Thought Tweet #847 "You must let go of your attachment to success to attract success." Good Advice - Yes or No?

The Thinking Behind The Tweet

Napoleon Hill taught we must have a burning desire and a clearly defined definite purpose in life. [Seems to me he would vote - No]

Joe Vitale teaches Yes [in fact, that's a quote from his 2009 book 'The Attractor Factor']

It's not an issue of The Power of Positive Thinking [Norman Vincent Peale]. Both Hill and Vitale embrace the concept of The Law of Attraction. However, their approaches to it differ in many ways. The Law of Attraction means different things to different people.

When it comes to positive thinking, abundance thinking, and The Law of Attraction - dogma and over-zealous claims trouble me. 

Believe what works for you. Understand your limitations. Package your messages with care.

Beliefs: some good, some not-so-good

Beliefs intertwine with perceptions and patterns in your brain. Then beliefs manifest their influence, acting as your 'internal filters'. These filters guide your view of the world. These filters guide your behaviour. Your beliefs become deeply-held in your subconscious mind. From that strong base, your beliefs generate your habits…some good, some bad. Your beliefs determine your appetite for new things, your attitude toward change, and your ability to replace bad habits with good habits.

Do you know the true nature and depths of your beliefs?

Have you taken the time to 'dig deep' and understand your most-powerful beliefs?

These beliefs, your strong-and-deeply-rooted beliefs, govern your life: deep beliefs are the roots of your greatest joys; deep beliefs are the roots of your darkest fears.

Your deepest and most-strongly-held beliefs aid your efforts toward certain goals while they resist your efforts toward other goals. In these ways, your beliefs are fundamental to your life. They are fundamental to how you feel during your life and they are fundamental to whether or not you achieve the success you desire.

Where did your beliefs come from?

When it comes to questions like this, all of us are students. None of us know with certainty why or how we have beliefs. Yet, certain things make sense to us. As examples:

·         We perceive things and our perceptions of those things are taken to our brains

·         Our brains file vast amounts of information in memory, for future reference

·         Our brains like to simplify our lives so they sort things into patterns/concepts

·         With repetition bits and pieces of information solidify into bigger pieces and then into patterns

·         Diversity of perceptions expand and complicate perceptions, building a hierarchy of sorted/related patterns [and concepts]

An illustration...

When we are infants we hear our parents say the word "No". That's an audio perception. As our parents repeat the word "No" we learn "No" is an important part of our lives. Simple repetition of that spoken word causes neurons in our brains to construct deeper "No" pathways. Recognizing the importance of "No", our infant brains begin to build a "No" pattern. Our infant brains quickly pick up diverse perceptions that will feed into the "No" pattern. A parent may show an angry face while saying the word "No". The visual body language signal and the verbal sound signal send 2 separate messages, both of which feed into the growing "No" pattern in our infant brains. We notice/perceive that different situations precede our parents’ "No" messages. We perceive more diversity, more repetition and the "No" pattern becomes stronger, deeper, and more-nuanced. Even as infants we have a very broad and deep understanding of the word “No”. We recognize its sound, we recognize what it looks like when it is written, we recognize the facial expressions and the various forms of body language that accompany the word “No”, and we know the word “No” is expressed to us as a result of a wide range of different situations.

We learn our parents are not the only ones who deliver "No" messages to us. Other family members, to varying degrees, deliver "No" messages. We meet neighbours who have little people of their own and both those neighbours and the toddlers they bring into our lives add more "No" to our perceptions.

Why all this discussion around the word “No”?

That question begs the questions…

Do you understand how the pattern/concept “No” has fed negatives into your belief system?

Do you understand the extent the pattern/concept “No” throttles your efforts toward your desired goals & success?

Do you understand how to go about repairing the damage the word “No” has done to you belief system?

Are you willing to make an effort to find out?

Thought Tweet #841 Major achievements flow in the wake of small wins.

The Thinking Behind The Tweet

Sometimes we find ourselves marveling in the overnight success enjoyed by people and businesses. Sometimes we feel a little twinge of jealousy, wondering why this doesn't happen to us. Sometimes we waste our breath talking about the fortuitousness of this or that person or endeavour.

When we find ourselves tempted to think or talk along those lines we should pinch ourselves. As we wince under our own pinch we should remember major achievements flow in the wake of a series of small wins. Remember, the Beatles paid their dues, for years, in small clubs in Hamburg, Germany before they splashed onto the worldwide music scene. And, hobbyists played with backyard rockets long before NASA put men in lunar modules on the surface of the moon. And Beethoven learned his craft from taskmasters.