Is Your Glass Half Full or Half Empty?

Early in his Mind Power Training, John Kehoe, one of my mentors and a renowned authority on the powers of the mind asks his audience to truthfully answer a question about how they perceive their lives.

From the perspective of a glass, John asks, is your glass half full or half empty?

A very simple, yet very profound question, isn’t it? How do you perceive your life?

Is your glass of life half full or half empty? Which is it? John asked us to think about it and be honest with the answer…

Maybe you’ll agree that it’s sometimes hard to be fully honest with ourselves about such personal and intimate matters – like how we perceive ourselves and the various aspects of our lives.

Are they really working or not? Is this what I really want or not?

I know in my case that the truth about how I viewed my life was hard to admit.

I wanted to answer that, oh yes, my glass was half full. I think to “sugar coat” things and avoid the real response and its possible implications. My mind wanted to pretend things were better than they actually were.

I’d learned from John in his training that the mind resists change and will even lie to keep us “safe” – to maintain the status quo and keep us where we’re at. The mind behaves like a sentry protecting the fortress.

But here I was looking to elevate the quality of my life – to become happier, more light-hearted, peaceful, and abundant in every aspect. To love my life. I really wanted to experience these things and felt it was possible if I made some changes to my beliefs, perceptions, and to my focus.

That’s why I was taking this Mind Power Training. To learn how to change my thinking because I’d come to believe the profound effect our thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions have in shaping our lives – the quality of our lives. Whether our glass is half full or half empty.

John was contending that thoughts were real forces, having an undeniable effect in our lives, and I knew enough already to believe him. It all made sense to me. So what I really needed to do was truthfully answer this profound question. Go inside myself and gauge where I was really at.

And arggg! My glass was half empty. That was my true belief.

I was terribly disappointed to discover this. I thought that I was further along in my personal journey to what I wanted than I really was. My mind had been telling me this and in truth it had been lying to me. In fact, it had “advised” me to abandon John’s training and stay the same, saying things like, “This is a waste of time. You already know these things. There’s nothing new to learn”.

Huh? Oh really? Did I actually know these things? If so, why was my glass half empty? Clearly more work needed to be done to change that belief as hard as it was for me to admit.

I realized the Great Trickster was at work here, a term John was attributing to the mind. It was up to its shenanigans and deceit, trying to keep me where I was. Resisting change and stifling my growth. Such a fitting name it is, the Great Trickster, and oh boy, was I seeing it in action!

On the other hand, I was also happy to have clarified what I honestly thought about my life. To have actually faced it. I’d resisted and avoided the truth and now the clarity brought relief.

As a side note, I did go a step further and discovered that avoidance was a pattern of mine, albeit an unconscious one, showing itself countless times in all aspects of my life. It was oftentimes how I handled things - or didn’t. I avoided them, and this usually kicked me in the butt. Sometimes big time!

I found it interesting that I was a doer in so many instances, but also an avoider in others. Seemed to be a contradiction.

But looking back, I see that the avoidance was fear. I tended to avoid that which I feared the implications of, or that which made me or others uncomfortable. Interestingly, I also realized that a lot of my “doing” was done out of fear. So not really a contradiction. Both had the same root of fear.

Well good to know, right? So very good to have brought the unconscious to the conscious so I could make changes. Create a glass half full life and shut the door on avoidance and fear. And I now had some tools to do so, as taught in John’s training.

Once I stopped feeling sorry for myself (another habit of mine), I could experiment with the various Mind Power techniques John taught to change those thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, and patterns of behaviour that were at the root of a glass half empty life - and instill ones that reflected one half full.

I would become happier, more peaceful, more fun-loving, more abundant in every aspect of my life like I wanted. I really did believe that when I made the internal mental shifts, my life would then reflect a glass half full. At least I believed it in theory anyway. Intellectually it made sense to me. But the only way I would really know would be to work with my mind – experiment with John’s techniques and see if I got the results I wanted.

So I committed to doing just that. Experimenting.

Let me say for the record that training the mind to think what you want it to is not an easy process, that’s for sure. But it is totally doable as long as one has a strong desire to change.

I think that’s so very critical and necessary for success, because remember the Great Trickster aka the mind? That “beast” that resists change and will even lie to you to keep the status quo? The one that has thought the same thoughts, believed the same beliefs for decades, if not longer?

When you try and change its ingrained patterns of thought, the mind will behave just like a stallion that bucks and flghts back persistently to not be trained into submission.

So you gotta wanna – big time – or The Great Trickster will have you for breakfast.

But if you persist with its training, the mind will succumb just like the stallion.

I think it’s also necessary for success to take on these powerful beliefs. 2 of John’s 6 Laws of the Mind that are applicable here:

The 4th of the 6 Laws of the Mind is the Law of Control which states, “We are forever experiencing thoughts, but we have the power and ability to either entertain or dismiss them”.

The 5th Law of the Mind is the Law of Insertion: “We have the power and ability to insert any thought of any type into our mind”.

So very long story short, through persistence and exercise of the will, I trained the stallion into believing that my life was a half full glass of Chardonnay. And as a result, my life reflects that belief. It is at least a half full glass of Chardonnay.

Now I continue to train my mind to go beyond half full and dare to believe that my glass is overflowing in all aspects of my life. (My cup runneth over). And I’m happy to report it is working!

Like another mentor of mine, success trainer T. Harv Eker used to say at the beginning of all of his talks, “Don’t believe a word I say” (about the powers of the mind and my experience). Try the principles out for yourself – experiment with them and see where they take you.

Your life will be what you think it to be.