Believing And Achieving

Bet you that you've never realized that you are achieving what you believe in right here, right now! Our subconscious mind, where we store our beliefs, dictates our behaviour and creates our lives. Problm is that normal people live down to normal expectations. You've got to change your beliefs, to impress your subconscious mind with the belief of what you really want out of life. After that your subconscious mind will simply bring it about.

By Willie Horton

Copyright (c) 2010 Willie Horton

How would you feel about the proposition that you can achieve anything - absolutely anything - in which you can believe?  Well, whether you realize it or not, that’s what you’re actually doing at the moment - you’re living the life that you believe you can live.  Years of research in various fields of psychology lead to the inexorable conclusion that normal people perceive only what they expect to perceive and experience only what they expect to experience.  This psychological fact present us with a major stumbling block because, unfortunately, as a result of our socialisation into a normal world and upbringing by normal parents, we have normal expectations and these normal expectations are way short of where we could set our sights.  In other words, at this very moment in time, you are living down to your expectations - and you’re not even aware of it.

Psychology also explains that our lives are created by our subconscious mind’s view of the world.  We learn our perceptions of how the world works, who we are, what we’re capable and incapable of, our strengths and weaknesses, in short, our own self image during our formative years.  These perceptions, which over time gradually become deeply held beliefs, are stored in the deep recesses of our subconscious mind and, in later life, when faced with a situation in which we have to take action, our actions will be dictated not be what is actually happening but by what we perceive is happening based on those subconscious beliefs.  In this way, we constantly replay the repetitive behaviours that we learned during our formative years and stop ourselves in our tracks.  Worse that that, we are unable to spot opportunity when it stares them us the face, because it’s not something that we are expecting and, therefore, we are simply unable to see it.

The result of all this is that our subconscious perceptions, learned during our childhood, are our beliefs.  These drive our expectations and our behaviour and, in this way, our beliefs create our lives.  Or, put another way, we achieve what we believe.  The obvious corollary of this is that, if we change our beliefs, we will live a completely different life.

Effectively, you have to give yourself new beliefs - these new beliefs should, quite obviously, focus on the things that you really, really want out of life - not the mundane in which you currently believe by default.  You have to be able to make a big enough impression on your subconscious mind to enable it focus on what you want to achieve to the extent that it believes that it is part and parcel of who you are and what you’re capable of.  If you can make that impression on your subconscious mind, it will simply see the life that you really want and the things that you really want to achieve as the logical step up from your current life.

So, what does it take to believe?  Believing is not wishing hoping and wanting - these aspirations mean absolutely nothing to a subconscious mind that is driven by its inner programming.  Rather, believing is seeing, feeling, hearing smelling and tasting.  Yes, that’s right - your five senses, which are your sole interface with the world, are the mechanisms by which the subconscious mind creates your life.  They are the very ingredients that you used to form your views of how the world works, life in general and your own self-image, during your formative years.  As adults, we pay little or no attention to our five senses, preferring to use what we learned during our childhood to make sense of today - and, in the process, make a complete nonsense of it!

To change your life, you really only have to take some simple steps to provide your subconscious mind with a new belief system.  To do this, you’ve got to explain to your subconscious mind what it would be like to achieve your goal.  You’ve got to explain to it what It is like to see, feel, hear, smell and taste the life that you really want - as if you already have it.  Nothing could be simpler, nothing could be more powerful.  You’ve got to immerse yourself in your desired outcome, imagining that you have arrived at that outcome already.  But the subconscious mind - as distinct from your conscious, thinking mind - has to take it on board, it has to be deeply impressed and excited by your desired outcome.  You can make the necessary impression on your subconscious mind by handwriting the experience of the outcome, as if you’re there already, using all five senses, writing only in the present tense - because you’re already there!  The hand-eye coordination that handwriting requires captures an abnormal amount of your subconscious attention - you become ‘young and impressionable’ when you handwrite.

But, something this powerful comes with a very large Government Health Warning!  You need to be careful what you wish for, because a focused subconscious will effortlessly set about its task of bringing about what it believes to be the life that you live - after all, that’s what its’ doing already.

Willie Horton enables his clients live their dream - since he launched his acclaimed Personal Development Seminars in 1996. His clients include major corporations: Pfizer, Deloitte, Nestle, Wyeth, KPMG, G4S & Allergan. An Irishman, he lives in the French Alps and travels the world as a much sought after speaker and mentor. In 2008 he launched Gurdy.Net home to his Online Personal Development Seminars, Change Your Life & No More Stress

Self Help Books That Don't Help!

Reading and doing are two completely different things. You could read every travel book in the world without ever leaving the comfort of your own home - but you won't have lived the experience. Life is about living and living is done in the here and now. You need to awaken your subconscious mind from its automatic state and start living now. No leap of faith is required - no major action is needed. Small daily steps will change your life.

By Willie Horton

Copyright (c) 2010 Willie Horton

Are you an avid reader of self help or self improvement books?  Because many people that I know are constantly reading, constantly learning, constantly searching, constantly gaining a deeper understanding of what it takes to change your life.  Unfortunately, however, it is not reading that changes your life, but doing - and far too many people are content with the feel good factor that self help books often give you, whilst nothing concrete actually changes for the better in their lives.

The constant reading of self help books is very similar to collecting a large number of brochures and travel guides about some beautiful place that you would really love to visit.  You pour over the descriptions and other people’s experiences, you admire the beautiful photographs, read and re-read all the reviews, imagine what it would be like to be there, immerse yourself in this wonderful voyage that you so dearly want to take.  But you never actually make the reservation or purchase the ticket - you never commit to taking the trip yourself.  What’s my point?  Reading about how to achieve the life that you really want and doing something about it are two entirely different things.  Reading all those feel-good stories about how others have changed their minds and, as a consequence, changed their lives, may well give you that warm feeling inside, you may even fully understand and appreciate how they’ve done it and how you could do it.  But tomorrow morning, when you drag yourself out of bed for another day’s drudgery, what has changed?  Precious little!  When you face another day of worry, doubt, stress, financial difficulty, low self-esteem or simply even boredom, what good will all that reading have done you?  If anything, it will have made you even more restless and more dissatisfied than you were in the first place.

