Reaching the Top

As A Man Thinketh, So Is He

Once upon a time there was a frog sitting near the bank of a river.  Enjoying the warmth of an afternoon sun, his relaxation quickly turned to panic as he noticed a scorpion fast approaching.  Startled, the frog hopped frantically toward the water, knowing well that scorpions can’t swim.

“Frog! Wait, wait!” yelled the scorpion.  “I need your help!”

The frog, with caution, stopped to hear him out.

“I need to cross the river, but I can’t swim!” said the scorpion. “Can you please carry me across on your back?”

“No way!” replied the frog. “You’ll sting me.”

“Of course not.  If I did that, I would drown, because I can’t swim,” said the scorpion.

Realizing this was true, he agreed to help the scorpion.  He jumped in the water, the scorpion climbed on his back, and they began making their way across the river.

Halfway across, the frog looked up at the scorpion in complete disbelief, as he felt the stinger thrust into his back.

“Scorpion, why!?  Now we will both drown.  Why did you do this!?” yelled the frog.

“Because I’m a scorpion,” replied the scorpion.  “It’s who I am.”

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You will always behave in accordance with your identity -- your beliefs about who you are -- even if doing so will cause you harm.  If you believe you’re a failure, then you will behave in such a manner that engenders more failures than successes.  You will have created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Think about it.  When you believe that you’ll never get the job you want, do you even try?  And if you do try, how much heart do you put into the effort?  Not much.  Instead, you make a half-hearted attempt, fail to get the job, and then use this failure to further strengthen your belief of your inadequacy.  It becomes a downward spiral.  Your beliefs of inadequacy prevent you from truly trying, so you don't really try, so you fail.  This failure, then, further strengthens your belief of inadequacy, causing you to try less and less, causing you to fail more and more. 

Have you ever experienced this in some part of your life?  I have.  The question is, is there hope?  Is there a way out of this downward spiral?  Or are we stuck in it for the rest of our lives?  What can we do?

Now, read carefully, because the principle I’m about to share is the most important idea you will ever read about on my blog.  It’s a principle, a truth, that’s been called The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale -- the secret to success.  Here it is:

As you think, so shall you become.

As you think, so shall you become.

Our lives are determined, are shaped, are formed, by our thoughts.  What’s on the outside is a manifestation of what’s on the inside.  People who think about becoming lawyers become lawyers.  People who think about becoming writers become writers.  And people who think they can’t succeed, don’t.  It’s a truth that’s been stated in many different ways, in many different sources:

"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
  --  Proverbs 23:7 Bible

“We are what we think.
All that we are arises
With our thoughts.
With our thoughts,
We make our world.”
-- The Buddha

“We become what we think about.”
-- Earl Nightingale

“Our lives are defined by our convictions of who we are.”
-- Anthony Robbins

“Man is what he believes.”
-- Anton Chekhov

You can evaluate the quality of your thoughts simply by evaluating the quality of your life.  If your life is bad, your thoughts are bad.  Your thinking is too negative.  Similarly, if your life is good, it’s because your thoughts are positive.  Going back to our question: How do we escape the downward spiral of failure?  We escape by changing our thoughts.  This must occur first.  We must change our thinking, because remember, our thoughts are the reasons we’re in the spiral to begin with.  Once we change our thinking, our actions and behavior will reflect our thinking, as will our lives. 

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I’m going to stop here and continue this discussion in my next entry, where I’ll talk more seriously about Self-limiting Thoughts, the beliefs that prevent us from transforming our lives into the ones that we desire.  For now, I hope you understand the utter importance of your thoughts, for it is with your thoughts that your life is shaped.

Goals: What Is Your Primary Aim?

I've been thinking of a good way to begin this entry, and there's probably no better way to start than by sharing with you what Michael Gerber wrote in his book, The E-Myth Revisited:

"I’d like you to imagine that you are about to attend one of the most important occasions of your life.

It will be held in a room sufficiently large to seat all of your friends, your family, your business associates -- anyone and everyone to whom you are important and who is important to you.

Can you see it?

The walls are draped with deep golden tapestries.  The lighting is subdued, soft, causing a warm glow on the faces of your expectant guests.  Their chairs are handsomely upholstered in a golden fabric that matches the tapestries.  The golden carpeting is deeply piled.

At the front of the room is a dais, and on the dais a large, beautifully decorated table, with candles burning at either end.

