Shattering limiting beliefs

I take great pride in what I do, I have studied the mind and success for over 25 years now, not because I had a natural interest in how the mind works, but because I just couldn't make it, it didn't matter what I did, nothing worked.

What I learned propelled me into the ranks of the worlds top 1% of salespeople and went on to save my life (really)

What I learned in a nutshell follows..........   

My latest keynote speech..

Id like to start by asking you a question

Who here believes that they haven’t used their full potential so far and that you would like release more of your potential in order to do more, be more and achieve more in life, can I have a show of hands please. (lead the hand raising)

May I also ask, If I could share information with you that would most definitely help you to use more of your potential and also allow you to make improvements in every area of your life, would be something that you would want to know more about, can I have another show of hands please.

Fantastic, What I have come to share with you this evening is some of the most powerful information that you will have ever heard, so powerful in fact that it could literally save your life one day, how do I know this, because it saved mine, that is how fundamentally powerful this information is.

Lets imagine that over here is your past, your old way of doing things, , in the past you have used your mind in inconsistent ways through no fault of your own, I say through no fault of your own because you have never had a minutes worth of teaching in regard to how your mind works and how to use your mind effectively at anytime during your entire education., and because of this you were literally set up for failure.

Over here is your future, here will be totally different to your past because over there when you achieved success in any area of your life, you couldn’t explain why, because when things turned out well, you were using your mind in a certain way, but you were using it in a certain way by accident, so if you were like me, sometimes you got it right and sometimes you got it wrong, but because you weren’t aware at a conscious level, how you were doing what you were doing it was impossible to achieve consistent results,
because you didn’t know the formula, its was like trying to bake a cake without a recipe, you put in a pinch of this and a pinch of that and now and again it comes out perfectly, but because you are not following a recipe you cant replicate what you’ve done because you don’t know the formula you used, and this is exactly how we have been running our lives, however after this evening has ended you will know enough to start doing things differently and more effectively because you aware of the process so you will be able to do it consciously.

I’ve been studying in this field for well over 20 years now, and what I am going to share with you is what I’ve learned and a few examples of how I managed to turn things around and to be able to live life on my terms as opposed to being buffeted around on the ocean like a ship without a rudder which is exactly how things are set up for us to operate when we do not know how to use the most powerful instrument in the entire world, our own minds.

I didn’t set out to learn any of this, but had I not learned it I probably wouldn’t be here now as I would have ended my life many years ago, it was too hard and too painful to carry on as I was, thankfully I had a great desire to be successful, I wanted to have a happy marriage, I wanted to have children, I wanted to be a successful motorcycle racer, I wanted to have my own successful business one day, but growing up, I grew up in the worst kind of home, I was watching my mother being physically abused from the age of 4 or 5 and a few years later I would also get abused both physically and mentally and some of the things that happened to me verged on torture

My father was always having affairs and my mother would grab him by his arms and try to prevent him from going to see his girlfriends, he would just struggle free, turn and punch her to the ground rendering her unconscious and then leave me at the age of 10 to drag her from the hallway and lift her on to the bed where I would begin to clean her up, wipe the blood from her face, put frozen peas on her black eyes and sit with her until she came around, so I could make sure that she was still alive, there was no point in calling the police, in the 70s they were interested in domestic abuse unless it annoyed the neighbours, the next part of my daily ritual was to go to bed and force myself to sleep, I just wanted to get rid of the days as fast as I possibly could, but then my father would return home and assault me in my sleep with constant punches to the face, being beaten in your sleep has a similar effect on the mind as having a heart attack as you go into shock because you cannot comprehend what is happening to you.

After he would leave, I would go to the safe place in my mind that I had created, it was a vision, a vision that was so vivid and so real that it would drag me through my darkest days and it became the hope that would get me through my teenage years, in this vision, and this is a key function of the mind as we think in pictures and what we picture in our minds eye, we move towards, but again, if you aren’t aware of the process its very hard to create consistent results, in my vision I would imagine myself in my 20s, I would see my wife lying in a large bed and next to her was a little girl with a pony tail with her arms flung over her head, and as I looked to the right, I would see another baby girl shuffling in her cot with a dummy in her mouth, and the room would be bathed in an orange glow, why the orange glow?, I have absolutely no idea, but when I would imagine the scene it was always bathed in a soft orange glow, at that time in my life I had no idea about the power of vision or the power of imagination, but I did believe that one day, one day, life would be normal, I will come back to this story later.

My parents eventually got divorced after 16 years, the divorce came through on my 18th birthday and that was the day we left the family home, I spent my 18th birthday moving into another mans house who wanted us there about as much as we wanted to be there.

A couple of months later I was introduced to a girl and fell in love, it wasn’t really love, it was the need to be wanted by someone, to feel as though I counted but I had no idea what was coming next, unbeknownst to me, she was out on bail, and after we had been together for six months she broke the news to me that she was on trial accused of murdering her baby, she swore to me that she didn’t do it and that it was her boyfriend and that it would all come out in the trial.

