Believe In Yourself

"You weren't an accident. You weren't mass produced. You aren't an assembly-line product. You were deliberately planned, specifically gifted, and lovingly positioned on the Earth by the Master Craftsman." -Max Lucado

This is the quote that starts off principle 5 of Jack Canfield's The Success Principles. The more I read this book, the more I study the scriptures and the more I take time to dream, set goals and make plans the more I realize that I have the ability to accomplish whatever I want. The power is in me to do absolutely anything. I can do it. Having this mentality is an attitude, it's a choice. Some people don't have the ability to do anything because they have not made the choice to do so. So really it's not that they can't, it's that they have chosen not to. I received an email from a friend who was told all her life that she couldn't do physically demanding things because she had asthma. She told me that now she realizes that that belief has been limiting her throughout her entire life and that she actually CAN do more than she thought previously possible.

Canfield shares an inspiring story about a woman named Laura Shultz (maybe related to my high school cross country coach:) who picked up the back end of a Buick to get it off of her grandson's arm. By the way, Laura was 63 years old. She was reluctant to talk to anyone about the event because as 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?" She went on to go back to school and study geology and to then teach it at a local community college. Not bad for a 63 year-old.
(More on Laura Shultz at http://www.christianitytoday.com/biblestudies/articles/theology/thatisreallylife.html )

"The phrase I can't is the most powerful force of negation in the human psyche." -Paul R. Scheele.

Don't tell yourself you can't, tell yourself you can. I have had a dream to be a great runner ever since high school. I've always thought I wasn't very fast, that others were faster. Well, frankly, that was the case in high school because that's what I CHOSE to believe. I didn't really know how to train, I was too prideful to seek help. Now I am making a decision to be the very best I can possibly be and I am setting the bar extremely high. I recognize that I may be setting it too high, but I'm sick and tired of having this dream inside of me that I can't suppress and telling it, "Sorry, you picked the wrong guy. You see, I can't do it." I AM DONE WITH THAT! (Deep breath, smile--Okay, now I'm excited and happy.) I have made a decision to believe with everything I can that I CAN. It's possible and I can do it!

Like I said on my Goals page, "I would rather attempt the impossible, fail horribly and look like a fool than live someone else's dream looking back with regret and shame of what might have been." (Read this post.) And that's how I feel. I invite all of you to listen to your hearts. Figure out what you REALLY want to do with your lives, and then go do it. It's never too late, just look at Laura in paragraph 3. You can do anything. That's what I'm doing and that's how I run fearless.