That got your attention, didn't it?!
😂
I'm sure for the aficionados, he's got many, many more killer quotes, but the one that really stuck with me, and that has made its way onto the podium of Giles’ all-time favourite quotes—and that I trot out regularly—is this one:
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
~ Wayne Dyer*
OMG sooooo catchy! 😲
(*We'll brush under the carpet the fact that he didn't come up with it… but neither did Max Planck, as part of his Quantum Physics work, so I guess we'll never know!)
Trouble is, there's a slight problem with that quote, isn't there?
In making it that memorable and hooky, it runs the risk of a mind hearing that and interpreting it as,
“Oh. I need to change the way I look at things. It's all my fault everything's so rubbish. And I just don't have the energy to be trying to reframe everything right now.”
😔
Now I can’t go back in time and read Wayne’s mind, nor have I read all of his books or listened to all his audio programmes, but I’m guessing that’s not what he meant, when he said it.
Wayne Dyer was not a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist. He was a deeply spiritual man, who’d clearly seen a thing or two about the nature of reality.
And I bet if you’d had the chance to sit down and talk to him in depth about this saying, he’d have a much richer interpretation of it; maybe one that I'm not seeing.
These days however, the Giles Ego Construct 📦 is just about sure enough of its status, that I like to rephrase that quote as:
Let's face it, it's not half as catchy, is it? (I can see why he said it the way he did.)
But for me, it's closer to the truth.
Because there is no ‘you’ there to intentionally change the way you look at things. (If there was, wouldn't we all have done it already?! 😆)
You are the witnessing of change.
And from my own experience and that of my clients (you'll have to get your own evidence) that change is more likely to happen when we're not identifying with a ‘self’ that makes out like it's in charge but isn't actually a thing!
Just reflect for a moment:
- Good ideas about a new direction → happens when the mind's not over-analysing
- Fresh perspective on a situation → happens when you're not thinking about it
- Putting out your best work → happens when you're ‘in flow’ (i.e. ‘you’/ego is not there)
You're not ‘doing’ any of this stuff… You are the witnessing of it all happening. (And then the mind's observing and commentating on it all.)
So, although this may sound like absolute sacrilege, taken at face value, that Wayne Dyer quote is wrong.
Because ‘you’ don't change the way you look at things.
Although, things do change.
And that includes the way you look at change.
🤯
Giles
p.s. It's Sunday. These ones aren't supposed to ‘make sense’! 🤣