It all came out all right, but not as she said it would, for three weeks I would receive the newspapers at work which outlined the horrific things that had happened to the little girl and on the final day I was greeted with the headline… BABY KILLERS GET 5  AND 6 YEARS.

I was devastated, I cried all the way home, stopping off at the beach where I went down to the edge and cursed the world for my life, I then slashed my arms and woke up in a hospital ward with my arms all bandaged up, with no idea about how I got there.

What’s my point, my point is this isn’t a poor me story, there is no sadness or need for any kind of sadness far as this goes, they say that if you can tell your story without crying then you are healed and I am well and truly healed.

I just want to illustrate to you in no uncertain terms that if I can do it, I assure you that you can, you talk about starting from behind, the truth was I was so far back on so many levels that I didn’t know that there was a line!

Then, being a glutton for punishment I got into sales, life insurance sales actually, I responded to an advert that said “Earn ￡18000 a year as a financial adviser” that was more than double what I was earning at the time so I went along for an interview and after shortlist after shortlist I got the job, I was so proud to have made it through all of the different interviews until the day I started when I walked into the offices with another 19 people who were all starting in the same job on the same day.

Then at the end of the first month no check, at the end of the second month no check, so I went to see the boss and asked him what was going on.

He replied “what do you mean”

Well I signed up for ￡18000 a year and two months down the road I haven’t been paid”

Its commission only

But you said in the advert it was ￡18000 a year

￡18000 a year is the average earnings in the company, are you average or are you better than average

Not wanting to assume the title of average I said I’m better than average, to which he replied.

Well there you go then, you should make a least ￡25000 so its even better than you thought.

I walked away feeling as though I had been had over, it was a churn em and burn em method of recruiting, after 6 months 17 people had left, only two of us remained, a month later it was just me, this was when my life really started to change, because it was only when I started selling that I realised what a flawed human being I was, I would sit at my desk blushing with embarrassment trying to make cold calls whilst the older guys would all pretend to warm their hands on my red face, and when I did get my first appointment, it was a miserable winters night and it was pouring down, I got to the front door of the house, went to knock, but couldn’t move, I was so scared I froze on the spot, for about 20 minutes, I just stood there unable to move, then I sneezed, turned around and walked back to the car, horrified by my failure, I resolved that it would never happen again.

A few days later I was thumbing through a book sale and I came across a book by a man called Frank Bettger called how I raised myself from failure to success in selling, I devoured it and it set me on a journey of personal development that would consume the rest of my life with a passion for learning how we function and the rest as they say is history.

What I am about to share with you is the result of 25 years of research and application. Which I am privileged to share all over the world.

I discovered that the key fundamental in how we function is something called the self concept, your self concept is a collection of your attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and pre conceived notions about who and what you are and what’s possible for you, it sets the boundaries for your success in all areas of your life whether its life, business, personal or professional , whatever you do, you cannot operate outside of the boundaries of your self concept, not for long anyway, as anything you achieve that is outside of the boundary of your self image, will be dismissed as a fluke and you will revert to type.

The driving force behind your self concept is belief, and the beliefs you hold in life dictate the level of success you will enjoy in all areas of life, you literally have 1000s of beliefs about everything you can imagine and they act as a thermostat that restricts your level of performance in each and every area of your life, they are what determine what kind of a person you think you are, how good you are at your job, what kind of partner, friend, lover, sportsman, you name it and you have a corresponding belief about how good you are in this area.
So what are they and why do we have them, well beliefs are generalisations that you have made about past experiences and these generalisations are used as a psychological shortcut to help you decide what you can and can’t do by looking back over your experiences to get a measurement of what you should expect when you attempt to do anything.

They regulate what you see and hear, how you perceive the world to be, you see we don’t see the world as it is, we see the world based upon our belief of how we think the world is, our minds allow in information based upon what we believe to be true, if we receive information that is contrary to what we believe, we will either distort the information until it fits in with what we believe to be true or we will just delete it and ignore it.

If you believe a person to be bad and you tell someone something about them and they respond with, “no I think you have him all wrong, he’s the nicest guy I’ve ever met there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to help anyone, your response to this would be something along the lines of.
“Well you obviously don’t know him as well as I do, and if you did you wouldn’t be saying those kind of things about him, you see you wont say to yourself, Maybe I have the guy all wrong, you will distort or delete the information until it fits in with what you believe to be true.

