The last few years, we have been asking more and more philosophical questions regarding our experience of life and the experiences of others. We used to think cynically of philosophy as a kind of ‘airy fairy’ abstract intellectual subject for people who wanted to avoid ‘real life,’ but then we realised that this cynicism was in itself just a philosophy on life.

We have since discovered that philosophy is the most real and practical thing that we can embrace into our life because it reflects our perceptions and beliefs about our self, life and the world, which in turn determine our values, thoughts, feelings and actions, which in turn determine who we are, what we do and what we have and most importantly, where we are going. We have discovered that people who have abundance in their professional life, personal life and health, operate on a different core philosophy than those that don’t, often without realising it. Our core philosophy is what we all should be working on.

Our basic philosophical constructs i.e.; our perceptions, beliefs, thoughts, feelings etc. can exist on both the conscious and subconscious levels. It is at the subconscious level that things can get difficult, or interesting, depending on your philosophy.

The most basic philosophical question has always been ‘why are we here,’ or ‘what is the meaning or purpose of life.’  You are here to learn, grow, evolve, and ultimately to use your unique qualities and experience to bring your unique contribution to the world and fulfil your life’s purpose. Suffering is the conscious or subconscious awareness that you are ‘off track’ in this process.

Many people are so caught up in their emotions, usually hopes and fears, that they don’t stop to ask the most important questions. The quality of the questions you ask however, will in the long run determine the quality of your life. For many it is also difficult to think ‘in the long run’. The more stressed we are, the more difficult it is for your brain to focus on anything long term. Our overloaded emotional system and stressed mind just wants to know how to get through the day week or month. As a result, long term vision is lost causing many to greatly overestimate what they can do in the short term and greatly underestimate what they can do long term, resulting in more stress, disappointment, and ultimate under-achievement in one or more areas of life.

What you think determines how you feel which determines how you act, which determines how others react to you, which determines your results. But what determines how you think!  The very wise can control their thoughts, but the masses are controlled by their thoughts. We have all had times in our life where those same thoughts just keep coming from somewhere in the back and we just wish we could switch that mind off like a TV.

The answer is in the ‘script’, ‘story’, or ‘rules’, which have been programmed into our subconscious minds by our life experience, especially as children. Because our perceptions are pure as children but we are at the mercy of often stressed and distorted adult perceptions, it is unavoidable that we will be made to feel, threatened, helpless, powerless, worthless, ashamed, guilty, unworthy, unloved at various times and in various degrees before teenage. Our response is to wall off experiences and feelings that we judge as unsafe, bad or wrong because as we grow up, we look to the adult role models around us for confirmation of and or to give meaning to our own experiences.