“You get what you focus on, so focus on what you want!” and “Say it the way you want it!”
The success to creating your future is your attitude. Success is a habit. It is easily available to all who want it, believing you can have it and putting your desires into action is what it takes. Success has no secrets. Those who have achieved it readily tell their story of devoting years to their careers, to their passions and dreams, before they were able to acclaim success.
So many of us have reached that critical point in our lives that we want to change and attain the success we have been working so hard to reach. No matter how old you are or what circumstances you may be in, all you have do is be alert and receptive and believe; knowing that it is possible.
Socrates the Greek Philosopher was profoundly aware of the weakness in his own nature. Yet he came to realize that people are evolving beings, capable of changing and growing toward an ideal. People can always improve themselves. That is part of our greatness. Moreover, that the ability to improve ourselves can develop at any moment in our life.
Our unconscious mind is very important to consider throughout this process of creating your future and achieving success. The key to success resides within the area of our mind known as the unconscious mind and by feeding it positive messages our levels of abundance will change.
No matter how many books one reads on building prosperity in our lives or achieving personal success, if your self image is such that you do not believe you are worthy of success you will never be able to manifest your highest potential from an economic point of view.
So much of my work as a coach for executives and entrepreneurs leads me to see the harmful impact that a low self-image may have on people’s lives. So many people have a fear of succeeding and most people are not even aware of it. They attend seminars, they get executive coaches and they go out and read book, after book, after book on living your biggest life but no matter what happens they find that they cannot achieve their biggest dreams.
When you change your self-identity, your goals start to change; your actions start to change. The way you feel about yourself starts to change and then your life changes. The size of your goals reflects the nature of your self-image. Small self-image – small goals. Changing your self-image would be the start to changing your life.
Books are incredible teachers but nothing will teach you more than life and it is important to stay open to life’s lessons as they present themselves to you every day. The start to making changes starts with inner self-reflection. The doorway to success swings inward not outward. Therefore, the need for self-reflection is important. Removing limiting decisions, negative emotions, anger, sadness, fear and guilt from our past will enable us to look forward into the future with clarity and a new set of goals.
By not reflecting inwards, I believe may be the reason why so many people are living less than ideal lives. They are looking for fulfillment but on the outside; “let me get a better car, let me get a better title, let me live in a bigger house, and then I will find happiness”. Yet a fulfilling life begins by nurturing and connecting with your inner life.
There is nothing wrong with making more money, nothing wrong in living an externally beautiful life but if that is your number one priority, you will get to a time when you will realize that was not your highest priority after all.
Nothing is more important than working on yourself; getting to know yourself, getting to know your beliefs, your fears, your false assumptions, or your stain glass window, as I call it, your Context Window. The stain glass window is the combination of your beliefs, your fears, and your assumptions. It is essentially the way you see your world. We all see the world through a filter and most of us forget that we really do not see the world as it is but as we are. We have a personal context through which we filter reality.
The Context Window looks at our opinions, values, experiences, beliefs and attitudes in what we see through the “window of life”. Through this stained glass window, we determine what the truth is. For many people the windows has many different colours, some are bright; the expression “looking at life through rose coloured glasses”. While for others, they may be dark or even broken. Different life experiences will govern how we perceive events in our lives.
These truths govern our judgments and whether we take action or remain inactive, which in turn influences the results of our behaviours and impact on our future decisions.
We do not really see the truth that we believe we do. This filter has been set up by all the beliefs we have been taught since childhood and all the experiences that we have had since we were young. I encourage you to get to know your stained glass window or Context Window and look at your core beliefs.
Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman, authors of In Search of Excellence, describe an experiment that illustrates the power of words, even when those words are untrue:
The old adage is “nothing succeeds like success”. It turns out to have a sound scientific basis Researchers studying motivation find that the prime factor is simply the self-perception among motivated subjects that they are, in fact, doing well. Whether they are or not by any absolute standard does not seem to matter much. In one experiment, adults were given ten puzzles to solve. All ten were exactly the same for all subjects. They worked on them, turned them in, and were given the results at the end. Now, in fact, the results they were given were fictitious. Half of the exam takers were told that they had done well, with seven out of ten correct. The other half were told they had done poorly, with seven out of ten wrong. Then all were given another ten puzzles (the same for each person). The half who had been told that they had done well in the first round really did do better in the second, and the other half really did do worse. Mere association with past personal success apparently leads to more persistence, higher motivation, or something that makes us to better.
The result of this experiment is worth some thought; the subject’s unconscious minds were influenced by the falsified results. Perception alone radically improved one group’s performance and weakened the other’s.
These words stay in our unconscious mind and as we reach adulthood we need to take responsibility for our own belief systems. No programming has to be permanent. Any negative programming can be turned around. Sometimes through the power of a single affirmation that effectively counteracts the negative programming.