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CHAPTER 1
MIND-SET
Let's begin by defining "mind-set." For the purpose of our journey together throughout this book, when we talk about "mind-set" we are referring to the set of beliefs you have that affect the outcome of all your endeavors. Or, if this helps you clarify it, mind-set is also a fixed mental attitude or disposition that predetermines how you will interpret and respond to situations. In other words, your mind-set determines your outcomes!
Of all the things in life you have ever attempted without success, if you had the chance to try it again with a changed belief and mind-set, success would be in your own hands, and your outcome would be substantially better. As you become aware of your mind-set and learn how to use it to your advantage, you will find yourself succeeding in everything you undertake! So ... interested?
How are you going to start your new life? By changing your mind-set! In this chapter, you'll take a look at some ways that have helped me do this very thing. Once you get the hang of it, you'll start coming up with your own methods.
The first thing to remember is that by changing your thoughts, you change your emotional state. Change your emotional state, and you will change the way you act and, therefore, your outcomes in life. Thoughts lead to emotions, emotions lead to actions, and actions lead to outcomes. Outcomes design your life. This is how you get to choose your life!
Ask yourself the questions below, and answer them honestly. There are no correct or incorrect answers. Take all time you need to write down the answers to the following questions:
• What is it that you would most like to change in your life?
• Something in your personal life?
• Something in your professional life?
• Something in your relationships with people around you?
• How important it is for you to make this change? Why?
• What are your current thoughts regarding those things you would like to change?
• Within your thoughts, what are the probabilities for the change to happen?
• Identify the themes of those thoughts.
• Do they have a similar pattern?
• Do they represent how you act in front of others?
• Do they point you in the same direction as your goals?
• What effect do they have on your motivation to act?
• How do these thoughts make you feel?
• How do they affect your mood?
• How do they affect your energy level?
• What is your physical response to these thoughts?
Your answers are going to be your starting point, the result of your old way of thinking. They do not define who you are now, and most certainly not who you will become. You are already a changed person. I know this because you are holding this book in your hands, and are now motivated by your desire and intention to change your life. How radical or subtle this change will be depends completely on your determination and how open you are to change at this moment. There is nothing wrong with being who you are, any more than there is anything wrong with a piece of carbon. But under the right conditions, that piece of carbon can be turned into a diamond. And you can turn yourself into the best you can be. This is YOUR life. Own it! None of us can change the things that happen in the wider world around us. We cannot change people or the past. What we CAN do is change ourselves — change our perceptions, responses, and attitudes. And in turn, all those changes will alter everything around us, as well as our own outcomes.
From now on, as you wake up every morning, think of your marvelous self, of your magnificent life and all you will accomplish during that sliver of it that is today. Even though you may think your life is not as great as you'd like right now, begin creating with your thoughts the life you would like to live. Think of the way you plan your day. Mentally, walk through your day even before your feet touch the floor. This will help you gain focus and guidance toward your goals and will help you to avoid living life by default. Start your day off by complimenting yourself. Begin your daily words with "I am ..." and then follow by stating what you want to see and feel in yourself, and who you would like to become. For example: "I am feeling fantastic," "I am extremely happy," "I am successful," "I am grateful," "I am completely healthy," or "I am completely healed." In the beginning, you may feel as though you aren't telling yourself the truth, because you may not feel like the person you are describing. In those moments, just remember that the first step in becoming who you want to be is to think, feel, and act as if you already were that person. Everything begins with a thought. All thoughts are the seeds of something. Declare what you want out of life, and put your renewed mind-set to work. If your life is like a building, your thoughts are the blueprints — the design from which you build your life. Now you have the chance to change that blueprint to anything you want it to be! Now is the moment to become aware of the thoughts that will determine how you feel and how you act. Take those unsupportive thoughts that are not taking you forward towards where you would like to be, and replace them with supportive thoughts that give you options and open a world of opportunities.
Start creating your future in your present, thinking of ways you want events to turn out and what you would like to achieve in your life, rather than dwelling on things you don't think you can accomplish, become, or change. If you don't like the outcomes you have received thus far, there is something you can change within you to receive different ones. The question here is, how far are you willing to go to get what you really want? There is nothing you can do about the past. What you CAN do is to work in the present.
All that you think about and speak about, you bring about.
