E-Ensure A Successful Attitude
"If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." - Wayne Dyer
At·ti·tude - a settled way of thinking or feeling about someone or something, typically one that is reflected in a person's behavior.
As human beings, our minds are telos seeking organisms. Telos means an ultimate object or aim. 'Where focus goes, energy flows' meaning whatever it is that we put our attention on is that which we will find. Like a telescope, once directed towards the item wish to be seen, it eliminates your ability to see anything else other than the range in which its lens is focused. The more you magnify the object so it becomes clearer, the less you see of anything else around it.
Our minds operate exactly the same way. Once we become fixated on a probable outcome we're seeking, the more focus we put on our intention, the less we recognize all of the accompanying distinctions that come with it. Without further inspection, one might read into this description of perspective as simply putting your focus on what you want. However, the startling reality is this is true of both what you 'do' want AND 'don't'.
What we notice will be a function of our predominant mental programming at the time we decide what we want to put our focus on. It's called our reticular activating system (RAS). In simple terms, the RAS is the gatekeeper of information that is let into our conscious minds. It plays a critical role filtering the enormous amount of sensory information we are bombarded with every second. It makes sure our brains don't get encumbered with more information that it can handle by selecting the information that is most important for our minds to pay attention to. It operates 24/7/365 both consciously and unconsciously.
On the conscious level, it will pick up information that supports your dominant mental programming and bring it to your attention to assess. On the unconscious level, it does the same thing, however you're not aware that you are directing it. For example, when you are driving in traffic with many automobiles around you, you tend to notice cars that are similar to yours or something you want without consciously looking for them. You notice the similar autos to yours in different colors, years, styles, models, etc., because your RAS knows what to look for out of familiarity. Since you spend so much time in your particular auto or are emotionally attuned to one out of desire, you gain a keen awareness of its distinctions in comparison to all others. Though surrounded by hundreds or thousands of different makes of automobiles, you consciously and unconsciously notice yours.
This example can be applied to what you've allowed to program your thinking. There's a term used in computer programming called G.I.G.O. While amazing feats of engineering that have transformed life as we know it, computers cannot act on their own. What they can do is based on the programs (sets of instructions on how to process inputted information) written by a programmer. It has no judgements, emotions, or human logic to make decisions other than what it's been told to do. If you program a computer that 2+2=5, even though it's wrong, every time it's asked to compute 2+2 it will calculate 5 every time. G.I.G.O. means Garbage In Garbage Out.
Our minds are programmed exactly the same way. Whatever we've immersed ourselves in through our five (5) senses will form the predominant mental programming of our thought process. If our minds have been programmed with more negative programming
How does this programming affect our ability to 'believe' towards discovering our full potential?
When presented with an opportunity, dream, goal, or aspiration that we decide we want to pursue; we are either going to produce results or reasons. The likelihood that we produce the result we are seeking will be a function of our minds being focused on the solutions to the challenges that will come with it more than we focus on the reasons it can't be done.
Every problem has a solution and every solution brings with it challenges you could not have foreseen. This means that when discussing what it takes to discover your full potential through building your belief, you're going to constantly be presented with challenges in which you'll need to find solutions to. Like a telescope, the more we focus on the solutions, the less we see the opposition that's there to teach us. However, the same thing holds true on the other side. The more attention we put on the reasons we can't produce an intended result by focusing on our challenges, the less we're able to see the solutions every adversity has. Our point of view, or perspective, will be based on the programming our minds have at the point in time we choose to consciously direct it.
Ensuring a successful attitude doesn't mean you only focus on the positive and blindly pretend life is nothing but rainbows, sunshine, and Unicorns. You need to acknowledge when something isn't working so you can take control and do something about it. Acknowledging it and pivoting towards a solution by asking the questions that reveal the answer is far different from dwelling in the adversity and having it grow so big it blocks the light of possibilities from being recognized. Those that 'believe', see more possible solutions than problems and focus their attention on them to produce the results that demonstrate their intention. Those who lack 'belief', at some point in time along the journey of manifesting the results they are seeking, will focus on the reasons it can't be done more than the possibilities of how it can be accomplished. Once the RAS becomes trained to notice this more than the solutions, it then supports this awareness by having your recognize all of the reasons it can't be done more so than seeing the ways in which it could be. This is why Thomas Edison would go through 10,000 ways in which the incandescent light bulb wouldn't work to find the one way in which it would. His focus was on the result...not the process of seemingly constant failure.
If you're challenged in learning how to 'believe' because your predominant mental programming leans towards reasons rather than results, the good news is you can reprogram your thinking thus learning how to strengthen your 'belief'. This reprogramming will be a result of who you choose to spend time with, what you allow to enter your thoughts through what you see and hear (reading, listening, studying, immersive learning), and the hunger in which you truly desire to grow and develop past the challenges you've been met with that have previously stopped you.
Once you go down this path, you'll recognize your position on it when things that used to trigger you lose their power because of your perspective changing. The further down this path of reprogramming you go, the stronger you get in becoming unstoppable. You'll know you've finally arrived when what you see in your minds eye is as real as any physical item in time and space. It's at that point that you'll unequivocally,
Believe...
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