Life changes

I was talking to Eric over coffee earlier today.

A little background for those of you who don't know Eric. He is a student of the same disciplines which I am currently digging into (with great relish, I may add). Those of you who've met Eric will know that he's about 40 years old and a rather calm/sedate alternative to my crazy hyper self.

Anyway, as I was saying, we were chatting.

We both came to the conclusion that our lives have changed for the better quite visibly over the last few months just through the power of positive reinforcement and the fact that we are actively seeking out ways to better ourselves.

We agreed that change had to come from inside. It has to be internally motivated. You cannot really want to change just to please someone else, and reasonably expect to succeed. The core motivation has to be that you want to change because you genuinely believe that it will make you a better person.

I notice it in the way I walk and the way I talk. I look so much more confident when I am out in public. I'm trying out new crazy things that I never thought I'd do. OK, my recent haircut wasn't my best experiment, but hey, I'll never know until I try it out!

Oh, along the lines of positive reinforcement... We chatted a little about the power of limiting beliefs. So briefly speaking, all of us have this little part of our brain that tells us that we cannot do something. It's that part of you that says you're not a good public speaker, or that you are afraid of speaking your mind, or that you dare not approach a pretty girl. Well, guess what? If you just force yourself to do JUST DO IT (thanks Nike!) you often find that contrary to what you think, the actual experience is nowhere as painful as your imagination makes it out to be. And if you draw on the positive aspects of that experiment, you will gradually gradually find that your limiting belief is... gone...

On a totally unrelated note, I met this guy today, Brian. Brian is a certified handwriting expert. He had me write down a short paragraph and from there, figured out a lot of things pretty accurately about me - that I am persistent (I'd call it stubborn), am very imaginative (true), have moderate self esteem (true to some degree), am talkative (usually true), don't reveal my inner self easily (very true) and am not really into sports (more false than not). Overall, I was pretty darn impressed.