Reading, understanding and intellectually appreciating what it takes to change your life is going to make no difference to your life until you put your learning into practice - and daily practice at that!  And therein lies the problem for the vast majority of us so-called normal people - we’re afraid of stepping outside our cocoon of normality, we’re afraid to be different, we’re fearful of standing up and being counted.  In short, we are afraid to take what we perceive as some risk-laden leap of faith.

On the other hand, if you’ve managed to come across a self help book (or a really good website for that matter!) that gives you simple and practical step-by-step instructions on how to change your life (and there aren’t many of them - most of them are ‘feel-good books’ or ‘treble your income in six weeks’ nonsense) then it should have dawned on you by now that there is no leap of faith required.  All you need to take is take small daily - there’s that word again ‘daily’ - steps that shake you out of the stupor in which most normal people are just about existing.  This stupor is the net result of a normal subconscious mind that operates your life on automatic pilot so that you keep doing the same things the same way.  As a result, your life will never change until you take some simple practical action.

To change your life, you’ve got to change the way you’re living the life that you have at present.  In other words, you’ve got to find some way of grabbing your subconscious mind’s attention, to bring it back to reality, to switch off that automatic pilot.  As I said, no leap of faith is required.  Indeed, no major action is required of you at all.  All you have to do is to start small - by doing something as simple as changing your morning routine - because small things shock your subconscious mind out of its comfort zone.  Your success and happiness - an end to all worry and the creation of the life that you would really like to live - depends on your ability to focus your mind or, to put it more simply, to pay attention - not to what you want out of life, but to pay attention to the all important business of living in the only place and time that you can actually live - the here and now.  Something as apparently insignificant as dressing yourself the other way (think about it, you always put the same leg into your pants first, you always lead with the same arm when putting on your shirt) will do for starters.

Because once you begin to do anything differently, once you begin to call your subconscious mind to attention, once out of your routine, you will begin to realize that absolutely everything in your life can be done differently.  When this realization dawns upon you, you will find yourself in a completely different place - where things that were otherwise unconscionable suddenly become obvious - and easily doable.  And where anything and everything great in life can come about.  I know this to be true, my clients or even people that have read a couple of my articles or watched some of my videos, know this to be not just true, but the key to happiness and effortless success.  At the end of the day, however, it’s up to you to start doing the things that will change your life, to stop reading and start doing.

Willie Horton enables his clients live their dream - since he launched his acclaimed Personal Development Seminars in 1996. His clients include major corporations: Pfizer, Deloitte, Nestle, Wyeth, KPMG, G4S & Allergan. An Irishman, he lives in the French Alps and travels the world as a much sought after speaker and mentor. In 2008 he launched Gurdy.Net home to his Online Personal Development Seminars, Change Your Life & No More Stress

The Art Of Negotiating With Spiritual Wisdom

A psychiatrist discusses a way to negotiate with spiritual wisdom

By Dr Russell Razzaque

The British public are being treated to an entirely novel view this year; politicians talking to each other. Instead of exaggerating and emphasizing, through loud speakers, the differences between each other, they are actually sitting down and treating one another with mutual respect. Straight after the general election, the Conservative and Liberal Democratic parties started negotiating a compromise program. This form of negotiation is, as the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, himself acknowledged the morning after the election a scenario “unknown to this generation of political leaders”.

The result of the 2010 UK general election was a hung parliament. This means that no one party has an overall majority in parliament, which is something Britain is not used to. Unlike in continental Europe, where coalition governments are the norm because of their electoral system, the UK political system is almost entirely adversarial where one party usually holds all the power and the opposition has none and, as a result, vehement confrontation tends to be the order of the day. The weekly clash of Prime Ministers’ questions - the world’s first prime time reality TV show - is the most visible manifestation of this.

The sight of our politicians apparently growing up over night to engage in mature adult conversation with each other is truly refreshing and one that much of the public are reacting to favourably.

The impulse to descend back into the confrontational default is, however, never too far from the surface. After all ours is a system that goes back several hundred years. The key to success in this new form of adult politics, however, is almost a spiritual one; it’s all about honouring the tribal instinct within while at the same time remaining anchored to the calm centre that sits within us all.

This is where negotiation can indeed become a form of spiritual practise for anyone engaged in it - especially politicians. The fact is that there are two dimensions to all of our personalities; one part - whether we call it the ego, lower self or, as I prefer, the outer self - that wants drama, material reward, excitement, popularity and pleasure, and another part - our higher self as some refer to it, or inner self as I prefer - that is detached from the roller coaster of the outer realm and that is our core centre of peace, acceptance and stillness. We constantly bridge these two parts of our inner world - the part that wants change, and the part that is acceptance - and progress is only really possible when we are able to embrace both these contradictory elements of our inner world.

This is why, If the negotiator is able to simultaneously remain in touch with the side of his/her self that yearns for change and fast impatient action, as well as the deeper layer of the self that maintains an acceptance for all that is, genuine expansion can occur in both the outer and inner worlds. It is for this reason that all negotiated progress is incremental. Just as it should be.

This is what progressive political change is all about and it is a great relief that this time Britain’s politicians have been forced by the public to practise it.

Dr Russell Razzaque is a London based medical doctor & psychiatrist. If you liked this article you may benefit from his online self help program. Sileotherapy is a combination of internet therapy and self improvement.