Success Is Not an Accident

by Tommy Newberry

  Bring Out the Best

  Question suggestion helps you take conscious control of the questions you repeatedly ask yourself. Your thinking can be only as good as the questions you ask, so ask those that direct your attention to the best things in your life. Ask questions that challenge your creativity and potential. Ask possibility questions. Ask questions that bring out the best in you. Here are some examples:

  Aren’t I fortunate to be so healthy?

  Aren’t I fortunate to have tons of energy?

  How can I be even more productive today and enjoy the process?

  What might happen this week that would bring me total pleasure and satisfaction?

  I wonder how many lives I will positively impact today?

  Isn’t it great that I’m always in the right place at the right time?

  The above questions are empowering because they assume a positive, desired condition or outcome. When I ask, “Aren’t I fortunate to be so healthy?” the suggestion is, “I am already very healthy.” That’s how the brain interprets it. When I ask, “Isn’t it great that I’m always in the right place at the right time?” I am really programming myself to be in the right place at the right time. When I ask, “Aren’t I fortunate to have tons of energy?” I am affirming that I already have a lot of energy.

  You’ll find that questions immediately change what you’re focusing on and consequently change your feelings and your level of creativity, excitement, and motivation.

  Aren’t you fortunate to be reading this lesson?

  Fifteen Practical Insights

  Here are fifteen key ideas or insights that will help you talk yourself into even more success and get the most out of this lesson.

  1 | Always use the word when rather than if in situations where you are talking about something you want to happen. Say, “When I close that sale” or “When I lose that weight . . .”

  2 | Take control of your explanatory style—that is, the way you interpret past events. Put a positive twist on things—or spin them to your benefit, as they say in politics—by looking back and reinterpreting any seemingly negative situation and mentally downplaying its significance. This reduces the effect the past has on your future.

  3 | Watch out for media programming, the constant suggestive influence from radio, television, newspaper, magazines, and billboards. It is estimated that the average American is exposed to more than fifteen hundred advertising messages each day. If you think like the masses think, you’ll get what the masses get. Let’s not go there.

  4 | Never let anyone say anything to you or about you in your presence that you don’t sincerely want to happen. Be alert whenever someone starts a sentence with the word you in daily conversations. Your interactions with others play a major role in what you believe to be true about yourself. Sometimes it’s minor. Sometimes it’s major. But everything counts! Be especially cognizant of old friends who continue to speak of you as the person you used to be but no longer want to be. Though you can’t control what others say to you, you can increase the amount of time you invest with people who are positive and encouraging. For close friends and family, be bold and ask them to verbally support your efforts to grow and improve.

  5 | In dealing with other people, particularly those you live or work with, never characterize them in their presence as something you don’t want them to be. You will just reinforce their tendency to be that way. If you want people to be on time more often, the very worst thing you can do is to shout at them or look them in the eye and say, “You’re always late!” Avoid this temptation, or you’ll keep getting more of the same.

  6 | Whenever you catch yourself thinking something negative or self-defeating, say the word cancel, next, or deflect. Then say or think what you really want to believe. This technique interrupts and weakens limiting patterns of thought.

  7 | By always doing what you say, you strengthen your character and literally program yourself to create the reality dictated by your words. So resolve to keep every single agreement you make with yourself, and your self-talk will become even more powerful. In other words, walk your talk.

  8 | Refuse to claim or take possession of anything that you don’t want in your lifestyle. For example, don’t say “my cold,” “my headache,” “my bad back,” “my debt,” or “my price range.” Instead, attach yourself mentally and verbally to what you do want, such as peace of mind, joy, strong relationships, abundance, and good health.

  9 | No matter how common it may be, refuse to get cornered into conversations involving skepticism, cynicism, doubt, fear, worry, or gossip. Self-talk is contagious. Don’t let others contaminate your self-talk with their negativity and toxic energy. Talk to yourself and others only about things you want to experience.

  10 | Most people routinely say things to or about themselves that they would never say to a respected friend. Refuse to acknowledge any thoughts that oppose who you really want to be. Make this promise: Be a respected and nourishing friend to yourself!

  11 | Leave the past in the past. If it becomes necessary to discuss a habit, tendency, or quality that you’d rather not have, always talk about it as if it’s long gone—as if it’s history rather than a current, ongoing problem. Use the phrases “up until now,” “in the past,” or “I used to be” to frame any constructive self-criticism. Be careful not to pull the past into the future by making generalizations about prior behavior.

  12 | Choose the words of champions. Replace “I’ll try to” with “I will.” Replace “I didn’t have time” with “I chose not to make time for that.” Replace “It’s not my fault” with “I accept responsibility.” Replace “You make me upset” with “I feel upset when . . .” You always have the choice. You can be a helpless victim, or you can be a powerful human being who makes an impact on the world.

