If you challenge your mind to expand your comfort
zone, you will naturally expand your wealth zone. By
striving to grow your comfort zone, you are constantly
taking risks and finding more opportunities, ideas,
actions and growth than you ever imagined. The bigger
your “container,” the more income and wealth you will
attract and hold. Challenge yourself to constantly make
your container larger, and watch the universe rush to
fill the space.
What is the single most important
skill you can master to
increase your happiness and
success? Training your mind.
How do you train your mind?
Start by observing your thought
process. If you are like most
people, your mind continuously
produces both empowering
thoughts, such as those that lead
to success, and disempowering
thoughts, including those that
don’t support your wealth and
happiness. As you identify your
thoughts, you need to begin consciously replacing your disempowering
thoughts with empowering ones. In doing so, you will
begin adopting empowering attitudes as your own. Start by making
declarations to yourself, such as “I act in spite of fear,” “I act in spite
of doubt” and “I act in spite of inconvenience.”
Believe it or not, you can choose your thoughts and control your
mind. You have the natural ability to cancel any thought that does
not support you. You can also install self-empowering thoughts at
any time by choosing to focus on them.
At one of my seminars, Robert Allen, a close friend and bestselling
author, said something quite profound: “No thought lives in
your head rent-free.”
What he meant is, you pay for your negative thoughts in
money, energy, time, health and happiness. If you want to
move to a new level in your life quickly, begin by dividing
your thoughts into two categories: empowering and
disempowering. Observe them, and determine if they are
supporting your happiness and success. Choose to entertain
only the empowering thoughts, and refuse to focus on the
disempowering ones. When a nonsupportive notion comes
to the surface, replace it with a more supportive way of
thinking. I call this process “power thinking.” And mark my
words, if you practice it, your life will never be the same.
So, what is the difference between power thinking and
positive thinking? The distinction is slight, but profound.
People use positive thinking to pretend that everything is
rosy when they really believe it is not. With power thinking, though,
we understand that something is neutral until we assign it meaning
by creating a story.
"You
have the
natural ability
to cancel
any thought
that is not
supporting you."
This is the difference between a positive thinker and a power
thinker. A positive thinker believes their thoughts are true.
Whereas a power thinker recognizes that their thoughts are not
true, but since they are making up a story anyway, they might as
well make up a story that supports themselves. Why do we do this?
Not because our new thoughts are true in an absolute sense, but
because they are more useful to us and feel a heck of a lot better than
nonsupportive ones.
Observe yourself and your thought patterns, and entertain only
the thoughts that support your happiness and success. Challenge
that little voice in your head whenever it tells you, “I can’t” or “I don’t
want to” or “I don’t feel like it.” Don’t allow this fear-based, comfort-based
voice to get the better of you. Make a pact with yourself that
whenever the little voice in your head tries to stop you from doing
something to support your success, you will do it anyway to tell it
that you are the boss. Not only will you increase your confidence
dramatically, but eventually, the voice will get quieter and quieter as
it recognizes it has little effect on you.
Particularly during economic downturns like this, it is crucial
that we change our pessimistic thoughts into empowering ones and
stretch our comfort zones to attain and hold more wealth. We must
constantly choose to remain positive and not let disempowering
thoughts take hold, regardless of what the media says about the
global economy.
Practice getting out of your comfort zone by consciously making
decisions that will make you uncomfortable. Talk to someone you
would normally avoid, ask for a raise at work or try something that
scares you.
Living a mediocre life does not lead to happiness. Constantly
wondering what could have been does not lead to happiness. What
does lead to happiness is living in our natural state of growth and
reaching our full potential.
The next time you are feeling uncomfortable, uncertain or afraid,
press forward instead of retreating. Experience the feeling of discomfort
and accept it for what it is—a feeling. Recognize that a feeling
does not have the power to stop you. Push on, and eventually you
will reach your goal.
The point, however, is not whether or not those feelings
of discomfort eventually subside. If they do lessen,
take it as a sign that you need to increase your objective
because the minute you get comfortable, you have
stopped growing. Managing your mind to live at the edge
of your comfort zone will allow you to grow and reach
your fullest potential.
Because humans are creatures of habit, we have
to practice. Practice acting in spite of fear, in spite of
discomfort, in spite of inconvenience. By doing so, you
will quickly move to a higher level, and your wealth will
almost certainly increase.
The mind is a powerful tool, but it is also the greatest
soap-opera scriptwriter in history. It creates powerful
stories based on dramas or disasters that have never
happened and likely never will. As Mark Twain said,
“I’ve had thousands of problems in my life, most of which
never actually happened.”
It is important to remember that you are not your
mind—you are much bigger and more powerful than
your mind alone. By learning to train it, though, you
can conquer your fear, expand your comfort zone and
dramatically increase your wealth.
T. Harv Eker is an author, success trainer, and founder and
president of Peak Potentials Training. His books include the
No. 1 New York Times Best-Seller Secrets of the Millionaire
Mind and the international best-seller SpeedWealth. He also
offers the Millionaire Mind Intensive, a three-day seminar
that helps people take control of their minds and nurture self-empowering
thoughts.