Beliefs come from many sources and are created in a variety of ways, the earliest beliefs we have are formed in our imprint period, from birth to about seven years and are given to us from authority figures, mostly parents and teachers, at that time in our lives we rarely question anything, because we view parents and teachers as right in everything we say and because of this their truth becomes our truth, their beliefs become our beliefs, whatever they say at we tend to believe, and if we believe it, it becomes true for us, and that’s something that you really need to be aware of, something only becomes true for us if we accept it as the truth, I remember back in my life insurance days we had a new girl start as a salesperson and she had come from an electrical appliance sales background and her goal was to sell an appliance every day, so when she joined us, she expected to do the same thing, well just to put this into perspective, the average life insurance salesman sold 4 policies a month, but this was December and we never sold any insurance in December because the story we told ourselves was that you cant sell in December because everyone is in the Christmas mood and no one wants a life insurance salesman in their home while they are trying to watch it’s a wonderful life, remember if you believe something to be true, then it becomes true for you, we believed it to be true, so we never sold anything in December, However at the end of the first week, the manager came in and started putting up the sales figures on the wall and next to the new girls figures and she was down as having made 5 sales and it was only her first week, and then one of the guys turned to her and said “Don’t you know its December and no one buys insurance in December, and you know what, she hasn’t made a sale in December since , and that is the power belief has in our lives, so we have to be extremely careful about whose advice we buy, the words of others can have massive influence in our lives but only if we accept what has been said as the truth.

Our beliefs are also heavily influenced by cultural values, significant events, past results, knowledge and imagination, yes imagination, something doesn’t even need to have happened to create a belief within us as the subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between something that is real and something that has been vividly imagined, and we imagine something it is literally stored as a memory even though it never actually happened, have you ever done the lemon exercise? Do the lemon exercise.

Now we all know we weren’t drinking the juice of a real lemon, but most of you still winced at the bitterness as we felt the bitter juice on our taste buds, so why would you think that the imagination would have any less impact on our subconscious minds when we vividly imagine anything, it doesn’t, we are literally creating our futures moment by moment with our current dominant thoughts, and we always move towards what we think about,

At my last talk someone asked me if I believed that our futures are predetermined and I know for a fact that our futures are pre determined, just not in the way most people would think, our futures are predetermined, they are pre determined by our thoughts and actions of today,

Poor thinking and little action today equals a life of lack and frustration tomorrow, A life of productive thought and massive action creates a life of achievement and satisfaction, the trouble is at best most people do the thinking but never take any action, always waiting for the right time, but they fail to realise that the right time is now, why because now is the only time we will ever have any control over, its all we ever had!

So Now you know beliefs come from and what they are, why you have them and hopefully you will now have an idea as to why you have been able to achieve certain things and why you haven’t been able to achieve results in certain areas of your life or at least have a better understanding of why some things have turned out the way they did up until this point, however the good news is that all beliefs are learned, and what can be learned can be unlearned.

For me, it wasn’t until I started really trying to make progress in my insurance career that I realised something was holding me back, at this point I had never ever heard about limiting beliefs and for several years I struggled trying to make a living without ever really making any significant progress.

I was desperate to be a success, and I had set a goal of qualifying for the million dollar round table, which is a world wide organisation that represents the top 5% of salespeople in the world, but every year I failed to qualify and nothing I ever did ever seemed to get me closer to my goal, I had read that only 0.5% of its membership was under 30 years old and I was 29, so I decided that I was going to qualify before I was 30 no matter what happened, and I did, but only just, but it wasn’t without putting in what I considered unsustainable effort as I seldom got home before 10 or 11 pm every night.

It was on one of these nights that a miracle occurred in my life, because I got to witness the immense power of the imagination and visualisation, I got to understand the power of all of the visualising I used to do in my teenage years to get me through the days, One night, I arrived home really late, it must have been close to midnight, I had spent the night trying to sell a couple of aging hippies some life insurance and it had been a long process as they continuously smoked hash and their comprehension level was getting worse as the night went on, and I was starting to feel a little high just sitting with them in the same room.

So arriving home close to midnight and not wanting to wake anyone I got undressed in the bathroom and then as quietly as I could I eased the bedroom door open, as I did, I felt this wave of emotion come over me, I didn’t know why at first, but I got very emotional as tears began to run down my cheeks, when I opened the door, the bedroom was bathed in an orange glow, I looked over at the bed, and saw my wife lying there, next to her was my 3 year old little girl with her pony tail in her hair and as I turned to the right, I saw my baby daughter twisting and turning in her cot and sucking on her dummy,

Unbeknownst to me, my wife had been out that day and bought a soft glow lamp, something that would allow me to see what I was doing without bumping into things when I got home late, I had forgotten about that vision from all those years ago and here I was, standing in my own picture, a picture that had been long forgotten even though it was probably the only thing that got me through one of the worst childhoods you could imagine, I was home….. And it was exactly, it was exactly as I had imagined all of those years ago.

You see we really do move towards what we think about consistently and vividly imagine.

So, I just qualified for the million dollar round table that year, and I set off the following June to my first meeting in Anaheim California, for me this would be the making of me, I would get to rub shoulders with the worlds best and my goal was to become one of them..

On my first evening I wandered into the bar and saw someone that I knew was achieving success in the business, he was several years older than me, quite loud and with a distinctive northern accent and in truth he really was quite full of himself, when he had finished talking about himself it was almost as if he were saying, ok enough about me, what about you, what do you think about me! after the initial small talk, I said how much have you made this year, without hesitation he said ￡80.000, I was blown away, it was only early June and I had only done ￡17800 myself so that was more than four times what I had achieved at that point.

