It’s important to know what we really think about important issues in life. Our thoughts actually are the root cause of our emotions, which affect our actions, which form our habits, which develop our personality. Our thoughts and beliefs are the foundation of who we are, what we do and who we become. As we change our thoughts and beliefs in any area of life, our feelings, actions and even our personality changes. Therefore, it is important for us to know what we really believe, and to carefully monitor our thought life.

I’ll start you off with some categories or areas to get you thinking about your thoughts. During the next few days, I will add some specific questions in each of these areas to prime your pump. Once your thoughts start flowing, please keep writing until they are all out there on the page for you to look at, so you can make your accurate mental inventory.

Please fight the urge to write what you were taught to believe, what you ought to believe or what you want to believe! Look deep inside and face the truth about what you really DO believe at this present moment in your life.

Take your complete mental engine apart and take a look at what is really inside – in the end, that’s what drives you! Beware, the ride could get bumpy!

– What do you believe about:

* God

* People & Relationships

* Marriage & Family

* Life & Death

* Health, Diet & Exercise

* The World, Races & Culture

* Work & Success

* Money & True Wealth

* What do you believe about You?

– Do you think that some of your beliefs may need to be challenged & changed?

– Which ones need to be changed and which ones need to be strengthened?

– Your thoughts affect everything that you do, so you need to root out the ones that lead to ruin and solidify the ones that lead to serenity and success!

SOME OF THE MESSAGES THAT HAVE BEEN IMPRINTED UPON YOUR MENTAL HARD DRIVE IN YOUR LIFE TIME ARE PAINFUL, AND SOME LIMIT YOUR LIFE AND KEEP YOU FROM REACHING YOUR FULL POTENTIAL. YOUR MISSION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT, IS TO LOOK CLOSELY AT ALL OF THE MESSAGES, ANALYZE THEM, AND DECIDE WHICH ONES ARE NOT TRUE. THEN WORK HARD TO ERASE OR REPLACE THEM WITH TRUE THOUGHTS THAT WILL BUILD UP YOUR LIFE AND HELP YOU REACH YOUR GOD-GIVEN POTENTIAL!

So, let’s get started!

1. FIND THEM

2. FACE THEM

3. ERASE THEM

4. REPLACE THEM

REMEMBER – YOU CAN NEVER BE MORE OR LESS THAN WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE!

Now take some time to think deeply about your life and identify the messages have been written on your mental hard drive, and by whom (message writer – parent, sibling, classmate, friend, society, you, etc)

Then, list these messages and the writers of them, and write the new message of truth that you will use to replace this old message every time the old one pops into your head. It’s time to take your mental inventory and rewrite your hard drive today!

* Changing your attitude (view, opinion or outlook) begins with changing your thoughts!

* No matter what happens to you, your attitude is always your choice, and your attitude almost always determines your altitude in life!

* Is your prevailing life attitude more like, “I think I can…I think I can”, or “We’ll never make it”?

* Often, rather than truly face our feelings, we allow our thoughts to gather and we listen to their dreadful commentaries that lead to our obsessions. These controlling thoughts form our attitudes that lead to our behavior, which develops our habits that shape our personality that is so difficult to change because it becomes so engrained in us. That’s why it is so vital that we identify and work to change our stinking thinking patterns that form our   attitudes

* Identify some of the deeply rooted thinking patterns and attitudes that form your character traits and deep seated prevailing and controlling emotions that may sabotage your potential. Then, decide which thoughts or attitudes you will adopt to replace the negative or self limiting ones (I’ll include some suggestions for you and you can identify and add more ):

* Fear  (to faith)

* Doubt  (to confidence)

* Rejection (to acceptance)

* Pride (to humility)

* Victim Mentality (to responsibility)

* Helplessness (to hope)

* Distrust (to trust)

* Laziness (to diligence)

* Boredom (to creativity)

* Disinterest (to vigilance)

* Discontent (to gratitude)

* Irritability (to patience)

* Critical (to kindness)

* Pessimism (optimism)

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Maybe, growing up, you heard things like, “What’s the matter with you?”  As a result, you might still think that you are in some way defective or abnormal.

Possibly you were asked, “Can’t you do anything right?”  To this very day, whenever you mess up or fail, you might say to yourself, “They were right, no matter how hard I try, I can’t do anything right.”

