The Greater Self with a Greater Plan of Action
It is one thing to know that we can make the impossible possible, but what is more important is doing something about it. Hopefully, the chapters in this book have motivated and inspired you to take action. If not, perhaps this chapter will.
At the risk of appearing senile, I have taken the liberty of repeating some of the important points you have already read. My goal is to inspire you to release the power of your Greater Self with a greater plan of action.
Clear thinking and an empowered sense of self is the necessary foundation from which to turn the impossible into the possible. When we plan our lives and set goals with the powerful meaning of purpose, we will remain on track regardless of any obstacles in our path. The clearer we are about what we want, the more power we will have in achieving our goals.
MAKING CHOICES
The only thing in life we have no choice about is making choices. Everything we experience is the result of our conscious or unconscious choices. How much are we aware of the importance of every single choice we make? Are we aware how far any tiny decision that we make may take us?
In some way, either through conscious or unconscious choices, we set ourselves up for everything that comes into our life, good or bad, happy or sad, success or failure. This includes all facets of our life, be it business, relationships, health, or personal affairs. In addition, every choice has a natural result leading to further choices of a similar nature.
Before we can free ourselves from impossible situations, we must take responsibility for our own choices. There is no room in our minds or time in our lives to blame everyone or everything else. All this does is fill our hearts and minds with negative emotions like resentment, which blocks our ability to see new possibilities. Our attitude of victimization can leave us barricaded in our own prison of impossibility. Instead, it is our choice to change our attitude to one filled with unlimited possibilities by taking responsibility for where we are and where we want to be.
Our conscious awareness, through possibility choices, is our way of changing impossible situations into possible opportunities. Our goal in life should be to convert every experience, through the dominant thought of possibility thinking, into temporary challenges on our path to becoming our Greater Self. It is not enough to see the possibility; we must become the possibility.
We have already learned that there is no way to avoid problems. The real secret is the way we choose to respond to problems and life situations. Put simply, it is not what that happens to us that controls our present and future, but what we think and believe about the events in our lives. This means that we must be willing to accept what has happened, to accept where we are right now, and to take responsibility for changing our present situation. We could view it this way:
What is, was.
What was, is.
My past will always be the way it was. I can’t change that.
What will be, is up to me.
I must give up my interpretation of the way it is to have it the way I want it.
Once we realize that this is reality and that things are the way they are, we can change our thoughts and therefore change our experience.
As Shakespeare so astutely observed, life is our stage and we are all actors. We tend to act out the scripts we have been told to play. One way of the other, our life is a continuous series of scenes in the play. We can write a new script at any time. All it takes is a conscious choice to envision our life script with new possibilities.
POSITIVE LESSONS
We must remember not to personalize everything that we think happens to us. The problem with personalizing every experience is that it not only influences the way things were and the way things are, but the way thing will be in the future.
Positive lessons are not always taught in positive ways. Whether we like it or not, life is fair. Life’s traumas give us opportunities to make better choices, to stretch us beyond where we have been before, and to expand our circle of possibility. Unfortunately, most people would rather stay stuck where they are than change their impossible situations. In fact, most people would rather be certain they’re miserable, than risk being happy. They keep doing whatever they have been doing that
hasn’t worked because they’re afraid to risk. All the while, they never realize that the greatest risk of all is not risking. If we don’t risk, we can be sure nothing will change.
Turning the surprise of pain or disappointment into positive lessons is essential to personal growth. If life didn’t push us sometimes, there would be very little change for the better. There must be stimulation to trigger new thought or change for the better. This creates discontent with the way things are or the way we want things to be. Without discontent, there is no motivation or stimulation to change.
PERCEPTION ADJUSTMENT – SEE PROBLEMS AS ONLY TEMPORARY
We must see problems as temporary and look for the complementary opposite in all that happens to us. We must look for possibilities as we learn from adversity, and use the spark of personal challenge to propel us forward. Robert Leighton said it this way: “Learn from adversity!” Adversity is the diamond dust heaven polishes its jewels with!”
