Perception or deception? What you see is what you get…

I wonder how our lives would change if we put a positively powerful spin on our greatest challenges. What if, for example, I viewed my recent brain surgery as one of the highlights of my life? It might go something like this:

Gosh, this is exciting, isn’t it? Brain surgery! Never had that before. And none of my friends have ever had this kind of intriguing experience. What’s it all about, and what might they find in there, apart from that pushy little blob that’s trying to take over? I’ve probably been coasting too much, getting bored with the status quo and indulging in too much mental masturbation; since my mind loves a challenge, this one has obviously been sent to get me thinking in a whole (hole?) new way. And isn’t it fascinating to think that my waking self got dispatched into some death-like, timeless zone while the surgeon took a saw to my noggin? In a flash, I’m awake again without ever knowing I’d been asleep. Yet eight long hours have passed, with the most delicate dance of intricate interventions having been choreographed by a whole team of experts, completely focused on me. Am I not hugely blessed? Not only did I manifest a highly skillful surgical team to save my life, but I have a body that can re-grow an entire network of nerves, re-knit bone, and recalibrate the brain once the squatter has been evicted. Blimey. I’m amazing! Yet I’ve been twiddling my thumbs, metaphorically speaking—taking my sweet time with life and work, and really not pushing myself even close to my potential (while spending far too much time contemplating my limits to even glimpse what’s beyond them). It’s time to do something seriously superlative with all this power inside me.

It’s no surprise, then, that I now have little time for pleasantries or being polite, just for the sake of propriety. I no longer sweat the small stuff (well, maybe just a little, but I usually catch myself before I go too far down those nasty little rabbit holes). I’m keenly aware of my mortality, while realizing that my body has incredible creative, healing powers that I never truly grasped or valued before.

But what about the small stuff? If we take the stance that we’re in charge, that we powerfully attract all kinds of circumstances that are designed to ultimately advance us along our personal evolutionary path, then we must consistently hold that power in every single thing—from the tedious breakdown of a nifty new laptop, to the disintegration of a long-standing relationship. We’re either in charge or we’re not. We’re either powerful or we’re not. So patting ourselves on the back for having manifested a fabulous new partner, yet bemoaning the fact that we just got fired from work doesn’t make sense— and it doesn’t do us justice.

So if I client cancels or if something important gets rescheduled, I ask myself what opportunity I have created by orchestrating this turn of events. I almost always find the answer: I needed to rest; I wanted to work on my book; I needed to go for a walk—and if I hadn’t, I’d never have found that amazing book or bumped into that guy who… You get the idea. I’m in charge. I’m running my own show—even when my subconscious brings me stuff I don’t like; it’s only doing its job—putting me in touch with something I wasn’t aware of or hadn’t yet seen from an enlightened, empowered perspective.

So it’s all good, even when it’s bad. And we’re in charge, even when life seems chaotic. What you see is not necessarily what’s there. Yet what you see is what you get.