Living the Significant Life (10 page)
Read Living the Significant Life Online
Authors: Peter L. Hirsch,Robert Shemin
Your thoughts are something you can choose. In fact, it's with our thoughts that we have the God-given power of choice. Once again, you must have the discipline and the focus to keep all of your positive thoughts in your mind while removing all negative thoughts.
Have you ever tried to kick out a negative thought? (The word
try
is in itself a clue that you're on the wrong track.) It's like taking a stray animal, feeding it for a couple of weeks, and then deciding you don't want it around anymore. The animal will still keep coming back again and again. It's not easy to get rid of negative thoughts, no matter how unwanted they may be. In fact, lots of times it's nearly impossible
.
That's why so many people pay good money for courses and products to help them
try
to stop smoking, lose weight, and get rid of any other prevalent bad habit.
Instead, what you must do is simply replace the limiting thought with a positive one. Each time that a limiting thought or fear starts to replay in your mind, stop the thought right in midsentence and replace it with its oppositeâa positive thought.
Your thoughts not only often become your reality, they also determine your feelings, and the emotional energy of feeling is a powerful ally for shaping either success or failure. Again, it's a choice, and it's up to each of us, moment by moment, to make the choice for success and happiness.
That's another really important point: the business of developing positive thoughts is a moment-by-moment thing. The instant you succeed in turning a negative to a positive, that negative is going to do its best to reassert itself. After all, it's fighting for its life! But then, so are youâand it is really all up to you which of the two wins.
What State Do You Live In?
No, this is not an inquiry about your geographical location. What is your state
of mind
?
All fears, including the most destructive fears of poverty and failure, are nothing more than states of mind.
States of mind come about by the mental habits we choose over and over until they exist automatically. When we are in a given state of mind, we've probably just found ourselves there without really knowing how we got there or why. We don't plan the trip. We just show up in Doubtville or Can't City or wherever.
This is important, because these states of mind can cause our results, and they can absolutely cause the most negative and most disastrous results. So developing the states of mind that serve and give power to your goals and purpose is a very important skill to learn. It takes discipline: learning and following our positive beliefs.
Fortunately, there is a wonderful built-in mechanism that will help you tremendously: the conscious mind can hold only one thought at a time. This is a real blessing. It makes it so much easier to remove a negative thought if you can replace it immediately with a positive thought.
How do you do that? Do you remember when Julie Andrews sang “My Favorite Things” in
The Sound of Music
? Whether it's raindrops on roses, Christmas, ice cream, having a nurturing relationship, learning to play the guitar, or learning to speak Italian, that's what you can use to replace any and all negative thoughts.
See yourself doing what you've always wanted to do. In your mind, picture yourself having achieved your dreams and desires: sailing the ocean, speaking to eight hundred people and inspiring them all, or traveling to Nepal. The minute a negative thought pops into your mind, slap the success disc of your life into the DVD player of your mind. Keep playing it again and again until it's the state of mind you normally walk around in.
Now you're living in a great state!
TIPS FROM PETER
One of the first things I learned to do to shift my state of mind was the exercise of tallying up each day's successes. Soon, not only was I increasing my habit of success but another thing I didn't expect also began to happen: I began to realize how grateful I was.
ReallyâI began building the habit of gratitude as well as the habit of success. Believe me, if you want to walk around in a powerful state of mind that will have you on top of the world, bringing you great results you never dreamed were possible, gratitude is it.
Now I regularly replace negative states with grateful states simply by listing all the things in my life I'm grateful for. I start saying them to myself one by one: I'm thankful for my wonderful family, for my many friends (and I list them each by name). I can go on forever. The sun, this day, the clouds, the rain, the flowers, my car, the speedometer, numbers, lights, windshieldsâsee how the list of things you're grateful for just builds and grows? The result is instant smiles! It's a great state of mind, and it's so powerful!
Fear carries with it the danger of paralyzing you and completely stifling your actions; even more important, fear kills inspiration and imagination.
Fears
of failure obviously lead to
beliefs
of failure; fears of poverty lead to beliefs of poverty. Fears encourage procrastination, kill ambition, and invite unhappiness in every form. We're convinced that many illnesses, even organic disorders, can be healed by replacing the limiting fears in our minds with powerful beliefs.
The way to conquer fearful thoughts is to strongly insist that they leave. The subconscious mind will believe anything you tell it. Develop states of mind that support and encourage you.
The Critic
There's one more fear we need to discuss: the fear of criticism. This commonly manifests as “What will others think of me?” We call it the fear of not looking good.
How we look to others is one of the most powerful motivators of human behavior. There's nothing wrong with looking good. Everyone likes to look good, and we're sure you do, too. But when we sacrifice our integrity to look good, when we lieâby commission or omissionâto protect our public image, we undermine our goals and purpose and champion beliefs of fear and failure.