  13 | Watch out for others who transplant their past experiences to you, often lowering your expectations and in effect causing you to clench up, preparing for the worst. This is particularly true concerning life’s common experiences such as school exams, dating, marriage, pregnancy and childbirth, raising children, finances, and getting older. Learn from others’ experience, but always assume it’s going to be a lot better for you than it was for them. Remember, what you expect with confidence tends to materialize. So be alert to the sort of mass hypnotism that goes on in our society.

  14 | Every cell in your body “listens in” to your thinking and interprets each thought as a command. If you want to know what your self-talk was like three years ago, just look at yourself and your life today. What the mind harbors, the body expresses.

  15 | Putting into practice even just a few suggestions from this lesson will generate a visible and measurable improvement in your life. Don’t worry about mistakes. Shrug them off and stay focused on doing better tomorrow. Remember, it is at the very moment that you think your self-talk is not working that you need to use it the most. Fill up every spare moment with a thought of the person you want to be.

  You Are Changing!

  Finally, remember this: At this very moment, you are changing! Nobody stays the same for any length of time. You are continually changing in the specific direction that your thoughts and goals lead you. You are what you are and where you are because of the dominating thoughts you have allowed to occupy your mind. Your surroundings are nothing more than the outworking of your thoughts. There is only one thing in the world that you have complete control over, and that is your thinking. If you don’t deliberately give yourself positive directions, your mind and your body will continue to act upon directions from anywhere and everywhere, like a vacuum sucking up dirt. There’s no real argument on this point. It’s easier to do nothing and just take life as it comes to you. But you have a choice: You can be programmed by your fears and doubts, by envious peers and fair-weather friends, by the flood of bad news and negative headlines—or you can chart your own course and let others follow. It’s completely up to you.

  Do you now have the intensity of purpose, t
he tenacity, to discipline your mind to stay fixed on what you want? If you do, your mind will become transformed with confidence and boldness. Using the tool of positive self-talk, you can eliminate negative thought patterns and replace them with positive beliefs and expectations. Using self-talk, you can make the internal adjustments that must precede all external changes. You can get much more out of life than most people ever look for. You are mentally tough! And I know you can do it!

  Lesson 5 Questions for Reflection

  Which of your beliefs about yourself are not useful and could be limiting your full potential?

  In light of who you intend to become, how should you improve your self-talk?

  What captures your attention immediately before falling asleep at night and upon awakening in the morning?

  What do you tend to think about most when you are not thinking about your goals?

  What does the Bible teach regarding the pitfalls of an undisciplined mind? Consider Proverbs 4:23, 27:19; Matthew 12:36-37; Romans 12:2; 2 Corinthians 10:5; Philippians 4:8; James 1:8.

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  Whom can you influence with the ideas from this lesson in the next forty-eight hours?

  Lesson 5 Assignments

  1 | Make a list of what you would believe about yourself, your potential, and the world if you had already achieved your most important goal.

  2 | On separate note cards, neatly write at least ten self-talk statements (affirmations) for each of your top five three-year goals.

  3 | Read aloud the Fifteen Practical Insights on pages 159–162.

  Lesson 6

  Choose Positive Visualization

  Positive results follow positive mental pictures.

  In this lesson, you will learn to

  • Discipline your mind

  • Sharpen your concentration ability

  • Reinforce commitment to goals

  • Increase desire

  • Build productive beliefs

  • Reduce stress

  • Accelerate your progress

  A subconscious programming technique even more powerful than positive self-talk is positive visualization—mentally picturing events or outcomes in your mind before they occur in physical reality. Visualization is based on the same principles as self-talk, but it is considerably more effective because it goes directly to the source: the collection of subconscious mental pictures that occupy your mind. Self-talk triggers the development of new mental images, whereas visualization directly imprints the new pictures. Self-talk and visualization complement each other. Visualization intensifies your self-talk, and self-talk reinforces your visualization. Both techniques promote the accomplishment of your goals and should be used in tandem on a consistent basis.

  It’s important to note that visualization is a skill that can be learned and mastered. Everyone has the ability to visualize. As with all other skills, some people find visualization naturally easier, almost intuitive, while others must practice often to experience the benefits. You can demonstrate your ability to visualize just by thinking of how many windows there are in your living room or recalling the smell of freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies. Visualization refers not just to visual images but also to hearing, touch, taste, smell, and emotional sensations.

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  I visualized where I wanted to be, what kind of player I wanted to become. I knew exactly where I wanted to go, and I focused on getting there.

