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Many of us sit around looking at our dreams and what we want to do with our life and think that we don’t really have the ability to achieve it, that our dreams are outside our own reach because of who we are, we where we have been in our lives. We believe that the circumstances that we are in or that we have lived through made our dreams nothing more than mirages, tempting but never real.  And we are WRONG!!!That set of thinking is a whole bunch of self-delusion. Everyone has their own unique brand of trials and tribulations that they have lived through and are living in that makes the world seem like an impossible place, but some people use that as an excuse while others as a driving force to change their lives.

I have a friend who lost one of his legs below the knee. Now he could have easily decided that going into security work, which was his dream, was never going to happen now.  How could he be a bodyguard with only one leg.  Very well  as it turned out. He used his lost leg as a reason to push harder and train until he was better than many of the candidates with two legs and he moved into doing the job he loves despite it.  And our world is full of people with this sort of story.  

The idea here is that we have a choice to make about our world and how we are going to interact with it. The world is nothing more than a reflection of your outlooks and beliefs. If we believe that we cannot overcome where we are or where we came from, then we are correct and will never be able to do so. In contrast, if we believe that we can succeed despite our past and our circumstances that is exactly what we will do. The reason for this is that our outlook defines our effort in the meaningful things in our lives.  Let me say that again.  Our beliefs shape our efforts!

Our beliefs will define the effort that we actually put into something to change ourselves. If we think that nothing is going to change, we will sit and put very little effort and belief into a venture that is meant to change our lives and the simple fact is that our belief will hamper our ability to work on that venture, to stick with it and to ultimately make it a real change. On the other hand, if we believe that something will change our lives, we will have the energy and effort to push that change and make it a reality instead of standing in our own way.  Have you heard, believe you can or believe you can’t either way you are right.

Our belief will also define how we see everything. When we carry a belief that nothing will change, no matter the reality that we live or that the world imposes on us, we will see no change. We could triple our income over a year, yet all we will see are the bills and expenses and we will still feel that nothing has changed. We can lose 20 pounds, but still see a fat image in the mirror because we believe that nothing will change. If believe nothing will change we will seek out the negative aspects that support our belief and ignore the changes that have occurred. As humans, we want to be right and we seek out ways to be right at the subconscious level.  

Believing that we can change things allows us to reverse that process and see and accept the changes that have occurred. Ever thought of buying a red car and then suddenly seeing hundreds of red cars everywhere?  Did everyone else go and buy a red car too?  No, of course not, it is because you are now looking for red cars because your focus is on red cars that you are now noticing them more.   Both of these outlooks reinforce our belief that we can or cannot succeed and makes those beliefs that much stronger.

Changing our belief can take time and practice to do well. If we do it though we greatly increase our chances at a happy and healthy life rather than being angry and disgruntled at everything. Most of us will not have an experience in our lives that jars us out of ingrained beliefs, so it is up to us to take an active role in changing those.

One of the actions we have taken is that we don’t have problems anymore.  We now face challenges that we can overcome.  By simply changing how we looked at such things we have made them easier to deal with.  An example:  Our car needs new brakes.  Even a year ago this would have been a HUGE problem for us because, “Where are we going to find $1000 to fix brakes? Money doesn’t grow on trees!”  Now because we have changed how we look at such things our approach changed as well.  This time our response was “OK so we need $1000 for breaks.  I think we can adjust this budget here some and if we sell a couple more of these, we can have that together in a couple of weeks.”  It was much less stressful this way.  Either way we were going to find the money for new brakes.  It is simply too important to skip.  The old way left us very stressed and miserable.  Our new way left us feeling confident and like we had succeeded in something big because we had overcome a challenge.  

What actions are you going to take to change your beliefs and begin to relish your life?

~Dominic