What You are CAPABLE of doing and
What you THINK you can do are very different!
What Are Your Limits?
We’ve all heard the amazing story of a frail grandmother lifting a car weighing thousand of pounds to save a loved one. Or those who can remember hundreds or thousand of names and faces of people they’d only met once. Or crash survivors who withstood sub-freezing temperatures for days. How did they do it? What creates our limits, and what erases them? We will explore these questions in the next few minutes.
A Chilling Story
First, here is another remarkable story of the power of the human mind. A man accidentally locked himself inside a refrigerated box car. Try as he did, he couldn’t get out. He recorded his progress by writing on the side of the car. The first entry indicated he was slowly getting colder and colder. He said there was nothing to do but wait. He probably banged on the side of the car and yelled for someone to help him, but there was no one nearby to hear. Finally, he wrote, “I’m slowing freezing to death. These may be my last words.” They were.
The Power of Beliefs Even if the Are Illusions
The next day the man was found dead there on the floor of the box car. He had died, but not because he froze to death, but because he believed he had. He knew he was in a refrigerated car and knew that it would have subfreezing temperatures–that is under normal circumstances, but the refrigeration unit was out of order. The temperature in the car was actually 57 degrees Fahrenheit, and there was plenty of air. The man died of his own self-created illusion.
This is certainly a dramatic example of how the power of beliefs and thoughts can affect us. Beliefs and thoughts create feelings and expectations of happiness or sadness, success or failure, and based on those perceptions, a person is either spurred toward success and accomplishment or bogged down by accepting failure or mediocrity. Our lives unfold according to how we think.
One or Two Lumps of Sugar?
Perhaps you’ve heard of the placebo effect. A placebo is an inert or neutral substance given to a patient who has not responded to traditional therapies. The patient is conditioned by being told that he or she is being given a powerful new drug that will surely work. The patient is then given the placebo, which is often nothing more than a capsule filled with powered sugar.
In an amazing percentage of cases–often 30 to 40 percent or more, depending on the condition, the person gets better. Not because the powered sugar did anything to help, but it was the person’s belief about it that did the trick.
How to Lift 500 Pounds
One of he most amazing and encouraging stories of all concerns the Russian weight lifter Vasily Alexeyev. Before the mid 1970’s no human being had ever lifted 500 pounds overhead. The Russian held the world record, but he was never able to break the 500 pound barrier–though he had tried several times. For one important competition, his trainers told him that he would be lifing a weight he had lifted before-499.9 pounds. He did it and then discovered that his trainers had deceived him about the weight–he had actually I lifted 500 1/2 pounds–a new world’s record!
What his trainers did was purposely tell him to do something he already knew he could do. they had erased a limitation that had been embedded not only in his mind but also in the mind of all other weight lifters, and the 500 pound barrier was broken forever. Soon other weight lifters were lifting more than 500 pounds also. In fact, once the 500 pound limitation was removed from his mind, Vasily went on to lift more than 560 pounds overhead.
The Surprising Source of Strength
We all have such tremendous untapped resources that can enable us to accomplish far more than we have ever imagined possible, and the secret to releasing these resources lies in learning to tap the powers of the inner mind. There are actually at least two major components of our mind-the conscious and subconscious.
Our subconscious actually does more than our conscious mind in our everyday life, and yet most of the time we aren’t even aware of it. Sure our conscious mind does the thinking, reasoning, analyzing, and making decisions, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Our subconscious mind lies below the level of our conscious awareness and it stores all the information that comes in through our senses. It also houses all our memories, and our emotions. It controls most of our bodily systems like breathing, heart beat, digestion, and eye blinking. It also takes over for us when we are doing repetitive tasks such as walking, driving, typing and sports. This is why you don’t really need to think much about these things once you learn them.
But do you remember what it was like when you were learning? Every movement was very deliberate–that’s because it was your conscious mind doing it. Once the subconscious got the hang of it and took over, everything became much smoother and automatic.
Mental Software
The subconscious works something like a computer, which although it might be very fast, is of little use unless it has a program to tell it what to do. Well, your subconscious mind is like that too. All your memories and experiences become your master program that directs and controls your life. Your master program controls your emotions and success patterns in your career and relationships. It actually determines whether you are positive and happy most of time, or depressed and moody.Even your habits that you might often feel like a slave to and find difficult to change, are controlled by your subconscious mind. That’s a lot of power.
Your subconscious is especially important to you in your career. For instance. if you are not making as much money as you think you should, in most cases the reason is that the self-sabotaging and limiting programming in your subconscious is preventing you from having it. Your limiting subconscious programming affects your income and the quality of your life more than any other single factor–more than the economy, the business your in, or even how hard you work.
Who Wrote the Programs?
Where did your programming come from? From the time you were born, your mind began absorbing input from those around you. You were told what you could do and what you couldn’t do. You were told what was right and what was wrong. One researcher estimated that by the time children enter school they have been told no” over 40,000 times! That is a lot of negative programming going into your subconscious mind, so it’s no wonder people have low self esteem.
All of what you were told and what you experienced as you were growing up formed an image that you had of yourself and the world around you. This image is what became your master subconscious program that would direct your life.
Here’s how it works. Imagine a little league baseball player who usually strikes out, and now he is up to bat. What kind of thoughts and images are likely to be going through the child’s mind? Is he thinking, “This time I’m going to hit a home run?” Not likely. This youngster has little self confidence because each time he gets up to bat he’s more scared than the time before-and that’s precisely why he usually strikes out. How do I know? Because I was that little boy. I struck out every time but twice the entire season–and one of those times was when I got hit with the ball, and the other time I was walked to first base.
Needless to say my batting average was at the bottom of the list. It was all due to striking out a few times and then expecting to strike out every time I got up to bat. I still vividly remember the sensation of knowing that as I got up to bat I would undoubtedly strike out again. These kinds of experiences can stay with a person for their entire life unless something is done to change it.
Babe Ruth whose name is legendary as a home run hitter, hit 714 home runs in his professional career, but did you know that he struck out 1330 times–almost twice as many times as he hit home runs? Yet he was known as the home run king, and never thought of himself as the strike out king–and neither did anyone else. Failure was simply not part of his master program. His self image was set on success.
What To Do Next
What if someone took you aside and worked with you–putting positive thought, beliefs and pictures in your mind. Can you imagine the difference there could be? It would make all the difference in the world. We have hundreds of audio programs on our website that are like your personal coach to give you the encouragement and tools you need to succeed in all the major areas of your life.
