I read these words on the empowerment network. These words are actually very deeply philosophical despite how simplistic they sound. Most of us do not succeed because we think that we can not. The neighborhood we grow up in has most of the positive and negative attributes that will haunt us for the rest of our lives. If you grow up in a rich area, you assume that you will be rich like your daddy, right? If you grow up in a slum, you assume that as an adult that you will remain there. Sure, we dream of winning the lottery, and many work their way out of poverty. When I turned 23 and graduated from school, I realized that I would be lucky to make a quarter of what my father had made because my skills were not in demand and because I was not valued.
We all have inner blockages within our mind that prevent us from doing many things. So, maybe the topic of this blog entry should be on overcoming those blockages.
I am overweight and have been for years. But, I love nature and love hiking. I go to Yosemite national park in California regularly. It is a long drive, but my passion drives me to go there. I love to hike up the mist trail to Vernal Falls. I feel very winded and exhausted every time I go up that high. Sometimes it is dangerous going down those steps so exhausted because I lose my balance much more easily when tired. My goal had always been to make it to the next waterfall — Nevada Falls. But, I couldn’t picture myself getting that far. So, after several attempts at this monsterous trail, I made it 20 minutes farther than Vernal Falls. The thing which we should note here is that my attempt that got me 20 minutes farther created a new possibility in my mind. The new thought is “I can”. I did not have that thought before that point in time. So, the very next time I went up the mist trail, I made it all the way to the viewpoint for Nevada Falls. I made it! Now, I understand subconsciously that I really can do it, and that consciousness opens up doors to possibilities.
In business most people think that they cannot start a business. Most of them are right because they don’t have the skills. But, many people who do have the skills also think this way. They might need to brush up on marketing and management, but many of these people COULD start a business if they took it seriously. People who do have a business have serious limitations in what they think is possible, or what they are comfortable with. The limitation starts with a thought, or a type of consciousness that you have where the type of success you could achieve doesn’t exist.
So, how do you break this type of limited consciousness. I don’t call it negative consciousness — just limited. You have to try new things. If you want to expand in a particular direction, but going that direction, your consciousness will adapt to include that direction in its set of possible things that you can do. Once you achieve a small success, your consciousness will record that in the consciousness database, and a bigger success will look a lot more possible — just like me reaching the viewpoint of Nevada Falls was not initially possible, and then became thinkable and possible. It was a few months after I thought it was possible that it actually happened.
My parting comment is that I always joke about there being a Starbucks up on the Nevada Falls mountain trail. I always say, “Isn’t there a Starbucks in another 20 minutes or so?”. In real life there are no businesses up there, and only a bathroom building near one of the bridges two miles up. Maybe my goal should be to bring soft drinks up that mountain and sell canned starbucks and coca-cola up there so that my joke comes true. Unfortunately that would be illegal — and I would be responsible for the trash created as well.
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