by pressablealiassolutionscom
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Welcome to Insights and Implications!
This month’s newsletter comes from Cheryl Bond. She writes that we are bombarded with inaccurate messages. We are told over and over that circumstances have the power to make us feel a certain way. Read Cheryl’s humorous but profound take on this.
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When Your Morning Is Hell, Just Go to Taco Bell!
The world operates from the misunderstanding that life comes at us from the outside-in. This misunderstanding makes it seem like our only choice is to find a way to cope with our circumstances, and it permeates our lives. Just look at a recent radio ad campaign for Taco Bell.
The ad begins with a description of how a morning trip to the Registry of Motor Vehicles can ruin your entire day. Long lines, confusing directions, and the overall feeling of powerless against government bureaucracy sets up the scenario. The jingle brings a false sense of hope – “When your morning is hell, just go to Taco Bell”.
Further reinforcing the false paradigm of outside-in, the ad suggests that grabbing a breakfast sandwich at Taco Bell will miraculously put your day back on track. It’s a simple commercial, but every time I hear it, I cringe. (I know, I know, a commercial can’t make me cringe!)
Radio and television advertisements are full of similar false claims that reinforce the, “I’ll be happy when” myth. I’ll rekindle the romance in my marriage when I go on a Carnival Cruise. I’ll be deliriously happy like Jessie James Decker on the beach in her bikini if I go on the South Beach Diet.
Then there’s the widely held delusion that elections can make us sick with grief and stress. I cannot be happy again until the person I want to win is in the White House or 10 Downing Street. Maybe I need to go to Taco Bell to help me feel better.
The fact of the matter is that people and circumstances do not have the power to make us feel anything. The human mind works only one way – from the inside-out. Our experience is coming to us through the power of our thinking. And we cannot have a feeling, good or bad, without thought.
Further, our minds are designed to give us an unlimited flow of fresh thinking and new perspectives – if we know where to look and stop believing the outside-in myth.
The next time it seems like your morning is being sabotaged by the Registry of Motor Vehicles or the traffic or the kids, know that you don’t need to go to Taco Bell or anywhere else. The answer is always inside.
Cheryl Bond