Most people want to be happy and live a fulfilling life. We have aspirations, dream about, and work towards goals for living our best life. However, in order to achieve these dreams, we must learn about ourselves in a different way. It means challenging what we currently think about ourselves. How can we encourage and develop so that we become what we envision for ourselves?
In order to live a smart and successful life, you will benefit most by understanding that you cannot achieve success beyond your current concept of yourself. If we want to live our best life, we must live it from the best concept of ourselves. This means if we want to have more success, the part of us that benefits from shifting is fundamentally and foundationally the core concept of what we believe is possible for us.
When we choose to transform the concept of ourselves we have moved into the area of “personal development.” When we choose to challenge our current state of being, we choose to rise above our current circumstances. We are also challenging what we think is possible for us and we are rising in consciousness as well.
This journey of personal development is also a journey of spiritual development. The two go hand-in-hand because you can’t do one without the other. The transformation of these two aspects is what helps us develop authentic confidence.
An important question we can ask ourselves is, “What about me is shifting?” Meaning, what is the aspect of us that is shifting? When you enter the arena of transformation, it is all of you that shifts. In eastern philosophy, there is a concept called Karma, which is the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences… Sometimes it’s called fate or destiny.
For me, there’s essentially two types of Karma. The first one surrounds the sum of my past actions which influences my current life. For example:
· In what country I am born
· What parents I choose
· My childhood circumstances
· What primary first language I learn
· The health of my body at birth
· The ability to learn
· My sexual orientation
I call these “First Karma” circumstances. These are the things that you have to live and work with. Everyone has first Karma circumstances. The color of your eyes. How tall you are. The sound and tone of your voice. What day you were born. These are the things about your karma that are specific to your personality in this current existence and don’t change.
We used to not be able to change our current gender, however, we have moved into that type of medicine and created the ability to be transgender if we choose. However, there are fundamental things that do not change about your Karmic birth.
The second form of Karma surrounds your current actions and interactions… For example, working for a hothead boss in a dead-end job. People you have relationships with. The type of friends you have. The choices of food you eat. If you have an addictive personality and drink, smoke or both. How you dress. The people you hang out with; all of these actions surround the current concept you have of yourself.
The fundamental thing that is important to understand, is these are all transformable aspects of our personality. They are the Karmas we choose to interact with and they are based solely on our current concept of ourselves. They are malleable and subject to change on our command.
They are based on what we believe is true and thus will act, live and prosper according to the current concept. These types of Karmas only shift when we choose to shift them. If we don’t choose to shift them, we simply continue to live with them by producing our current circumstances over and over again. We call this continued cyclical interaction with our second type of Karma, our “Comfort Zone.”
Your comfort zone is the reflection and cause of your current reality and condition. It showcases what you believe and think about yourself. Our focus and our attention, as well as our point of view, surround many of these concepts and this produces what we call reality. Thus, reality is simply what we think is possible for ourselves in each moment based on our current concept. Therefore reality is malleable too.
We change reality by shifting the concept of what we think is possible for ourselves. When we change the concept of ourselves, our life changes. It’s not the habit that changes, it’s the concept of who we are that changes and this produces transformation.
The way you change the concept of yourself is by challenging what you believe to be true about yourself. We call this stepping out of your comfort zone… When you’re young; you challenge yourself by going to college or entering the service. You challenge yourself by learning to speak another language or learning to play an instrument like the piano.
Learning new things challenges the status quo or comfort zone. When you read books, you learn more and challenge your point of view. You challenge your ability to shift and transform by earning a degree or going through basic training. These are building blocks to learning to command your mind into shifting its perspective as a way of life. When you shift your perspective, you can shift the concept of you into a stronger more successful concept of self.
This shifting comes from your soul. Your mind likes things the way they are. It doesn’t want to change. It wants to be in control, so it feels safe. It likes the comfort zone… but it has an ego, so it also likes a more powerful concept of the self. It becomes willing to exchange more powerful thoughts if it thinks it can be more or get more of something for itself.
The “Secret Sauce” for growing more success means being able to command your attention, point of view, and focus. We know that what we focus on grows. In order to enjoy more success, that means we have to guide our focus, and not let our focus be a knee-jerk reaction. We have to guide our point of view and not let something or someone else guide it for us. This requires that we grow more awareness of ourselves and mindfulness about what we want to focus on.