— Napoleon Hill
When you are working toward what you wish for, if, after several attempts, you see no change or progress, change the questions you ask! If you've been asking, Why can't my coworker be nicer to me?" ask instead, How can I be nicer to my coworker? It isn't why something happens to you that matters; it's what you are going to do about it. Ask yourself how you can make things better, how you can see the lesson to be learned, and how this experience is going to make a difference in your future. Ask better questions, and you'll get better answers. You will not go through something that you do not have the strength to overcome. That strength is within you, and only you can find it and summon it in the moment of hardship. Asking better questions will enable you to view the situation from a different angle, get a new perspective, and create an entirely new outcome.
Ask yourself, Am I living or merely existing? Are my actions moving me toward where I want to go? Am I doing what brings fulfillment and joy into my life? Am I experiencing life to the fullest? These types of questions will have better answers as you pay attention to what you do with your time. When you think of something that needs to be done, ask yourself, Is this helping me advance toward my goal? Then rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 representing unimportant things that can wait or can be delegated; and 10 the things that are vitally important to do and should be done immediately. When rating the tasks or actions, rate them with the first value that comes to mind. If you take time to think about it, chances are that you won't assign the right value to it, because you are rationalizing the situation. As Nike says, "Just do it!" It's the first thought, the first feeling of how it rates in importance or significance, that counts. So don't try to reevaluate the same thought again — you'll just be changing the truth of its placement in your life.
The purpose of rating tasks, events, and actions is to help you decide how to invest your time wisely. Invest time in yourself, in high-quality activities, in your health, in your mind, in your spirit — in things that will enrich your life and put you in a mind-set to achieve greater things. This will bring you new energy, new vitality, and greater experiences. It will make you stronger in every facet of your life, be it mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, or social. You will begin to resonate with your dreams and ambitions. This doesn't mean you don't go out and have fun with life. It just means that by taking charge of what you consciously think about and do, you will automatically make your life more fun and worthwhile.
It's unfortunate that many people go through life not learning how to stand up for themselves, living instead by others' opinions or by what the media and conventional "wisdom" tell them. Every person has an innate desire deep within to become a better human being, and each of us has the individual responsibility to follow that desire through to completion. Begin to manage your conscious thinking by visualizing and imagining your journey's path with consistent focus. Your thoughts will make you feel better. When you feel better about yourself, you want to take action. And by taking action, you will change the course of your life. This translates into a harmonious life, which increases the clarity of your passions, dreams, and goals. Using visualization consistently will start a miraculous movement that aligns you with the law of attraction. As we said at the beginning of this chapter, it's all in the mind-set.
What do Beethoven, Anthony Robbins, Brian Tracy, John Maxwell, Marc Victor Hansen, Helen Keller, Terry Evenshen, Brendon Burchard, and many other great human beings have in common? This: that even though they may face hard times in different areas of their lives, they have always, continuously, created a life for themselves by their intentions. They've learned from their mistakes, from the mistakes others have made, and from the obstacles they have found in their paths, and they have become stronger as they figured out ways to accomplish their goals, and they kept on going. They have looked at every challenging moment as a learning experience, and found ways to become successful, better people. These are lessons you cannot learn unless you have experienced challenges personally. Their choice to face their challenges and always move forward comes from their mind-set.
Example
I'd like to share with you a short story about Gloria Estefan. In 1990, Gloria was on tour with the Miami Sound Machine when the bus she was in crashed and left her critically injured. She fractured her back and needed two titanium rods implanted to hold her spine in place, and she spent a very painful and difficult year between physical therapy and surgeries. Everyone thought her career was at an end, but she reappeared on the stage a year later with the new single "Coming Out of the Dark."
What do you think was the driving force behind her living life to its fullest before and after this life-changing challenge? How do you think she overcame this major hurdle in her life? It wasn't just good luck, or because she had some money, that she was up walking and performing so soon after such a devastating injury. She called into her life the strength she needed to heal, because she had her thoughts set on recovering and continuing with her life. She couldn't walk after the accident. She was young, she was told she couldn't have children, and her career was rising fast — how do you think she must have felt when she saw herself lying in a hospital bed? She fought the fight of the champions, and she won. After just a year, she was back on track, performing at a world-class level! What kind of mind-set do you think she had?