On the table, in the center, is the object of everyone’s attention.  A large, shining, ornate box.  And in the box is . . . you!  Stiff as the proverbial board.

Do you see yourself lying in the box, not a dry eye in the room?

Now, listen.

From the four corners of the room comes a tape recording of your voice.  Can you hear it?  You’re addressing your guests.  You’re telling them the story of your life.

How would you like that story to go?

That’s your Primary Aim.

What would you like to be able to say about your life after it’s too late to do anything about it?

That’s your Primary Aim.

If you were to write a script for the tape to be played for the mourners at your funeral, how would you like it to read?

That’s your Primary Aim.

And once you’ve created the script, all you need to do is make it come true.

All you need to do is begin living your life as if it were important.

All you need to do is take your life seriously.  To create it intentionally.  To actively make your life into the life you wish it to be."

What is your primary aim? 

At a restaurant, a waiter comes to your table and asks, “Which entrée would you like?”  Pretend, for a moment, that I’m your waiter, at the restaurant of life.  And now I’m asking you: What do you want?  Who do you want to become?  Note, I’m not asking for your opinion on what is possible and what isn’t, or your opinion on what you think you’re capable of and what you aren’t.  I’m asking you: What do you truly and seriously want in life?

Do you know?  Have you ever taken the time to seriously examine what it is you want most?  To sit down quietly with pen and paper in hand and write down -- as specific and as detailed as possible -- your aspirations, your goals?

If not, why?  It’s been said that Americans spend more time planning their vacations than they do planning their lives.  Does that include you?

This task is not easy.  It’s absolutely amazing, as I’ve found from my own experience, how difficult it can be to figure out what we want in life.  But we absolutely must do this, because if we do not, what will become of us?  How would we spend our time?

Zig Ziglar wrote:

Howard Hill was probably the greatest archer who ever drew a bowstring.  He was so accurate, he killed a bull elephant, a Bengal tiger, and a Cape buffalo with a bow and arrow.  In newsreels, I have seen him repeatedly hit the target dead center.  After sending the first arrow to the center of the bullseye, he would then literally split that arrow with his next shot.

Now, I have never shot the bow and arrow to any degree.  But I’m here to tell you that if your health is good and your eyesight is good, I could spend 30 minutes with you, and at the end of those 30 minutes, I would have you hitting the bullseye more consistently than Howard Hill did on the best day he ever had.

Provided, we first blindfolded Howard Hill.  And spun him around a few times so that he would have no idea which way he was facing.

I hear you saying, “Zig, that’s ridiculous!  Of course he’d lose!  How on earth could you possibly hit a target you couldn’t see?”  That’s a good question.  Here’s a better one:

How can you hit a target you don’t even have?

-Zig Ziglar, See You at the Top

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The captain of a ship does not leave harbor without a target port in mind.  Likewise, you must not set sail on the sea of life without a worthy destination in mind.  You must not drift with the wind, sailing one way then the other, hoping to arrive, by chance, at some desirable port.  “Because you and I both know, that for each rich and bustling port, there are a thousand miles of rocky coastline.” (Earl Nightingale, Lead the Field)

So... what do you want?  What is your primary aim?  Your target?  Your port of destination?  What are your short-term goals?  And are these short-term goals congruent with your primary aim in life?    

I hope you honestly take the time to answer these questions.  You must figure out what you want in life, because if you don't, then no amount of money, possessions, or friends will make you happy.  Not knowing your primary aim, you will forever be a blindfolded Howard Hill, a sailboat lost at sea.        

Emotions, Beliefs, and Limiting Beliefs

In my previous blog entry, They're Your Emotions, there were two main ideas on emotion I wanted to share.  One, your emotions are created from within you, by you, not by others.  There is no secret ether through which external events can travel, penetrate your mind, and push your emotional buttons directly.  Only you have access to those buttons.  And two, the emotions you feel are based on your interpretations of events, not on the events themselves.  That’s how three people can witness the same exact event, yet have different emotional responses.  They each interpreted the event differently; therefore they each felt differently.  These are the two truths I hope you’ve taken away from my previous entry.

I see these truths as being absolutely essential, because if we believed otherwise -- if we believed that our emotional well-being is perpetually and uncontrollably at the mercy of external events -- we’d never even begin to take action.  Why?  Because we wouldn’t have hope.  We wouldn't believe there’s a way to change the quality of our emotional lives, because we’d believe our feelings are uncontrollable, dictated by external circumstance.  And without that hope, we wouldn’t act.  Fortunately, there is.

