How To Sift Through The Good And The Bad

You’re a sifter! That’s right, I called you a sifter, because we’re all sifters. I’m sure your curiosity is peaked and you’re read to know what sifting really is, and how it’s relevant to your life so let’s get to it.

What Is Sifting?

Sifting, is simply the having of experiences, and then choosing our preferences. Everyone is doing this all the time.

Can you stop having experiences? No. (Maybe if you kill yourself, but no one knows.)
Can you stop having feelings? Not that I’m aware of, maybe while asleep.
Can you stop choosing? Nope, because even ‘waiting’ and ‘inaction’ are choices.

Sifting is taking in all experiences, and choosing your preferences out of them.

So we understand that everyone is sifting, basically all the time. Just like everyone is thinking, and everyone is feeling. Sifting is one of the big 3. The truly successful people of this world think well, trust their feelings, and know how to sift. Do you?

Do You Sift With Success?

Clearly, none of us can stop sifting through experiences and making choices. We can, however, have an experience – and even though it feels bad – continue choosing it. Sounds pretty dumb, eh? Well, you’d be surprised how many people do it. I’ve done it. I was homeless twice. Twice! I had two business partners who weren’t confident in their own value. Two!

This sifting-and-repeating gets at the root of self-abuse, addiction, abusive relationships, depression, unfulfilled goals, etc. because when you have a thought (or an experience), and you choose to repeat it in one form or another, it looks horrible. Like why would you keep doing this?

Sometimes people react to experience with "Oh I hate this and I label that and how dare the world bring me these experiences."  kind of attitude. They’re still sifting, and they’re also realizing that it doesn’t feel great, and then they’re spending tons of time hating on it.

That’s a pretty miserable way to sift. They could just have an experience, admit that it didn’t feel great, and then get clear on a preference.

Find The Contact Lens Of Experience

We’re all sifting, can’t say that enough, so why not have fun with it?  When an experience comes, why not sift through it while looking for something you like. It’s like looking for a dropped contact lens in a trash dump. Even your friends may help.

Everyone’s intention is to find the lens and help out, no one stands around wasting time saying "Oh, I picked up a rusty screw, not the lens. Let me complain about how much I hate finding rusty screws when I’m looking for contact lenses." — They just toss the screw aside immediately and keep looking for the contact lens. After this process continues, someone usually finds the lens. If everyone involved stood around complaining about the garbage they kept finding, the search would likely take much, much longer, and be miserable.

So as you move through life, realize there are some experiences you may not prefer. It happens. They exist. (Maybe avoid comparing life to a treasure-hunt in a trash-dump <grin>) Instead of bitching about these experiences, which will hold back your journey towards what you want, try thinking/saying "Oh, there’s *one* aspect of this I like", or even, "Oh! I’m glad someone else is able to find value in this".

Do anything, anything you can, to appreciate the experience that’s coming to you and enjoy sifting through it, because happily sifting through the less desirable experiences is what gets you quicker to the ones you really love! It’s kind of like, having a library full of books or an iPod full of songs.

Browse The iPod Of Life

Say someone gave you 100,000 songs: some you knew, some you didn’t, some that friends recommended, and some you’ve never heard of.

Well there you go, that’s quite a gift, right?

ou’ve now got this abundance of song-choices and listening-experiences.

Now, you could start checking out the first one alphabetically, and it could be some song you really don’t like, and you know you don’t like it.  You have the choice of ranting and bitching about the song and telling everybody how much it sucks. But notice that, while you’re doing this, you’re not sifting through the rest of the song library.

While you’re whining, you’re not hunting down the fun stuff that’s in there. That particular song could be good for someone else, great, as long as it puts a smile on their face. If it’s not for you, a pro-level sifter would give it the barest flicker of attention and then eagerly and excitedly browse through the library for more awesome tracks that suit them.

So you have two analogies, the contact lens in the dump, and the ipod full of songs. Personally to me life is less like a trash-dump and more like one big library of mp3s.  It never stops and it never ends, and everything in it is value for somebody.

Have fun sifting!

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