Shakespeare had this fearâand its antidoteâpegged perfectly when he wrote, “This above all: To thine own self be true.”
The number-one reason that people try to steal our dreamsâand that's what a great deal of criticism comes down toâis that our dreams force other people to take responsibility for themselves. Our dreams compel other people to admit to themselves that they, too, are in control of their lives. Our own dreams force others to take responsibility for where they are today and where they will be tomorrow.
When you take a stand, you're going to catch some flak from people who haven't the courage that you have. It comes with the territory.
Courage
means “heart” and “being on purpose.” The changes we are talking about here require courage. The true warrior is one who has the courage to do battle with the enemies within oneself.
Which do you think comes first: having courage and then taking action, or taking action and then drawing courage from it?
Let's let Henry Ford answer this one: “Courage follows action.”
Don't be surprised by people's desperate fear of criticism. After all, for many centuries human beings have been punished and even killed for having the courage to express beliefs that were different from those held by the majority: Galileo, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther King Jr., and many more. We have a horrible intolerance for new and different beliefs that threaten the status quo.
Nonetheless, we must resist this fear with all our might. The fear of criticism leads to indecision, and it is the primary reason for a lack of ambition, motivation, and purpose.
President Theodore Roosevelt said the following:
It is not the critic who countsânot the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause. . . . Who, at the least knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while doing greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
We can be thankful together for the fact that we have the power to overcome and conquer the fear of criticism and all other fears.
Once you give it a try, you might find that it's actually fun to be a warrior in this battle with your fears. At first you might not be very good at it, just as in sports or any other new pursuit, but you'll be surprised at how quickly you'll improve and how good you'll become. It doesn't take long. And since you've already learned to embrace a challenge, something else will happen: you'll start looking for bigger fears to battle. That's the problem with this business of conquering fear: once you start doing it, there are fewer fears left to fight anymore! Once that happens, we need to move on to even more exciting and fulfilling challenges.
In the weeks following Brad Nelson's epiphany, he found that he was often preoccupied. Now, however, his thoughts had shifted from the Haitian village to his own city and how he could fulfill his newfound mission. He knew that he wanted to turn his health care background into a way to make a real difference in the lives of others. Of that he was certain. Beyond that, he hadn't a clue.
Going about his workday, as he walked through the corridors of Middle West's hospitals and office buildings, he began to pay more attention to his surroundings, hoping inspiration would strike. Who was falling through the cracks? Who wasn't being served adequately? How could the organization make changes that would begin to fill those gaps? And how could he, a respected employee but one pretty low in the pecking order, find a way to make that happen?
It didn't take long for him to find the answer to the last question: he couldn't. If there was one thing he knew about Middle West Health Partners, it was that the wheels moved slowly, if at all, when it came to making major changes. The board of directors had decided more than three years ago to tear down two outdated office buildings and replace them with a new tower that would house an ambulatory care clinic and physician offices. The wrecking ball had yet to arrive. In order to make anything happen, Brad would have to leave his job and start a new company, where he would call the shots. The idea thrilled him, but he still didn't know how to begin.
Remembering the old adage that knowledge is power, Brad ate a quick lunch at his desk and headed for a bookstore near his office. He was a frequent customer there, but usually his mission was to pick up a few magazines on cars and auto racing or the latest volume in the fantasy fiction series his daughter loved. On this day, he found his way to the business section, and it was overwhelming. There were multiple rows of books on every topic imaginable, and two rows specifically on starting and managing your own business. Wow, there was a lot to learn.
Forty-five minutes later, Brad headed back to his car. His credit card had taken a hit, but he was armed with a shopping bag filled with books and magazines he hoped would help him start to figure this out.
Later that night, Brad passed up a basketball game on television to dive into his research. He headed into the room left vacant when his son, Jon, had left for college, and stretched out on the bed, surrounded by his purchases from the bookstore. It didn't take long for his enthusiasm to wane a bit.
How
many new businesses fail within the first year? Really? After about an hour, he stacked the books on the floor next to the bed and got up. Maybe he could still catch the last half of the game.
The next week, as Brad continued to educate himself on the ins and outs of entrepreneurship, he felt his enthusiasm slowly being replaced by doubts. How would he finance a business of his own? His credit rating was fine, but would a bank risk money on someone who was unproven? He and Kathy certainly didn't have the means to provide the financing themselves. They had one child in college and two more heading there in a few years. Kathy was a stay-at-home mom. They were stretched thin already.
That Saturday night, after their children were in bed, Brad and Kathy sat down to watch television, settling on a movie that followed the lives of seven friends who attended college together. A few minutes later, Kathy nudged him playfully and said, “That guy Eric reminds me a little of you at that age.”
