The majority of people don’t think they will ever live the life they want. Usually it’s because they’ve been told their goals are crazy or impossible, and they won’t ever achieve them. Kids are very impressionable, and will believe almost anything they’re told by parents and authority leaders.

As a result, most of the population doesn’t put forth much effort in anything they do, because they don’t believe they’ll succeed anyway. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Sometimes all it takes is belief to finally reach your goals. When you change your beliefs about what is possible, suddenly things become more clear and you realize achieving a particular goal is not as difficult or impossible as it once seemed.

To do this, you must challenge your beliefs. Beliefs are only true as long as you think they are. In fact the dictionary defition of a belief is: Assent to a proposition or affirmation, or the acceptance of a fact, opinion, or assertion as real or true, without immediate personal knowledge.

You may feel liberated when you realize you get to decide NOT to believe a certain limitation you have. Once you make the decision not to be limited by these negative beliefs anymore, you’ll realize you actually can be much more than you’re letting yourself.

Don’t fall victim to the idea that something must be true because it’s what other people believe. Just because a lot of people once believed the world was flat didn’t make it true.

I was once told, “if you want to be rich, don’t take advice from broke people”. I’m sure you’ll agree that’s pretty great advice.

If you have a certain attitude about whether or not you can succeed at something - take a closer look at where you got that belief. Did you pick it up from people who are not successful?

Question the beliefs you have constantly. Sticking with your current beliefs can be comfortable and safe, but staying in your comfort zone will never get you anywhere.

Today I’m going to share with you a great concept I originally learned from my friend Kevin Wilke. It’s what he calls the 4 most deadly words.

These 4 words are so deadly in fact, that using them almost guarantees you won’t be as successful as you would like to be.

The scary thing is that you probably think them all the time without even noticing - which is really bad because that means you have habit of thinking this particular way.

And those 4 words are…

“I already know that”

You may have just caught yourself thinking that right after you read those 4 words. Now that is super deadly!

What makes them so deadly?

Because the moment you start thinking you know everything already, your mind closes - even to new ideas you don’t know.

This makes it practically impossible to learn new things, and to expand your awareness and achieve greater success and breakthroughs.

This way of thinking will keep you stuck where you are currently in life. It will hold you back, and might even cause your failure. Consider this: Your current way of thinking has gotten you the results you now have. So to get different results, you must change the way you think about things.

Don’t operate from an ego based mindset. Don’t close yourself off from learning and growing because you would rather think you’re smart and know everything already. They let their ego keep them trapped.

There’s a saying I really like that goes like this: “You can be right, or you can be happy”. Now of course, we’d all rather be right AND happy, but the point is that people can be so stubborn at wanting to be right (even if they’re WRONG), that it keeps them from growing and succeeding. I know people who are like this and they continue to get the same results, nothing ever changes.

I was that same way for quite a long time. Rather than open my mind to the possibility that there may be more for me to learn, I would instead search for some sort of proof that justified what I already believed. I hate to think of all the time I wasted trying to prove my point when I could have been learning.

Sure I got to be “right”. But it certainly didn’t make me successful or happy. I just got to bask in the miserable glory of being right, and not being open to different mindsets and ideas that would have improved my life a lot faster.

These days, I’m always looking to learn. I make sure never to say or think the phrase “I already know that”, and as a result end up learning more than I ever expected.

Now you may be asking, what about things I already do know?

Good question. Let me ask YOU a question now.

Do you really already KNOW it? Do you know it in and out? More importantly, do you DO it and LIVE it every single day?

Or is the reality that you just heard about it or read about it somewhere?

There’s a HUGE difference between learning something and truly knowing it.

Knowing something means doing it, not just thinking it or learning about it.

The reality is that, no matter how much you think you know about something, there is ALWAYS a possibility to learn new things. Especially when it comes to personal growth.

There are several personal growth books I read again and again, because each time I read one of them I get something different out of it than I did before.
Why?

Because each time I read it I have a different perspective. I’m at a different stage in my life, so I see things in a completely different light.

It’s amazing how you can read or hear what seems to be the same information multiple times and each time get something new out of it. This happens all the time.

Whenever I approach a situation or begin to read/watch/hear something and those deadly words pop into my mind, I immediately catch myself and ask “What can I learn from this?”

This forces my mind to not only be open to learning new things, but actually be looking for ideas I may not have picked up the first time around.

It feels really great to walk away from something knowing more than I did before. Feels much better than thinking I already knew everything they were talking about.

If you look at anyone who is successful for the long term, you’ll notice their desire to constantly be learning new things. Successful people don’t have the “I already know that” mindset. But that mindset is certainly common among poor and unsuccessful people.

Anything can be a learning experience if you choose it to be.

On this blog you will learn the principles, techniques and ideas that have taken me from a depressed, drugged up teenager with ADD who almost didn’t graduate high school (in fact I rarely went to class at all, and got D’s and F’s in nearly every class the entire time I was in Junior High and Senior High School) to completely turning my life around and becoming successful, focused, and most importantly - happy.

My mission with this blog and website is to make a profound difference in people’s lives. What I’d like to prove to you - for your own benefit - is that it doesn’t matter where you are now.

Even if you grew up dirt poor (like me). Even if you have a horrible attitude and mindset regarding money and success (like I used to), even if you didn’t get straight A’s all through school and graduate college with a Ph.D (I barely graduated high school and that was only because one of the school counselors felt bad for me when my dad died and gave me a 2nd chance. To be able to graduate I had to go to school 6 days a week and complete a year and a half worth of school work in just a couple of months.

Even if you’re at the point now where you feel scatterbrained, overwhelmed or stressed - if that’s where you are now, I can relate. I used to be in your shoes.

Maybe your situation is not or never has been quite that bad. Despite your current circumstances, I hope the information I share here will help you change your life as it has helped me changed mine. Here is a key point to remember - take baby steps. Especially if you’re the kind of person who gets overwhelmed easily or procrastinates.

Did you know that clinically depressed people often have goals that exceed what they feel they can really accomplish? As a result, they often get stuck in “paralysis of analysis” and find themselves unable to act because they feel like they must have new skills or more information first. They get stuck in a cycle of learning and learning but never doing.

I’ve experienced this myself (MANY times) in the past when I had very low self esteem, and would set lofty goals I didn’t believe I could actually achieve. To overcome this, you need to get the ball rolling and gain some momentum by setting and achieving very small goals. Then use your small successes to motivate you and move you toward larger successes.

One last point I’d like to make is that part of the reason I’m starting this blog is I’d like to create a positive community and connect with like minded people, rather than negative people and “energy leeches”.

If you have come here to learn and grow from valuable life-changing information, to improve yourself and the lives of others around you - great! I’m excited for you to be here, and I hope you’ll return often and benefit from what you learn here.

However if you’re a negative, scarcity-minded person who likes to argue, complain, make idiotic excuses and bring others down - this isn’t the place for you. Please close this browser, and find somewhere else to spread your misery.

In the next blog post coming up, I’ll be sharing something with you that will open up your mind to future success principles you’ll be learning. See you back here soon.