Beliefs

In order to achieve success, you must believe you will be successful before you start.

I know this sounds like a cliché…

BUT… it’s very important and fundamental.

Success is achieved by having a millionaire mentality… meaning you think like a millionaire NOW, not after you become one.

How will you become successful if you don’t begin to see and think yourself successful?

I’ll tell you…

It’s not possible!

Your personal beliefs have created your life experiences to this point. This is the perfect time to begin addressing some of these beliefs.

Beliefs are the thoughts you adopt to rule your life.

Why is it that one man’s gold is another man’s junk? Why is it that when two people are faced with a challenge, one person sees certain failure while the other person sees adversity as a reason to succeed?

Most people buy their own excuses and barely get by. They barely make a living, yet a few motivated and focused individuals become successful… not by getting by, but by designing a life.

Most people are willing to believe that childhood and adult events have shaped their lives.

NOT TRUE.

It’s not the events that shape your life… It’s your perception and beliefs of those events that have the greatest impact.

Break Free of Limiting Beliefs

You have probably known or read about remarkable people who have suffered loss and abuse, but still prevailed and became triumphant survivors instead of beaten down victims.

It’s never the environment. It’s never the events, but the meaning you attach to the events that matter.

It’s how you see, view, and interpret these events that shape who you are today and who you’ll become tomorrow. Beliefs are what determine whether you play and win the game of life or sit on the bleachers of life and collect splinters.

Generalizations are what create self-limiting beliefs.

Perhaps you have failed or been unsuccessful in other businesses in your life, and based on that experience, you have developed a belief or a fear that keeps you stuck.

Perhaps you have heard these generalizations from other people when talking about having your own business:

• Sounds difficult.
• I tried that once. It didn’t work for me.
• Sounds like you have to do sales work.
• Those types of businesses never work.
• You’ll never make it with your lack of experience.
• Sounds like a scam to me.
• Get real! You’re such a dreamer!
• Grow up!
• People like us are never successful in business.
• Don’t invest any money!

I’m sure you can come up with many other generalizations for any endeavor you have ever attempted.

Beliefs are Self-fulfilling

Once you believe a statement to be true, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Why even try?” or “I’ll give it a shot, but it probably won’t work,” or “I’ll give it my best effort.”

These are all statements that really mean, “I don’t believe I’ll make it, but I’ll go through the motions in case anybody asks whether I made an effort, but I know full well that I won’t be successful at this anyway. At least I won’t disappoint myself.”

Let me ask you this…

Were you one of the people who received poor grades in school and believed the generalization that you weren’t bright or that you were a slow learner?

These generalizations are perceptions based on your past and often the opinion of someone else. These very generalizations are what end up limiting you by narrowing your view of what you deserve.

Average people think very realistically, while successful people tend to think out of the box, or somewhat unrealistically.

My whole point is that generalizations form your beliefs and therefore become limitations that you impose upon yourself. Most of your beliefs are nothing more than generalizations of past experiences and misinterpretations of painful and pleasurable incidents.

Here are three challenges that you face regarding generalizations and beliefs:

1. You do not create conscious decisions about what you will or won’t believe.

2. Your beliefs are misinterpretations of past experiences.

3. Once you adopt a belief as your own, you tend to forget that it is merely an interpretation of a situation that can be reinterpreted at any time.

These challenges are the very reasons that a large number of people fail when they get out of the box or step into free enterprise.

Many times, with this belief and thought process, you will go through the motions of attempting to achieve, but in reality, you will continuously sabotage your success without ever understanding why.

Making the Change

Until you learn to change your thinking, you will continue to treat your beliefs as if they are realities. Many of your beliefs are adopted limitations handed down by your parents, spouses, supervisors, teachers or other people you perceived to be authority figures.

I have assisted many of my clients to adopt a new set of permissions… their own!

Giving up limitations for permissions is the process I call “reinventing yourself.” The majority of people rarely question their beliefs. Changing how you think and changing how you view situations is what allows you to grow and change as an individual.

You have the power to create or the ability to merely exist. You have the capability to take any experience of your life and create a meaning that is either disempowering or a meaning that can literally empower you and other people and positively change lives, especially your own.

Unfortunately, some people take the pain associated with their past and say…

“Because of this, I will never be successful,” and yet there are those who experience the same pain and choose another belief… a belief that says, “Because of this, I will assist others.”

These people say, “Because I’m an alcoholic and recovering drug addict, and because I’ve been abused, I will be in a better position to assist others to change their beliefs. I will now be in a situation to teach people about their potential as human beings.”

I spent fourteen years of my life in addictions. I have spent the last 29 years clean and sober. By reinventing my life and myself, I have been able to aid thousands of people with achieving the same transformations.

We have all experienced challenges at different times in our lives. In my early thirties, I had reached a point in my life where I had to change or my options were going to be very bleak. I made a decision to adopt a new philosophy of life.

Over a period of time, I was able to pick up my shattered dreams and begin my process of transformation. I consciously decided to begin living an empowered life. It was a choice and as you know, the choice is always there for you when you are ready to acknowledge it.

Changing your long adopted, old, comfortable beliefs takes time. It’s a process, not an overnight sensation.

Look at the process of change as a marathon, not a sprint. You must be willing to go through the process in order to collect the payoff. It’s time for you to recognize the capacity you have for change and literally become the person you know you deserve to be.