KEEP ON PUSHING ™ e-zine

Faith – Part 2 (August 2006)

What do you believe about yourself and your abilities? Do you believe you have the ability to be excellent at what you do? Do you believe you can achieve anything you set your mind to or do you believe that you are just not equipped with the tools for success? These questions all speak to the amount of faith you have in your ability to succeed. They are born of the thoughts you habitually harbor, ultimately determining your level of expectation and the results you experience.

We've all been programmed since birth to think and behave as we do today. Since it is impossible to behave in a manner inconsistent with our programming, this usually leads to a negative outcome in our lives. Fortunately, the programming can be changed; and with effort, you can replace your self-limiting thoughts and beliefs with self-liberating, empowering ones.

In order to live as a person of faith and begin to operate with confident expectation you must change the foundation upon which your belief is built - your self-concept. Your self-concept is the bundle of beliefs you have about yourself and about every part of your life. This set of beliefs determines your reality as each and every one of us sees the world through the prism of prejudices created by our belief structure. As we change our belief in any area of our life, we simultaneously begin to change in that area as well.

The law of belief states that whatever you believe with feeling becomes your reality. Your emotions are like a well-primed engine that provides your thoughts with energy and power. The more intensely you feel something, the greater effect that thought will have on your life. Your thoughts and emotions, and hence your beliefs, can empower or restrict you depending upon how you choose to use them. If you change your self-limiting thoughts and beliefs, you change the faulty self-concept which has been stifling your quest for success. This is probably the hardest thing you will ever have to do, but it is something that has to be done in order to live up to your full potential. As William James said, "Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives."

All the successful men and women who have gone before us have been people of faith. They resisted doubt and fear and fought to overpower their self-limiting thoughts and beliefs - choosing to replace them with empowering ones. In the process, they developed a powerful, supportive self-concept - one which engenders faith in their ability and pushes them to persevere where others would have given up. Henry David Thoreau reminds us, "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours."

This kind of conviction emboldens the successful ones to attempt things that others thought were impossible; and in the end they are able to achieve remarkable things against seemingly insurmountable odds without regard to the dire predictions of those around them.

Action Plan

Here are four tips that I believe will SAVE you from a life of mediocrity and help you develop a healthy, supportive self-concept and live your life as a person of faith:

• S AY positive things to yourself everyday. Affirmations are statements of belief and as you continually affirm and reinforce these positive ideas to yourself you will begin to feel better about yourself.
• A CT as if you are the person you wish to become. A wise man once said, "Begin to be now what you will be hereafter."
• V ISUALIZE. You cannot be what you cannot see. Begin to visualize yourself as the ideal person you would like to be. The visual images you entertain eventually become your reality because, as Brian Tracy noted, "they intensify your desires and deepen beliefs.""
• E MOTIONALIZE. Remember that your emotions energizes your thoughts. The more intense you feel , the greater the effect will be on you.

Keep On Pushing!

Published by
Devon Harris
www.devonharrislive.com

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Copyright (C) 2006 Devon Harris. All rights reserved worldwide.

The contents of this E-zine may be copied, reproduced, or freely distributed for all nonprofit purposes without the consent of the author as long as the author's name, copyright notice and contact information are included.

Previous issues:

• Faith - Part 1
• What Determines Your Success?
• Paying the Price
• Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
• The Pursuit of Excellence
• Paying the Price
• Creating New Beginnings
• Acres of Diamonds
• Discipline IV
• Discipline III
• Discipline II
• Discipline I
• Chance or Choice
• An Attitude of Gratitude
• Persistence
• Dare to Dream II
• Dare to Dream I

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