Pillar 1 of the Three Pillars of Mastery: Your Mind
The only thing that stands between you and all the good that life can offer – happiness, health, prosperity, wealth – is a sound belief system that is in harmony with the laws of the universe. Your Mind, including your thoughts and beliefs, is the first of the three pillars of financial and life mastery. Alone, your thoughts can propel you to incredible success, or bury you alive in your own creation.

As a spiritual being, you have unlimited potential. What you think and believe affects how you react emotionally to any situation. Your emotions in turn impact the actions you take. Act on the basis of fear or according to old, limiting beliefs and the results fall far short of your potential, often undermining your dreams. Your mind is the key that opens or closes the door to success.

Jim Thorpe was a gifted athlete, and he understood the power of the mind. In 1912 he traveled by ship across the Atlantic to the 1912 Olympic games. While other athletes spent their daytime hours working their bodies, Thorpe worked his mind. He visualized each of the 15 events he would execute in the Decathlon and Pentathlon. Others thought he was lazy and a fool. Thorpe, however, easily won both events, and it took years before anyone was able to break his decathlon point total.

Thorpe’s visualization techniques are common today amongst world class athletes, business leaders, entrepreneurs, actors, and anyone who wants to achieve significant goals. They understand the power of the mind to make or break any situation, so they train their minds as they would their bodies. William James, a visionary and renowned psychologist said, “Believe and your belief will create the fact.” With this in mind, millionaires take charge of their minds, reducing the “noise” and negative thoughts that inhibit success and focusing on thoughts, beliefs, and actions that create success.

To use your mind powerfully in a way that helps you realize your dreams and goals:

1. Rigorously examine your current thoughts and beliefs, exploring their origins and how they manifest in your life today.

2. Take charge of your mind, and your life, by eliminating the noise and integrating new thoughts and beliefs at a deep level.

3. Expand your capacity and create balance in all areas of your life.

“An educated person is not necessarily one who has an abundance of generalized or specialized knowledge. An educated person is one who has so developed the faculties of his mind that he may acquire anything he wants, or its equivalent without violating the rights of others.” – Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

Rigorously examine your thoughts and beliefs
Most of us have learned what works, what doesn’t work, what’s possible, and what’s not possible from our families, schools, and social background. We carry this “learning” with us into adulthood, constantly finding evidence to support what we know to be true. That is, you might have learned at an early age that “money doesn’t grow on trees” or “if you haven’t got it now, you’ll never get it”. You may have even received the message that you are basically an unlucky person.

These thoughts are mostly unconscious by the time you are an adult and as borrowed beliefs, they rule our lives. Programmed messages about ourselves and money end up dictating not only what we think, but what we feel and how we act. They create a cycle that can’t be broken until you begin to understand what you think and believe. Rather than continue to be controlled by your family, siblings and society, your goal is to break this cycle and gain control of your own mind.

The clue to understanding your predominant beliefs is to examine your current results. For example, you may be struggling to get new clients for your business. The struggle may be a result of a belief that “I’m not good at marketing”. This thought creates an uncomfortable feeling, which in turn produces actions (cleaning your desk instead of marketing), and the subsequent results (no clients) further substantiate your beliefs about your lack of marketing ability.

If you’re not getting the results you want, either your beliefs and behaviors are not congruent, or they are congruent and it’s your beliefs that are wrong. To examine your current belief system and thoughts, and take the first steps toward creating new thoughts, follow this three step model:

1. First look to your childhood. Describe your early environment and the people who surrounded you. Think about their lifestyle, the kind of work they did, and what they did when not working. What messages did you receive from them about money, success, or your potential?

2. Second, look to your present. What don’t you have that you want? Examine carefully the thoughts you have that are holding you back, and the beliefs that govern those thoughts. For each desire you have, write at least one recurring thought that is holding you back.

3. Third, create an affirming thought that is in alignment with your desire. Begin the affirmation with the words “I am so happy and grateful now that…”, and fill in the rest. Repeat this affirmation to yourself often, regardless of how awkward or ridiculous it may feel. Remember that you are working against life-long thoughts and beliefs that won’t give up easily.

Take charge of your mind and your life
“If you train yourself in the practice of deliberately picturing your desire and carefully examining your picture, you will soon find that your thoughts and desires proceed in a more orderly procession than ever before.” – Genevieve Behrend, Your Invisible Power

To take control of your life and properly engage in the creative expression of your potential, it is absolutely essential that you exercise and strengthen your mind. You can do this by reducing the amount of “noise” in your mind, and by using an effective learning model.