We should practice awareness modification. This requires changing our beliefs by learning from adversity. The problem is that the more investment we have in our beliefs, the harder it is to change them. Defending our beliefs and trying to prove ourselves right only serves to waste our valuable time and resources and delays our ability to change our situation.
A possibility thinker is always willing to change and knows he or she is always part of the answer. Possibility thinkers sees and answer in every problem. Unfortunately, the impossibility thinker just sees the problem and thinks he or she is the effect instead of the cause.
It’s our choice. We will always find whatever we are looking for. We have a choice to turn the situation around and to find the complementary opposite and make our own reality. If we are caught up in taking everything that happens to us personally and defending our beliefs and actions, we will be so busy protecting our false sense of autonomy that the solution will be out of our reach. We cannot find the solution if we keep looking at the problem. When we focus on the solution, it will be revealed to us, because whatever we are ready for is ready for us. All we have to do is look for it.
ENDINGS MAKE GREATER BEGINNINGS
We must learn from our experiences, forget our past track record, and take each moment as a new beginning. Otherwise, we will keep repeating the same old thing. If we agree long enough for our limitations, they’re ours. It goes like this:
If you keep doing what you are have been doing
You will keep getting what your have been getting.
Experience is the best teacher, provided we become the best students. When something doesn’t work out the way we expected, we need to leave the experience behind us, but take with us the lesson that guides us to a new beginning. There is no time to waste with denial, resistance, avoidance, and criticism or blame. Our habit is to make the same choices and have the same reactions. Welcome all of life’s challenges as perfect messages guiding us to shift our course.
CHAOS BRINGS NEW ORDER AND NEW POSSIBILITIES
When life seems to shake things up through ever-changing circumstances, we must use times of disorder or chaos to see the
variety of possibilities that come our way. Even though times of disruption and change may seem like chaos, these times are actually perfect timing as new possibilities will always come before us. Chaos stirs up our perception, allowing us to refocus and redirect our actions. We have the choice to perceive change as a time of chaos and impossibility, or as perfect timing for new possibilities to appear.
If we view chaos as impossibility, we will kick into our survival mode and close our doors to possibilities. On the other hand, a falsely positive attitude can mean putting your head in the sand and avoiding problems. We must face problems head on, with a new attitude of seeing the possibilities. If we put our head in the sand, we block our sense of self – our Greater Self – where the possibilities and solutions lie. Our Greater Self is personally empowered and can better realize and assess possibilities. Finding winning possibilities requires shifting our emphasis from won’t power to willpower. Remember, it doesn’t matter what you can do, what really matter is what you will do.
RISKS AND REWARDS
If we don’t take risks, we can’t take quantum leaps that can propel us forward more rapidly. Our rewards in life will always be in direct proportion to the risks we are willing to take. Great inventors try thousands of times until they reach a discovery. Taking risks should be, as much a part of our lives and as easily understood as the every day mistake.
Probably the strongest reason why we don’t make certain choices is our fear of mistakes or things not working out as we expected. Worst of all, others might think we made a mistake. Mistakes are an everyday part of life. In fact, I tell people if you are not making at least a dozen mistakes every day, something is wrong. You are not moving forward.
This attitude is currently accepted in many corporations that are beginning to encourage their employees to take risks. Corporations think risk taking is worth it. A current trend in corporate training programs includes the recommendation that corporations welcome their employees to take risk and positively reward them for doing so, even if certain actions and plans might not work out. They are advised to look for what did work and what was a good idea and then improve on the original idea. Certainly, if corporations are willing to invest in risk taking, the reason is that in the end there is a higher return when the innovative ideas of their people finally pay off.
POSSIBILITIES IN ACTION
Getting On Purpose
Our purpose makes our goals believable because we are connected to the greatest personal benefits that fulfill us. Why we do something is more important than how we do it. When we have purpose, we will always find the path of least resistance guiding us with possibilities toward our goal.
