148,000 No’s

If you grew up in a fairly typical American household, you experienced, on average, the word NO, or what we could not do, more than 148,000 times in your first eighteen years of life. That’s called negative programming! Very seldom intentional, but very powerful, nonetheless. This unintentional negative talk comes at us from every angle – our parents, siblings, teachers, schoolmates, and co-workers.

Research provides us with some startling data; seventy-six percent of everything we think is negative, counterproductive, and works against us…and in most cases, we aren’t even aware of it. Over time – year after year, the effect of negative talk becomes embedded in our minds and we begin believing what we are being told by others…we even start telling ourselves the same and the mold is made. No matter how innocently given or subtly implied, we begin hearing the same words and thoughts repeatedly; hundreds, even thousands of times we were told, or we told ourselves, what we cold not do, could not accomplish. Repetition is a convincing argument. Eventually we believed what others told us and what we told ourselves most; we began to live out the pictures of ourselves we had created in our minds.

In time we became what we most believed about ourselves. And in doing so, we created a wall, which for most of us will stand invisibly, but powerfully between us and our unlimited futures.

It is virtually impossible for any of us to do anything, no matter how insignificant, without being affected by our conditioning. Every step you take, move you make, or word you say is affected.

In short, how successful you will be at anything is inexorably tied to the words and beliefs about yourself that you have stored in your subconscious mind.

You will become what you think about the most; your success or failure in anything, large or small, will depend on your programming – what you accept from others, and what you say when you talk to yourself.
-Excepts from What To Say When You Talk To Yourself, by Shad Helmstetter, PhD.

“Your mindset is the foundation for everything in life.”
-Unknown

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”
-Henry Ford

“Once your mindset changes, everything on the outside will change along with it.”
-Steve Maraboli