Spring Cleaning

How many of your beliefs about yourself were put there by others who may have been well-meaning, but mistaken? Let’s press the pause button a moment, and really give this some thought.

Do you believe that you just don’t have what it takes to succeed in life — that you are not smart enough, strong enough or capable enough to achieve much?

If so, where did you originally get those beliefs? It could very well be from adults who gave you, when you were very young, their opinions about you. And because these people were your authorities, you took in these beliefs and made them your own. At the time, you had no way of knowing if what they said was true or false, fact or opinion. You trusted these people, so you trusted what they said.

Did you know that many successful people have had similar beliefs programmed into them, and have gone on to prove them wrong? In his early years, Albert Einstein was a poor student who was called mentally slow and unsociable. Abraham Lincoln’s teachers described him as a daydreamer who asked foolish questions. Thomas Edison was called a hopeless case when he was seven years old. His teacher described him as “addled” and said it would be useless for him to continue in school.

All of these people came to realize that authority figures were not the determiners of their destiny. Rather, they themselves were. And there are thousands, if not millions, of these stories from all corners of the world!

So, if you are being held back because of beliefs you got early in life, ask yourself whether it might be worthwhile to throw them out and replace them with others that will serve you better. Only you will know which ones to hold, and which ones to toss out. However, this kind of “spring cleaning” (or any other time of the year) is the best kind, because it de-clutters the path to your desired future.