Change is a Good Thing

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer says in his book The Power of Intention that, "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." And I am in 100% agreement with this line of thinking. But it isn't just a clever way of rearranging some old worn out phrase about changing our thought patterns in order to achieve different results. It's actually born out of quantum physics, where it is absolutely true that the behavior of matter actually changes depending on whether or not the observer is present. The mere act of observing something from a certain perspective (belief system intact), changes the way that the things being observed behave in space and time. I know this stuff is a little trippy for New Years Eve, so I'll try to reign it back in a little bit. The bottom line is that when you believe that something is true, the universe bends over backward to make that something a reality, and if you can change that belief system, then the universe changes accordingly.

I use a lot of quotes and reading material references when I write this blog because they tend to reinforce the points I'm trying to make and it lends credibilty to what I say if I can find someone who is famous for being a lot smarter than I am saying the same thing or something very similar. I also think it helps if I can share some of the books, DVDs, Audio-Books, Podcasts and Articles that I found to be invaluable in realizing my own dreams. There is absolutely no reason to re-invent the wheel and write down original thoughts when someone else has already said it perfectly and probably 100 times mores eloquently than I can say it. But I digress. The topic today is change and I need to get back to the that.

One of the best ways to bring about change in our own lives is through the use of affirmations. A lot of people might think that this is a bunch of baloney, but it has now been scientifically proven to be successful by Neuro-Linguistic-Programming experts. Affirmations work because our mind is subject to the power of suggestion. And when things are repeated over time, then they become fully fused into our thinking. Louise L. Hay provides these affirmations for change in her book You Can Heal Your Life:

I am willing to change!

I am willing to release my
old patterns and negative beliefs.
The Power that created me
has given me the power
to create my new life.
I choose positive,
fulfilling new thoughts.
Beginning now,
right here,
right now!

If you truly desire that things change for you. Then you have to be the agent of that change. If you don't change the way you think and behave then I have to be honest with you; your life is not going to change very dramatically for you. In order to bring about positive change, simply repeat the affirmation to yourself in the mirror each day in the morning and in the evening before you go to sleep. You can do it more often if you really need massive change (wink). I promise, if you do this for the next 40 days and 40 nights, you will see massive changes taking place in your life.

The Past is Past

The point of this post is that no matter what lies in your past, it's history. Yes, it's healthy to look back and review the past, reflect upon it, learn from it and then the most important part of this exercise; move forward. We need to put our past behind us. Learn from it and let it go. Alexander Graham Bell, who is no stranger to both success and failure said, “When one door closes, another opens. But we often look so regretfully upon the closed door that we don't see the one that has opened for us.”

The thing that separates success from failure is perseverence. The power of perseverence is the common denominator shared by those who have enjoyed the most massive success in life. While inventing the lightbulb, Thomas Edison made over 9,000 attempts at it before he finally succeeded. The world famous inventor remarked, "I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work." It's absolutely OK to fail. The thing you want to do immediately after failing at any attempt in your life, is to try to understand what it was that made that attempt unsuccessful. Learn from the experience and try something new. Keep moving forward. The ones who fail to succeed in life are the ones who give up on their dreams and simply quit.

The annals of history are chock full of stories of men who stopped just before reaching their goals. Be it prospectors during the Gold Rush or oil men drilling for Texas Tea who only needed to keep going a few more feet to strike it big. However, we rarely hear about these men. Why, you ask? Because they failed. It is my thinking that this is where we get the saying "Quitters never win and winners never quit." Which side of this dichotomy would you like to be on? Will you be a winner or a quitter?

A New Beginning...

As we approach the New Year of 2011. I begin to review the past year and reflect on all of the successes, failures, triumphs and lessons learned as I try to prepare myself for the coming year. This reflection provides me with a starting point from which I will be departing for the journey of the year ahead. As I look back, I see that 2010 was a great year for wrapping up the first decade of the 21st century. 2000-2009 was the first decade of the 21st century (some may argue that the decade spans from 2001-2010). In either case, 2010 was a good year for getting closure on that decade which was pretty challenging as a whole. I'm glad to say that it is over and that the next decade has the potential to be the best decade of my adult life.

The secret to making any given decade the best of your life is that you compartmentalize each year and try to make every one of them the best year of your life, so you come out of the decade with a collection of 10 of your life's best years. Therefore, I know that 2011 is going to be the best year of my life to date. To take this formula further to it's conclusion of the best decade, and the only way to have the best year ever, is to have a collection of the best 12 months of my life. I can hear some of you losing interest, but just bear with me as I drag this out logically. If any given month is to be the best month for you, you have to fill it with 4 or so of the best weeks ever and those weeks need to contain 7 of the best days possible. Therefore, we need to live each day as it is given to us, as though it is the best day of our life. So you may be asking how this is even possible and the answer is really quite simple. In order to make today the best day of your life, you merely need to do one thing. You need to improve on one thing in your life so that you live today as a better person than you were yesterday.

Imagine if you take these small daily steps towards creating the best possible future for yourself. You don't have to do anything monumental. You simply need to make 1 tiny improvement in order to fulfill the dream. these tiny incremental improvements stack up in your life just like compound interest makes your savings grow in the bank. For the day, it might not seem like much, but when you spread it over the weeks, months, and years that make up a decade of your life, just think how much better of a person you'll have become in just 10 years time. So let's think about where we stand today and look for the one small improvement that we can make today that will make us better than we were yesterday. If we can make the one small improvement today, then we have succeeded in making today, the best day of our life (so far). And we can do it all over again tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. So you see, it really is quite possible for every day to be the best day of your life as long as you strive to improve yourself daily.

Now I know a lot of you are thinking that this is going to be a lot of work. Maybe making a change for the better each and every single day is too much to ask. If that's true, then maybe you will want to condition yourself by slowly getting into shape. Make a small improvement once a week, or once a month, but do it in the knowing that for every small improvement we make in our lives, we've created a better life for ourselves out of that action. Self improvement is a worn out pair of words, but the intention behind them is paramount to creating a better life. If you do make small improvements over time, they will stack up in your life and transform you into the person you truly want to become. Read the books, listen to the lectures and sermons and apply the wisdom you find there in your own life and you can't help but build the life of your dreams. Just make sure that the books you read and the things you listen to are taking you in the direction that you have chosen for yourself. Nobody chooses the direction of your life, but you. Take control and make it happen starting today.