DON’T WASTE YOUR LIFE BELIEVING YOU CAN’T

The phrase I can’t is the most powerful force of negation in the human psyche.
PAUL R. SCHEELE
Chairman, Learning Strategies Corporation

If you are going to be successful, you need to give up the phrase “I can’t” and all of its cousins, such as “I wish I were able to.” The words I can’t actually disempower you. They actually make you weaker when you say them. In my seminars, I use a technique called kinesiology to test people’s muscle strength as they say different phrases. I have them put their left arm out to their side, and I push down on it with my left hand to see what their normal strength is. Then I have them pick something they think they can’t do, such as I can’t play the piano, and say it out loud. I then push down on their arm again. It is always weaker. Then I have them say, “I can do it,” and their arm is stronger.

Your brain is designed to solve any problem and reach any goal that you give it. The words you think and say actually affect your body. We see that in toddlers. When you were a toddler, there was no stopping you. You thought you could climb up on anything. No barrier was too big for you to attempt to overcome. But little by little, your sense of invincibility is conditioned out of you by the emotional and physical abuse that you receive from your family, friends, and teachers, until you no longer believe you can. You must take responsibility for removing I can’t from your vocabulary. In the ’80s, I attended a Tony Robbins seminar in which we learned to walk on burning coals.

When we began, we were all afraid that we would not be able to do it—that we would burn the soles of our feet. As part of the seminar, Tony had us write down every other I can’t that we had—I can’t find the perfect job, I can’t be a millionaire, I can’t find the perfect mate—and then we threw them onto the burning coals and watched them go up in flames. Two hours later, 350 of us walked on the burning coals without anybody getting burned. That night we all learned that just like the belief that we couldn’t walk on burning coals without getting burned was a lie, every other limiting belief about our abilities was also a lie.

DON’T WASTE YOUR LIFE BELIEVING YOU CAN’T

In 1977, in Tallahassee, Florida, Laura Shultz, who was 63 at the time, picked up the back end of a Buick to get it off her grandson’s arm. Before that time, she had never lifted anything heavier than a 50-pound bag of pet food.

Dr. Charles Garfield, author of Peak Performance and Peak Performers, in-terviewed her after reading about her in the National Enquirer. When he got to her home, she kept resisting any attempts to talk about what she called “the event.” She kept asking Charlie to eat breakfast and call her Granny, which he did. Finally he got her to talk about “the event.” She said she didn’t like to think about it because it challenged her beliefs about what she could and couldn’t do, about what was possible. She said, “If I was able to do this when I didn’t think I could, what does that say about the rest of my life? Have I wasted it?”

Charlie convinced her that her life was not yet over and that she could still do whatever she wanted to do. He asked her what she wanted to do, what her passion was. She said she had always loved rocks. She had wanted to study geology, but her parents hadn’t had enough money to send both her and her brother to college, so her brother had won out. At 63, with a little coaching from Charlie, she decided to go back to school to study geology. She eventually got her degree and went on to teach at a local community college. Don’t wait until you are 63 to decide that you can do anything you want. Don’t waste years of your life. Decide that you are capable of doing anything you want and start working toward it now.

IT’S ALL ABOUT ATTITUDE

When baseball great Ty Cobb was 70, a reporter asked him, “What do you think you’d hit if you were playing these days?”
Cobb, who had a lifetime batting average of .367, said, “About .290, maybe .300.”
The reporter replied, “That’s because of the travel, the night games, the artificial turf, and all the new pitches like the slider, right?”
“No,” said Cobb, “it’s because I am seventy.” Now that’s believing in yourself!

DON’T ASSUME YOU NEED A COLLEGE DEGREE

Here’s another statistic showing that belief in yourself is more important than knowledge, training, or schooling: 20% of America’s millionaires never set foot in college, and 21 of the 222 Americans listed as billionaires in 2003 never got their college diplomas; 2 never even finished high school! So although education and a commitment to lifelong learning are essential to success, a formal degree isn’t a requirement. This is true even in the high-tech world of the Internet. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, dropped out of the University of Illinois and at the time of this writing was worth $18 billion. And Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and later founded Microsoft. Today he is considered one of the richest men in the world, with a net worth of over $46 billion. Even Vice President Dick Cheney dropped out of college. When you realize that the vice president, the richest man in America, and many $20 million–a–movie actors, as well as many of our greatest musicians and ath-letes, are all college dropouts, you see that you can start from anywhere and create a successful life for yourself.

10. From “Some Billionaires Choose School of Hard Knocks,” June 29, 2000; Forbes.com, 2003 Forbes 400 Richest People in America. Statistics were revised based on the 2003 edition of the Forbes 400 Richest People in America.

WHAT OTHERS THINK ABOUT YOU IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS

You have to believe in yourself when no one else does.
That’s what makes you a winner.
V ENUS WILLIAMS
Olympic gold medalist and professional tennis champion

If having others believing in you and your dream was a requirement for suc-cess, most of us would never accomplish anything. You need to base your decisions about what you want to do on your goals and desires—not the goals, desires, opinions, and judgments of your parents, friends, spouse, children, and coworkers. Quit worrying about what other people think about you and follow your heart.

I like Dr. Daniel Amen’s 18/40/60 Rule: When you’re 18, you worry about what everybody is thinking of you; when you’re 40, you don’t give a darn what anybody thinks of you; when you’re 60, you realize nobody’s been thinking about you at all.
Surprise, surprise! Most of the time, nobody’s thinking about you at all! They are too busy worrying about their own lives, and if they are thinking about you at all, they are wondering what you are thinking about them. People think about themselves, not you. Think about it—all the time you are wasting worrying about what other people think about your ideas, your goals, your clothes, your hair, and your home could all be better spent on thinking about and doing the things that will achieve your goals.