Change is a choice because all your thoughts and beliefs are a choice.
You are the only one responsible for your beliefs.
If you believe change is impossible, then for you it will be.
If you believe change is a choice, then you choose beliefs that move you in the direction of your dreams.
Each day you decide whether you will accept or reject the beliefs programmed in your mind by your parents and culture.
When you examine a belief, you can accept it, modify it, or discard it and replace it with a new one.
Everyone quietly discards the false beliefs of childhood. Adults no longer believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the cow jumping over the moon.
Unfortunately, most people don’t discard the false beliefs of adulthood.
Once they become adults, their beliefs solidify into mental concrete. For most people it’s too much work to discard limiting beliefs and replace them with empowering ones.
You need to confront your limiting beliefs.
Are they true or false? Are they helping or harming you? Do you want to change them? Do you want to change your beliefs about who you are and what you can do with your life?
Who will run your mind?
Will it run on the default settings inherited from your parents and culture?
Will instinct make your decisions for you?
Will you take control of your mind?
The choice is clear.
Either you run your mind or someone else will.
Either you make your own choices or someone else will make them for you.
THE BIRTH LOTTERY HAS MOSTLY LOSERS AND FEW WINNERS
When you program your mind with empowering beliefs, you take charge of your life.
When your parents and culture run your mind, you travel to a destination that you didn’t select by a path you didn’t choose.
The Life Long Disoriented run their minds using inherited beliefs. They never scrutinize their beliefs. They never think an original thought. Their lives are full of imperatives without any interrogatives.
A few fortunate people inherit empowering beliefs from their parents. The lottery of life placed them in a family living with positive, empowering, resourceful, and unlimited beliefs. They achieve excellence as an accident of inheriting good beliefs from their parents. They won the birth lottery.
Other people are born into dysfunctional families. Their beliefs imprison and limit them. They are the losers in the birth lottery.
Unfortunately, the birth lottery has mostly losers and few winners.
The losers in the birth lottery are prisoners of inherited beliefs. They lost the first skirmish in the battle of the mind.
If they don’t change their beliefs, they spend their life living out other people’s dreams. They are trapped by thoughts that they didn’t select. They live a life that they didn’t design. Their culture preset all of their choices, and change is impossible. They have no major choices to make. Their parents and culture gave them a complete map for their life.
Cultural predestination is embedded in their mind. They labor under the strong delusion that they don’t have any important choices they can make. Everything has been predetermined, and change is impossible.
The Life Long Disoriented believe that cultural predestination determines the outcome of their life.
They are wrong.
CHANGE IS POSSIBLE ANYTIME AND ANYWHERE
Change is possible anytime and anywhere. Furthermore, change is a choice.
When you choose beliefs that are positive, empowering, resourceful, and unlimited, then positive change happens.
In my university days, I discovered pinball machines.
These machines provided an analogy that helped me understand the power of choice in changing the outcome of my life.
When I played pinball, I had a limited ability to affect the outcome of the game by pressing buttons that activated the two flippers at the lower part of the playing field.
Most of the movement of the shiny stainless steel ball was beyond my control. However, when the ball got ready to exit the playing surface at the bottom of the game board, I hit those two flippers and sent the ball rocketing upward back into the game.
Although I had only limited control over what happened to the ball, I had sufficient control to keep the ball in play for long periods.
I learned the valuable lesson that although I cannot control everything, the limited control that I had was sufficient to make the game entertaining and challenging.
I HAVE SUFFICIENT CONTROL TO DIRECT THE OUTCOME OF MY LIFE
In life I also learned that although I cannot control all the events of my life, I have sufficient control to be able to shape the outcome in a manner that reflects my goals and aspirations.
Every time I release a ball into the pinball machine, I have a choice.
I can let the machine play the game for me, or I can direct the outcome of the game myself.
When I surrender my choice, and let the machine do the choosing for me, the game is usually short, and the results are disappointing.
When I take charge of the game and operate the flipper of choice, the game becomes an adventure. I keep the ball in play, and I repeatedly snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Pinball taught me important facts about life.
First, I learned to not trust the machine to make choices for me. The machine isn’t intelligent. It doesn’t care whether I am happy or sad. It doesn’t know about my dreams and aspirations.
Second, I learned that when I use the flippers of choice the outcome of the game is markedly different than when the machine makes all of the choices.
Third, I learned that although the flippers of choice allow only a limited ability to control the game, that limited degree of control is sufficient to make a major difference in the outcome.
The Life Long Disoriented are experts at allowing the pinball machine of life make all their choices.
They put their money in the machine and shoot a shiny ball onto the game of life. They watch the ball bounce around for a few seconds until the ball goes down the drain, and the game is over. They put in another coin and shoot another ball into play. That ball quickly goes down the drain, and the game again is over.
No one told these people about the flipper of choice at the bottom of the playing field. They think they don’t have any choices they are allowed to make. They don’t believe they can do anything to affect the outcome of their life. They just keep playing the game until they run out of money and time, and their life is over.
The Life Long Disoriented make the mistake of entrusting their future to the machine.
Since choice and change are not programmed into the machine, their lives go down the drain.
The machine will not do anything to make their lives better. They bounce around in the pinball experience of life until their ball disappears ending the game.
When a person puts his hands on the flippers of choice, things radically change.
When failure and catastrophe come knocking at your door, the flipper of choice kicks the ball back up into the playing arena, and you go for another try.
When it looks like hope is gone and despair is imminent, a quick flick of the flipper of choice gets you back into the game.
That small quick flick of the flipper of choice has saved me countless times.
If you want to learn more about how to make positive change happen, you can read the Owner's Manual for Your Mind by Dr. Dave.
POSITIVE BOOKS FOR A POSITIVE LIFE