So I set out to find myself some mentors and I was successful in doing so, I managed to get Ben Feldman who was the top life insurance salesman in the world and I also managed to get Joe Gandolfo to help me who was famous for selling more insurance from in the 70s than 1500 of the 1800 insurance companies in America.

Ironically, in spite of having two of the worlds top salesmen helping me, it wasn’t making me earn anymore money, which was really starting to piss me off, as I was so desperate to succeed and if I couldn’t achieve the success I craved under these two men then there was no hope, but I was shortly going to find out that knowledge wasn’t necessarily the answer, because if we have limiting beliefs, knowing more simply wont help us, in fact if we don’t believe at a subconscious level that we can achieve something no amount of knowledge would make even the slightest difference as I was shortly going to realise.

I had been working with an investment company for a short while, occasionally they would put a little investment business my way, but then one of the biggest breakthroughs of my life was just about to happen.

My contact called and asked me if I could fly to London to meet one of his clients team just to give him an overview of what I did and how I might be able to help, I flew into London and met my contact and we started to walk towards a restaurant where we would be meeting.

All of a sudden my friend grabbed me by the arm and swung me around, Mark, I haven’t been quite honest with you, we aren’t meeting my clients member of staff, we are meeting the man himself, he’s one of the biggest shipping magnates in Russia and he has a 100 million that he doesn’t know what to do with and I said you could help, I knew you wouldn’t be keen if I told you as I have seen you look uncomfortable when I have suggested meeting people before.

We arrived at the restaurant and I would have been a much happier person if the ground had swallowed me up, as soon as he door opened, there was this stereotypical Russian man that looked as if he was Dolph Lungrens twin brother, and when he stood up he was about 7ft 2 in, as I shook his hand I couldnt help but notice that my entire hand as well as a piece of my arm had disappeared into his giant grip, I tried to say, it’s a pleasure to meet you but no words would come, apart from this little squeak, I could feel my lips moving but no sounds came out, as I looked to his left and right I noticed several advisers either side of him, which just made it worse.

My friend, looked at me, looked at Dolph and then looked at me again, and fearing that left to my own devices I would just stand there and say nothing indefinitely, he broke the silence and said “Right, lets order”

Very directly and without warning Dolph said in his distinctive Russian accent, well what do you have for me”

I looked at him, paused and paused some more, for a brief moment everything that had ever happened flashed before my eyes and I was hit with the thought of “What’s he going to do, shoot me”

I then proceeded to tell him all about the fantastic investment I was selling and recommended that he got involved as soon as he could as there was a limit on the money that the scheme could take and that he should make getting involved a priority.

And how much do you think I should invest young man, I am sure Steven has briefed you about my problem.

Steve had, Steve had also told me not to suggest more than 1 million as he had been trying to get this guy into his company for years.

I considered Steve’s words, paused, and said “Dolph (That really wasnt his name and I cant use his real name) I think I would be wasting your time and insulting your intelligence if I suggested that you invest any less than 10 million pounds into this, I am aware that you could easily do much more, but I would be more comfortable if you could see what I can do with what is a relatively small amount of money to you, I am more than happy for you to invest more, but not now, let me get you some great results first”

I couldn’t actually believe the words that were coming out of my mouth, it was all I could do to stop myself grinning as I spoke, as I turned to my left I looked at Steve and his mouth was a gasp, I leant over to him and whispered, “close your mouth Steve”

The client paused for a moment, his team started talking to him in Russian, which irritated me because it reminded me of how my grand parents used to talk about me in front of me in Jersey French.

I turned to Steve and asked what’s was going on, How the F, should I know, you’ve probably blown it with your 10 million request.

After what seemed like forever, he looked at me paused and said “ok young man, we do business, call me on Monday”

The next morning I was back in Jersey, and my financial times came through the letter box, with the heading, The end of with profits investments is nigh, it was what I had suggested, and the end wasn’t nigh at all, I phoned the financial times and asked to be put through to the journalist which I managed to do with surprising ease.

“I’ve just read your article”

“And how can I help”

“Its total bullshit, why would you write such a thing”

“Well he said, I read somewhere that these investments would be overshadowed by better investments in about 10 years”

“These are 5 year investments, why would you write such a thing without giving out the full info”

“Because it makes for compelling copy”

I slammed the phone down in disgust and prayed Dolph wasn’t a reader of the financial times as it was a misleading article and it would be a fine investment for the next ten years.

After what seemed like a month, the weekend passed and my 6.30 am telephone was near, the phone rang.

“What do you make of this article in the times young man”

I reiterated the conversation that I had with the journalist and reconfirmed that I felt it was the right thing to do.

