Module 4 – The Power Of Thought
Every strength you now have was once a weakness, and since you have many strengths, it is clear that you have learned this important life lesson – how to turn a weakness into something you’re very good at.
This module will ensure that you internalise this important lesson and carry it with you for the rest of your life.
For all of its study, and for all of its inherent human desire, success remains a mystery for most. Performance carries a mystique that leads intelligent people to blame chance, luck, or coincidence for the way their life turns out.
What causes rational people to use irrational explanations such as these?
Simple! No one told them about the two worlds.
In all human endeavours, there are two worlds of engagement that determine performance. All success or failure, all victory or defeat, in every game we play as people, happens in these two worlds. These two worlds can be defined as the inner world of our mind, and the outer world of our actions.
The outer world (taking action) is where most people operate. They learn what to do and how to do it, taking action with their craft’s skills, processes, and best practices.
But for so many, the inner world remains elusive, and therefore success remains a mystery.
The inner world: your Motivational Intelligence
After a few decades of life, most of us realise that human results (from ourselves and others) are not only hard to understand, but are very inconsistent from one person to another.
The older we get, the more we realise that success is not a product of our genes, IQ, or even if we went to University. This only increases the mystery surrounding success.
At The Power Within, we try to simplify the approach to understanding this and other “mysteries” of performance and success.
However, once we understand that everything happens in two worlds and that all human behaviour is a product of cause and effect, we can gain immense clarity and understanding of the past, current, and future results of our lives.
Most of us have experienced the powerful impact our inner world has on everyday life.
The outer world: your actions
Nothing in the outer world can happen without you first processing it in the inner world (your thoughts).
The outer world is no more and no less than the actions you take each day. If you are not getting the results you want, all you need to do is look at the actions you are taking every day.
These actions are driven by the thoughts you hold about yourself, the task at hand, or the self-confidence you hold.
“Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Laws of cause and effect
For example, the last time you set a goal to get a new car – you eventually decided on a certain make, model, and perhaps colour. This, of course, is an apparent and specific mental picture.
After you’ve thought about getting this type of vehicle for a while, a bit of magic seems to happen. You begin to see this vehicle everywhere you go. Has this happened to you? If so, some follow-up questions should be asked.
Were those vehicles just put there recently? Or…
Were they already there and you didn’t see them before?
Your spaced repetition of thinking about the car (or goal) and your positive expectancy towards its acquisition caused your mind to look for clues and point out things to help you.
Your inner world came first and then shaped your outer world
On the flip side, think of something that you have given up on, dread doing or usually avoid. Can you readily think of excuses and rationalisations that explain why you are not good at it and why you shouldn’t try?
Clearly, you didn’t approach this with the same positive expectancy as with the car. However, with spaced repetition, your mind believed the goal was avoidance or poor performance. Your mind helped you reach this goal by coming up with excuses and rationalisation.
A similar thought experiment can be used to explain two opposite workdays. We have experienced some days when we felt strong and unstoppable. We still ran into obstacles that day – but handled them differently. We moved through the day with a kind of “effortless excellence,” getting everything important done – and then some
We feel tremendously accomplished and fulfilled during these days. However rare, on these days, we learn, grow, and enjoy ourselves. If we reflect on our inner world these days, we realise our mind was positive, quiet, calm, and focused. Our mind didn’t interfere with our self.
On a different workday, our actions are clumsy, things are difficult, we hesitate, we’re all over the place. If we reflect on our inner world for those days, we will discover our mind is filled with negativity, self-criticism, over-analysis, and second-guessing.
Our mind is not calm, positive, and singularly focused – we are constantly interfering with ourselves.
With either day – our success is simply a by-product of our inner world.
In any area of your life where you have developed mastery, you first had to create and develop your optimal “inner world” regarding that skill or subject. You had to develop positive, resilient, passionate attitudes about your ability to be proficient in that arena or you would have avoided it or given up very early in that pursuit.
Our dominant thoughts (those we repeat most frequently), our long-held beliefs about ourselves, and our potential first shape our “inner world”. They then manifest themselves in our “outer world” – for good or for ill.
So, the key to better results and greater success is first a higher awareness and mastery of the “inner world’s” relatively neglected skills to ensure it is an enabler and not a disabler to our success.
Then, accomplishing success not only becomes a lot easier – it can be taken to any endeavour.
All successes and failures start as a thought in your mind. Everything happens in two worlds.
My inner world
Our own successes, breakthroughs, learnings and those times that we have embraced change are powerful reminders that we have already lived a life filled with Self-Leadership.
Keeping these examples at the top of our minds can help us get through some of the most difficult days.
This exercise can help you gather those examples to build your confidence as you approach new challenges continually.
These examples are not just helpful when used to remind ourselves of our growth and success. The real key is understanding how we built the steps to that success. You must understand on two levels (your inner and your outer world) how you accomplished this progress to leverage and duplicate your growth.
This exercise can help you specifically identify what you did at the Mindset Level and at the Activity Level to achieve your objective or develop your mastery.
Like all of the program exercises, this can be done continually throughout your life. You can also go through it with others to help them better see they had success in their past and their future.