The positive focus of purpose keeps us from being distracted and can also prevent our becoming too emotional when problems arise because our eyes and mind are focused on something we truly desire. If we get caught up in the small, day-to-day busy stuff, we could miss our chance to give the commitment needed to achieve the greater things in life. People who fail to achieve their real desires in life do so because they major in minor things.
Goals and Planning
Planning is the creative process put into action, and goals set mileposts of accomplishments with specific measurements of results and time frames. Goals set our strategy into action and ensure our commitment. They motivate in two ways; first by seeing the measurable results produced, and then by giving us checkpoints to ensure that we maintain our momentum.
The goals we choose must be something we are willing to work for on a daily basis. Otherwise, they are not the right investment for our contribution of time, resources, and energy. When our goals are set with clarity of purpose, then planning, scheduling, and related prioritizing is a breeze. Necessary adjustments are just part of the ongoing process in getting what we want.
MANAGE YOUR TIME, YOUR ENERGY AND YOUR MIND
Planning and scheduling how and when we intend to create what we want is paramount in these fast-paced times. We don’t have to get anxious about our time, otherwise we’ll make rash decisions and have an ineffective approach toward getting what we want. Our time is vitally important, but it must be managed with clarity and peace of mind. With purpose, our passion kicks in gear; giving us the creative energy we want and need to make work a true passion. We always find time to what we love.
In most people’s minds, work is doing something we don’t want to do to earn money as compensation, but if we are truly suited for the work we do, we will love doing it and enjoy the compensation. Being suited has to do with two things; our purpose and our instinctive talent, which usually matches our purpose. The key is discovering and focusing on things we love to do. These are our natural talents. The only way to
succeed in the long run is to get very good at what we love to do, because we can never get good enough at something we are not suited for. True happiness is loving what you do and getting someone else to pay you to do it.
Having the overview of purpose and the accompanying values give us the big picture we need to see ourselves reaching our goals. With this overview, our planning and scheduling come more easily and effectively, like the path of least resistance. If we do not value our time, energy, and resources as precious, we can deplete them by allowing impossible distractions to take us away from what we want most. With our Greater Self intact and aligned with our true purpose, we know exactly when to do exactly what we need to do with greater effectiveness.
FOCUSING OUR TIME AND ENERGY
Our energy is our most important resource, and therefore it must be protected from impossibility deterrents and directed in a progressive focus toward the possibilities we select. Here are the ways we can simplify our lives to allow for possibilities to come to us easily.
Focus on Simplifying Your Life
Figuratively and literally, clean all your closets. Get rid of everything that you are not using. Create a space for new possibilities.
Organize and Prioritize Your Life
Assess how much time you spend in various areas of your life such as social, spouse/love partner, family, exercise, alone, work, vocation,
hobbies and club activities, and relaxing, and then balance them out more evenly.
Mental/Psychological Management
Frequently do a mental checkup regarding your perspectives on your experiences. Seek areas of self-improvement of your interpersonal management.
Never grow tired of growing! –
When your mind is tired, exercise your body. When your body is tired, exercise your mind.
– Anonymous
FAILING BY NOT DOING
Impossibility thinkers are usually passive. They let things happen to them instead of directing their lives and determining their outcome. They are usually afraid of change in any form, even if there is no risk involved. New situations frighten them or make them anxious. They are unwilling to answer the door when opportunity knocks.
Our success is measured by our ability to complete things, and yet whatever we have not accomplished is what we have chosen to keep from ourselves. Impossibility thinkers who believe things can’t be done will go out and prove they are right.
Procrastination is directly related to our impossibility thinking and emotions. With impossibility thinking, we can dread doing tasks that appear to be drudgery when it is only our attitude that makes us perceive this. An old southern grandmother always said, “Thinkin’ on it is worse than doin’ on it.”
The typical excuse for procrastination is to say we don’t know what to do or how to do something. An impossibility thinker says, “I don’t know.” A possibility thinker says, “Let’s find out.”