“Young Man, I know what the press is like, but I did not get where I am by taking unnecessary risks, we do 1 million and we see how you do”

It was the Thursday before Good Friday, and it was the biggest single commission cheque I had ever generated, ￡50.000, which had to be split two ways, it was also the most miserable Easter of my entire life as my share of the original investment was supposed to be ￡250,000 and in 2000 that was going to allow me to move out of my rented accommodation and buy a 3 bed roomed house for cash.

But there was a silver lining, I had just been given the greatest gift I would ever receive even though I didn’t know it yet, I didn’t know it but I had always dealt with people without much money because I had chronic limiting beliefs in this area, I didn’t realise I did, because as explained earlier all beliefs are created at a subconscious level and are rarely if ever questioned consciously, after my experience with Dolph, the belief that I wasn’t up to dealing with people of his stature just melted away, and similar opportunities started appearing as if by magic, only it wasn’t magic at all, I didn’t see them because I didn’t believe I could, you see we don’t see the truth, we see the truth as we believe it to be, and if we believe it to be true then it becomes true for us.

The next month I was at the million Dollar Round table annual meeting and sure enough my loud friend was holding court in the bar, when he was free I shuffled over and we got talking about production level.

“How have you done so far this year” I asked

“Same as last year, ￡80.000” how about you”

“Me, I did ￡90,000 last month, would you like a beer”

What’s my point?……………….. Nothing, and everything

That year after that experience I went on to officially rank in the top 1% of salespeople in the world and I did 7 times more business than I had done in the previous year, in fact, my production had really only hovered at a certain level for several years before that and yet now, here I was having a 700% increase in business in 12 months.

Was I 700% better, did I know 700% more, the answer on both counts is a resounding no, at best I would be marginally better.

The entire change in my business fortunes was simply down to the removal of a limiting belief that I wasn’t even aware that I had, and with the removal of that limiting belief came an entire new way of life, so please ask yourself the question, where are your limiting beliefs, and you do have them by the way, everyone does, even Richard Branson and people like him have them, the difference is they just have a much higher ceiling than the average person,

So where do you begin, you begin by looking at the areas of your life that aren’t working as well as you would like them to, and these are the areas of life where your limiting beliefs reside.

For those of you that are interested in attending an intensive one day seminar, I am running a full day workshop on June 13th where I will be working with a small group of people where we will systematically spend an entire day together deconstructing and identifying your limiting beliefs, and replacing them with empowering new beliefs, it will be a truly life changing day for those of you who wish to attend, but there is only a small number of tickets as I like to be able to spend plenty of time on a one to one basis, they aren’t going to be released until tomorrow on quidsin, or you can go to eventbrite.co.uk, there is an early bird offer which is going to be less than half the normal rate and this will only be available for 24 hours, so if you want to take this to the next level you will need to book tomorrow.

Its important to know that beliefs don’t work alone, they affect different functions of the mind and its paramount that you are aware of how they work in order to get the very best for yourself from this information, Beliefs affect what you focus on, what you see, and how you perceive the world you live in, and all of these functions work independently, but they all influence each other dramatically and they can make you or break you depending on your own understanding of how they work and even more importantly how you can work them to your best advantage.

I’m sure you have all heard about or read the secret, how’s that going for you?

For the majority of people not very well and there is a reason for that, they failed to mention or simply didn’t know that it doesn’t matter what you think if you don’t believe it, if your inner voice , says no then nothing happens, however, when you change your internal belief system everything will change in your outer world, but you have to change the belief first!

What you focus on is directly influenced, by what you believe and how you perceive your world, you simply cannot see something that isn’t you, and I am sure that this makes no sense to you whatsoever, so its important to understand how your subconscious mind works and how your beliefs influence what you see.

We are bombarded with 2 million bits of information per second via our five senses, every hair that stands up on your body is sending data back to your brain for analyses, the problem is that your brain can only process 7 +- 2 bits of information per second, which is the equivalent of 134 bits, so here’s the problem, if your brain is bombarded with 2 million bits of information per second and you can only actually process 134 bits, then how does your brain know which information to select?

Well, this is where the information I am sharing with you becomes life changing because when you actually understand the process you will begin to understand how the circumstances in your life have unfolded as they have, and even more importantly how you can use this information to actually direct your focus and take conscious control of your thoughts, focus and beliefs and for the very first time actually be able to take real control of the direction of your life.

 

At the moment you actually do all of this every day, you just don’t know your doing it, as it is totally subconscious, so you will be creating good and bad results and you will never know why!……………. until now, and as we go through this you will smile to yourself as you become aware of what you have been doing what you do and why you see what you see.

When you focus on something with intent and with conviction, you activate something called your reticular activating system, your reticular activating system or RAS for short is an alerting device which is located at the brain stem, and the function of the RAS is to allow information to get through that is either of value or a threat, everything else is locked out.

So what determines what is of value, you do, with your thoughts and feelings, with your fears and desires, That which I have feared has come to pass, as humans, we are teleological beings, which means that we are goal seeking by design, so we are always heading in the direction of our dominant thought sadly no one ever taught you how to use these processes of the mind so we are left to use them in a random and hit and miss manner, so even though we are designed for success we are literally programmed for failure by ourselves through our own lack of knowledge about how we are supposed to operate.

