Page 16 - Taming Your Gremlin A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way (Rick Carson)_Neat

And we’re not our personalities. Personalities are just networks of
behaviors that emerge from a matrix of beliefs we hold about who we are.

And we’re not our beliefs. Beliefs, even the noblest of them, are just
opinions that we develop loyalty to, so that we can pretend that the world

has at least a modicum of predictability. Doing so helps us feel safe.
Ironically, we sometimes fight to defend our beliefs, creating anything but a
safe situation.

So we’re not our beliefs; we’re not our personalities; we’re not our
bodies. And we’re not our thoughts. We have thoughts. Positive thoughts
and negative thoughts. Thoughts about the past and thoughts about the
future. Boring thoughts and strange thoughts. But we’re not our thoughts.

So, what of that thing you really are? That thing that has a body, a
personality, beliefs, and thoughts, but is none of these? It has had hundreds

of names applied to it. Soul, spirit, prana, re, chi, ki, God, the primordial
vibration, to name a few. It doesn’t matter what we call it, because no name
can circle it. It existed before the word. I often refer to it as true love. But
for our purposes, here and now, let’s call it life. Your life. Your very own
life, humming away inside of you at this moment.

YOUR LIFE

It’s your life. It’s not your mother’s life, your father’s life, your spouse’s,
your employer’s, or your child’s. It’s your life. Your very own life. A gift to

you directly from the creator of this whole shebang. It’s the greatest gift you
will ever receive, and you already have it.

And if that’s not enough to fill you with pride and satisfaction, consider
this bonus. Not only do you get your very own life, but, just because you
arrived on the planet as a human being, you get the consciousness to
appreciate your gift of life and to respond to it however you would like,

moment to moment and day to day. Your ability to respond to your life is
known as your response ability. But it’s not always easy to respond to this
life gracefully, in great part because of a vile, vicious, villainous,