When you change your thoughts you change your influence. A popular question that I often ask at my live events is, “what month and day of the month were you born?” My follow up question to your answer is, “How do you know that?” The most popular answer I get is that ‘its on my birth certificate!’ Does that make it right? Not hardly. Birth certificates have been wrong, some fake, some forged. Then I get the answer, because that’s when my parents said I was born. Interestingly, I had someone in my audience at one of my events who is from a family of about 8 siblings relate how at a recent family reunion they have all realized that they’ve been celebrating one of his brother’s birthday on the wrong day. NULL
Once it was revealed to him, he decided to keep celebrating it on the wrong day. It was easier than changing it and all the work that would come with changing all of his records. What’s my point? You really don’t know when you were born. You’ve just believed someone else or a piece of paper. It could be right, it could be wrong.
I share this with you to illustrate that there are a lot more important things in your life that you have come to believe about yourself that you’ve been told or told yourself that simply may not be true. This in turn has effected you all your life and will continue to do so if not corrected.
Don’t take your thoughts for granted! We could have even more fun with this. How do you know your parents are really your parents? Hate to break the news! You don’t, unless you have a DNA test. Oh, yes, you might look like your father, brother, sister or mother, but with billions of people on this planet, someone else does too. With babies accidentally switched at birth and other crazy things that happen you never know sometimes. But no, it’s not time to take a break and call your parents if they are available and try to confirm that they really are your parents. The odds are most likely in your favor. So let’s take sometime and explore some things that you might have bought into that effect your self image, relationships and lifestyle to name just a few. Have you ever said to yourself or known someone who has lamented any of the following,
“I feel guilty when I spend money or time on myself!”, “I’ll never amount to anything!”, “I can’t say no to others!”, “I don’t deserve to be successful!”, “ “I have to achieve things so as to get recognition!”
We’re not born with these thoughts by any stretch of the imagination. They are learned. We all have past experiences that we must do our very best to not allow them to prevent us from moving ahead in our lives.
The number one danger of buying into thoughts like these is that they create huge mental barriers that can dramatically limit our lives, quality relationships and control our emotions.
I unfortunately know a thing or two about negative past experiences. Everything from my wife telling me my baby really isn’t mine, to my grandfather and stepfather dying of cancer and my father being murdered. I’ve been very careful not to let these past experiences create limited beliefs in my thinking. If I did, it would be virtually impossible to attain the things in life that I have. Peace of mind being one of the highest on my list. Don’t get me wrong, this is not to get you to think I don’t have some bad days. But there is one thing worse than having a bad day. That’s having a bad day and not knowing how to change it. Let’s focus on some practical ways of changing thoughts from our past. I will also debunk some myths that are popular that don’t work. One of the things I have participants do in my Discovering the Perfect You program is to try to identify negative things that have happened in their life that they over compensate for that are not normal. For example, a limited belief that I could have adopted could have been, ‘you can’t trust women!’ This could have easily been a trap I could have fallen into. It would have a been ridiculous belief. More often than not people tend to adopt beliefs that make no sense at all. There is one key factor why we do this.
We often do this because as humans our make up is to justify our behavior and often the side affect of that is never taking responsibility.
“Okay Gary’, you say. Now I’ve taken responsibility but still have these negative thoughts and feelings. Now what? Taking responsibility doesn’t always eliminate the negativity but it is certainly a start. Next, “Watch your attitude!” That’s right, ‘Watch your attitude’. By that I mean don’t think you’re going to use positive thinking to put your past in your past! Trust me on this one. Positive thinking is like spray paint on rust. It doesn’t last long.
Saying positive things and becoming positive are two different things.
Oh, and watch out for those positive affirmations as well. Read this closely and slowly. The more you say a positive affirmation the less you believe it, that’s why you keep saying it. Allow me to repeat that. The more you say a positive affirmation the less you believe it, that’s why you keep saying it. Interesting thought, don’t you think? I know when I woke up this morning I didn’t have to try to convince myself that I am a man and repeat over and over while looking in the mirror, “I’m a man, I’m a man!” Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that positive affirmations don’t work. I’ve found that most people don’t know how to correctly use them. Not to mention most don’t really know what a positive affirmation is. Often people confuse a simple statement as a positive affirmation.
Either way, positive affirmations must be turned into beliefs for them to be effective. Remember, that for every belief you act on you get a result. Once you convert your affirmations to beliefs, results start happening.
Influence: In the beginning of this article I shared some thoughts that we all may have experienced from time to time. Thoughts such as:
“I feel guilty when I spend money or time on myself!”, “I’ll never amount to anything!”, “I can’t say no to others!”, “I don’t deserve to be successful!”, “ “I have to achieve things so as to get recognition!”
We often get so wrapped up in our thoughts that we forget to realize that they are presently influencing us and creating negative attitudes and emotions. They are ‘just’ that… thoughts. You’ve heard before what I’m about to tell you, but I’m going to add a powerful twist.
You are made up of your thoughts but you’re thoughts are not made up of you.
When you truly get this point you’ll get to a higher understanding in realizing that there is a difference between being made up of your thoughts and your thoughts not being made up of you. Understanding that your ‘thought’s are not made up of you’ means that they are just that, thoughts. Inanimate things. Change them, make them disappear, ignore them. And when you do they are no longer made up of you.
When you change your thoughts you change your influence. So be careful what you have taught yourself to believe or what you have programmed yourself to believe if they don’t serve you.
The moral of the story is, ‘The smart person believes half of what he hears, the intelligent person knows which half to believe.’ This even includes your own thoughts!
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I started my first business when I was 11 years old and my second business when I was 15 years old. My second business was in the jewelry trade. By age 17 I had my own fine jewelry store and was making over $100,000 a year.
I began consulting with people who wanted my advice. From this point I worked on getting my message and information out to people through my CD's and seminars. I soon received attention from national television producers of one-show-after-another, and things started taking off. My work was getting in front of millions of people and lives were being changed.
My passion for my work comes through in everything I do. I love teaching and love to see people succeed by applying what they have learned. It makes it all worthwhile for me.
When I'm not traveling to seminars I like to take time and unwind in the Caribbean with close friends and family. I am very fortunate to be able to fly myself to my speaking engagements, which gives me the ability to manage my schedule and maintain the pace that I do.
I have accumulated nearly 5,000 hours of flight time. I enjoy flying everything from Lear jets to helicopters, and, I am a certified flight instructor in both airplanes and choppers. Who knows? Maybe one day I'll get to take you flying to the Caribbean or to one of my events. It's truly Beyond First Class!
- Discovering the Perfect YOU! by Gary Coxe - December 1, 2010
- Frustration Really Does Equal Success! by Gary Coxe - November 1, 2010