It has also been said, “It is better to have tried and failed, than to have failed to try.” I believe the only failure is not to have tried at all, but that every effort we take, no matter what the results, it is a success for having taken action.
We’ve heard the phrase; “Good things come to those who wait.” This may be true when we are motivated and we have already given it all we’ve got, but for those who just wait, I would say, “Things that come to those who wait may be the things left by those who got there first.” We must take action; otherwise those who were willing to take a risk and take action will leave us behind. Our life will be about trying to catch up. Even though risks are involved, you will find that it is much easier to keep up than to catch up. When we have an opportunity and don’t take it, we’ve already made our choice. Not to decide is to decide.
YOU MUST BE SICK AND TIRED OF BEING SICK AND TIRED
Our motivation to take action will occur when it becomes more difficult to suffer than to change; in other words, when we become sick and tired of being sick and tired. Our habits that bring us pain are more comfortable for us than the fear and discomfort we may feel about doing new things in a new way. Why is it so hard for us to let go of certain counterproductive actions and decisions when the signs are there telling us that we have made these mistakes before? Our survival mode is fooling us into thinking we are avoiding pain when we are actually about to create the same old thing all over again.
Usually, before most of us will take the new road, we have to be in more pain than our perceived fear of the new road. Everything we do comes from our need to avoid pain and our desire to gain pleasure. Both are biologically driven and constitute the controlling force in our life. The desire to avoid pay tends to be the greater motivator rather than seeing new possibilities as positive opportunities.
Thought plus emotion creates conviction. Your conviction creates your reality. It is our choice to use our emotions as an energy force that shows us self-defeating impossibilities, or we can shift these emotions into energy boosters as we view possibilities with enthusiasm, resilience, creative spirit, and a personal sense of empowered competence.
All of our emotions move us in some way. Emotion is energy in motion. What is important to understand is that not all emotions are limiting. We have both limiting emotions that are energy sappers and expanding emotions that are energy boosters. Your choice to see impossibilities or see possibilities. You can either look through the lens of negative emotions, or the lens of motivating emotions.
YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOOSE UNTIL YOU GIVE UP
A possibility thinker says, “It may be difficult, but it’s possible.” An impossibility thinker says, “It may be possible, but it’s too difficult.”
Why do we give up? Is it because we’ve tried before and then perceived ourselves as having failed, therefore our planned desires become unfulfilled dreams rather than something possible and still achievable? Have some of our experiences seemed painful and therefore we fear reaching for the brass ring? Even the concept of the brass ring seems to imply the unattainable. That is not what the brass ring concept is
about. The brass ring is right there. Others have grasped the brass ring and so can we. Certainly, most of the goals we set are ones others have achieved before. If this is so, then you can achieve them as well. A possibility thinker says, “I will!” and succeeds. An impossibility thinker says, “I’ll try,” and fails. If we have some setbacks, we must not give up. Each no brings us that much closer to a yes. When we persist at something with consistence intention, we can break through to the success we want.
If we perceive past losses as catastrophic and painful because we chose to react that way before, we will resort to habit and look to the past as the controlling factor for our future. By setting step-by-step goals where we can see results along the way, then, if we get a bit off the course we anticipated, we can adjust it without catastrophic losses.
EXPECT WHAT YOU WANT
If we are not moving toward what we want, we don’t really want it. The best way to predict our future is to create it. If we don’t believe it and live it, we must think we are not worthy of it. The end result is that we always move towards what we feel worthy of.
You will either live up to or down to your expectations of yourself and your future. The truth of the matter is, in life, you don’t get what you want, and you get what you expect. Everyone wants health, wealth, and happiness, but they don’t have it. The problem is they want it but they don’t expect it. If we don’t expect it, we will not create it and attract it. We must believe that we deserve what we most desire. The conflict comes from believing “I want this, but I only deserve that.” Whatever we deserve is really whatever we choose to expect to happen.
