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You’ll Only Achieve What You Expect

Many successful people are dominated by an inspirational unrest that urges them to rise above themselves and their circumstances to reach higher. It’s an inner impulse that results in actions.

I believe that fear and low expectations can lead to underachievement. Expectation is like a magnet that draws you towards something because of your belief that something you desire or don’t desire is there. My question to entrepreneurs would be what is an average person’s expectation? More importantly what’s your expectation?

What are you thinking? Do you fear poverty, losing your job or people not liking you? Are you worried you might not be able to support your partner and they will leave you? Does work or your marriage feel like a trap? Do you expect to catch that flu that’s going around?

The word expectancy is one of the most important words in the human language. When you expect something you start to get images of it, you think about it, your whole life starts to move in the direction of it. It’s a magnet, good or bad, so if you control your expectations you can control the direction of your life.

The late Maxwell Maltz, a leading motivational speaker and bestselling author, said; “Ideas dreams and actions that are contrary to a person’s core belief system will not be believed and will not be acted upon.” This quote has had a profound impact on my life and it’s so important in understanding how the human mind works.

The ideas, dreams and actions Maxwell refers to might be good, inspirational or well-meaning, but if they are contrary to somebody’s belief system that person will reject them and not act. You have to change your thinking in order to change your actions and behaviours, which in turn will change your life.

Each of us has a thought pattern that has been established by our environment, by our upbringing, teachers, family members and friends. This is the core belief system you operate by, even though you may not realise it! To achieve, it helps if you examine and challenge this system. The key is changing the way you think and what you believe.

People tend to do things in a way that is consistent with the way they have done them before without even examining their actions. Several years ago my business operated from a shed at the bottom of our family home. We moved to a new property and the business went into two business units. For months afterwards I found myself driving to work and ending up outside our old family home. On occasion I still find myself driving there if my mind is occupied. It got so ingrained in me that I kept going back as a force of habit.

This is how the mind works; you move the mind to where you want it to be. Then through emotional implantation or repetition it adjusts until this becomes your primary source of thinking. This is what you have to do.

Some people will remember the heavy weight champion Evander Holyfield. Two weeks after winning the World Heavy Weight Championship he acknowledged that he had fathered two children with girlfriends in the past 12 months, while his second wife gave birth to their first child. This brought his number of children to nine.

Holyfield said: “… the problem is a generational curse, it’s routed in my impoverished morally twisted and fatherless upbringing, my father had 20 something children, it looked like I was falling down that line and I said how do I get off of this. I always wonder why do I struggle to do what’s right when I know it’s right”. Then he concludes; “that’s the whole game, you have to try and break old thinking”.

Whether he did it or not, I don’t know. But Holyfield recognised the key - for someone to change their behaviour, they have to reject their old ways and mode of thinking. This is the challenge I put to budding entrepreneurs.

You can never change your outer world until you first change your inner world. Temporary change is from the conscious mind. Permanent change is of the subconscious mind, your core belief and operating system. If you catch this, it will revolutionise your life.

Kevin Byrne, Founder and CEO of Checkatrade.com

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Kevin Byrne .