What is written

In my last post we talked about how the stumbling blocks in our way give us an indication of how to go about making a plan to get what we want. Here and now we will be discussing something else that people often use as a limiting factor.

Your past. What has gone before. Your record. History. They are different words that all mean the same thing. It is the accumulation of things that we have done and that have been done to us right up until this very moment that have caused us to be where we are today.  But we are not the things that we have done.  I am sure that you have heard someone say that whoever they were talking about would never amount to anything due to their past record. They may have said things like that person is a screw up, always in trouble with the law. Stay away from them or they will take you down with them.
 
Many people that know me today, would either be surprised or have a hard time believing what I used to be like. I was an angry, angsty, bitter, frustrated wreck. I had anger management and self control issues, had frequent violent outbursts both verbal and physical. There were multiple instances of being on the wrong side of the law including theft, vandalism, property destruction and arson. I had frequent thoughts of both murder and suicide.

My life is not like that anymore. Nowadays, I am calm and peaceful in nearly every circumstance, even when things are not going my way. There are times where I get agitated, but nothing like before and my tendency is to not get upset in the first place about many things that used to drive me up the wall. Through experimentation and effort I have learned many constructive ways to vent the stress when I do get upset, so that it does not find its way to such destructive outlets.

If the sum total of my life were to be based on my past, then by all rights I should be in jail or dead. But why am I not? Because I did not use my past as a limiting factor. I did use it as a yardstick, but not for measuring where I would end up. Instead, I used it to take a measure of where I was. Then I asked myself if I was okay with being there. I found out that I was not and began to take steps to change things until I became happy with the results. First, I learned to control my emotional outbursts, which was a start but not enough. Then I learned how to not let others know whether or not they were pushing my buttons. And finally I learned to restructure the way I think so that less buttons exist and the ones that are there are much smaller and harder to find. It was at this point that I became happy with my results and focused on other issues.

The key here was that I used my past as a spring board or a starting point instead of a limiter. Just as the obstacles in yesterdays post paved the way for dreams coming true, my past was the first step in writing a new and better future for myself.

And if a simple demon/angel/alien/baby like me can do it so can you.

What's your story?

Most people believe that the reason they are not successful is due to some external force that is keeping them down. They don't have time to take business classes so they can learn how to succeed because they have kids.  Or they are simply not smart enough to do it. Perhaps you believe you have always been broke and living paycheck to paycheck and that is all you will ever be. Nobody believes in you. You may believe that you are a product of your parents and your environment and since your folks aren't wealthy and neither is anyone else you know, you can not not become wealthy.

If all of those things were true how would anyone become wealthy in the first place? Originally we were all on an even keel. Nobody had more than anybody else. Yet some rose while most did not. What made them special or different? Do they deserve to be rich while you deserve to be poor? Is it some kind of karmic balance? Not hardly.

Every sentence  in the first paragraph is a limiting belief. While many of those who become successful do or did have some of those circumstances surrounding them, they were not part of their internal story about who they are and what they are able to do. Many successful people had busy lives before they were successful. A lot of them came from poor broken homes. Some had little or no real education, a few years of grade school and no college at all. Every person around them constantly told them about how they were going to fail. And yet they succeeded anyways.

Successful people, take note of the bad circumstances around them and declare that they are not acceptable. They are not okay with where they are. Their lives change forever and for the better when they decide to use those circumstances to lift them up instead of holding them back.

I acknowledge that I am a high school drop-out with barely a summer term of college. I come from a somewhat poor immediate family. I am 38 and have been employed for less than half of the last 20 years. None of my immediate friends and family are wealthy.

But that is not going to stop  me. I am one of the wisest and most intelligent people that I have ever met. My thirst for knowledge is never ending. I can do anything I set my mind to and I have a burning desire to succeed in spite of all the "markers" for failure that surround me. I have begun to take active steps to change my thinking from scarcity to abundance and to infuse my life with even more inspiration and coaching from those who already are how I want to be.

Your story can be that you are a winner or a loser. But, in the end it's your story, meaning you are the author of it. You decide the tone and context. If you are the writer why make it a horror story? Why not make it epic fantasy?