Noise consists of the excuses, blaming, confusion, rationalizing, procrastinating, and distractions that interfere with the results you want. Noise constitutes about 85% of the mental activity of most people. Your goal is to exercise your mind to reverse that ratio so that 85% of your mental activity is productive and useful. As you did with the self exploration of your beliefs, examine the nature of your mental activity. When you are confronted with an obstacle, what do you do? What thoughts run through your mind? Without judging good or bad, simply make a note of the thoughts you’re having and examine where they originated.

The high percentage of noise we experience is a result of the ineffective model of learning most of us were taught. We hear or read something, gather information, and suddenly have an answer. Unfortunately, our answer is based more on supposition and past experience than it is on present information and experience. Consequently, we repeat past results and old patterns of behavior. Think of the number of times you have found yourself in a very similar situation around money, work, or relationships, even after having read the latest books on the subject.

A more effective model for learning involves listening with our minds, bodies, and emotions, learning based on new information, and doing something about it. That is, you consciously entertain a new idea, get emotionally involved with the idea, step out and act on the idea, and experience the new end result. The most important part of this model is to stay current by continuously acting immediately on new ideas and new learning.

This is what we call experiential learning. You start with a new idea, and by virtue of getting emotionally involved and acting immediately, you have a new experience. This new experience informs and shapes your new belief system and helps reduce the amount of noise that inhibits your continued progress.

Expand your capacity and create balance in all areas of your life
As you begin forming new, more positive and productive beliefs and reduce the amount of noise you will naturally gain more control over the results you see. Now, you are ready to expand your capacity and create balance. Thomas Carlysle said, “When the mind is stretched by a big idea it will never return to its original shape.” It is the big ideas and big dreams that expand your capacity. It is essential, however, that you gain control of your mind and create new belief structures and positive thoughts before you venture too far down the road of a big idea. Too many people set themselves up for failure, only to confirm their original limiting beliefs about themselves and the world.

Your capacity is your mental ability to conceive or perceive, internalize and act on a concept until it is expressed in material results or circumstances. For example, you conceive of an idea for a new kind of housing development. You perceive and visualize the idea, forming a very clear picture of what you want to create. Internalize the concept, and take consistent actions toward your conceptualized vision until it is expressed in material results, such as the architectural plans or the development itself.

Developing your capacity requires a belief system that does not limit your ability to perceive, internalize, or act on the concept. The results you get are always a reflection of your mental capacity, so you are guaranteed bigger results by expanding your capacity.

Two keys to expanding your mental capacity are maintaining a “Motivational Gap” and bringing order to your life.

The Motivational Gap is the psychic bridge that spans the distance between where you are, who you are, and who you see yourself becoming. Like any bridge, if this gap is not engineered properly it will never serve the purpose it was designed to serve. Design your motivational gap by first understanding what really motivates you; otherwise your motivation will easily be diverted. You must be motivated to bridge the gap between who you are and who you see yourself becoming. Too large a gap, and you’ll lose steam. Too small a gap, and you’ll lose interest. Your feelings are the important clue – when you truly feel yourself motivated you are more likely to stay motivated and energized toward your goal.

To bring order to your life requires that you take responsibility for your thoughts, beliefs and actions. Then, focus on your target, set a clear direction, think and act strategically and with a clear purpose, and make a binding commitment to spend time every day strengthening your mind and mental capacity.

Finally, bring all of this focused attention to all areas of your life. One area that is out of balance will affect all other areas of your life, so it is vitally important to pay attention to your whole life. Important areas of your life that you may be considering are:
• Health
• Family
• Environment
• Relationships
• Career
• Community
• Spirituality
• Partner/Intimate relationship

All of these areas surround and interact with money or financial wealth. Money deeply affects each and every area, and each of the areas affect your relationship to money. Take time to evaluate which areas are most important to you, then focus your new found mental capacity to create big changes in each of those areas beginning with the area of highest priority.

Living in Freedom
By taking control of your mind and starting from new ideas instead of any present inadequate results you can begin living in freedom. These new ideas create feelings of excitement and expectation that result in inspired actions. The inspired actions produce new results that close the gap between where you are and where you want to be. As you learn from these new experiences, you will continue to grow and create a cycle of wealth from which it is impossible to ever go back.

By Loral Langemeier. Through the years, Loral has emerged as one of the most inspirational, motivational and uniquely hands on speakers in the area of business and financial success.