Anyone who uses computers knows that most programs are intuitive, meaning you intuitively know what to do next, it’s the same with animals, no one has to run a seminar for bats explaining to them that there really is no need for them to constantly crash into objects as they have a built in radar to prevent this from happening, for some reason, human beings don’t know how to intuitively operate their own minds and unleash the dormant powers that lie within each and everyone of us.

The most interesting part to all of this is that we bring into our lives that which we focus on, think about and feel with emotional intensity, so we may not always get what we want out of life but we always get what we expect, because what we expect is what we think and feel and attract at a subconscious level, You see most people actually have it all backwards, If someone says to you, Ill believe it when I see it, what kind of image does that bring up for you, a successful person or a pessimistic person,

You have to set the goal first and then you will see how you will achieve it, all the things you need to know to help you achieve your goal will start to filter through to you, desire, belief and expectation are the key, you cannot set out to achieve something and be successful in bringing it into reality otherwise, you see there is too much information out there, and the right information wont get through until make a proclamation about what you want to achieve.

Most people want the proof before they act, but the only thing you can prove is based upon results that you have already achieved, which means that it will be more or less impossible to achieve something bigger, this is why people get stuck unable to move forward!

You have to set the goal, commit to it and make it a conviction and then the how to will come to you, lets look at a couple of examples that all of you will have experienced.

How many of you have ever bought a car and all of a sudden you see that make everywhere, you see them at the traffic lights you see them pulling out in front of you, there are loads of them in the car parks, how strange is that, yesterday there were hardly any of them but today now that you have bought one they are everywhere, with a show of hands who has this happened to.

What about this as another example, Ladies how many of you suddenly started to see pregnant women everywhere when you became pregnant ?

Before you were pregnant, you hardly ever saw pregnant women, now you see them everywhere and you turn to your friends and say, there must be a baby boom on at the moment because everywhere I turn there are pregnant women, but do you want to know something, the pregnancy rate is pretty much the same all of the time, it wasn’t a baby boom that you are or were experiencing, you were just seeing what was important to you, the cars and the pregnant ladies were always there but yesterday they just weren’t important to you so you didn’t see them….. But as soon as they became important to you, the information filtered through!

So consider this, is it therefore possible that you have missed out on opportunities because you were telling yourselves that they weren’t there, I know I did this for years, I didn’t believe I could sell to boards of directors or high Nett worth people, I didn’t feel as though I was good enough, so I subconsciously screened out and simply didn’t see the opportunities that were right in front of me, then one day my beliefs were challenged and all of a sudden there were more opportunities appearing than I could deal with, but do you know what, just because you don’t see something it doesn’t mean it isn’t there, all you have to do is change your beliefs about what’s possible for you and things will start to appear to you that were there all the time, you just didn’t see them because you didn’t believe it, can you imagine how much easier your life would have been so far if you would have even had an hour a week on this kind of education, when I was at school I learned E= MC2, and do you know what, in the 35 years since I’ve left school, its never come up!

I’m telling you that this information is so powerful that you can begin to see dramatic changes in your life starting from tomorrow if you start using what I am sharing with you today,

One thing that will really help you to comprehend just how powerful this is, is how beliefs can help you overcome serious illness, If you recall I said right at the very beginning that what I am going to share with you can save your life, just like it saved mine!

If you were with me three years ago more or less to the day, you would have been sitting with my wife and I at overdale whilst we were waiting to see the consultant, I was sitting there thumbing through 3 year old copies of national geographic magazines, but I wasn’t registering what I was reading because I was literally beside myself with fear, I had been feeling ill for several months, I had lost over two stone in weight, I felt as though I was poisoned through my entire body and every day I would sleep more and more, Id wake up later, go to bed earlier, and have sleeps during the middle of the day that would become longer and longer, I was actually dying and those ever lengthening sleeps would have eventually become one long permanent one.

My doctor had misdiagnosed me for several months, without ever getting up from behind his desk, I would tell him I had lost a lot of weight,

“Well thats because you are stressed“.

“I feel like I am poisoned to the core”

“Well you would do, you’re very stressed”

“But I’m sleeping longer and longer everyday”

“Well you would do you’re very stressed”

But then there was a physical symptom which he couldn’t ignore, one of my testicles had gone hard and small so I was sent for a scan where I was told I had an infection and would have to go on antibiotics for several months, if I had, I would be dead now.

The next day I awoke and my intuition was going berserk and I committed the cardinal sin, what’s the cardinal sin, I googled my symptoms and we all know that you never google your health!

