“What you are thinking is what you are becoming.” – Muhammad Ali
Your inner thoughts about yourself and your world have a direct impact on your outer world, the world you experience as your reality, no matter how rational or irrational those inner thoughts are. If you want to change your outer world, you want to start changing your inner world.
Changing Your Inner World
Take a moment to consider the times in your life when you’ve effectively talked yourself out of doing something. These are the times when you’re thinking of doing something, but then a nagging voice in the back of your mind talks you out of it. That negative inner voice is the voice of self-doubt. It’s the voice that questions everything you’re thinking of doing, putting doubt in your mind with negative what ifs.
What if it all goes wrong?
What if I can’t do it?
What if I’m not ready yet?
By changing your thinking, you can change your reality.
If you are focusing your thoughts on things going wrong, you’re only going to see the things that are going wrong – you become blinkered to anything positive. If things never appear to “go your way”, could it be that you think they’re not going your way and therefore, no matter how things turn out, you only see the things that didn’t turn out the way you wanted?
When you focus your thoughts on what’s going to go wrong, you only see what goes wrong. Just the thought of things going wrong can be enough to put you off doing anything at all – the nagging voice of self-doubt rears its ugly head again. Have you ever decided not to go for something because the negative voice said, “There’s no point, it’ll never work out”? Well, here’s the thing: did not going for it make it work out? Of course not. If you’d gone for it, would it have worked out after all? Who knows – you can’t know until you give it a go!
So, here’s a thought… what if you change to a positive what if process? What if it all goes right; what if I can do it; what if I am ready? If your thoughts are focused on what’s going right, now what are you going to see?
Think Big to Become Big
Until you’re able to think of yourself as a success, it’s impossible to feel like a success. The late great Muhammad Ali was master at the art of thinking big. His famous chant of, “I am the greatest” is well-known, but it’s not so well-known that he also said, “I am the greatest. I said that even before I knew I was.” Ali thought of himself as a champion and he became a champion – he put his energy into thinking big and he became big.
“If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it—then I can achieve it.” – Muhammad Ali (quoting Jesse Jackson)
Don MacNaughton is a High-Performance Coach and has worked tirelessly to help clients achieve success in the world of sport and business over the past 15 years. The next, highly popular, NLP Diploma and Life Coaching Certificate course starts in April 2019. Click here for more information or to sign up.