5 WAYS TO REWIRE, REIMAGINE, AND RECREATE YOURSELF AND YOUR WORKPLACE

There is little doubt that the environment where we work and live impacts our lives. However, by taking charge of how you perceive your environment, you can make incredible changes in your life. Rewire your thoughts about your environment, reimagine the reality of your environment, and you will recreate your environment.

Quantum physics has discovered something that many mystics have long since known: that your perception of the universe actually invokes the very universe that you observe. If you change the way you view the environment around you, the environment around you changes. This means your creative imagination literally affects the very blueprint of your reality. How our universe manifests itself depends on how we both individually and collectively dream it up. The real power, then, is in the viewing – the lenses we look through as we observe the world around us.

There is a wonderful story of William James, one of the leading thinkers of the late nineteenth century, who, as a young man, went to Paris to study. He was depressed and suicidal at the time. However, he decided to take a wager suggested by a French philosopher, to act each day as if the universe was full of purpose and meaning. By the end of his studies, he had discovered so much meaning and purpose that he changed his life. He became a great philosopher who influenced many.

You play a role not only in how you experience your universe, but how the universe will experience you and continue its creative expansion through you. It is important to note that at any moment you can effortlessly step out of your various dilemmas. You can stop endlessly recreating a toxic or negative reality. The key is whether you recognize how you are feeding into, supporting, and hence helping to create the very problem you are reacting to. As the philosopher, Jean Houston, puts it: “Don’t keep feeding chicken soup to your pathology.”

Another way to say this is that through our perceptions and our choices we are actually creating the culture that we so enjoy complaining about. Deciding that you have co-created the world around you – and therefore you are the one to step into healing it – is the ultimate act of accountability. In order to do this, every so often you need to stop, rewire, reimagine, and recreate the world around you.

Below are five practical strategies for rewiring, reimagining, recreating your current reality.

• Work as if you have the perfect job – now.
Regardless of whether you like or dislike your job or the environment where you work or live, act every day as if this were your ideal career in an ideal workplace. Imagine that this is where you have always dreamed of working, with the kind of colleagues you always dreamed of working with, doing the kind of work you have always fantasized doing. Act every day as if your current environment was full of purpose and meaning, and observe how the environment around you changes.
• Create a vision. Without a vision you perish. And if you don’t perish, you will likely get depressed. Rewiring, reimagining, and recreating means stepping back every so often to clarify a vision you are personally moving towards. Organizational vision statements will have little meaning for you until you have a sense of your own personal vision. What gets you up early? What keeps you up late? What inspires you to go the extra mile? What keeps you going on the darker days? Regardless of whether you are working toward a goal in your personal life or work life, be sure to make time to work for a dream that engages your unique talents and that is bigger and more powerful than simply “getting through the day.”
• Choose service over self-interest. Imagine ways you can make the world you live in better for others. Decide, just for today, that you are going to be a giver – by your smile, kind words, encouraging attitude, and generosity. Decide, just for today, to be a contributor, a helper to others rather than expecting so much from others. Decide, just for today, to replace unearned entitlement with gratitude. Make it a point to say thank you three times each day. Decide, just for today, to “lift,” rather than “lean,” to build rather than tear down. Ask how you can best be of service and grant some grace to your fellow human beings.
• Make yourself happy. Make a decision to enjoy the environment where you live and work. You don’t need to have the “right” job or the “right” boss or the “right” family to be happy or engaged in your work. Happiness is not a destination; it’s a method of travel. You can decide to be happy. It’s an attitude, a mind-set, a choice. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Happiness comes from the inside; it is not a matter of externals.
• When the horse is dead, get off. Maybe recreating your current environment means doing just that: finding something new. If you are in a job that you hate, and you need more than a renewed reality in your current environment, then cut your losses, quit your job, and start again in a new environment. Most importantly: STOP COMPLAINING, starting right now. Sometimes relationships need to end. Rewiring, reimagining, and recreating may mean starting over in a brand new environment with brand new relationships. One important word of caution: before you leave any relationship be sure that you are not running away from something you need to face, learn, and contribute to. If you seek a geographic cure, be prepared to meet the same problems in your next environment.

Put some of these intentions into action. Pay attention to the effect they have on you and your environment. You will create a new world when you rewire, reimagine, and recreate.