A further quote from the article I received the other day, “What You SAY Is What You Get; How To Speak Your Way To Success” by Jack Canfield, America’s Success Coach:

Researchers have found that the average person thinks as many as 50,000 thoughts a day. Sadly, many of those thoughts are negative — I’m not management material… I’ll never lose weight… It doesn’t matter what I do, nothing ever works out for me. This is what psychologists call victim language. Victim language actually keeps you in a victim state of mind. It is a form of self-hypnosis that lulls you into a belief that you are unlovable and incompetent.

In order to get what you want from life, you need to give up this victim language and start talking to yourself like a winner — I can do it… I know there is a solution… I am smart enough and strong enough to figure this out… Everything I eat helps me maintain my perfect body weight.

This is all well and good — but if you believe that you’re a victim, trying to speak your way out of it rarely works. Your brain hears you saying it and responds, “yeah, right.”

You will give up your victim language only when you cease to think of yourself as a victim, when you adopt the internal belief that you control your own destiny. A victim believes that he or she is not in control of their own life, correct? That they are driven by the currents of circumstance. Only when you change that belief will your victim-driven mindset change.

Oh, you may, by sheer force of repetition, convince your mind that you’re not a victim. Your brain will hear the repeated affirmations and begin to question itself. It will begin to think, “Okay, I’m hearing all this stuff. Why am I not driven by circumstance?” If your mind comes up with enough good reasons on its own, your belief that you are a victim will change. Then again, it may not — it depends on if Mr. Brain can come up with enough reasons to believe differently.

Change your beliefs

Why leave to chance whether or not your mind identifies you as a victim? Make a decision that one of your core beliefs is that you are in control of your own destiny. That “you don’t believe in any of that fate crap.” How do you do that? Easily, it turns out, and a lot more effectively that repeated affirmations of denial…  • Read the rest of this entry »

Reality isn’t real

What is reality? In the physical world, we can say, “That building is real”, or “that ball really did go through my window”. But in the realm of your mind, what is reality?

Your reality is simply your perception of the world around you after your brain has filtered the input through your rules, values and beliefs heirarchy. Your brain is constantly asking, “What should this mean to me?” The answers it comes up with are based on what you believe, what your values are, and the rules that you’ve set up for yourself.

Here’s food for thought: In the movie The Matrix, the character Neo is introduced to the ‘programmed reality’ of the matrix. In a setting devoid of anything but 2 chairs and a television set, he asks the question, “This…this isn’t real?”

“What is real?”, he is asked by Morpheus. “How do you define ‘real’? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”

Did you ever think about this? Are you sure that the red color you see is the same as the red color other people see? You know that the way your voice sounds to yourself is not the way other people hear you. You know this because you’ve listened to recordings of your voice. Does the smell of a daisy smell the same to you as it does to your neighbor?

Does an event mean the same thing to you as it does to the person down the street? You’ve been invited to go skydiving. Are you excited? Or are you aprehensive, or fearful? Why does skydiving excite some people and elicit uncontrollable terror in others? The answer is in the rules you’ve made for yourself, your beliefs, your values.

Your programmed reality

The encouraging fact is that all of these rules, beliefs, and values you have can be changed, if you want to. If you think about it, you’ll realize that most of this heirarchial system you have was set up without any input from you! It was programmed into your brain without your knowledge or consent. You didn’t consciously decide that you were going to be uncomfortable around new people, did you? Of course not. At some point in time, your brain decided that meeting new people was a thing to be nervous about. Maybe you met someone new, then later realized your fly was open. Or maybe you had a booger you didn’t realize was falling out of your nose until you looked in the mirror later. Your brain processes this, and decides that meeting new people isn’t such a good thing.

Hardly logical, is it? No. But that doesn’t stop Mr. Brain from making associations that may not make any sense or have any reasonable connection to ‘reality’. You don’t always walk around with your fly open or boogers hanging out your nose, do you? Of course not. But your brain has interpreted that meeting new people might mean embarassment because of something that may have happened once upon a time. It may not have even happened! The whole thing could be only your imagination, but your mind makes it real.

What is your reality? Is it empowering you to move beyond where you are, or is it limiting you?

I received an email from a business associate today. Attached was an interesting article titled “What You SAY Is What You Get; How To Speak Your Way To Success” by Jack Canfield, America’s Success Coach (his description!).
The article starts out,

If you are going to be successful in creating the life of your dreams, you have to believe that you are capable of making it happen. You have to believe you have the right stuff, that you are able to pull it off. You have to believe in yourself. Whether you call it self-esteem, self-confidence, or self-assurance, it is a deep-seated belief that you have what it takes — the abilities, inner resources, talents, and skills to create your desired results.

Your beliefs are really the key. They determine what you focus on during the day, what you think you can do, what you think you can’t do, what you consider as possible when you look at things such as business opportunities. They are the filter that you see your life through.

If one of the things you believe strongly is that rejection is the end of the world, are you likely to make the sales calls that you need to make? On the other hand, if you believe that having an offer rejected is merely a step on the stairway to success, you’ll be much more inclined, even enthusiastic, about making the contacts you need to make.

Do you have beliefs that are holding you back? Do you not believe in yourself as you should?

Identifying limiting beliefs

The first step that you must take is to identify the beliefs and rules that you have that are limiting you. One of the easiest ways to do that is to put yourself mentally in a situation that you’re uncomfortable with and you want to change. Say, for instance, that you’re uncomfortable meeting new people, talking to them. Now, say to yourself, “I’m really not comfortable here because ______.” Fill in the blank, and you’ll have identified one of your limiting beliefs. It could be, “I’m nervous here because I don’t think I’m at these peoples’ level.” Or, “I can’t do this because I’ve never done it before.” Rather simple, eh? Doesn’t take a whole lot of deep thought, just a willingness to put yourself mentally in uncomfortable situations and recognize why you’re uncomfortable.

Then you’ll have identified a belief that’s holding you back. But don’t worry — you can change that belief! You really can! If you have beliefs that are limiting you, why in the world should you keep them? Why continue to believe that way if it’s holding you back from accomplishing your goals? “It’s just reality”, you might say. Hogwash.

Work on identifying your limiting beliefs, rules, and values. Your goal is going to be to change those, but you can’t accomplish a goal without first having a clear perception of it, right? So get to work. See you next segment.