Did you ever hear that you were “always getting in the way” or that “you would never amount to anything”? Maybe you heard these kinds of declarations so often that you now believe them, even if just subconsciously. If you do, they are limiting your potential in many ways.

HOW WRONG THESE KINDS OF CRITICAL STATEMENTS ARE! STOP REPEATING THESE LIES TO YOURSELF AND STOP BELIEVING THEM! GOD DOESN’T MAKE JUNK AND HE MADE YOU TO BE AMAZING! BELIEVE IT AND ACHIEVE IT!

… Sometimes, it was the things that we were not told that made the biggest and deepest impression on us. How often were you told how much you were loved or that you were valuable or that you did a great job or that you were accepted and appreciated? Sadly to say, many of the things that we longed to hear, but never did, gave us the most debilitating life messages that are written deeply on our hard drives.

Do you ever catch yourself calling yourself stupid, or loser, or other less than encouraging titles? These self debasing messages also have to be erased and replaced. STOP BERATING YOURSELF! IT’S AN INSULT TO YOU AND TO THE ONE WHO CREATED YOU!IT’S TIME TO REFORMAT AND REWRITE YOUR HARD DRIVE TO CHANGE THE MESSAGES THAT YOU BELIEVE ABOUT YOURSELF.

So, let’s get started!

1. FIND THEM

2. FACE THEM

3. ERASE THEM

4. REPLACE THEM

EVERY DAY, WE ALLOW OURSELVES TO BE CONTROLLED BY THOUGHTS ON OUR MENTAL HARD DRIVE THAT CAN OFTEN PROGRAM US TO FAILURE. MANY OF THESE THOUGHTS ABOUT OURSELVES HAVE BEEN WRITTEN BY OTHER PEOPLE AND SOME HAVE BEEN WRITTEN BY US. THIS NEXT TOOL IS MEANT TO HELP YOU TAKE A CLOSE LOOK AT YOUR MENTAL HARD DRIVE TO INSPECT ALL THAT IS WRITTEN THERE – THE MESSAGES THAT KEEP TELLING YOU WHO YOU ARE AND CONTROLLING MANY OF YOUR ACTIONS. SOME OF THESE MESSAGES ARE PAINFUL AND SOME LIMIT YOUR LIFE AND KEEP YOU FROM REACHING YOUR FULL POTENTIAL. YOUR MISSION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT, IS TO LOOK CLOSELY AT ALL OF THE MESSAGES, ANALYZE THEM, AND DECIDE WHICH ONES ARE NOT TRUE. THEN WORK HARD TO ERASE OR REPLACE THEM WITH TRUE THOUGHTS THAT WILL BUILD UP YOUR LIFE AND HELP YOU REACH YOUR FULL GOD-GIVEN POTENTIAL!

1. 1. IDENTIFY THE MESSAGE (spoken or unspoken)
2. 2. IDENTIFY THE MESSENGER
3. 3. REPLACE IT WITH A NEW MESSAGE

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To deal with afflictive emotions, we must face them, deal with them, and let them be evacuated.

Take time now to think back over your life, and write a list (it might be very long) of all the emotional trauma and hurt that you experienced from your earliest memory until today. Write the details (even the ones that you have never told anyone about before, and maybe have even hidden from yourself). Then assign a number 1-10 (10 being the strongest. Our emotions need to be identified, fully felt, and expressed in order to be processed! To evacuate these painful emotions and let them go, I need to pour them out before God and let him heal them and take them from me.

For me, I have discovered that, in the process of silent meditation, God gradually exposes me to my unconscious negative and destructive emotions at a rate that I can handle and enables me to gradually let go and evacuate these and the false self that has been hurting me and others, and has been hindering my true created self from being fully realized and allowed to grow to greater maturity. I had been stuck in many emotional places where I had been deeply wounded. Facing my inner pain and gaining interior silence in increasing measure has led to deeper healing, greater serenity and growth in my maturity. I’m still in the process, like all of us are, but until our emotions are under our control, we remain stuck.

Weather we realize it or not, we are all daily under the influence of our unconscious drives, emotions and motivations. Unconscious damage from our childhood or early years on this planet could be negatively influencing our decisions and our relationships.

