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A Fresh Start
There is an Irish urban myth that someone stopped to ask an Irish man for directions only to be told:
"If I was going to there, I wouldn’t start from here!"
We may laugh or feel exasperated at the thought that we can’t get somewhere just because we didn’t happen to start at the right place, but isn’t that what so many of us do with our lives?
We decide we can’t get to where we want to because of where we started. Well, we may not be able to determine where our journey begins but what if we re-could create a life from scratch?
Clean Slate
The Latin phrase, "Tabula Rasa" means "blank tablet" in English and usually refers to the idea of a fresh, clean start. Philosophers and psychologists have discussed the nature-nurture debate for centuries; are we born with a mind that is a blank tablet, or are we born with "built in" knowledge that determines emerging behaviours?
Let’s pretend we are leading Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) scientists with the capacity to build a successful, fulfilled human being.
For the sake of this experiment let’s assume we are starting with a blank tablet, from which we can create a successful and fulfilling life without pre-determined thoughts and behaviours.
I guess we first need to know what purpose we have for this human being and what a successful and fulfilled life would look like.
Purpose
Arnold Schwarzenegger was at least two versions of the A.I. cyborg from the future in the Terminator films. One version had the purpose of killing Sarah Connor and one of protecting her.
We need to know what purpose and passion we want our blank tablet to have so that we can give it the behaviours and thoughts it needs to achieve that vision and destiny.
Now we know where our blank tablet is heading we need to build in some indestructible self-belief. It doesn’t matter what laboratory we build this human in or who the scientist "parents" are, we can create this self-belief, we can build in the capacity for our successful human to choose free will over fate.
Fulfilling
We need to get our experiment moving now towards its purpose. To make sure this life we are creating is a fulfilling and successful one we need to ensure everything is done for a purpose, even (or especially) if the purpose is to have fun.
Our new human will have the capacity to choose life enhancing activities over "should do" tasks.
So we can give our experimental human the ability to do more, and choose wisely.
If we do our job well and build our new life force without the capacity to feel fear, then anything is possible. Imagine a life where failure was not a fearful prospect but grasped as an opportunity to learn more and grow. So we will add in a programme that allows our being to take more risks without fear.
Connect
Our new human will have a very lonely life if we do not build in the desire to connect with others. Our experiment is much more likely to succeed if we add the behaviours and beliefs that allow our new human to understand that all great things are achieved in partnership.
We all need success buddies because sometimes there is a need to reach out for help and sometimes there is a need to inspire others to achieve success.
To do this we need to make sure our shiny new human stays enthusiastic, confidently shares its vision, inspires others, understands where others fit into the vision and stays focused.
We need to add this personality trait of staying focussed because difficult times come, even for shiny new humans with everything in place to be great, so our little experiment needs to persevere in tough times.
Success
Finally, if we measure the success of our experiment we can’t just look at the outward signs, we need to weigh up the fulfilment of a life well lived. We hear so much now of people building a life of outward success but still feeling unfulfilled.
Research indicates that a more fulfilled life is to be found in working towards the greater good or a higher purpose. So let us ensure our human is generous with its energy and efforts and builds kindness into everyday life.
Ok, so we are not really blank tablets now. We have self-limiting beliefs, fears and sometimes we may lose the vision for our lives. But, we can go back to the laboratory and start to re-build our life to become more successfully fulfilled.
Opportunity
There is still the time and opportunity to work on ourselves to build better beliefs, let go of fear and practise the behaviours of success. It just takes the commitment to work on the experiment.
We can take the time to work through these different elements of a successful life by joining a Fiona Harrold’s "7 Rules of Success" programme.
Joining a programme will give you the opportunity to work on each of the rules in the company of fellow experimenters and build up your success buddies network.
The first licensed workshop is being held in Doncaster, South Yorkshire during October and you can read more about it here
