Good day friends hopefully your week is off to a great start. Today I want to share a tool that can assist to remind us of who we are, through the process of understanding who we are not.  As a result of the cognitive process,  we learn to do most things that are not controlled by our unconscious.  Psychologists have determined that our conscious as well as sub conscious minds determine our thoughts and actions towards something, and serve as the foundation for a conditioned state of mind.  We are all conditioned to some degree, and if you are like me the morning doesn’t quite get going until that first cup of coffee is hot in your hand, and the aroma arouses your senses.

So how did I become conditioned to coffee?  It was through starting my mornings with a cup everyday.  Reflect on yourself and  whatever news stations, work out routines, or meditation practices you do everyday, you are conditioned as well.  The power of conditioning is far deeper than just the pattern of behavior as most conditioning elicits unlearned reflex responses that occur.  So it isn’t necessarily the taste, and warmth of the coffee that captivate my morning imagination, however it is the way the coffee makes me feel that has me thirsting for the next cup.

Conditioning is a process of changing behavior by rewarding or punishing a subject each time an action is performed until the subject associates the action with pleasure or distress.  This is seen most commonly in the work of Ivan Pavlov and his Classical Conditioning experiments in which his team trained dogs to salivate to the sound of a bell after they had been conditioned to directly associate a bell with food.  A practice that I have made common in my personal development and work with others is to look at ourselves from an inverse perspective to better understand who we are.  If you are able to look at things from multiple perspectives you will learn more about the situation, and open yourself to an alternative.

In photography, a negative is an image that is  used to make positive prints.  A reversal results which restores light and dark to their correct order to create the positive image.

To assist with creating your positive image, please consider the below 10 things that you are not as they will help you to determine who you are.

10. What Others Say of You – Do you.  your opinion of you has to matter more than anyone else, when you do well you should be your loudest supporter, and when you under perform you should be your loudest critic.

9. Alone – We are sharing existence together, and countless numbers of people have and will repeat this same story on earth.  Know that circumstances can be made better when worked at, and help in the form of counseling and mentorship are available.

8. Your Gender – Yes men and women are created differently physically, and both are capable of doing anything they desire.

7. Your Ethnicity – Yes you are the same or different ethnicity as everyone else in the world.  Your ability to reach success in becoming the best you has no ethnic bias or limitation.

6. Your Job Title – Your title at work can only sustain you “at work”, and it will eventually change anyway.  Remember it is not the title of the job, but the person in the job that makes a difference.

5. Your Financial Status – Money will come and go, as that is what it is designed to do as a medium of exchange.  If your searching for happiness in money, you need to look elsewhere as your happiness is something that can’t be monetized.

4. Incompetent – You are not inept or deficient in anyway to create positive change in your reality and condition the life you want.  Doing some thing, is alway the start of a great thing.

3. Invencible – Be mindful of your mental, physical, and spiritual well being.  The most essential requisite for living a full life is staying alive.

2. Finished – Until it is done, it is all a work in progress.  Don’t give up on anything that you feel is worth fighting for.

1. Too – You are never too old, young, tall, skinny, short, fat, early, late, tired, stressed, busy, or any other adjective to mention that can keep you from being the best you.

If you find yourself using any of these listed as a way to describe who you are, work to break your conditioning today by seeing the other side and knowing that you are much more than any one thing.

make the rest of your life the best of your life!