“Man is not the creature of circumstances;
circumstances are the creatures of men.”
-Benjamin Disraeli [1]

Our feelings are based on our interpretations of events, not on the events themselves.  I know, I’ve said that already.  But what does it mean?  And more importantly, how can we change our interpretations of certain events, and therefore change our feelings?  Let’s start with the first question: what does it mean?

Over the course of our lives, we have developed a multitude of beliefs about everything we have ever experienced.  Growing up, we have formed beliefs about what is and what is not appropriate behavior, our morals.  We have formed beliefs about what we’re willing to live with and what we’re not, our standards.  And we’ve developed beliefs -- no, not beliefs, but convictions -- about ourselves: who we are, what we can do, what we cannot do, what our possibilities are or are not; convictions which, combined, form our self-esteem.

This complete set of beliefs that we’ve gathered since childhood, then, is applied to external events to form our interpretations.  For example, let’s say your friend John loans you $10 so you can buy lunch, and you promise to pay him back during the week.  Then, a few days later, you have the money to pay him back, but discover that he forgot you owe him.  Knowing this, and because your favorite flip-flops are on sale, you buy them with the money you were supposed to return.  Now you feel guilty.  But you see, it’s not the fact that you spent John’s money (the event) that makes you feel this way.  You feel guilty because in your mind you have a moral, a belief, which says, “I should not break promises I make to my friends.”  This belief, applied to the event (breaking your promise), creates your interpretation: “I did something bad.”  And it is this interpretation that is the root cause of you feeling guilty.

So, you believe you shouldn’t break promises to friends, and by buying those flip-flops, you have violated this belief, causing your feeling of guilt.  But now let’s change something.  Let’s say that your friend John doesn’t have a good track record himself.  In fact, you believe, “John has always broken the promises he’s made to me, so it’s OK if I break mine.”  Believing this, you make that purchase, and don’t feel the pang of guilt.  Can you feel the difference this change in belief creates?  Have you ever done this before?  Acted in a way toward one person and felt guilty, but acted similarly toward a different person and not felt guilty?  Why is that?  It’s because you have different beliefs -- one for the first person, another for the second -- and this difference in beliefs is what causes the difference in emotion.

Here’s the important point: If we wish to change our emotional responses to an event, we must change our beliefs about the meaning of said event.  A different belief, a different emotion.

And here, I stop.  Because I know that what I just said does not sit well with you -- especially when you try to apply it to the flip-flops example above.  You see, I’m not here to talk about morality, or to convince you to change your beliefs about what’s right or what’s wrong.  Going back to my example, you may say that we should hold the belief, “I should not break promises I make to my friends”, and that by breaking it, we should feel guilty.  It’s justified!  And you know what, I agree completely.  I’m not suggesting that negative feelings such as guilt are inherently bad, or that we should abolish all negative emotion.  All I’m saying, at this point, is that you change the way you feel by changing what you believe.

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself,
but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment”
-Marcus Aurelius [1]

You change your feelings by changing your beliefs.  But sometimes, the negative feelings your beliefs create are justified.  So your next logical question is, “When, exactly, should I change my beliefs?”  Easy.  You change your beliefs whenever they are hindering or preventing you from living the life you want to live.  That’s it.  No complicated formula or special process required.  If you have a goal that you really want to achieve, but have a belief that’s creating doubt or discouragement, then that is the belief you should change.  The man who believes that he’s a failure in life and that there’s nothing he can do to escape his miserable state is, no doubt, depressed.  And if he is to climb out of this state, he must sit down with a goddamn pen and pad of paper and begin to seriously examine, and ruminate on, his beliefs that are keeping him down.

Limiting beliefs -- that’s what he has.  We all have them, some people to a greater degree than others.  They are the beliefs we have that hold us back, that keep us down.  If you ever find yourself telling yourself that you can’t do this, or you can’t do that; that you don’t deserve success, or happiness, or anything else you want in life, then congratulations: you’ve found a limiting belief.  But if you’ll just take the time to honestly question the truthfulness of that belief, you’ll begin to find counterexamples which weaken its strength.  If done consistently, you’ll eventually find that your belief was absurd, and months from now, you’ll look back with amazement and wonder, “Why in the world did I believe this in the first place?”  Because you see,

“If you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right.”
-Henry Ford         

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So I end this entry with a homework assignment.  A single question that I would like you to ask yourself: “What are my limiting beliefs?”  When you discover one, right it down.  Do this for a few days.  Then wait a day or two, and return to your list of limiting beliefs and begin to make an honest assessment of what they mean and how true they really are.

