Experience is a powerful teacher. The problem with experience is you get the tests first and the lessons after. We can skip some of the hard tests if we learn from the experience of others.

Experience is a powerful teacher. The problem with experience is you get the tests first and the lessons after. We can skip some of the hard tests if we learn from the experience of others.

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

Eleanor Roosevelt

I have come to understand that I am what I choose to believe. All my actions, and how I view the world and its opportunities, is seen through the lens of my beliefs. The world reveals more as we become more attuned.

I now know that I have to be very careful to rigorously evaluate my beliefs and ferret out assumptions and examine them. As Socrates said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”

My assumptions may or may not be true, and they may or may not serve my best interests. It is incumbent on me to align the truth and my best interests.

At the end of the day, we are all pretending to be someone based on our beliefs. It’s best to pick beliefs that serve us in the pursuit of becoming our best selves. We get to choose. We are what we pretend to be.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

- Kurt Vonnegut

This process of cultivating my beliefs has been helpful to me in every aspect of my life. I have noticed I have a different range of options and opportunities based on what I choose to believe.

Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe.

- Saint Augustine

This process is only sustainable with a mind set and intentions aligned with those goals.

You can choose what to believe about yourself and your reactions to events. Your beliefs will determine the choices you make, the actions you take, and the responses you make.

You have to know deep down why you are doing things. A person who knows why they are doing something can figure out how to do it. We operate off of the meaning we generate about why we are doing something. All our actions come from the intention behind them.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

Marcel Proust

We all know the saying “I’ll believe it when I see it.” It makes sense. We want visual proof of something before we acknowledge its truth. But in many instances it is the other way around. We see what we want to see. We see what confirms what we already have decided to believe.

Just take a look at the news or politics for examples of how an event can be split, like light through a prism, into various interpretations.

Its like Rashomon.

Rashomon is a Japanese movie by the great director Kurosawa that examines the nature of truth and human perceptions. It recounts how four people have different versions of the same crime scene. It is worth checking out.

Confirmation Bias

The world is brimming with a variety of things going on. We humans are wired to focus on things we already believe. It’s called confirmation bias.

The world is constantly broadcasting an infinite variety of things. We act like a radio and tune into the ones that we recognize and relate to.

We are inclined to look for, interpret, and remember information in a way that confirms our beliefs. It is important to be mindful and aware of this proclivity. It is a blind spot that can blunt our best destiny.

We have the ability to identify our beliefs and change the ones that are holding us back. We can replace them with beliefs that will serve our pursuit of personal freedom.

We can’t afford self-sabotaging assumptions about how the world works. An example is personal finance and wealth creation. Many of us harbor beliefs about money that are holding us back.

William Butler Yeats said,

“The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”

Lets work on sharpening our wits.

The journey to unleashing our personal best takes us through a series of cascading steps. Emerson laid out the template eloquently and succinctly:

“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is about shaping our destiny.

The first step is to focus on creating a set of beliefs that will generate thoughts and ideas that we then turn into actions. Our beliefs are the “why” we want it. The actions are the “how” to do it. As we apply the actions consistently they become habits.

We can define our goals so we know where we want to go. It ultimately about what destiny we want to fulfill.

It is critical to clearly know what we want in life. Take time to dream and visualize and journal what you really want. Don’t put any curbs or judgments on your dreams. Just brainstorm and write them down. I like to do this every year and check back on them and see if they still represent where I want to go.

Once that is clear we craft a plan to get from here to there. This is where we break down our path into feasibly doable and measurable steps. This is the roadmap of how to reach those goals.

The first part is changing our mindset. What got us here won’t get us there. We need to identify bad behavior, eliminate it and replace it with productive behavior. This is a process of becoming more.

I am in the process of doing this right now. I want to lose five pounds. I know I need to discipline my calorie cravings and up my exercise routine. I know if I run for half an hour I burn around 400 calories. A pound is 3500 calories. If I double my run and burn 800 calories, and run every day, I can lose a pound every four days. If I do this for twenty days I can lose five pounds. So now I am faced with knowing what to do. Do I have the discipline to do it? I am going to find out this month. It starts today.

The past doesn’t matter. Its what you do now going forward that will shape your destiny. Stop beating yourself up for what’s happened in the past. It is not productive behavior. Focus on solutions instead of problems.

Forward motion and being action oriented requires dispelling ideas of being at the mercy of events and helplessness.

Learned Helplessness

Many times in life events ambush us that are outside our control. Shit happens. We get laid off from our jobs, betrayed by a lover, someone gets ill or dies, or the government cuts benefits we relied upon. It can seem like there is nothing we can do to make things better. We feel like we try and try and nothing works.

When this happens we fall into a state where we just don’t want to be disappointed again. We feel like we just can’t take another failed attempt and that the world is aligned against us. It feels much better to just watch TV and eat ice cream and pizza.

This condition is called “learned helplessness”. We have actually taught ourselves that we are powerless in confronting and engaging with the world.

Shit happens. Step over it.

It’s important to get rid of this negative belief that you can’t do anything. The feeling that you have tried everything and nothing works is a self-limiting belief.

First of all, what’s the point of quitting? Just try something else. Make a list and try five new things everyday. Why not? Who cares if they don’t work. No one is keeping score. Tweak them, refine them, learn from the feedback, course correct, adjust and try something else.

There are lots of examples that we can take courage from.

Thomas Edison said, “I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” We don’t remember all his failures. Edison is famous for inventing the light bulb. It just takes one success. Colonel Sanders was 65 and worked for a year and a half and had over one thousand rejections before his first yes.

Churchill was completely marginalized and out of the public eye before he returned at 66 and led England through its darkest days to victory. Churchill said, “Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”

You are writing your biography right now. How do you want to be remembered? What kind of role model do you want to be? Treat life like a game. Go from failure to failure and don’t lose enthusiasm. Heck, gain enthusiasm.

Mythologize your personal story and use your trials and tribulations as fuel. This is your personal power.

Your power lies in being persistent in taking action. Every time you do something you have the opportunity to learn from it. Then you can do it better next time. Persistence is best built on a foundation of habits.

“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.”

― Octavia Butler

As long as you are clear on your aspirations and goals and why you want to attain them, taking action is the only way towards them.

As Tony Robbins says, “Take massive action.” I have that as a post-it note on my computer so I see it every day.

Re-double your efforts. Try to do ten times your current effort. If you increase your current output you will see more forward motion and gains.

This is the process for learning to do the right things for personal freedom and independence. This is the way to financial freedom.

Make a practice of focusing on solutions instead of problems. Plan for setbacks and obstacles. Even though we don’t know what they will be if we have a mindset that acknowledges that we will encounter problems then when they happen we don’t feel surprised and ambushed. We just acknowledge it and think oh this is the challenge I have been dealt. Treat them like puzzles to solve. Keep an emotional distance and focus on solutions.

We all have problems, frustrations, disappointments and setbacks. There is no getting around it. They are a part of life. Its how we view them and deal with them that shapes our lives more than anything else we do. Get out of the “why me Lord” mindset. The universe’s delays are not the universe’s denials.

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