Mi Hamba Blog

The mind works in mysterious ways doesn’t it? 

When you start to study it, even on a very very basic or “layman’s” level you become absolutely amazed at the power it holds.  It really has 2 parts:

1.  The conscious mind — the thoughts actions and feelings that you are aware of, and

2.  The sub-conscious mind — thoughts actions and feelings that you need not be aware of.  These are just handled by your brain for you.

Are you aware that the conscious mind only handles around 2 - 4% of your daily activity, and your subconscious mind filters through and handles the other 96 - 98%?  This is an amazing thing when you really sit and consider it.  After all, your subconscious is where your knowledge base is — it is where you go to recall things that you know.  It is also where your beliefs are.  You never sense something and have to consciously figure out if you believe it or not — you either do or you don’t.

This is all accomplished in conjunction with your Reticular Activation System, which for lack of a better term is a filter.  It determines whether or not the thought you are having matches the belief stored in your mind.

So — what happens when you have a million dollar idea?  Does your “filter” take that idea and file it away under unbelievable because you believe you will never earn a million dollars?  For most people, that is exactly what happens.

For those of us that are real students of our own Personal Growth, we realize that true change is accomplished by changing our beliefs and how they are stored within our knowledge database.  Getting involved in a personal coaching program will empower you to learn exactly how to change your limiting beliefs.

One of the biggest considerations in achieving all that you want to achieve, actually being, doing and having all of your goals and aspirations is knowing why you want them.  Once you know why you can restructure your beliefs about them, no matter how big the goal or the desired outcome. 

Beliefs are astronomically stronger than desires.  You probably should read that again — Beliefs are astronomically stronger than desires!  Your why is directly proportional to your beliefs — the stronger the why the more you will work on ensuring that your beliefs will empower you to achieve.

As we all know our beliefs are learned, we are not born with them.  Our parents, society and the people within our circle of influence instilled them upon us.  As a result we can re-learn our old beliefs or we can learn new ones - that’s a fact.  Our beliefs have a large controlling influence on our sub-conscious mind, and our sub-conscious mind is responsible for 96 - 98% of our daily thoughts and activities.

Our brain has a filter — sort of like a noise de-limiter that you would put into a car stereo to eliminate the interference from the other electrical components.  The filter for our brain takes our thoughts and impulses that our senses pick up and deliver them to the appropriate parts of the brain.  That filter depends on our beliefs to know where most of these signals need to go and filters out the ones that do not fit within the structure.

This then stands to reason that even if we really want to earn a million dollars, but really do not believe that we will or can then we won’t.  We could have a million dollar idea hit our thought process and never act upon it because the filter in our brain checked the belief about being a millionaire, realized that we don’t believe in that so the filter discarded the thought entirely, putting it back into the universe for someone else to find.

Developing your why about earning a million dollars will assist you in developing and changing your belief about it.  A purpose, what you will do with the money, what you would purchase, who you would help and having an outcome bigger than you will allow you to believe that you can achieve.

Golf — Now there is a way to spend a couple of hours excercising your ability to pay attention to and control  your feelings.  Especially the ones that produce those nasty limiting beliefs we keep writing about.

I am not a golfer — not by even a stretch of anybody’s imagination.  As a matter of fact I usually call it “Swish — Darn — Drag Your Bag”.  On Sunday however, I was invited for a round of golf by a good friend that I used to work with and had been missing for a while now.  He is a good golfer, retired and when we worked together was really a surrogate Father for me.  You know what I mean I hope, he was someone I could depend on for advice in life situations and he never hesitated to give it — just like Dad.

When we got to the golf course it was really busy and because it was just the 2 of us, we were asked to be accompanied by another couple of people.  Wonderful people and again pretty good golfers.  Enter my first Limiting Feeling of the day:ought:

I can’t golf with these people — I will just delay and hold them up — which I was able to relpace with:

Even though I am unable to golf as well, I am so grateful that they will be able to give me some great tips and that they are so understanding.

What is amazing is that they were very understanding and they did offer some great tips.  As a matter of fact for every ball I hit over the fence they found 2 for me as they assisted me in looking for mine.  That in itself empowered me to develop an allowing statement of:

Many people are hitting golf balls out of bounds, just like me!

I wasn’t the only one hitting them over the fence and out of bounds and I knew it because I had the proof — there were a ton of lost balls in those woods.

As you can imagine, there were a ton and I mean a ton of limiting beliefs and feelings about my golf game as I progressed through the day.  Because of my experience with being a student of personal development, I was able to recognize them and re-phrase them as a positive statement instead of a negative statement.

To the unseasoned person of Personal Development the first 9 holes were disastrous and a non-believer would think — there I told you — that stuff doesn’t work.  The second 9 holes however proved my knowingness that controlling your feelings and your limiting beliefs is absolutely transformational.  All of a sudden I was hitting my drives straight, or at least straighter, I wasn’t losing my ball anymore and I was able to at least keep up.  I actually shaved over 10 strokes from the front nine — now that felt good!

Had I not been able to control my feelings I would have been an emotional wreck by the 6th or 7th hole and not enjoyed a single minute of the game.  The folks I golfed with all mentioned what a great attitude I had about being so bad at the game.  I think that was a compliment.

Can you remember back to the good old days when you were a child, young and carefree?  You had big dreams of being a ballerina or an astronaut or a doctor.  You knew what you wanted and you couldn’t imagine any reason why you wouldn’t achieve it.  So, what happened? 

Unless you are one of the precious few that actually became what they always wanted to be, it is safe to assume that at some point you were given a reality check.  Can you remember the exact moment?  I can.

I was about ten years old and I told my Grandmother that when I grew up I was going to be a figure skater.  She promptly informed me that I was too old.  I should have started to train at the ages of four to six, so now it was too late for me. 

I remember the way I felt just as clearly as if it were five minutes ago.  I was completely devastated and shocked, not so much because I couldn’t be a figure skater, but more because of the realization that I had limitations placed on me.  I could not be anything I wanted to be, the world was not my oyster.  I was too old at the age of ten.

I loved my Grandmother dearly and I know that she didn’t mean to upset me, but rather to guide me and teach me. 

Looking back on the situation knowing what I know now, I realize that it was a limiting belief that I took on as a child and carried with me through adulthood.  Many of us have these limiting beliefs that we inherited as a child which are still stunting our personal growth.

Just because these beliefs were right for our parents or grandparents or teachers in their day, it does not make them right for us now.  It is time to take inventory on these limiting beliefs and replace them with positive supportive beliefs that will lead us to our dreams.