True North

In life, you cannot move true north while your eyes are focused behind you on the negative south.

Our minds are a truly incredible force. We gravitate towards what we constantly think about, the most dominant images etched in our minds.

Many of us have heard the saying, ‘It’s not what happens to us that counts, but how we see it and how we react. Our reality is how ‘we‘ see things.

How one person reacts to a situation can often be very different from how another person reacts to the exact same situation. As we see ourselves, is how we see things.

Question

Can I ask you are question? What are the dominant images and thoughts in your life and business? Are they positive or are they negative?

Are they images of success or images of failure? Are they images of prosperity and abundance or are they images of just getting by?

Why do I ask you this? Because your life will gravitate towards the most dominant images & thoughts that are in your mind.

You see, your life cannot embrace what your mind doesn’t truly believe. You cannot create success if you’re constantly thinking of failure.

There has been a plethora of research that has been conducted into how the mind can determine success.

You’ve often heard it said, ‘What the mind can conceive, it can achieve.’ Well, the solution is to truly conceive it first. If you want a dream to come true, you’ve got to have it first.

Visualization

Your life will actually move in the direction of your dream because visualization is a powerful force. The great Greek philosopher Aristotle said that the soul doesn’t think in words, it thinks in pictures.

So, whatever it is that you visualize, that is what you’re going to move towards. Sportspeople use visualization to great effect. They visualize themselves winning over and over again. They go to where their competition will be held and visualize winning on the day.

Business and salespeople also use it. They visualize the perfect pitch or closing that fabulous sale.  

This visualization also applies to the image we have of ourselves. Do you portray yourself in a negative or positive mindset?

Don’t Be Naughty

We have all seen and heard the parents who repeatedly tell their child, ‘You’re a naughty boy, you’re a bad boy, you shouldn’t be doing that!’ Could they end up with a child possessing a negative image of himself?

Those negative words are building an incorrect image in that child’s mind. More than likely that boy is going to increasingly become a naughty boy.

As one of my knowledgeable friends advised recently, ‘If we tell a child who’s just done something wrong, “You’re a good boy, good boys don’t do that”, you’re actually creating a positive image in that child’s mind.’

It’s All About Mindset

I read recently that Jews comprise about two percent of the world’s population, yet they control about 50 percent of its wealth.  I thought why is that? Because they are taught from a very young age that poverty in a man’s house is worse than 50 plagues.

What’s one of the dominant images in their mindset, to avoid poverty. It’s no wonder they work so hard to avoid it. They are taught that poverty is not a good thing.

In contrast, where I was from, the Australian culture tends to demand a negative image of wealth. For instance, a typical Australian response to seeing an extremely successful person would be, ‘He must be doing something illegal, he looks a bit shifty.’

Our culture wherever we are from forms images in our psyche that dominate our lives and our attitudes in life.

How do we repel those negative images that invade our minds? We’ve got to protect our minds and ensure we have a positive mental picture of ourselves and others.

We have to create in our minds the kind of images that will enhance our lives, not hold us back… images that propel us forward, not hold us back, images that will lift us up, not drag us down.

It’s imperative to take charge of those images so that we can begin to enjoy lives of success and abundance.

Don’t Dwell On Past Mistakes

We all make mistakes, but are your mistake imprinted in your mind so that you think about them daily? Do you view them as one-off events or do you see them as a permanent condition?

Do you see them as something that has happened and you have learned from them or do you define yourself by them? Do you say to yourself, ‘My life is a mistake’? Or do you tell yourself, ‘A mistake is something I did, not something I am?’

What’s the predominant image in your mind of yourself?

You are only going to progress towards your true north when you get your eyes off south and look forward.

You cannot go forward while looking in the rear vision mirror. Most of us need to snap off the rear vision mirrors so we can make better progress towards what we really want in life.

Until next time.

David