But Google actually help save my life, by pure chance a man had posted the same symptoms as me and a doctor had replied, go to A and E, do not tell them about the diagnosis that you have been given, just tell them that you have an ache and they have to examine you and scan you,

So that’s what I did, a junior a and e doctor prodded me for a few minutes and said,

UMMM your lymph nodes seem to be up, I’m going to see if the oncology surgeon is on the ward, now I never knew oncology meant cancer or I would have freaked out at the mention of the word,

Fortunately he was on the ward and he came down, examined me and said he wanted to see me in his clinic on the following Monday, when I got there my wife and I sat down and his very first words were……

“I think you have a tumour”

I momentarily passed out.

When I came a round I was told that he had to operate immediately and five days later I was operated on, when I came around he was standing at my bedside with a big smile “ I got it all, and I’m 99% sure that this will be the end of it, we just need a biopsy in Southampton which is just a formality,

Going back to the waiting room for the second time in two weeks to get the results of my biopsy, which was my follow up appointment ,I just put the National geographic down when the nurse appeared with a reassuring smile, “ the doctor will see you now”

I had barely sat down with my wife when I heard the words

“Bad news Mr Baker, you have Lymphoma
(cancer of the blood)”

“Is that curable”

“No idea, its not my field, you will be booked into see the specialist in 3 weeks, he will have all the answers you need”

He got up , grabbed his files and left.

My wife and I just sat there looking at each other in shock.

As we drove home, I kept glancing at my wife, her gaze was fixed firmly on the road as if she couldn’t comprehend what was going on.

When we arrived home, I started to suffocate, I couldn’t breathe, So I ran out into the garden, still I couldn’t breathe, so I started to tear at my clothes, I ripped the buttons from my shirt and tore at my belt, I turned and saw my wife’s with her face in her hands sobbing uncontrollably…

How am I going to tell the girls was all I could think of….

The next day I had to fly to London to bring my oldest daughter Chloe back from college with her car, Chloe was always very intuitive, if her mother ever had anything on her mind and couldn’t sleep, you would hear her wake up and her two little feet hit the ground and then walk to her mothers side of the bed, climb up and put her arms around her, she did this from the age of two.

So there we were, the two of us, driving down the M25 and she began to cry.

“What’s up baby”

“Have you got cancer Dad” Are you going to die”

Her words made everything real, we pulled over and held each other so tightly.

“No baba, I’m not going anywhere~”

But my RAS was working overtime, I would see life insurance adverts on the TV, I would overhear conversations about people who had died of cancer, I would notice shoe sales because it wasn’t worth spending too much on shoes, and every article of news that would report on the latest cancer death would get through to me.

Then it hit me,

Hey, What am I doing, I teach this stuff.

Immediately I retrained my focus, changed the belief and set the goal of getting better with all of the emotional intensity I could muster, and almost immediately totally different information started to come through.

I would hear of new treatments, hear of breakthroughs, a friend called with information about a supplement that was supposed to be a 1000 times stronger than chemo…………..

I had a challenge ahead, I had been given a 50/50 chance of survival, but there was a caveat, in order to have a 50/50 chance what I had needed to be discovered and treated within 4 to 6 weeks, Id had this for 9 months now!

I had actually thought that a 50% chance was quite good until I was lying in bed one night and it occurred to me that a 50% chance was like playing Russian roulette with 3 bullets, I didn’t like those odds very much.

It also occurred to me that no one has the information that I have learned and studied for over 25 years, therefore most people never got away from the fear factor and change their focus to allow in information that will help them……

On my second chemo session, I was in the chemo ward with a sweet young woman called Annie, I asked her HOW she was going to beat this and she sheepishly said “with positive thinking” but I could see she didn’t really believe it so I started to talk to her about the power of belief .

She began to cry, “I used to really believe I was going to get better, I had to, all I ever wanted was to meet a man, fall in love and get married and have two children, I wanted it so much that I convinced myself that I was going to get better and I was, for three months in a row, my scans showed that my tumours were getting smaller and I was feeling much better, my doctor was amazed and delighted”

“What happened to change that”

“Well” I was here for a chemo session a few months ago and the nurse asked me how I was, I smiled and said “I’m great, I’m going to beat this”

The nurse turned to me and looked at me pitifully she then took my hand and squeezed it and said “Don’t get your hopes up, you have a very aggressive form of cancer”

And on my last scan they were getting bigger again.

We started talking about beliefs and how to use her mind in the way I have shared with you, and while we were talking a nurse was changing my drip and she walked away, I saw her start talking to each and every chemo patient and as she left each one, they would stand up and walk over to me pulling their drips behind them and every person was sitting around my bed, as we chatted, I could see fear turn to hope as they could see a better way ahead for them, it was one of the most beautiful and rewarding moments of my life…..

I lost touch with Annie, until last Christmas she found me, I received an email from her, “I’m fine, I’m in remission, and I just thought Id let you know, I just got engaged, THANK YOU X

Its no mystery that our minds are our greatest allies when faced with a serious illness, Dr Henry Beecher of Harvard found that after years of exhaustive studies that our beliefs and expectations largely determined whether or not we would survive, he also discovered that our belief and expectation of the drugs was a major factor in how effective the drugs would be., this was backed up by a further study by Dr Andrew Weil who gave stimulants to a large test group and told them that they were powerful sedatives and the vast majority became heavily sedated, the very same thing happened in reverse when a different group were given sedatives and told that they were stimulants.

