Success Principle 10 – RELEASE THE BRAKES

“The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”

Have you ever been driving your car and suddenly realized you had left the emergency brake on? Did you push down harder on the gas to overcome the drag of the brake? No, of course not. You simply released the brake… and with no extra effort you started to go faster.

Most people drive through life with their psychological emergency brake on. They hold on to negative images about themselves or suffer the effects of powerful experiences they haven’t yet released. They stay in a comfort zone entirely of their own making. They maintain inaccurate belief about reality or harbor guilt and self-doubt. And when they try to achieve their goals, these negative images and preprogrammed comfort zones always cannot cancel out their good intentions – no matter how hard they try.

Successful people, on the other hand, have discovered that instead of using increased willpower as the engine to power their success, it’s simply easier to “release the brakes” by letting go of and replacing limiting beliefs and changing their self-images.

Stop re-creating the same experience over and over. An important concept that successful people understand is that you are never stuck. You just keep re-creating the same experience over and over by thinking the same thoughts, maintaining the same beliefs, speaking the same words, and doing the same things.

Too often, we get stuck in an endless loop of reinforcing behavior, which keeps us stuck in a constant downward spiral. Our limiting thoughts create images in our mind, and those images govern our behavior, which in turn reinforces that limiting thought.

As long as you keep complaining about your present circumstances, your mind will focus on it. By continually talking about, thinking about, and writing about the way things are, you are continually reinforcing those very same neural pathways in your brain that got you to where you are today. And you are continually sending out the same vibrations that will keep attracting the same people and circumstances that you have already created.

To change this cycle, you must focus instead on thinking, talking, and writing about the reality you want to create. You must flood your subconscious mind with thoughts and images of this new reality. It will interest you to know that this concept is well grounded in the bible. Isaiah said in 43:18-19: “Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth, shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.”

What is it that is holding you back from making upward movement towards the fulfillment of God’s purpose for your life? It’s time to release the brake and move forward. It’s time to believe God for a new thing.

NOTE: Adapted from Success Principles By Jack Canfield.