Experience
I literally had to experience death to realize my purpose and full potential in life. This was a double death. The first death was physical — I had to be resuscitated at least three times. The second one was that I had to die to my previous lifestyle. This is not the same for everyone, but it was necessary for me, because I was too stubborn to listen to my inner voice when it said, slow down and take a look around. Before the accident, I felt indestructible. Nothing would stop me from doing anything I wanted, even if it wasn't good for everyone involved. If someone told me I couldn't do something, I did it twice just to spite them. This included plenty of things most people would consider irresponsible or dangerous. It didn't matter to me, because I felt I wouldn't die doing it. I might get hurt, but nothing would stop me. I was invincible! I had a somewhat cocky attitude, you might say. Uh ... somewhat? I was full of myself! Three earlier accidents had almost claimed my life in the previous three to four years, not to mention the goofy stuff I did as a kid, which could have killed me many times over. Can you see how I would believe that I was bombproof? Having survived as many brushes with death as I did, I grew cocky in my thoughts and actions.
Don't do this at home, boys and girls! You, either, ladies and gents! It is not a good character trait to have. Just because you make it by the skin of your teeth a few times is not some divine sign that you always will. No. What it actually means is, if you don't change your ways now, the end is near. I know, through personal experience. The accident was as close to death as one ever gets to come back from. I flatlined at least three times on the operating table. I was in an induced coma for ten days. My new mindset was chosen before I came out of my coma. My family often played Anthony Robbins CDs as I lay there. This was one of the greatest things they could have done for my recovery. The CDs reached deeper into my subconscious than I knew. This affected my mind-set in every way. The continuous positive messages on those CDs were ingrained into my brain and developed me into the person I am today. I still listen to them and read self-improvement and personal development material daily to keep in this mind-set and create this state. I chose and I choose to live life completely in every sphere, not just to exist in the world. I choose to give back to life multiple times for all I have ever taken or been given. I will assist and guide anyone — physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually, to overcome his or her challenges. Giving unexpectedly and unconditionally without demeaning anyone or myself, in my every venture in this new life, brings me great pleasure and joy.
EXERCISE
During your day while you're at home, working, or just going about your daily routines, pay attention to where you are not having it easy, or what you may be getting stuck on. Take a moment and look for ways you could alter your thinking on any particular point to get an outcome that serves you or others involved.
CHAPTER 2
NOTHING HAPPENS BY ACCIDENT
Not a single thing in your life ever happens by accident. Everything is brought about by thoughts, feelings, and actions. The results that you are experiencing in your life come from your actions, and these results will have the same characteristics or qualities as the thoughts that created them. Have you ever thought about someone and felt you needed to call that person? Then, when you do call, the first thing that person says is, "I was just thinking about you!" What happened was, your thought's vibration was sent out to the universe (I should get in touch with Dan), and the universe answered back (Dan called you). This happens all the time, in everything you do — you just don't usually notice it. What we need to do is become aware of this fact.
The images that you plant in your mind instantly set up an attraction energy. This energy is the one that governs the outcome of your actions while creating the life you are experiencing. This doesn't mean that the results are always the ones we want, only that the attraction works the same for everything. Continuously switching the thoughts of what you are or what you want to become makes the process chaotic. How often have you said something like this: "I can't afford that"; "I just can't seem to get rid of this cold"; "I'm such a klutz!" These are negative or low-vibration thoughts. By doing this, you are defying the law of growth. Just know that the law always works by providing what the vibrations ask. If you are consistently changing your vibrations by attracting positive or high vibrations in one moment and, the next moment, neutralizing it or attracting the opposite, this causes the attraction energy to vibrate out of harmony and into disorder, placing you in a spiral that slows you down.
Everything you strive for is also striving for you with equal intensity. Everything you desire is already yours to claim. All you need do is send out the vibration (an intense thought followed by an intense feeling, then action), and it will be returned to you as the physical manifestation of your desire. Once you become conscious of what you already possess, it becomes your reality. The secret to receiving more on a conscious plane is by truly understanding the six faculties of the mind. These are will, memory, reason, perception, intuition, and imagination. In this book, you will also learn another key factor in creating your life to be all you ever dreamed it to be: the understanding of how to get yourself into this harmonious vibration. As you practice it daily, you will come into a new understanding of how the things I've been mentioning actually work. It's one of those things you just have to experience for yourself. Once you start putting this to work for you, it will stir something so deep within you that the vibrations begin to manifest in your life even while you sleep!
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Life of Your Choice"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Daniel Bax.
Excerpted by permission of Morgan James Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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