How we react

“Our lives are not determined by what happens to us, but how we react to what happens. Baseball is just a game. You should always play the game with passion, play the game with heart, and play the game you love, and possibly one day your dreams can come true just like mine did.” – Wade Boggs, upon induction as the newest member of the Baseball Hall of Fame

Accept no limits

“A person is limited only by the thoughts that he chooses.” — As A Man Thinketh

You are not limited to the life you now live. It has been accepted by you as the best you can do at this moment.

Any time you’re ready to go beyond the limitations currently in your life, you’re capable of doing that by choosing different thoughts
.

We each earn the income we do today because that is the amount we have limited ourselves to earn. We could easily earn 5, 10, 20 times or more if we did not limit ourselves through the thoughts we maintain.

Don’t believe that’s true? Surely you know people who earn much more than you who don’t have your education, your skills, or your intelligence. So why do they earn more than you?

I love the story of George Dantzig that Cynthia Kersey wrote about in Unstoppable. As a college student, George studied very hard and always late into the night. So late that he overslept one morning, arriving 20 minutes late for class. He quickly copied the two math problems on the board, assuming they were the homework assignment. It took him several days to work through the two problems, but finally he had a breakthrough and dropped the homework on the professor’s desk the next day.

Later, on a Sunday morning, George was awakened at 6 a.m. by his excited professor. Since George was late for class, he hadn’t heard the professor announce that the two unsolvable equations on the board were mathematical mind teasers that even Einstein hadn’t been able to answer. But George Dantzig, working without any thoughts of limitation, had solved not one, but two problems that had stumped mathematicians for thousands of years.

Simply put, George solved the problems because he didn’t know he couldn’t.

Bob Proctor tells us to “keep reminding yourself that you have tremendous reservoirs of potential within you, and therefore you are quite capable of doing anything you set your mind to. All you must do is figure out how you can do it, not whether or not you can. And once you have made your mind up to do it, it’s amazing how your mind begins to figure out how.”

And that’s worth thinking about.

Note: This was previously published in Day by Day with James Allen, but its message bears repeating many times.

The Belief of Lance Armstrong

“Without belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single day. And it will beat you. I didn’t fully see, until the cancer, how we fight every day against the creeping negatives of the world, how we struggle daily against the slow lapping of cynicism. Dispiritedness and disappointment, these are the real perils of life, not some sudden illness or cataclysmic millennium doomsday. I knew now why people fear cancer: because it is a slow and inevitable death, it is the very definition of cynicism and loss of spirit… So, I believed.” – Lance Armstrong

Lance wins seventh straightCongratulations to Lance on seven straight! Thanks for the great example and all the meaningful lessons you taught us!

Conquer Fear!

“He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure.” – As A Man Thinketh

I have come to believe that the greatest diseases of mankind are doubt and fear. That’s not to lessen the seriousness of some of our other afflictions, but doubt and fear rob more people of more life than all the other diseases of the world put together.

Why do I think they’re diseases? Well they’re acquired, we weren’t born with them. They’re communicable – much of the time they’re passed from one person to the next. But even more clear is the Merriam-Webster dictionary which says a disease is “a condition of the living animal…that impairs normal functioning.” Sounds like fear and doubt to me.

Doubt keeps us from going for the promotion that we certainly would have gotten had we gone for it; from asking for the big order that the next person got because they asked; from making positive and long lasting changes in our life because they “rock the boat.”

Fear causes us to make weak and irrational decisions that sell out our future for the sake of today. It takes our happiness, our sleep, our very life.

For the “patient” who finally admits they have a disease, there are cures for doubt and fear.

In her outstanding book, Conquer Fear!, Lisa Jimenez lists “The Seven Truths” that can help us overcome fear:

“Truth #1
Fear is the dominant problem in your life today.

Truth #2
Fear is a gift that was instilled in you as a means of protection and a way to bring you closer to God.

Truth #3
When you run from or deny your fear, you leave the gift unopened.

Truth #4
When your fear of success or fear of failure is exposed, you break through their control over you.

Truth #5
Your belief system is the driving force behind your behaviors and your results.

Truth #6
Your everyday habits are broadcasting your belief system, your fear, and your unmet needs loud and clear.

Truth #7
Change your beliefs and you change your behaviors.
Change your behaviors and you change your results.
Change your results and you change your life.”

And that’s worth thinking about.

The secret to lasting change

Here’s some excellent wisdom from John Assaraf, author of The Street Kid’s Guide to Having It All:

Things like your weight, your appearance, and the amount of money you make are expressions of a deep-rooted mental image. If you want to make permanent change on the outside, you must first retrain the internal mental images that automatically control your perceptions and behaviors.

You already know that willpower and persistence don’t work long term. That’s because they’re controlled by your conscious mind, which accounts for only 2 to 4 percent of your actions and perceptions. Here’s the good news: You also have an unconscious, “cybernetic trigger” in your brain that works exactly like the thermostat in your home. Just as a thermostat is set to a certain temperature and automatically makes corrections to maintain it, your cybernetic trigger is set to a certain mental image and takes appropriate actions to maintain it.

To make lasting change, you must create a new internal image of your desired goal, then you must condition your brain to see it. If you don’t like your current weight or income, for example, you must break the old patterns and the old conditioning that’s causing them. You must create a new image and reinforce it in your mind. It takes 30 days of everyday practice to retrain your brain and make a permanent change. The good news is that you can’t get a brain hernia if you overdo it! Once a new habit is ingrained in your brain, you’ll behave automatically to maintain that new internal image.

Application of Knowledge

Start with these 3 simple actions every day for the next 30 days:

1. Get absolutely clear on the outcome you want to achieve. Write it down.

2. Replay in your head having already achieved your outcome. See all the benefits. Imagine what you would be doing, who would be impacted, what conversations you would be having, and how you would feel. Spend 5 to 10 minutes fully in this experience every morning upon waking, and again just before bed.

3. Reaffirm the following affirmation as many times as you can daily: “I now have everything I need to accomplish all of my business and personal goals. Abundance is my birthright and I accept it NOW.”