Your thoughts create your tomorrow
It’s Tuesday the 24th May and I’m sat in my office at home gearing up for DARETOGROW in Newcastle tomorrow evening. It’s been a busy week already. Yesterday Alice and I got the train to London and back just to go to dinner with friends in the evening. Three, six, nine months ago, racked with debt, this was not an option, in fact if one of us would have suggested this to the other the response would have been a rather pronounced laugh.
It was possible yesterday because we never gave in to the debt. No matter what was going on around us, we made plans for the future, we worked on our dreams and we acted in total abundance. For example, I have carried a dollar bill around with me in my pocket for months. On it I’ve written the word ‘prosperity’ and whenever I’ve reached into my pocket to pay for something I’ve seen the dollar bill and reminded myself how wealthy I am. I also carried cash in my pocket and would go into shops and think about all the things I could buy with that £20. I just chose not to. Neither of us ever gave into our situation. We never accepted it as our fate, it was always just a temporary situation that would – like everything else – change.
Now, we are debt free and ploughing ahead with our goals. We have a gorgeous flat, money in the bank, wonderful new clients we love and we’re about to choose a new car. All of this was part of our vision and we got everything we asked for and more because we dared to believe in ourselves and stayed positive throughout the ordeal.
Being in debt was an important juncture in my life because it taught me to value money, it taught me to enjoy the things money can’t buy and most of all it taught me how important our thoughts can be in shaping our future. If we’d have sat around crying and complaining and repeating over and over “I’m poor, I’m in debt, things will never change”, we wouldn’t be in this position today – we’d still be in debt. Instead, we’d say things like “When this is paid off in May, we can save for that car”, “when we’re in the black, we’ll go on that course”, “when that lands, we’ll buy this for the flat…”. We always made positive plans and talked about how great things will be but importantly, we also always focused on what we had in the moment and how great things were. We had our health, happiness, dreams each other and…our imaginations wherein we could conceive all sorts of wonderful plans!
Would I trade the debt for anything? Never. I needed that debt to grow. I’m now ready for the next part of my journey and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the thoughts we focus on today are busy creating our tomorrows. Therefore, each morning, before I get out of bed, I lie there visualising my dream life and then I take one small action towards it that very morning.
If you’re in a difficult situation now I want to challenge you to reflect on your thoughts. What do you think about in the morning, over lunch, late at night? Do you focus on the positives in every situation or do you allow yourself to be consumed by the fear of everything that could go wrong?
If you want to change your situation, the first step is to be a witness to your thoughts. Recognise what you’re thinking about and how this might be impacting the outcome. Then, start to control your mind and change your thoughts. If you think “this will never change”, change it to “What can I do right now to help ensure I change this situation quickly?”. If you think “I don’t deserve love, money, success”, change it to “how many people could I help and in what ways if I had more money, if this idea took off, if I only loved and trusted myself enough to take bigger actions?”. If you’re thinking “I’m sad, I feel down because of X, Y, Z”, start to list all the reasons you have to feel great!
Yesterday I was on a run. Pushing myself up the 1/2 mile hill to the park each day is gruesome. At first, my mind would say “stop, this hurts, just walk, don’t push yourself so hard”. Now, I listen to music really loud and tell myself “you can make it because you always do, push yourself now and you’ll feel great later, if you can do this physical challenge you can overcome any business challenge” but perhaps the most powerful thing I remind myself of is just how lucky I am to be able to run at all. That is a privilege some people don’t have and I intend to use it up to every last step.