As the show continued, Brad began to see the resemblance. The character of Eric was a life-of-the-party kind of guy who came from three generations of lawyers, and his family assumed he'd be the fourth. Eric, however, was beginning to realize that law school simply wasn't in his future and was struggling with the prospect of breaking that news to his family.
The story took Brad back to his own college days. When he'd begun the process of applying to medical schools, his adviser had pointedly told him that he was a long shot for acceptance. “Your test scores are adequate, but your grades are well below what they should be, and you don't have the extracurriculars to make up for them,” she'd said. “I wouldn't get my hopes up.”
The conversation had come as a blow. Obviously, Brad had known his grades could have been better, but each semester he'd convinced himself that he had more time. Nevertheless, he completed his applicationsâthree to universities with stellar programs and two more to lower-ranked schools that he considered backupsâand put the process out of his mind.
Within a few weeks, the first rejection letter had come, followed quickly by four more. Even his own university, the one that was about to confer a bachelor's degree on him, didn't want him in its medical program. There would be no Dr. Brad Nelson. He'd failed at the one thing he'd wanted to do his entire life, and there was no one to blame but himself.
After the movie's closing credits rolled, Brad had trouble shaking the slight disconcerting feeling the film had given him. It had been a long time since he'd really thought about his aborted medical career. After he'd gotten the job at Middle West and he and Kathy had started their family, he'd been too busy to think about it, and that chapter of his life had gradually faded into the background. Now, remembering how he'd felt when those rejection letters had come, he began to have doubts about his chances of success in whatever new venture he might undertake. He had failed then. It could happen again, and now that he had a family, the stakes were a lot higher this time.
Brad went to bed feeling vaguely unsettled, and the feeling stayed with him for the next few days. At the office, he rededicated himself to his job and pushed aside the idea of leaving. His boss was nearing retirement age. Maybe if he worked harder, he'd be considered for a promotion. At least it would mean more money and a change of pace.
Kathy noticed that Brad had stopped talking about starting his own business. When she casually asked about it, he gave a vague reply about needing to give it more thought and changed the subject. A few days before Jon was scheduled to arrive home from college for the summer, she moved Brad's business books out of their son's room, putting them back in the bag from the bookstore and leaving it in a corner of the family room. Brad didn't seem to notice.
Jon arrived on a Saturday, and the following day he and Brad sat down to watch a baseball game on TV. During a commercial break, Jon said, “So Dad, since I've been home, I've been so busy filling you in on everything I've been doing at school that I haven't had a chance to ask about you. A few weeks ago, you were telling me on the phone that you were thinking about starting your own business. How's that going?”
Brad shifted uneasily in his chair and hesitated before responding. “I don't know. I haven't thought much more about it, to tell you the truth.”
“Really? That surprises me, because you sounded so excited about the idea. What happened?”
“Nothing, I guess. I think I went off half-cocked, as my dad would say, and didn't really think it through. I'm not sure it's such a good idea.”
Jon paused for a moment, then continued to push. It wasn't like his father to be so tentative and evasive. “Why wouldn't it be a good idea? I think you'd be great at running your own show.”
For several minutes, Brad rambled vaguely about some of the issues he'd encountered when he'd begun researching the idea of launching a business. He talked about the difficulties of getting financing, the need for a detailed business plan, the pitfalls of hiring and keeping good employees. “And those are just a handful of the million and one things that could potentially go wrong,” he said.
“Let me get this straight. You're afraid you're going to fail, so you're not going to chance it? You're not even going to try?” Jon asked.
“Well, I wouldn't put it that way,” Brad replied, sounding a bit defensive.
“I would,” Jon said. “Look, Dad, you and I have been bonding over baseball for as long as I can remember. Did you ever think about the fact that our favorite sport is the one with the highest failure rate? The best hitters in the league fail nearly 70 percent of the time, but they keep stepping up to the plate and trying again. Why can't you do that? It's what you'd tell me to do, right?”
“I see your point,” Brad said with a laugh. “At least I wouldn't be striking out in front of thousands of fans.”
“Exactly!” Jon replied. “My economics professor talked a little about that stuff last semester. One day we had a guest speakerâa guy who runs a venture capital company that loans money to start-up businesses. He said he'd be reluctant to lend money to an entrepreneur who hadn't had at least one failed business, because failing taught them so much. It helped them learn what not to do the next time, kind of like a batter learning what pitches not to swing at. He said he admired them because they had the guts to come back from failure and try again. It sounded weird at the time, but I guess it makes sense.”
“Yeah, I guess it does. Hey, base hit!” Brad said, as the action on the television screen caught his attention again. The two men settled back to continue watching the game, but Brad had begun to feel something shift deep inside. He idly wondered where Kathy had put those books he'd bought.