Thursday, May 08, 2008

Fantasy Fairies and other mental traps

To keep with my intrinsic value theme this year, I thought I’d take a different approach in this month’s newsletter and discuss one of the major obstacles to focusing on the things in our lives that bring infinite (intrinsic) value. What is this key barrier that keeps us from embracing principles, opportunities, and challenges? What continually sabotages us from engaging in life, connecting with people, creating value, and contributing to our world?

I like to call them “Fantasy Fairies”. These fantasy fairies fly around our minds creating images that draw us from reality to make-believe land.

Sometimes they are pleasant, kind, gentle. You may even view them as positive. These fairies may help you to build images of where you are going to be in 5 years… with increased wealth, happiness, joy, balance and lots of recreation. Oh, how wonderful your life will be ‘when’. The good fantasy fairy helps you to build castles in the sky. She can even help you to move in! She keeps telling you that if you keep imagining the wonderful thoughts that she has for you over and over again, you will soon have those amazingly wonderful things in your life.

You may also have fantasy fairies that flutter around your mind that aren’t so pleasant. These I call Dark Fairies. These fairies create images of doom and gloom. They give you feelings of frustration, discouragement, failure. They create visions of how people are out to get you. They ‘help’ you to ‘understand’ the intentions of others (even when you can’t possibly know these intentions). You know what I’m talking about… when someone writes you a short email or says a few short words to you. Your dark fantasy fairy helps you to believe that it is because they are mad at you or that they don’t like you. In reality, they may just be having a bad day and aren’t really thinking about you at all.

"Hope is for sissies."

Both of these fantasy fairies, the bright one and the night one, keep you from being you. When you live in your mind, you are not living in the world. This reminds me of a great line I heard on House the other night (5/5/08). {Click here to read more.}