I am what I think I am.
You are what I think you are.
The world is what I think it is.
Ah, the power!

What do you think about? What kinds of thoughts dominate your inner life? What are your most fundamental beliefs and attitudes about self, others, and the world? Do you believe that life is abundant and purposeful….or empty? Do you believe that you are strong, competent, capable and lovable…or not? Do you believe that you have the personal power to live the life of your dreams…or that no such thing exists?

Whether you think you can or think you can’t,
you’re right!

What do you think? What do you say to yourself and others? What do you believe? What you choose to believe, in my opinion, is the most critical piece of the life design process. Have you ever stopped to consider what your philosophy about life is? And more importantly, does your belief system work for you or against you – does your self-talk energize or deenergize your life?

Your beliefs and your thoughts provide the compass and the fuel for the paths you choose (or don’t choose) in your life. A small example: if you believe that you will never be comfortable at parties because you don’t feel socially skilled, you will most likely never be comfortable at parties. Not only will you believe what you tell yourself and act accordingly, you will also perpetuate the belief. Chances are because of your beliefs, you will be less likely to accept invitations and thereby end up staying home alone. Consequently, you feel lonely and insecure which continues to make you uncomfortable with other people. Thus, the belief is reinforced and the cycle gets repeated over and over.

I like to teach people what I call the T-F-B cycle. It is magical and powerful to understand this dynamic interplay: Thoughts create Feelings which lead to Behavior which then reinforces the original Thought and on and on and on and on. You can bring about change in your life by changing any one of these three areas of the cycle– your thoughts, your feelings, or your behavior. Psychologists originally believed that if you could just change your behavior (just stop doing what you’re doing or start doing something) then feelings and thoughts would subsequently change. And this does happen. However, it is very difficult to “Just Say No.” Then we believed that if we could change the feelings, this would break the cycle. So, we medicated our feelings and felt better but it was still exceedingly hard to change our behavior.

True, deep change will be more likely if we start by changing the way we think, that in turn, changes how we feel and, ultimately, how we behave. We have come to know that this is the origin, the beginning point of the cycle and the most effective place to break it. I promise you can break this cycle anytime you want. You can change your entire experience of life by changing how you think. It is what and how you think about yourself and your life that creates the experience of your life. What if?

If you *believed* you’re smart,
you’d act smart.
If you *believed* you’’re creative,
you’d act creative.
If you *believed* you’re a success,
you’d act successful.
If you *believed* you’re excellent at something,
you’d act excellent.

What if you chose to believe that with each social experience you are becoming more and more comfortable? What if you focused on being relaxed and having a good time. Eventually, a new cycle is spun off. Eventually you begin to grow in experience and confidence. You are more willing to go out socially and engage because you are believing you can and encouraging yourself to move ahead. And you feel success. This becomes your belief : “I believe that I can learn the skills and develop the attitude to feel comfortable in any situation I choose”. This is your new experience. This is your new self-talk.

The next step is to repeat these beliefs over and over. After all, the old self-defeating beliefs came from thoughts we have repeated or had repeated to us over and over. These old repeated thoughts about our self, others and the world became matter of fact or truth – even if they weren’t true. Most times you aren’t even aware of your internal chatter.

Learning to design and co-create your life requires that you wake up and pay attention to what you intuitively know. You know that if your beliefs and self-talk are negative, you won’t get what you want. If your beliefs are uplifting and empowering, you will get want you want. We all know this is true because what we truly want is to have feelings of fulfillment, satisfaction, and peace. This is what we all want.

Attitude is Everything

Life doesn’t just happen to you. It’s what you think about what happened to you that creates your experience. If you are experiencing a divorce and think about loss, betrayal or victimhood, you can’t help put feel depression and hopelessness and will behave as such. However, if somewhere inside you have the inner strength to believe in possibilities, then this can be the opportunity to grow and expand your life. (Often times our most wonderful lessons are unwanted.)

The good news is that you have the ability to control how you think almost all of the time. If you are conscious and are taking responsibility for the experience of your life, you can decide how you want to interpret things knowing that how you interpret will directly affect how you feel, what you do, and what is manifested in your life.

Whatever your innermost dominant thought is focused on
is what you attract, move toward, or become.

This is a much higher level of responsibility – responsibility for your emotions and your thoughts as well as your behaviors and is one of the most empowering tools you have. Take responsibility for the fact that how you think creates your experience in this world. Our thoughts and beliefs create everything that happens in our life. Emerson said, “What we think is what we create.” Job stated, “Thou shall decree a thing and it shall be established unto thee.” “As a man thinketh”, and so on, are only a few of the well known adages about the power of our thoughts.

We realize that what we think and feel not only influences what we do and what we experience, but that it also affects what happens in the world and the universe. This metaphysical power is to be understood, respected, and incorporated into our beings.

Take responsibility to sort out the disruptive, limiting, untrue, nonproductive and even hurtful images and ideas you hold. You will not only change your life, you can literally change the world. Understand the power of the scripts in your life about who you are and how you should be. And take charge. Take responsibility for what you think, say, and do. Ask yourself, does this thought, belief, or attitude energize my life or deenergize it? Does this belief represent how I really feel? Is it loving and positive or is it blaming or ugly? Is it focused on what you really want?

Powerful Question:

Do you take responsibility for the experience of your life?
Do you take responsibility for your thoughts and beliefs?

We can learn to choose new affirming beliefs that will empower our choices. We must make choices about what we are going to believe.

Focus your thought like a laser point of light
on your vision, your goals, your dreams.

Ghalil, in his program on being a “professional dreamer” says that our thought processes must be like one focused streams.