Image via Wikipedia

How does your life work?  What makes things happen to you?  Many of the greatest, most respected minds this world has produced answer, “Your life unfolds according to your personal beliefs.  Your beliefs make things happen to you.  Your strongest beliefs determine your happiness, health, and all of the conditions of your life.”

     This answer is at the philosophical core of many of humankind’s greatest teachers, both past and present.  Whether it was Buddha declaring. “All that we are is the result of what we have believed,” or Jesus teaching, “As you believe, so will you be,” this message prevails: The power and responsibility to create the life you want is yours, and you create your life based upon your beliefs.

     The course’s goal is to have you identify your beliefs, then to teach you how to change the false and self-limiting ideas that prevent you from being the person you want to be, living the life you desire.  By doing these things, you literally re-create your self.

     I don’t pretend to teach this course from high atop some pedestal of self-perfection.  My life continues to be filled with challenges to overcome, and it continues to present constant problems to solve.

     The course is my love letter to you.  The letter’s message: You are important and irreplaceable.  You deserve the best life has to offer and you have the power to create it.

     The course is presented in a simple style, using simple words.  Truth is simplicity itself, and that-s how it should be presented.

     Now, let’s begin.

YOU CAN HAVE A NEW LIFE – AND YOU CAN START CREATING IT NOW

YOUR NOW SELF

     Before Re-Creating Your Self, it’d important to determine who you are right now.  I call the person you are at this time “your now self.”  The purpose of this lesson is to become better acquainted with your now self.  One effective way of doing this is to write about who you believe your self to be.

Because I don’t expect, or want, anyone to accept the principles of Re-Creating Your Self on faith, each lesson includes an “Adventure in Inner Space.”  Each adventure gives you the opportunity to prove for yourself the validity of this course’s philosophy.  They will also help you to better understand your self, and that’s why I call them adventures – I believe the journey into one’s self is among life’s most exciting, challenging, and rewarding adventures.  An 8 ½ by 11-inch notebook in which to write your adventures is required.

You may rightfully choose not to complete each adventure in one sitting. Years of students’ feedback tells me that each adventure will take somewhere between one and two hours to complete.

     Get an 8 ½ x 11-inch college-ruled notebook – hereafter referred to as your adventure logbook – and a pencil with an erasure.  On the notebook cover, write “Re-Creating My Self.  Then, below that, write your name.

ADVENTURE 1

MY NOW SELF

    STEP 1:  Describe your self fully.  Include an emotional, intellectual, and physical description.  Write about your good qualities and bad habits.  Mention your special abilities as well as your personal limitations.  What makes you happy?  What provokes anger and sadness?  Is there a motto by which you live?  Write anything about your self that comes to mind.  But you are not to use other people’s opinions about you.  The only relevant opinions are your own.

Don’t be concerned about the quality, quantity, or style of your writing.  They don’t matter.  As long as you write your true feelings about who you are, the lesson will be a success.  No particular time limit is recommended.  Do it at your own pace.

STEP 2: After you’ve written your self profile, go back and read it.  Have you left out anything.  Do you now disagree with something you’ve written?  Feel free to add to, edit, or omit what you’ve written.

Every adventurer benefits from a guide.  To guide you through this first adventure, I offer an example created by a student in 1988.  His name has been changed to insure his privacy.  You are welcome to follow his lead, but don’t be concerned about tracing his every step.  Create the style, structure, and content that is right for you.

YOUR GUIDE FOR ADVENTURE 1

TIM, 24 YEARS-OLD

My parents had to get married because my mother was pregnant, and I believe that I’m the product of the union of bad things: promiscuity, depravity, anger, hatred, fear, and deception.  Those evil traits are festering inside me, waiting for a provocation to expand to full capacity.  I fear that if I don’t keep careful control over myself, the real me is going to bound out of my forged image like a devil from under a nun’s habit.

Descriptives that come to mind when I think of myself are clumsy, incompetent, selfish, and sadistic.  I wish I had a nickel for every time I felt that I was strange.

Though I look like an “All-American Boy” – I’m tall and muscular with blonde hair and blue eyes – I feel ugly and incapable of being anyone’s friend or lover.

I desperately feel I will never be successful at anything…I feel I do not qualify as an adult.

In direct contradiction, I possess an enormous capacity for altruistic love.  I have a great need to lift up the impoverished and the ill.  I have a deep awareness and appreciation for all things living and inanimate.  I have an above-average intellect, with powers of insight and perception.

I’m eager to re-create my self because I believe that once I break free of my “prison,” the wonders and resources within me will abound.

Meanwhile, I feel like someone who is always doing “it” wrong, whatever “it” is, always deserving a whippin’, and usually getting one.