Do you believe you’re creating the life you deserve? Is your belief strong enough that you REALLY believe you not only deserve it but that it’s possible?
Most of us develop “limiting beliefs” as we grow up beginning at a very early age. Think how many times as a child or even as an adult, someone has told you “Oh, you can’t do that!” or “that’s a crazy idea. It will never work.” I know it’s something I’ve experienced over and over again. Remember a week ago Susan Boyle got on stage to sing – the judges didn’t actually say anything but they certainly looked at her askance. It was easy to read their faces. But she had the belief in herself that said “I Believe In ME!”
Have you thought – when I just get the education or knowledge, I’ll be able to do it. So we spend our time learning or “getting ready”. Obviously, knowledge is important but if it becomes a limiting belief, it will keep us from moving forward. Many times the best way to gain knowledge, is to begin working toward our goal at the same time we’re going through training in whatever form that takes.
Another “limiting belief” is that you’ve tried and tried and continue to fail. History has legions of people who failed and quit. It also has legions of people who didn’t perceive those times as failures but rather learning experiences. Most of us have heard the stories about Thomas Edison and his 10,000 attempts to invent a light bulb or Colonel Sanders 1000 attempts to find someone who would believe in his chicken recipe or Steven Spielberg’s 20 years of looking for a way to produce “Shindler’s List”. These people stayed focused on their goals.
There is a great story about Roger Banister and John Landry. Everyone said that the human body wasn’t capable of running the 4 minute mile – it just wasn’t physically possible. So on the day of the race between these 2 men, there was much anticipation. During most of the race Landry was well ahead of Banister. Going into the last turn, Landry looked back over his left shoulder and didn’t see Banister. In the meantime Banister was passing Landry on the right and handily won the race – in under 4 minutes. Landry took his eye off his goal (the finish line) and that gave Banister the edge. Interestingly, they raced many times after that day and Landry won everytime. You must keep focused on your goal.
All of these people had enormous obstacles to overcome, probably the biggest being past negative experiences. But they took control of their life. When we have a goal that we truly believe in, we must take control of our emotions, our feelings, our actions and our limiting beliefs and create the life we deserve.
Easy to say. Hard to do? Well, limiting beliefs manifest themselves in negative self-talk. There are many things we can do to change negative self-talk. There has been much written about the power of positive thinking with thousands of examples of how people affected their life mentally and physically through changing their beliefs. While ridding yourself of some of your limiting beliefs can take some time, the methods are fairly simple. For the next 21 days do some or all of the following:
Start your day with a Power Shower – while you’re showering review your schedule for the day and visualize how great a presentation you’ll do; how that potential client will become say yes; how you’ll win that contract; how you’ll impress your boss with your creative idea. Shout it out – all your successes for the day.
Read positive or motivation books – there’s thousands to choose from. Just open one up anywhere and read for 30 minutes every morning.
Rewrite your goals daily.
Put a motivational CD in your car so you’ll hear positive messages as you go through your day.
Spend 5 minutes twice a day visualizing yourself achieving your goal – do one of these right before going to sleep and your subconscious will continue working on it while you sleep.
Remember that success is a journey – not a destination. Continue to study while you’re working toward your goal, not instead of. If you’re stuck and can’t seem to get to where you want to be, stand on your head (figuratively) and look at the situation from a different angle but NEVER TAKE YOUR EYES OFF THE GOAL.
When we consider our physical health, many people feel they are either sick or not sick. But in reality we can be sick, not sick or healthy.
So too with our life adventure. Many people are “not sick”. They may not take much pleasure in things. They don’t like their jobs and they’re just coasting along waiting to see if “life” is going to drop something in their lap. They may even see an opportunity but think “it’s too risky” or “it takes too much work”. So they just survive.
But isn’t life our big adventure? Isn’t it about growing up spiritually and emotionally; taking risks; expanding our experiences? It’s easy to see how people arrive at survival mode. It’s safe. As we’re growing up, we’ve all encountered situations when we tried something new or were just enjoying ourselves and someone laughed at us or ridiculed us. How did we handle it? For many people, these instances pile up over the years and they find themselves “just getting by”, just surviving, playing it safe. If we begin choosing only “safe” situations so that we look good in other people’s eyes, we will miss out on many opportunities that are right in front of us; opportunities that could change our lives.
How many times have you been faced with a “crisis” – I don’t mean a life and death type of crisis, but rather those that happen frequently. You’ve got a meeting with a new business partner and it’s vital that you be on time and make a good impression. You’re a little nervous because this could grow your business exponentially. You jump in the car and take off, trying to do a little mental preparing. You arrive right on time and as you start to get out of the car, you look down – you still have on your sweat pants and slippers!!. What are you going to do? You can just imagine what this new person is going to think of you – my goodness you can’t even dress appropriately. They’ll probably laugh at you and then start backing away from the business. Your busy little mind can create all kinds of scenarios – all disastrous. Now you’re really in a frenzy.
You could get back in the car and call them and tell them your car broke down or. . .
Go in and after saying ‘hello’ etc., say you know the greatest thing about my business is that I get to work at home and I often dress accordingly. Well, I’m a little chagrined because I guess I was so involved in thinking about our plans to work together, I neglected to check my attire and here I am slippers and all!
What do you think would happen? Probably you would both have a little laugh and very possibly your new business partner would tell you a story about an embarrassing moment of his own. We make up reality when we’re faced with a ‘crisis’. We need to quit worrying about what others think of us and rather start worrying about what we think of ourselves.
Thriving takes risk. There are several things we need to overcome in order to thrive:
Fear of failure
Fear of being wrong
Fear of rejection
Fear of embarrassment
If we’re going to live this adventure to the fullest, we must do our best. That means stepping outside our comfort zone to face irrational fears. It means taking responsibility for our choices. It means there are no failures, only learning experiences. It means getting over ourselves so that we can SOAR (Spirituality, Optimism, Abundance, Responsibility).
Are you thriving or just surviving? When will you take that first step?
How many times have you said “I can’t do that. I don’t have enough money (or ability,etc.).” Well, if you’re like most people, including myself, you’ve done it many times. Before you gave yourself a chance to ‘get’, ‘be’ or ‘do’ whatever it was, you blocked the possibility.
So the question is, when are you going to REALLY make the decision to realize your dream? See, when you make that decision that you’re going to do, be or have something, then the opportunities and means begin to appear to help you on your way. You don’t have to know how you’re going to get there, you just need to know that you will achieve your desired goal and be open to the possibilities that present themselves.
If you can conceive of an idea or goal, you can achieve it. The challenge often is keeping the negative thoughts at bay. When those snarly little thoughts raise their ugly head is just say “switch” out loud and visualize switching them off. Do it often enough and soon it becomes a habit.
It’s been said, ”by the thoughts we think, we are the designers and creators of our life”. How true. We need to believe that our dreams are POSSIBLE. I leave you with this video by Les Brown who says it eloquently http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwSMAd039rk
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