Free Mind Gym by Sebastian Bailey Page B

investigating the practical options for how to make them different.
    The next stage is actually making the change. You leave your job, buy a house, and move all your possessions. This stage is called “experimenting.” After you’ve settled in and started the beachside bar you’d dreamed about, this becomes your normal way of living, and you are once again in a state of doing. The cycle in itself is not complicated. The challenge is moving through it at the right pace and in the right way.
The Doing Magnet
    As you travel around your cycle, you will have conversations with yourself that stop you from moving on to the next stage and instead take you back to doing.
    Sometimes these thoughts can be very sensible and prevent you from wasting time or following the wrong path. But sometimes, unfortunately, they prevent you from both spotting and taking opportunities that could dramatically improve your life. The trick lies in recognizing the internal conversations and being able to make an informed decision about whether to listen to them or to ignore them and move on.
Conversation One: Dreamers Are Losers
    Action produces results. Doesn’t it? That’s what most of us were led to believe. However, you might miss out on great things in life because an internal conversation has convinced you that all dreaming is bad, that it’s a waste of time. Maybe, when you find yourself dreaming, you tell yourself something like this:
        •    I must get on with things .
        •    No point in dreaming. I’ll only be disappointed .
        •    I should be grateful for what I have .
        •    I have my feet on the ground .
        •    Let’s deal with today .
    These are some of the internal conversations we all have that stop us from contemplating and bring us straight back to doing.
    They struck a particular chord with a participant at one of Mind Gym’s workouts, who, on seeing the cycle, realized that she had never really left the doing stage, or at least she had only ever reflected on the mundane issues of daily living rather than the big questions about her life.
    Her cycle looked like this:

    “I don’t think I have ever asked myself how my life could be different or better,” she explained. “I only thought about how to make sure it keeps going as it is. That’s not to say I’m unhappy, only that I’ve never really thought about what I could do that would make me happier.”
    This woman—in her early forties, married, financially secure, and in a successful career—has a strong internal conversation that keeps her in a constant state of doing. When significant changes do occur in her life, they are likely just her responses to external events. And even then, her efforts would be geared toward getting her back to doing as quickly as possible.
    A couple of years previously, for example, she had been laid off from her job. Instead of wondering what opportunities this opened up or how to use her severance package to possibly pursue a new career or learn new skills, she immediately rushed into looking for another job, one that would be almost identical to the one she had just left. Here’s the kicker. It wasn’t that she had loved her job and didn’t want to do anything else, but she felt guilty for not just following the quickest and most obvious path back to staying busy.
Conversation Two: Get Real
    Oftentimes, this conversation is the most confusing. It’s that little voice in your head that tests reality. It’s familiar if you’re the person who dreams of being a filmmaker or an author or of starting your own business. You might not know any filmmakers or authors, therefore it doesn’t seem real to dream of being one. You might know a person who started their own business but failed. So, you deem your dream impractical. Your internal voice might say something like this:
        •    It would never work in practice .
        •    Nice idea, but I’d better get on with the