We want to train our conscious and subconscious mind to consistently see possibilities, not impossibilities. The mind is a marvelous thing. If you will make the decision to be do or have something, your subconscious will make the provision. The conscious and subconscious can either assist us in creating the possible, or convince us that what we desire is impossible. The choices we make and the subsequent results we get are determined by how we use our conscious and subconscious mind.
The bottom line is that our thoughts create our reality. If we are focused on the negative, our subconscious will direct us to people, places, and circumstances to prove that we are right. In order to preserve sanity, the subconscious always seeks to prove that what we are thinking is in fact true. Our job is to present ideas to the subconscious that compel it to direct us to what we want instead of what we don’t want – to the possible instead of the impossible.
CREATE A NEW HABIT OF POSSIBILITY THINKING
Listen to your intuitive hunches and give them full consideration as you make choices. These are hunches like, “I have the feeling it’s going to rain; better take my raincoat.” What happens to you when you get hunches regarding important decisions? We must practice listening to our intuition more often so that when the larger-scale decisions come along, we can go within for the final answers. Our minds must be open and uncluttered to catch these important internal messages. The mind is like a parachute; it works best when it is open, not filled with worry or fear. Fear causes us to make rash decisions, and fear is the mind-talk that prevents you from hearing your intuition.
If we have purpose, which is an inner commitment, then where else but within can we find the best answers regarding the choices we make? If
we think something outside of ourselves is the cause of our problem, we will look outside of ourselves for the answer. Taking the time (most often it would only take a minute) to look for inner solutions is how we can make our smartest decisions, because we are giving our minds the chance to run the possibility of our fullest mental capacity, using both the right and left sides of our brains.
Most of us become so influenced by others that we can be lured with their ideas of what choices we should make, and then we are vulnerable to miscalculating the real value or viability of the options presented to us. We must get in the habit of putting on the brakes for a moment and going within, using our clearest mental capacities (right brain/left brain) to assess our own possibilities. When we get caught up in the short-term gain, usually found in the quick fix, we do not consider the possible long- term pain that can result from hasty, externally influenced decisions. It is essential that our self-worth be stronger than the emotional sensation of rejecting the ideas of others.
IMAGINATION MAKES OUR POSSIBILITIES LIMITLESS
There are several ways our imagination expands our circle of possibility. We go beyond reason and logic by adding the dynamic of creative thinking, which triggers our mind to present more possibilities to us from what we know. By using our imagination, we can think of new possibilities with the resources available to us; we perceive more. Our imagination expands our possibilities by showing us ways to interface or connect creative thinking and our imagination. Our open-mindedness makes us receptive to new possibilities coming to us like a magnet. We can solve problems with our imagination, which give us room for expansion.
Imagination and brainstorming allow us to reconstruct or rework our information in order to create plans and goals that enable us to consider possibilities that were originally not in our mind. We can reconsider our options for accomplishing things and actually expand upon the envisioned end result.
For example, if you plan to build a boat, you can think of additional resources for materials, and then with creative thinking you realize that you can build a different, bigger, or better boat than you originally thought. The same imaginative expansion of possibilities can be applied to longer-term goals such as career planning.
Imagination solves problems by creating possibilities and anchoring our brain into visualizing what we desire as possible. When we envision ourselves having what we want, we pre-play it in our minds as truly possible. To great degree, you can control your own destiny. You are what is expandable.
INTENTION EXPANDS POSSIBILITIES
The key to success is to have dominant thought patterns that are totally aligned with what we want instead of what we don’t want. This is our creative intention. If we are thinking about what we don’t want, if becomes the dominant thought in our head that drives our brain’s neurology. To the extent that we focus on what we don’t want, we will create it. If we want money but focus on avoiding poverty, we will unconsciously create poverty. Our dominant thought would cause us to miss possibilities for what we want because we are looking for what we don’t want.
