The Genie we all have inside us is awaiting our instructions and ready to grant our every wish. Of course, if it were this easy we would all live in castles and zip around on magic carpets. If you’re not where you want to be in life, what commands are you giving your Genie?
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Want to change your life? Here’s the quick answer: pay closer attention to your thoughts and the instructions you give your Genie. If that sounds too simple, just grab your magic lamp and read on…
Sometimes we think what we say to ourselves doesn’t matter, that these are just random or fleeting thoughts. The fact is, what you say to yourself (your Genie) really does matter and it will determine your fate for the day, this week… your entire life.
Where can you find this Genie? He is your subconscious mind. And here’s the rub: we don’t have an option as to whether or not we give him instructions. He pays attention to our every thought. Our only point of control is the type of instructions we provide.
If you’re thinking, “Life sucks. This is really lousy,” your Genie hears that. You may not think he is effected by this negative self-talk, but Genie takes it all in and attempts to give you what you have requested. He is very disciplined that way. The trouble is… he’s not real good at deciphering moods, doubts, and fears. In fact, your Genie has no reasoning capabilities whatsoever. That is your domain. His only job is to obey your commands.
When you tell yourself “today is going to be a bad day because that’s the way my ‘luck’ runs,” your Genie hears that and says, “Okay… I have received your wish… here is your bad day!” Of course, you didn’t mean for him to take that literally, and you may not have even realized you used up a wish when you had that thought.
Think about the last time you balled up a wad of paper and threw it across the room into the trash can. Bull’s eye! It felt so good to make a shot of that distance with deadly accuracy that you decided to do it again. This time you give it some thought. That little nagging part of your brain you thought was asleep starts telling you, “That first shot was luck. You can’t do that again.” And sure enough, your next shot bounces off the rim onto the floor. You immediately spring up and grab the wad of paper, not dropping it in the trash, but taking it back to the spot from where you missed to try again. It’s the Trash Can Game and we’ve all played it. It’s also an excellent example of Genie executing the commands we provide him.
We must be very careful what we tell ourselves because our Genie–as wonderful as he is–cannot distinguish our real intent. Everything we say passes to him without going through any filters. We may tell ourselves, “This is stupid. I’m not going to try very hard to do my best because I’ll probably fail anyway.” Our intent may have been to give ourselves a cushion to fall back on just in case we didn’t do as well as we hoped. The trouble with giving ourselves that ‘out’ is that Genie will do everything in his power to grant our request of failure. He is undermining our ultimate desire to be the best we can be. He doesn’t mean to do this, of course, he is just following the orders we gave him.
Everything you see in the space you are now in was once a thought in someone’s mind. The chair you are sitting in; the car you drive; the television you watch. None of these would exist had they not originated in the mind of their creator. The thing to recognize is that we are all creators. We are the creators of our own destiny, the authors of our own story.
The story I created for my life, up until I was 36 years old, was that I wasn’t very smart. I hated school and couldn’t wait to finish my education at age 16. The two decades that followed found me comfortable with that story, if not somewhat unfulfilled. It took me twenty years to realize I had the power to change my life; to write a new chapter, to alter the direction of the story all together. Once I recognized this, I wrote chapters into my life I didn’t even think were possible. I went on to complete my graduate work in Education and Human Development at a major university and created a new and fulfilling life for myself.
We all have this magical power. Sometimes we don’t even know it, much less take responsibility for it. We tend to pay more attention to the events in our lives. When we react to something that has happened to us, we label it and then attach a story to it. Good, bad, exhilarating, depressing, rewarding or unfair, we make a note of it. We give these stories to our Genie for safe keeping. He stores them and will dutifully recover these accounts of events just as you have filed them. When we come upon a similar event in our life–sometimes years after Genie first filed the original story–he quickly provides us with the immediate reaction to take on our current dilemma based on this historical precedent.
At first glance, this sounds well and good. You have a living encyclopedia at your disposal along with your own “Genie librarian” to tell you the correct response in any given situation. The challenge associated with this repository of stored responses is that many times those responses are no longer valid. We may have matured and outgrown a conditioned response yet we continue to blurt out inappropriate behavior—no matter how self-destructive—because we have programmed ourselves to do so.
Our lives today are the culmination of every thought we’ve ever had. Once we embrace this concept–once we recognize we have created our world and take responsibility for it–we also realize we have the power to change our world by simply changing our thoughts. We can rewrite our story through new experiences and different responses to our new and improved lives.
You become what you think about most. Or, more eloquently stated by Deepak Chopra, “Whatever you put your attention on will grow stronger in your life.”
As humans, we like to make sense of our surroundings. Positive or negative, either way, we get to be ‘right’ about our life. The question is… What do you want to be right about?
Positive and negative emotions cannot occupy the mind at the same time. Genie always responds to your thoughts and unspoken requests with, “Your wish is my command.” Feed your Genie positive, supportive and well-nourished thoughts and you will live a life of prosperity, abundance, and untold riches. And just to be safe, it wouldn’t hurt to always make your third and final wish a request for… three more wishes.