Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE

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We become what we think

True story of the Miracle Man from The Secret

Looking back over the years, my life appears to have gone through certain phases; indeed it seems that I've had several lives in one (and I haven't finished yet!). Now I'm not going to bore you with any details, what I've done, where I've lived or who with! All that's not up for blogging about. But having been rather a poor performer at school, my life changed when I thought differently.

I was quite a frightened child at school for various reasons; I'm sure my learning ability was affected by bullying, from kids and also teachers. I remember one teacher skinning my knuckles on the edge of a wooden desk in her attempt to make me remember some historical fact or arithmetical calculation. I became so petrified of getting this treatment again that I think my brain seized up! Then I couldn't think at all. It was drummed into me from the age of six that I was hopeless at school and I was a poor performer. This became something I grew to believe for myself. So guess what.....because I believed it, that's what was my experience.

After leaving school I remember an occasion in my late teens having flunked most exams, suddenly having the idea that actually I was not much different from other kids and there was no real reason why I couldn't be good at some things. I became determined to make a difference. I therefore set out to be successful in my new career in shop window display and other activities that interested me. I would not say my life since school has been a success story of any measure whatsoever, but there have been a number of landmark achievements that may have surprised my early school teacher if she'd lived long enough to find out. But my primary school teacher was in her sixties when I started school in the 1950s, so her upbringing was probably Victorian.

Norman Vincent Peale, American writer and Minister said, "One of the greatest of all principles is that men (and women) can do what they think they can do." I would also adapt his words to say, "...that men cannot do what they think they cannot do". It happened to me at school; I believed that I could not do well in class, so I did not. I fulfilled my belief. But in my late teens I had the revelatory idea that I could do well, and that's what happened. I eventually became a senior executive in a large national retailing organisation, became a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and I'm happily busy with my Alexander Technique practice in central London.

It's clear to me, from personal experience, despite reading quotations from the likes of Norman Vincent Peale, that we are all capable of doing more. It is our thinking that limits us. It's our belief in ourselves that limits us. It's all about how we think. Change how you think and you change your life.

Whatever is the limit of our imagination and perception of what we can do, have or experience; this is how we will eventually perceive in our life. But if we can stretch our imagination to include some wonderful....indeed unbelievable things and truly think that we can achieve or have these things, we will bring about the circumstances where they can become reality. It's about stretching the elastic of how we think about ourselves, our situation and our life. We can ask for more than what we have but also ask for more than what we've already asked for! I thought of myself as a dunce at school; my belief and perception made it so. I changed my thinking and it changed my life. The Miracle Man in The Secret achieved more than most of us would think possible. ( I hope you are inspired by that little film clip as much as I am!)

Man (or woman) becomes what he thinks about.

it's good to stretch our imagination....to go a little beyond what we think is possible.....

:-)

Posted by Noël on July 14, 2008 3:26 PM | Permalink