What you must realize is that your personality – from the Latin persona, meaning a mask – is nothing more than a mask that not only conceals the real you from everyone else, it has misled you into thinking that it is, in fact, who you are. But, psychology tells us that your personality is a series of snapshots of people and events that impressed you when you were a young child – what we normally call our formative years. You snapped photos of these things because they were important enough to make you feel good or bad about yourself at that time. Unfortunately, psychology also tells us that the normal person is much more disposed to dwell on the negative rather than the positive photographs.

And your subconscious mind is currently obsessed with those snapshots and it is this obsession that creates your personality. Essentially, your personality is not real – it may have got you to where you are and you may really like it – but take care that you don’t fall in love with an illusion.

To rid your daily life of the afflictions from which only your illusory personality can suffer – worry, stress, anxiety, self-doubt, fear, frustration – you need to go beyond that personality, your perceived strengths and weaknesses. You’ve to go in search of the real you because not only does it not know worry, stress, doubt, not only is the inner you fearless, the real you is capable of achieving effortless success and happiness. The great news is that you won’t have to look to hard to find the inner you – it’s crying out to be discovered. You’ll uncover the real you in the quiet of a reflective moment, in the experience of one of those wonderful “natural high” moments that we experience at some point in our lives – where peace and contentment reign.

However, you shouldn’t wait for the next peak moment to get over the illusions of worry, stress and all the rest. You can do that right now by doing some meditation. When you meditate you will start to experience that stress, worry and fear are simply poisonous thoughts and that a clear and focused mind (the real you) simply has not time for such rubbish – it has much more pressing things to do.

Of course, you are aware of the odd useless thought that whizzes through your head – thoughts like “I hate my job” (this has nothing to do with your job, it has to do with what you think about it!) “I wish I was out on fishing” (a completely useless and distractive thought if you’re in the middle of a client meeting!) “I feel agitated talking to this person” (a thought linked to your perceived inadequacy as a normal adult, rather than anything to do with the other person). You might also be aware of one of the most corrosive forms of useless thought – the curse of worry. Then there are the deeper, darker thoughts that hide in your subconscious – these you believe to be hard facts. All our perceived weaknesses, all the things that we may not like about ourselves, all our shortcomings are simply thoughts based on things that made us feel a certain way about ourselves during our early years. They are seriously toxic thoughts.

Useless thought presents us with three big problems! First of all, it distracts us from doing what we’re supposed to be doing – to the extent that we only one percent do it! We’re not going to achieve much in life if we haven’t bothered to turn up for the event!! Secondly, useless thought presents us with a familiar, habitual way of going through or, perhaps even, coping with our daily life. It’s a habit that we’re so used to that we’re unaware of it. Thirdly, useless thought stops you moving towards the life that you really want. Go on thinking useless thought and you will never change your life. We can all achieve whatever we believe in – but if our resident useless thoughts are contrary, how will we ever believe?

You’ve got to break the cycle of useless thought. This is most effectively done by stopping yourself from having irrelevant, simple useless thoughts. How about an example! You’re walking along the street and you see a nice car. That’s fine – but you should then walk on and observce whatever happens next. However, you might say to yourself “That car is nicer than mine!” That’s a useless thought – it has nothing to do with the reality of the moment (the only time and place there is!). And it leads to other useless thoughts: “I wish I had a better car!” “I couldn’t afford a new car!” “I cannot afford to go on holidays this year either!” “What if I can’t keep making my home loan repayments!” Useless thoughts take normal adults down alleys and mug them all the time. It’s part of the way we are as normal adults. However, we’ve got to break the cycle of useless thought, otherwise we will continue to live habitual mundane lives. Is that your goal?