What do you get when you squeeze an orange??

This train of thought came from some Wayne Dyer teachings on YouTube – if you haven’t heard of Wayne Dyer before, then I recommend you check out some of those free videos – he certainly brings a new way of thinking to things.  But on this occasion, he was talking about what happens when you squeeze an orange…

OK – it’s not rocket science – you squeeze an orange and you get orange juice, right?  So putting that fruit under pressure yields the very essence of the orange.  Now take that to your life – what comes out when you get squeezed?

This is a very telling question – and not always a nice answer!  When the pressure comes on (which could be financial, business, family or just being cut off at the lights) – that’s when your true feelings come out.  When your defenses are down, and you are simply reacting to a situation rather than using the social filters that we all learn as adults – then your “juice” becomes evident.  And all too often in our society, that’s not a very pleasant sight.

But the question that really got me thinking was “where does that juice come from?”!  You see – an orange contains orange juice because of all the things that it has experienced – the weather, nutrients, sunlight, any chemicals used by the farmer.  Sometimes you pick up an orange and there’s almost no juice in it, other times you might get a lot of juice but little flavor.  There are many variations – just because you picked up an orange, does not mean that you can definitely say what is inside it.

So too with what is inside of us.  Our “juice” is the result of our experiences, our mistakes and our successes, the TV we watch, the things we read, the friendships we keep and the conversations that we participate in.  All of these have been mixing together and brewing into your character until one day, someone cuts you off in traffic, and we see just exactly what kind of juice has been developing.

The good news is that, unlike our poor squeezed orange, we have the opportunity to change our essence.  But we have to be prepared to take a long, honest look at just what we have been putting into ourselves, and make some changes if we expect to make a difference.  For me – I haven’t read a newspaper or watched the news on TV in 6 years – and I cannot honestly say that I have missed anything significant!  But I have dramatically reduced the amount of negativity that I absorb.  The next step is to replace that with positive input – personal development, like the Wayne Dyer videos linked above, or whatever works for you.

Bottom line – if you want good oranges, you have to feed your orange trees well.  If you want a great character, tuned for success and prosperity in everything you do – then you have to feed your mind well.  There are no short cuts, and the results may not show up overnight – but if you tend your mind and guard well what goes into it, then you can change!