  —Michael Jordan

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  It has been said that the pictures you create in your head turn into the reality you hold in your hand. That’s why it is crucial that you not allow the visualization process to be arbitrary. The primary aim of this lesson is to help you make the shift from random, reactive visualizations to deliberate, proactive visualizations that support who you want to become and what you want to accomplish.

  For the rest of this lesson, I will teach you exactly what visualization means and how it works. We’ll discuss variations of visualization as well as how to enhance your visualization skills to help you maximize your performance in every area of life.

  Your subconscious mind is responsible for your long-term success, failure, or mediocrity. It is responsible for generating and coordinating your thoughts, feelings, words, and actions. This is good news because you are responsible for the subconscious mind and whether it is programmed for success. Once again, you are in charge. You have yet another opportunity to take control of the direction of your life if—and this is a big if—you are willing to be extraordinarily picky about which thoughts occupy your mind. While you cannot always control what you are exposed to and the thoughts these exposures stimulate, you can control what you choose to dwell upon. The thoughts you harbor most often impact your life the most. The thoughts that set up camp in your mind have the most influence, not those that merely drop in for a quick visit.

  Fortunately, your subconscious mind is not a master, but an ever-ready and willing servant. It will bring into your life whatever you sincerely ask. The subconscious is not discriminating. Like fertile soil, your subconscious will accommodate whatever seeds you choose to plant. It’s just as happy to help you as to hurt you. It is content to bring you health or sickness and fatigue. It is happy to bring you either abundance or lack. Your mind works on the instructions it is given. These instructions can come from its owner—you—or they can come from whatever influences you expose yourself to on a regular basis. It is up to you to give your subconscious mind instructions that will produce a life that will make you contagiously happy and fully alive.

  An instruction to your subconscious can be defined as any continuously held conscious thought. It is not the infrequent mental pictures that exert tremendous influence, but the most dominant ones. The images that you consciously and repeatedly focus on become absorbed into the subconscious mind, like water into a sponge. At this point the progress is made or the damage is done.

  Successful men and women train their minds to think about what they want to have happen in their lives. They think about the type of person they want to become. They think about their goals and dreams. They think about the principles and virtues they most admire. They think about the people they like and the situations they hope to experience. By contrast, the unsuccessful or mediocre lack mental discipline. Their thoughts drift from the circumstances they hope to avoid to the people they dislike and the wide variety of injustices that seem to surround them. They’re quick to dismiss themselves as being unlucky and even quicker to dismiss the successful as being extremely lucky. The mediocre bathe themselves in all the reasons why they can’t have the life they really want, and lo and behold, they end up being right.

  What If?

  What if you visualized (one hundred times) pushing away a dessert after taking only one bite. Do you think you’d be more likely to do that in real circumstances?

  What if you visualized (one hundred times) delivering your next presentation comfortably and excellently. Do you think that would have a positive impact on your results?

  What if you visualized (one hundred times) the physical condition you hope to be in when you turn sixty. Do you think that would have any effect on the lifestyle habits you choose today?

  What if you visualized (one hundred times) rising easily and effortlessly at 5 a.m. feeling completely refreshed and rejuvenated. Do you believe that would improve your effectiveness in the morning?

  Your subconscious mind is incapable of distinguishing between an actual event and one that is only imagined. This God-given dynamic of the human brain allows you, through repeated visualizations, to convince your subconscious mind that a desired goal has already been accomplished. Once your mind believes something to be true, it automatically adjusts your thoughts, words, emotions, and behaviors to be consistent with your visualization. A visualization is a by-product of an electrical and chemical process within the brain. Because your visual images are composed of electromagnetic energy that consis
ts of matter, they are, in effect, real. As a result, your mind and body interpret them as reality and respond to them as though they were actually happening. For example, during mental rehearsals of their events, Olympic athletes often experience physiological changes—increased heart rate, respiration, perspiration, or even involuntary muscle movements—as if they were participating in the real event. Best of all, according to Stanford neurosurgeon and psychologist Dr. Karl Pribram, electromagnetically charged visual images produce a magnetic field that attracts back to the visualizer those things he or she vividly imagines and senses. This phenomenon enables you to attract into your life the very people, resources, and circumstances necessary to translate your goal into concrete reality.

  Two Types of Visualization

  You can visualize two primary aspects of a goal. One is the specific outcome itself; the other is the process or series of steps you must take to get there. It is important to practice both, but if you have to choose, practice outcome visualization. The realization of the actual goal counts the most, not necessarily how you get there.

  In outcome visualization, you rehearse the achievement of your goal in rich sensory detail. You should focus on the exact moment that represents attaining the goal. Outcome visualization keeps you excited and motivated, especially during the inevitable glitches, delays, or temporary disappointments. The more your eye is on the goal, the more focused and determined you will be.