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"Whether you believe you can, or believe you can't, you're totally right." Our lives can sometimes feel like they're spinning wildly out of control, and at other times feel like they're completely stuck. We're the same individual. What flips us from one extreme to its opposite? How do you explain where you are right now?

How about finding the personal connection that brings real insight and benefit though?

Henry Ford is the one who made that statement about belief. I see it carved into a stone in the bathroom of my mother's acupuncture practice when I go to visit. I nod in agreement to myself. And then I forget about it. But what does it really mean? Why am I agreeing? What's the real message?

This is not some rant about the power of positive thinking or the detriment of negative thinking. Positive and negative thinking are both useful tools when used at appropriate times. But that's just it, they're only tools. There's something deeper. Do you ever think about the original intent of these bumper sticker phrases? There is a reason we resonate with quotes like this. We can think of a personal circumstance where the maxim held up yet again.

It's simple to agree with these expressions of general truth, and we like to do it, but we do it very unconsciously most of the time. How about finding the personal connection that brings real insight and benefit though? I like Henry Ford's maxim particularly because it points directly at the core, no winding path, straight to the center of our being.

It's very practical, not at all airy-fairy when you think about it. Ford was talking about Belief. And whether you apply belief to the reason a person obsessively, compulsively locks and re-locks the door three times, or you use it as an example of powerful thinking, it's the same connection to belief that is making the difference. What happens both when you start to feel like things are getting out of control and when you feel like things are completely stuck is you have disconnected yourself from Belief. The person locking and re-locking the door has a (simplified) belief that they need to check the lock to make sure it's locked. We don't really need to know the cause, just understand that it's belief-driven. It's powerful thinking, even if it's not inline with our own thinking, because it has a personal and credible purpose, even when its execution seems odd to us. When you forget the purpose of why you do things is when you get stuck.

It doesn't matter how your belief(s) developed. To regain control or to break out of a rut, it is necessary to address the disconnection from your belief(s). Your belief can be fantastic or mundane. Your belief doesn't even have to agree with anyone else. That's not important. Identifying your beliefs is what's important. Anything you can name is something with which you can have an empowered relationship. Even in Harry Potter we recognize the power of naming something or someone, Shhhh! You know who.

So how does this get you out of XYZ situation?

If you heard all the "change" chatter in the recent presidential election here in the USA, you heard Barack Obama quote Mahatma Ghandi, "We must become the change we want to see." The rest of that quotation is the part that needed more emphasis. "Be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become."

It sounds too simple doesn't it? That's the problem. We believe that in order to receive good things we have to work hard or struggle. Not true. There is nothing except our belief in suffering as a requirement for rewards. If you want change, change your belief. Your job should be easy and enjoyable. If it's hard, look at what you believe to understand why it seems that way. There's a big difference between what you do to earn a living, and what you consider work. You need to be willing to play the What-If game. Start by asking yourself, "What if nothing bad happened by doing something different with this XYZ situation?" and see what the first answer that comes to you is, before you squash the thought.

The best thing anyone can do is to give you permission to have a different outcome. So here it is. I am going giving you permission. You are allowed to have a different experience today than the one you always seem to have. The situation does not need to look different from the outside, but now you are allowed to have it affect you in a different way than usual. You also have permission for it to be easy to do this.

Whether you want to resolve a stressful problem or just make friends with someone, you have permission to take out your "old eyes" and put in some new ones that can follow a different set of rules. (Just use your new powers for good please...)