Assumptions Holding You Back

Streak of bad luck

If you’re having a bad day, or a bad week or year, it’s nothing personal. In fact, it’s nothing at all.

The fates are not malevolently aligned against you. You’ve just chosen to see it that way.

Your streak of bad luck will end at precisely the moment you decide it is over. The only thing that can make the future look bleak is your agonizing over the past, and that can end right now.

Misfortune is difficult when you’re living through it. Yet as you do live through it, you build strength, experience, determination, and a solid connection to authentic purpose.

Instead of seeing yourself as a victim of your troubles, realize that as of now, you are very much a beneficiary of them. Though the pain may be deep, the power is even more profound.

With a renewed sense of purpose, look forward and move forward. Your future is yours to choose. 

Blueprints

Your thoughts are the blueprints from which your days are constructed. Each action you take is informed and directed by the thoughts you think.

If your thoughts are disjointed and unfocused, the results you get will be meager and mostly meaningless. If your thoughts are filled with negativity and worry, your life will faithfully express your greatest fears.

Fortunately, you can do much, much better, and it’s really not so difficult at all. You can choose, right now and as often as you wish, to fill your mind with positive, empowering thoughts.

All it takes is the will to do so. It is so easy to choose your thoughts, it seems almost trivial, and yet the results are anything but trivial.

When the blueprints are well designed, the building will be a strong, beautiful, functional structure. When your thoughts are consistently well chosen, your life will be consistently rich and fulfilling.

You can choose any thought, any time you wish. Remind yourself often to stick with those thoughts that continue to build your life into one that’s truly great. 

Where you lead

If you don’t notice and appreciate life’s beauty today, why will anyone else? If you don’t make the effort to make a difference, why should anyone else?

It’s easy to assume that someone else will take up the slack. But when everyone makes that assumption, nothing much gets done.

Choose instead to act as if all of life is seeing itself through your eyes. Live as if all of life is depending on you to express its highest, most beautiful purpose through what you do.

Live as though your world depends on you. Because it does, even when no one appears to be watching, and even when no one seems to care.

All that you think, all that you do, and all that you are, truly matters. It goes far beyond you and makes the world what it is.

Lead with care, lead with positive purpose, lead with love. And your world becomes a little bit brighter as it follows where you lead. 

Begin and continue

Whether it is a small task or a life-changing project, the strategy for achievement is the same. Begin right away, and then continue for as long as necessary.

Are you worried you might not get it right? If you put your energy into worry, you won’t get anything done at all.

Instead, step confidently up to the task right away, get going on it, and keep going. You’ll know soon enough if you need to adjust your efforts to get precisely the result you intend.

There are plenty of very reasonable excuses for not getting started. But even the most valid, understandable excuses won’t pay the bills or add to the quality of your life.

Instead of entertaining the worthless excuses or poisonous resentments, you can be making the effort. Instead of fretting about the possible obstacles, you can be steadily working your way past the real ones.

The achievement you seek is ready for you to claim it and bring it to life. Begin the effort now, continue as necessary, and that achievement will indeed be yours. 

Get it started

If you wait until the fear is gone, the opportunity will have already passed. If you wait until you’re sure you’ll get it perfect, you’ll never get it started.

The time to act is when you have the intention. The time to act is as soon as you feel the urge to make a difference.

If you hesitate, you’ll begin to talk yourself out of it. When you give in to doubt, doubt will seize the momentum.

Let the fear inform you and prepare you, but do not assume that it must stop you. Realize that whatever you doubt you can do is precisely what you must find a way to do.

Choose to transform each excuse for holding back into permission to step forward. Remind yourself that you can handle the uncertainty and the challenges, and can in fact thrive on them.

As soon as you decide to get it done, go ahead right then and get it started. Make the commitment, and you’ll create the achievement. 

Whatever results

To achieve, you must care enough to make the effort but not so much that you’re afraid to fail. The most valuable results are reached by focusing intensely on what you’re doing without attaching your sense of self worth to what you get from it.

Of course you would like to get the results you intended. But it’s not the end of the world if you don’t.

In fact, it is a powerful step in the right direction. No matter what results you get, you are still capable, you are more experienced than ever, and you are eminently worthy.

Imagine what you could do if you could do without worry. In fact, you can.

Think of how effective you could be if you didn’t have to obsess over how effective you were being. Those who accomplish much, do so by being unconcerned that they might accomplish little.

You are uniquely beautiful and worthy no matter what results you get. Keep that in your mind and in your attitude, and you’ll surely get truly great results. 

Working for fun

What if hard work was actually fun? Just imagine how much more of it you would choose to do, and how much additional value you would create.

What if tedious work was actually fulfilling? Just think of how many more great things you could accomplish.

Imagine that some person or some group wanted to hold you back, to keep you from being your very best. What would be a good way of doing that?

One extremely effective way to hold millions of people back would be to spread the assumption that difficult, challenging work is to be avoided. That being the case, is it really an assumption you want to willingly hold on to?

What’s fun, and satisfying, and fulfilling for you, is whatever you decide is fun, satisfying and fulfilling. If you so choose, that can include intense, difficult, challenging and even tedious work that creates great value.

Are you being held back by your assumptions about what is enjoyable and fulfilling, and what is not? You’re free to change those assumptions any time you choose.

— Ralph Marston