Children who are deprived of security, affection and control of their environment might have developed desperate drives for these that affect them as adults. Where do you think the anger, rage, increased volume or intenseness of intonation comes from when our security or control is challenged? Or why might we experience depression or despair when we don’t obtain the love, acceptance and affection that we deeply long for in life?

To deal with afflictive emotions, we must face them, deal with them, and let them be evacuated. We have to learn to let go of the things from our past that keep us from moving forward into our bright and hopeful future.

The way most Americans eat and live, you would think that they have a secret death wish. Over 65% of Americans are overweight and America brags that it “runs on Dunkin”. Eighty percent of Americans agree that physical exercise is vital for good health, but only 17% actually exercise! The two major excuses given as to why most people don’t exercise are that they don’t have time and it’s not fun. In respect to time, it’s nothing more than an excuse. How many hours do these same people spend sitting in front of the television or computer, with the only exercise being the lifting of their arms to eat some snacks and drink a beer or coke? Both add lots of weight, by the way. In regards to fun, do they enjoy their jobs? Do they go anyway every day? If they don’t like them, they probably need to go back to point number 9 in the Potential Puzzle, but right now, we are dealing with trying to get people to stop killing themselves with their soft lifestyle. The only people who are being helped by this lifestyle are those getting rich in the pharmaceutical and medical industries. So many people who make the excuse that they can’t afford the cost of fitness club memberships, spend much more each month eating out and will actually spend much more in their lives on medicine for high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes and other illnesses that stem from their latent lifestyle.

You may be offended by the bluntness of my comments in this section, but it’s because I care. If I can scare you into taking care of your body and health, if I can tear you away from the TV, computer and dining room table a few hours each week to add years onto your life, then these pages have been worth it, even if you hate me for telling you.

SO DROP THE DEATH WISH AND PICK UP SOME WEIGHTS! STOP WALKING BACK TO THE FRIDGE AND GO OUT TO RUN A FEW MILES. STOP SITTING ALONE IN YOUR ROOM AND GO JOIN A COMMUNITY DOING YOGA, PILATES OR ZUMBA. START TAKING CARE OF THE ONE BODY THAT YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN FOR LIFE. MAYBE YOU TAKE BETTER CARE OF YOUR CARS, HOUSE AND YARD, BUT DO YOU REALIZE THAT YOU HAVE TO LIVE IN YOUR BODY UNTIL IT GIVES OUT ON YOU. THAT OUGHT TO CHANGE YOUR MINDSET AND LIFESTYLE TODAY!

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Everything negative that was done to you or happened to you in the past has the potential to keep you from moving forward towards your future potential unless you choose to LET IT GO. UNTIL YOU LET GO OF IT, IT WON’T LET GO OF YOU! Whatever it was that they did or said and whatever happened, you need to let yourself fully feel what you really feel about it deep in your soul, then make the life-releasing decision to forgive everyone. Then, LET IT GO AND CHOOSE TO BE FREE OF IT! Don’t let the things of the past and the drives and deep motivations that they created in you keep you in bondage or control you any longer. Have you experienced abuse or betrayal? Were you criticized, bullied, or not loved well? We all are broken in some way and need to be rebuilt. We all are wounded in some way and need inner healing from the wounds of the past. Hurting people hurt other people and victims end up victimizing others. That’s why we desperately need deep healing that enables us to let go of the pain of the past, with all its tentacles that reach into our present world and hold us back from building our healthy future.

Letting go means that we:

FEEL IT FULLY

FORGIVE IT COMPLETELY

FREE OURSELVES DAILY

After you have truly LET IT GO, you can move on to actually LEVERAGING IT to become a better person building a better life and world.

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Since leadership is influence and we all have a measure of influence in someone’s life, we all need to grow in the art of leadership. Leaders give of their lives, serving others to empower them to reach their full potential. When individual members grow, so do the families and organizations of which they are a part. In any organization or situation, if there is good leadership, the rest will follow, but without it, the rest have no one to follow. Leaders know who they are and they respect others. Leaders are not defensive, but are ready to listen and learn from others. They continually grow and change and influence others to do the same. They know where they are going and how to get there. They work to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of all that they do. When opposition and difficulties increase, they rise to the occasion and rally the troops. They are great team-mates as well as team leaders. They value people and create value wherever they go. Are you this kind of a leader? Do you have this kind of influence? We all lead someone in some way. The question is, “how do we lead them and to where”?