Regards,
Nick   

References

[1] Awaken the Giant Within, Anthony Robbins,
Free Press, 2003

They're Your Emotions

I have a question to ask you.  And to answer it, I’d like you to think back to a specific time in your life when you’ve had this feeling.  The question: Was there ever a time when someone told you something that made you feel hurt, that hurt your feelings?

Have you thought of an example?  Good.  It shouldn’t have been too hard, because we’ve all experienced this before.  For me, I remember a time in high school when someone was ridiculing me for making a mistake.  It was about something he was experienced in, but I was new at, and I guess he felt the need to pick on me because of this.  I was pretty passive in high school -- didn’t pick on others and wasn’t picked on by others -- so being teased came as a shock to me, and yes, he made me feel hurt.  It never feels good to be looked at as a failure.  I’m sure you’ve had similar experiences, right?  Where you made a mistake and someone laughed at you for it, hurting your feelings?

But let me backtrack here.  Let me backtrack because, in the story I just shared, I lied to you. And let me backtrack because, in your own example, you lied too.  Really.  You see, in my story I told you that he picked on me for making a mistake.  That is true.  I told you that I felt hurt, and this, too, is true.  But I also told you that he made me feel hurt -- and that is a lie.  I apologize for lying to you, but I did so in order to make a point.  At least I can save face by saying that during the time, back in high school, I did believe it was true.  I did believe that he hurt my feelings.  But today, I know that’s a lie.

Confused?  Let me explain.

At the beginning, I asked you to think of a time when someone hurt your feelings.  With this example in mind, I have another question for you: How, exactly, did that person hurt your feelings?  Okay okay, he said something mean to you; we know that.  But that’s not what I’m asking for.  What I’m asking is, how did his words cause you to feel hurt?  He spoke the words, you heard them, then you felt hurt.  Between you hearing his words and you feeling bad, something must have happened.  What happened?

Let’s answer this question, first by stating what did not happen.  You see, others do not have direct access to your emotions.  There is no invisible medium through which people can press your emotional buttons, triggering your feelings of hurt, or anger, or anything else.  The words he spoke to you did not magically penetrate your mind and create that feeling of hurt. 

The reality is, every emotion you have ever felt in the past, and every emotion you will ever feel in the future, was created and will be created by one person: you.  You create, and you are responsible for every emotion you will ever feel.  They’re Your Emotions. When someone disparages you, you chose to feel that sensation of hurt, because in your mind you have a set of rules, a set of criteria, which says, “Only if X and Y and Z happen, then I’ll allow myself to feel hurt.”  You allow yourself to enter that state of mind by the way you use your physiology, by the way your rules, your beliefs, attach meaning to every outside experience in life.  And that is why it’s a lie to say that the guy from high school hurt my feelings, or that someone who said something bad to you made you feel hurt.  They did not make us feel anything.  We did.  We felt hurt because we allowed ourselves to. 

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

   -Eleanor Roosevelt

We are responsible for how we feel about external experiences -- the events which occur outside our bodies and are brought in through our five senses.  Going back to our example, someone said something mean to you.  That’s an external event.  You, then, internalized this event using your senses, in this case hearing.  However -- and this is important -- when the event first entered your mind, it entered as a meaningless, emotionless, blank canvas.  Only after you colored that canvas with the paintbrush of belief did it have any meaning or influence on your feelings.  You see, our emotions are based not on the external events we experience, but on the meanings we attach to these events.  This is the key piece that exists between someone being mean (the event) and you feeling hurt (the outcome).  We are responsible for our feelings about external events, because it’s with our beliefs that we add meaning to them and therefore trigger emotion.

“We must be very careful of the meanings we attach to things, because those meanings determine the quality of how we feel in our lives.”

-Anthony Robbins 

. . . . .

This truth is paramount, as it is the most fundamental, most significant idea which must be understood if we wish to regain control of our lives and steer ourselves in the direction we want to be heading.  Though, the implications of this truth can be scary, because it means we can no longer blame others for our current emotional state of mind.  It’s scary because it means that we are wholly responsible for our lives -- that we must take a risk, move to action, rather than wallow in our own state of emotional misery, blaming others for our lots in life.

In my next blog entry, I’ll pick up here, and talk about how we can control our emotions, now that we understand that they’re created from the inside, not from others.