Selecting Your Personality

Making memories stronger means making them more retrievable, both voluntarily and involuntarily.

The mind’s general content is made up of or strongly flavored by memories. It is obvious that how you feel or think about your experiences now is colored by your past. Past experiences that are stronger have more impact on your present experiences.

So, pick your past!

This is done in two parts. Here’s how:

First: Whenever you have an experience that you feel is a “goodie”-one that will have a positive influence on your personality-mind-senses, then strengthen it by categorizing it with intellectual and physical actions. You can do this by simply naming your experience (soon to be a memory) with an adjective such as “love,” “compassion,” “harmony,” “forgiveness,” “vitality,” “passion,” “generosity,” “abundance,” “faith,” “gratitude,” etc.

At first you should target, at most, one or two of the above as the qualities that you are looking for in your experiences. For instance, whenever you find that something about your experiences can be labeled “love” or “loving” or “lovable” etc., then intellectually note that fact by having the thought “That’s an experience with ‘love’ in it.”

Second: As you mentally note that you are experiencing a certain quality, then physically make a motion as if you are grabbing it mid-air and then doing something with it that symbolizes your assimilating that kind of quality. For instance, if you grab a “love moment” you might then bring that experience to your chest and “place” it into your heart. This physical action harmonizes with the intellectual action and further strengthens the memory of the experience. Each quality that you collect should have a different symbolic storing activity. It’s important that you decide what kind of action is best for you. The “placing into your heart” action might be less symbolic than perhaps “kissing the quality as it rests in your palm.” The actions must be poetically correct! You choose!

Do this for a week or so-until one or two actions like this become second nature to you, and then you can begin to add other qualities to your repertoire.

By doing this, you create memories that YOU like and want to have more easily recalled AND to be those which are more likely to form the “background” of your life. This makes for a personality that is, day by day, filled with positive and powerful qualities.

Ask yourself:

What kind of memories have I usually been unconsciously storing or strengthening by giving my attention to them? What percentage of them are bad experiences with negative qualities?

How often DO I have a specific memory from my distant past? How often am I certain about the influences that are skewing my present feelings, thoughts and perceptions?

What part of me recognizes good? How was this part formed in me? Who did that? Could I have a better good-ometer? Would this technique help me recalibrate my ability to appreciate the qualities of my experiences in daily life?

What am I missing now because I just am not practiced at noticing it? Am I surrounded by love and compassion? Would my life be much better if I was more sensitive to life positive qualities?

What does the phrase, “what you put your attention on grows,” mean to me now?