And I am living proof that this works, If you recall I was told I had a 50/50 chance of survival if it was treated within 4/6 weeks and I didn’t get treated for nearly ten months.

Last December I finished my remission and I am totally cancer free and I plan to remain so.

So you have seen how our beliefs dictate futures, how they control what we see and hear and how we act.

You have heard how we perceive and process information affects what information gets through to us and how we block out so much that would help us if we knew how to operate the God given gifts we were born with.

And hopefully you will now see how you can change your live in every area starting right away

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I just have one final short story that I want to share with you and its one of my favourites, I love it because it demonstrates how a human being can function when they haven’t been subjected to beliefs which limit and restrict them.

It was 1983, and Cliff Young, a potato farmer from the Australian outback had a dream, he wanted to be a long distance marathon runner, But Cliffy as he was known to his friends had a slight problem, he was 61 years old and had never ever entered a race at any level, let alone a long distance ultra marathon.

One evening Cliffy was sitting in his local pub with his best mate Walt and they were having a pint and reading through the stories in the local paper and something caught Cliffys eye, there was an advert for an ultra marathon and they were looking for competitors.

Cliffy turned to Walt

Look at this Walt, there’s an ultra marathon from Sydney to Melbourne, whaddya reckon mate “

“What’s the distance”

544 miles

You’re out of your bloody mind

Well, I don’t know if Cliffy was out of his bloody mind, but he talked his best mate into coaching him and everyday for the next few months he would train, 3 months later cliffy turned up in Sydney with Walter, and Cliffys sister also came along to make sandwiches.

Cliffy didn’t have a television, if he had he may have indulged his passion by watching the long distance races on the sports channel, but if he had he may never have entered the race, you see Cliffy didn’t know the truth, what was the truth, the truth was that….

61 year old men don’t enter ultra marathons of 544 miles

That you need a specialist team of nutritionists, physiotherapists, a coach and an ultra modern mobile home with all of the amenities worthy of such a world class athlete, and here was cliffy, he had just barely made it to the race as his friends battered old Toyota hi ace van broke down three times on the way, instead of a nutritionist, his older sister had come along with an ice bucket, a loaf of bread and a wedge of ham.

Cliffy went to sign in and was originally refused entry, the sponsors of the event considered it an embarrassment that an old bloke like Cliffy could have the audacity to show up for such a prestigious event, but through persistence they eventually wore the promoter down and he conceded that Cliffy could indeed enter the race,

It was a decision that he would soon regret as when Cliffy showed up at the starting line, he quickly became the laughing stock of the event,

Cliffy was walking towards the stating line and then a journalist spotted a number on his back and before long Cliffy had every journalist around him, it wasn’t just because of his age that he stood out, it was more to do with what he was wearing, you see Cliffy had turned up to race in Wellington boots, overalls and a baseball cap.

Everyone laughed and he was asked why he thought he could enter such a race

Well, we have a lot of animals on our farm, but we don’t have any horses, so I have to run around on foot and round them all up so im pretty fit, came his reply.

The race started and everyone set off, everyone except for cliffy, who seemed a little bit confused and everyone was a couple of hundred yards down the road before he set off on his way……but he didn’t even run, he shuffled along barely lifting his feet off the ground.

By the end of the first day, Cliffy was many miles behind everyone, now the professionals knew how to run an ultra marathon, after all you would expect them to as this was how they made their living, they all knew that when you run a race like this by running for 18 hours and sleeping for 6.

But Cliffy didn’t know the truth, or the accepted beliefs about long distance running, he didn’t know you were supposed to sleep for 6 hours, so he just kept on running, occasionally stopping to nap for 60 or 90 minutes.

Well I think you all know where I am going with this, Yes Cliffy Young at 61 years of age won the race, but he didn’t just win, he beat them all by a day and a half, because instead of sleeping he just kept on running,

He was asked by a journalist how he kept motivated to keep on running such a harsh race, to this Cliffy replied, “I just kept using my imagination, every time I got too tired to carry on and I couldn’t go another step, I would imagine that I was at home and a storm was coming and that I had to keep on running until I had caught all of the animals and got them safely back into the barns.

But that wasn’t all, he actually changed the way ultra marathons were run from that point forward, it was also discovered that Cliffys shuffling style of running was found to conserve energy and to this day that is how all long distance runners now run, its called the cliff young shuffle,

You see, the truth really can set you free, and I hope that with the removal of your own limiting beliefs that you will get to define your own lives and live on your own terms, and you can, I did and I was always the person in the audience who used to think, I can see how it would work for you, but it would never work for me, but the real truth is it will work for you and you most definitely can, and I look forward to hearing how all of you knock a day and a half off your own race.