An important component of the power of any successful strategy lies in the expectation that you will achieve your goal or objective.

Whatever you expect, from yourself, from your career, from your relationships, from your life, sets the limit of what is possible for you.

Henry Ford once said: “If you think you can do something, or if you think you can’t, in any case, you’re right.”

Invariably we push ourselves to the limits of our own expectations in life.

You are what you think

Be aware of the self-talk, the self-talk, that is going on in your head. There is a direct causal link between how we think about a situation, the words we use to articulate those thoughts, the energetic state associated with those words, and the results we create.

Successful people, in any area of ​​life, develop the ability to control and reshape their own thoughts:

* They are adept at picking up on their own negative self-talk and systematically replacing it with positive affirmations and a vision of their success.

* They refuse to accept limits to their potential.

* They expect the best, from the world and from others.

* They take full responsibility for the decisions they make and the thoughts they think.

So if you want to be successful, start thinking of yourself that way.

The luck factor begins and ends with you

This may seem obvious and it is, but that doesn’t stop many of us from procrastinating and procrastinating. We can (and do) find so many reasons why now is not the right time to take all of this seriously.

Why, despite our best efforts, do we resist and procrastinate?

This has been called the “knowing how to make a hole”.

A disturbing illustration of the know-how gap can be seen in research in the US healthcare sector:

“If you look at people who are prescribed maintenance drugs, people who should take, for example, a statin for the rest of their lives to control high blood pressure or high cholesterol and stay alive, you would assume that 100% of these people would not you?

It turns out that research done here in Massachusetts shows that between one-third and one-half of all Americans who take maintenance drugs, who understand why they take them, don’t take them after a year. “ (Kagan and Lahey)

This behavior has been labeled “immunity to change” and provides a compelling explanation for why we often show such resistance to personal change.

In summary, research shows that in these situations we have an unconscious belief that supports an unacknowledged competitive desire for our expressed intention to change.

It is this unconscious belief and the associated negative energy that causes our resistance and consequent procrastination.

The importance of managing your energy state

We live in a world full of energy, and how we feel inside most of the time, our dominant emotional state, has a great influence on our life experience, especially over time. In other words, we live in a participatory universe.

A personal illustration

I can recall a situation in my own life some 30 years ago when I unconsciously resisted looking within myself to make some personal changes.

I used to wait for things to change “out there”. I continually scoured the landscape for evidence of change happening “out there” so that I could feel better, until I finally realized:

I had to feel better for things to change.

Why was this so difficult? It was basically difficult because I was looking for evidence to base my positive feelings on because:

He was ingrained and obsessed with circumstance.

It took me a long time to realize that feeling better was an internal state and that my life experience ultimately depended on that.

It took me even longer to realize that I needed to give myself permission to do this, and that in doing so I had to overcome a deeply ingrained and largely unconscious commitment to the belief that I was somehow “wrong” or self-centered. do this.

Eventually I came to understand that this resistance stemmed from my childhood upbringing and religious background and that I mistakenly thought that by changing my expectations, I was somehow usurping the “will of God.”

It may sound irrational, and these things often are, but when I realized this, I was able to make the desired internal changes by reframing the belief.

Don’t keep looking outside yourself, at the circumstances, to find evidence on which to base your expectations; it begins and ends in you.

The science behind the luck factor

It is very easy to be cynical about all of this and simply dismiss it as a misleading, unsubstantiated positive thought. That makes it a very convenient excuse to rationalize your own resistance to change.

If you feel this way, of course you are entitled to their perspective, but first consider the following.

For more than 10 years, Professor Richard Wiseman examined the behavior of 1,000 volunteers who considered themselves lucky or unlucky.

In summary, their findings show that lucky people are people who, consciously or unconsciously, have mastered the art of generating their own good fortune through four basic principles.

The lucky people are:

1. Expert in creating and detecting chance opportunities.

Lucky people just taste things. Unfortunate people suffered from paralysis by analysis. They would do nothing until they walked through all the angles and by then the world had moved. They don’t get the benefits of learning by doing. I’m a big fan of starting small, trying a lot of projects, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and iterating based on feedback.

2. Make lucky decisions by listening to your intuition.

Nearly 90% of the lucky people said they trusted their intuition when it came to personal relationships, and nearly 80% said it played a vital role in their career choices … About 20% more fortunate than unlucky used their intuition when it came to making important financial decisions, and more than 20% used their intuition when thinking about their career options.

3. Create self-fulfilling prophecies through positive expectations

On average, lucky people thought there was about a 90% chance of having a great time on their next vacation, (and) an 84% chance of achieving at least one of their lifetime ambitions …

4. Adopt a resilient attitude that turns bad luck into good

Lucky people are very tough. I remember talking to a lucky person who fell down some stairs and broke his leg. I said, ‘I bet you don’t consider yourself so lucky now.’ He said the last time he went to a hospital he met a nurse and they fell in love. Now the two are happily married twenty-five years later. He said, ‘It was the best thing that happened to me … So yeah, things can look bad now, but the long-term effect of this could be very, very positive.’ That is a very tough attitude. Lucky people tend to have that kind of focus.

“The best luck of all is the luck you make yourself” (Douglas MacArthur)

Read more about: The Luck Factor