If you can see yourself as malleable versus a fixed point of view, you can shift the concept of yourself into whatever you envision. We call this reinventing yourself. The Native Americans call it shape-shifting. Most of us think of boxing legend, George Foreman, as “that grill guy.” However, back in the ’70s, he was the heavyweight champ who lost his title to Muhammad Ali in the most historical boxing match of that time.
In the mid-1980s, Foreman partnered with Russell Hobbs, Inc. to produce the fat-reducing “George Foreman grills”, which have since sold over 100 million units. According to Wikipedia, Foreman was paid $137 million in 1999 in order to buy out the right to use his name. It’s estimated that he has made a total of over $200 million from the endorsement, substantially more than he earned as a boxer. He became the spokesperson and the salesman of those grills. He reinvented who he was.
This type of reinventing has happened over and over again. Did you know that Jerry Springer’s first career was in politics? He was an aide in Robert Kennedy’s presidential election. Then, at age 33, became the mayor of Cincinnati. It wasn’t until he lost a bid for governor, that he became a TV news anchor.
In 1991, he launched the famous “Jerry Springer Show”. In fact, the show was originally supposed to be a political debate show. However, after some low ratings, he focused on topics like domestic issues and saw his ratings soar. People who understand reinventing themselves simply have learned to shift their reality. This is the secret key to success.
The first steps to shifting your reality is shifting the concept of what you think is possible for yourself. This theme is the core of the movie, “Mortgage Apple Cakes Bakery”. In 2009 actress Angela Logan was about to lose her home because her talent agency closed without paying her the money she was owed. Angel was buried in bills and the single mother of 3 sons.
Because she needed immediate income she thought about creating more money by selling cakes made by her family’s famous apple cake recipe. She knew if she could sell a hundred cakes for $40 each in 10 days, she could secure a loan modification and save her house.
That’s just what she did. She had to shift her perspective from: “Oh no, my home is going to be foreclosed!” to “How am I going to create the money to secure a loan modification for my house?” This is shifting your point of view, which gave her a new concept of herself. She could reinvent her circumstances.
Logan’s Mortgage Apple Cakes is now a thriving business because of this shift in perspective and what she thought was possible for herself. To shift anything in your life, you will benefit most by practicing and getting better at shifting your concept of self, your point of view, where you place your focus, and your attention. These are the skill sets of success that you want to challenge every day. From actress to business owner, here are the things I do to challenge my concept of self and grow more:
The most important thing I do to challenge my concept of self is continually ask myself, “What am I saying to myself?” Listening in on your own conversations will help you understand what kind of concept you have. When I’m scared of something or scared to do something, I ask myself, “What is it that I am telling myself about this situation or thing?”
Underneath that, I will identify the thought that is sabotaging my effort. That thought could be, “I’m not good enough” or it simply could be any sabotaging thought. Then I say out loud to myself, “No wonder you’re scared, look at what you’re telling yourself!” You’d probably be scared too if you were telling yourself what I was telling myself.
What I know for sure is that the concept I have of myself will either empower or impair me and my abilities. I get to choose which one I use. This is learning to command your abilities. Becoming aware and mindful that you are not just simply making a choice, but, creating the future concept of yourself.
Such as: outlining your comfort zones, and creating your point of view, focus, and attention. You are essentially reaffirming what you want your current reality to be.
The next thing I do is contemplation and meditation to help me calm my stinking mind down enough so that I can listen in and hear what it wants to say. Wayne Dyer said, “Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul.” This is so important to understand because this is actually who you are. Just like Wayne Dyer says, “We are souls having a human experience.” When I ponder this deeply I realize that I am only a soul and not a body. Your soul is good at transformation.
Then, I visualize, day dream, and fantasize about what I want to create. I let it simmer in my soul and let the RAS, or Reticular Activating System, begin the process of helping reality provide me with the, “How to” aspect of creating my dreams so that I can begin to shift them. I do this in the morning and throughout the day. This keeps my attention and focus pointed toward my vision.
Lastly, I take powerful actions towards the new concept I want to engage with. I don’t try to stop a past habit. Instead, I engage in new actions that reflect my new self-concept. I DON’T try to change my mind. I engage my mind with a new point of view. I let that ignite new drive and more actions in the direction I am now living. This is how I shift my reality and create new transformations.
Vickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://thesmartlifeclub.com or https://vickiehelm.com.