Intention creates attention and expansion of possibilities that will come to us. We move toward what we picture in our mind and the intention
drives us as an energy source. Wherever the mind goes, the energy flows. Whatever you give your energy to is what you will have more of. We don’t get what we want; we get what we expect. When we pre-play in our minds what we expect, our subconscious is compelled to find a way to make it possible.
FREE UP YOUR MIND FOR CREATIVE GENIUS
Allow your creative genius to come to the forefront of your mind rather than bogging your mind down with the way things were in the past or with the possibility of failure. We need to use practical, day-to-day techniques to clear our heads for creativity, whether it is exercise, taking a break, or contemplation during a walk.
Practice staying in the moment. We tend to look at everything from some point of reference, and usually it’s from some point in the past. If not the past, then it’s what we imagine in the future regarding possible and impossible situations. We need to focus in the now with what we know now.
We can redirect our creative energy by consciously directing our thoughts as we concentrate on what we want to achieve. Here is a daily exercise you can do and it only takes a few minutes.
Mental Exercise to Focus and Direct Your Creative Mind
- Release whatever is frustrating you. Often we think about or worry about things before we go to bed or when we wake up, so address them, clear them up, and get them out of your mind.
- State to yourself that you are in the process of creating improvements in your habits and character. We will feel much better
if we start the day with a clean slate. Remember the point about being in the now. - Define what you want as a goal (s). Even if the goal or goals are for the long term, we must focus on actions to take today. They must be clearly defined, because if you don’t, you might get something different from what you had in mind. Your subconscious mind hasn’t a clue what that means and therefore your mind cannot direct your thoughts toward specifics that will help you get what you want. Goals need to be measurable. If you want a certain amount of money, set a goal for a specific amount, but also, you can set a goal of a higher, ultimate amount, giving yourself a range. This way you can set a clearly achievable amount, and yet when you set the higher amount, you expand your possibilities.
- Visualize yourself actively having and enjoying what you wish. Sometimes I think our success almost entirely relies on setting visual images and affirming them by visualizing them as real.
Don’t get so caught up in how busy you are that you skip starting your day with a clear vision of the results you want, because when you take a few minutes to do this exercise, you raise your chances of getting what you want substantially. Ultimately, this would be a daily routine, just as important as planning the things you will do for the day.
CHOOSE TO LIVE THE LIFE YOU WANT
Impossibility thinkers focus on making a living. Possibility thinkers focus on making a life.
When we work with the mind-set of just making a living, just getting by, we limit our possibilities. In an interview with Barbara Walters, Dustin
Hoffman said his tombstone should read, “I knew this was going to happen!” That’s funny, but is a satirical remark on the perceived downside of life. We have a choice to either accept that life is predestined and that we cannot change this, or we can choose to live a world of possibilities.
POSSIBILITY CREDO
There are many tools presented throughout this book that you can use to turn impossible situations into possible opportunities. Not all of them will apply to you. Mark and underline the ones that you feel will help you to understand yourself better and motivate you to change your life from this moment on.
In addition, I encourage you to read and memorize the following possibility credo. It sums up the essence of this book and will help direct your thinking to accept the way things are, to be responsible for your choices, and to motivate you to use your resources to turn the impossible into the possible.
I realize that life is fair, regardless of what happens.
I accept things as the way they are before I can change them.
I know whenever I solve a problem, another problem will take its place, but that’s okay.
I understand that all problems are just possible opportunities in disguise. I focus on the solution, not the problem.
I always assume my Greater Self knows a better way to do things than my Created Self.
I either push, pull, or get out of the way, but I keep moving forward. I am willing to take risks and make mistakes
I am a person of action. If I say I’ll do it, I do it. I keep my promises, especially those to myself.
I never give up, because I know possibility thinkers never quit and impossibility thinkers never win.
Finally, please remember that as you make choices for turning the impossible into the possible through the greater plan of action for your Greater Self.
You must be (Who you are – your Greater Self) before you can do, (Change the impossible to the possible) and you must do (Take action)
before you can have. (What you want – the possible)