as they come, up to and including the end of life itself.

My outlook clearly states that there is MORE THAN ENOUGH of the following:

• Time (to do what is important, build relationships, and create abundance)
• Money (to sustain myself and my family while in pursuit of abundance)
• Intelligence (or resources to achieve abundance or adjust needs as required)
• Contacts (or like-minded people to join in creating abundance)
• Acceptance (of other important people in my life while creating abundance)
• Food (having an empty stomach from time to time is OK, and non-lethal)
• Sex (allowing me to appreciate all aspects of my romantic life)
• Work (a confident and patient attitude, even during economic decline, allowing space to consistently retool myself)

Now, I spend a few minutes every morning and night as I wake and drift off to sleep, in deep reflection of the abundance in all the areas that were simply filtered out before. The results have been surprising to me. I find myself more alert, more in the zone, and less perturbed by interruptions than before. My marriage is much improved over years past, and my kids are also getting much higher quality attention and guidance from me than ever before.

It's not a matter of believing in abundance. It's a matter of making abundance happen.

Thanks for tuning in.

Craig