Believing is seeing

There is a general belief that is com­monly accepted in this culture. The belief is that “See­ing is Believing.” In essence, we must be realistic. “If I can see it, then I will believe it.” We have already learned that human beings behave not in accordance with the truth, but in accordance with their perception of the truth.

Perception of reality limits success

According to Dr Robert Anthony people who must see it before they can believe it, or must have concrete feedback before they will take a risk, find it very difficult to grow and change. Most of their lives are spent waiting for something to happen rather than making it happen.

He believes that we stimulate our creative energy and drive in direct proportion to our ability to use our imagination. However, use of our imagination is limited by our perception of reality. “All of us have some natural limitations in perceiving reality, but we can expand our awareness of this real­ity. We are not limited by it unless we choose to be limited. In order to change this, we must be willing to take a good look to see if our perception of reality is perhaps limited or distorted.”

No two people have the same awareness or perception of reality. This accounts for the uniqueness of each individual. Although we perceive the same world, we interpret what we see differently. To the degree our awareness or perception is limited, our habits, thoughts and actions will also be limited. Our awareness is simply a combination of all the experi­ences, impressions and attitudes we have accumulated since birth. Our awareness can be summed up as our total life experience. Our awareness determines the clarity with which we perceive and understand everything that affects our life.

Everything that happens in our life is filtered through our aware­ness. We then act in accordance with our present level of aware­ness. If our awareness is faulty, then our actions will be faulty. Every decision we make and every action we take is based on our level of awareness at any given moment. In order to be all we can be, we must constantly work to change and expand our level of awareness, or our perception of reality.

One of the faulty perceptions in most people’s awareness is that “seeing is believing”. But the truth is, because we cannot see it, it does not mean it is not there. The reason we do not see opportu­nities or solutions is not because they are not there; it is because we have not determined what we are looking for. Rather than wait to see before believing, we must first set our goal before our reality will change. When we set a goal our brain and mind, working together, act as a natural filtering device that will help is to attain our goal.

What are you looking for?

The first thing we must do is ask, “What is of VALUE to me? What is important or valuable to me? What am I looking for? What is it that I want? What end result do I want?” These questions and their answers play a very import­ant role in your success. The inter­play between your brain and mind will not support you in obtaining your goals until it clearly under­stands exactly what you want. The information will not get through until you can answer the question, “What do I want?”

Dr Wayne Dyer reiterates: you must know what you want before you can become aware of how to get it. By determining first what is of value to you, you automatically let information that is important to you filter through. You will in­crease your awareness of valuable opportunities and information that will help you obtain your goal by knowing exactly what you want.

Our brain-mind mechanism naturally filters out any infor­mation that is not of value to us or does not pose a threat to our security. Information that is not of value to you or does not pose a threat to your survival does not get through to you. It automatical­ly gets filtered out. Like a spam fil­ter on your email, the brain-mind functioning together screens out thousands of messages and allows only those messages or informa­tion to get through that have value to you. If it allowed any and all information to come through, it would overload your nervous system and you would be unable to cope with all the data presented to it. To ensure your survival, it also allows threats of physical or psychological harm to get through at all times.

There is simply too much in­formation constantly coming at us. It is impossible for all of it to get through. So, we must determine exactly what we want. This will al­low our brain-mind mechanism to become highly selective as to what information is of real value to us.

The right information when need

Once we determine what we want, the information will start to flow through. Remember that because we cannot see it, does not mean it does not exist. It only means we are blocking out infor­mation that is not important to us at the moment. This blocking is natural and simply a protective mechanism to keep us from going insane. Unchecked, however, this mechanism can limit our possibil­ities.

There is at any given time a vast amount of information avail­able to support you in creating whatever you desire. However, most people, or groups of people (and businesses fall into this category), try to solve problems without first determining exactly what they wish to accomplish.

They make decisions based on the available facts or the resources they have at the present moment. The natural response is, “We cannot do that. We do not know where the money is coming from. Who is going to help us? We do not have what we need. We do not have what it takes,” or “We do not have enough experience with this.”

Focusing on the end result

Dr Anthony opines that you do not need to know all those answers. In fact, if you did have the answers to all those questions, that information would, in the present moment, probably work against you. What you do need to know is, “What is the end result? Where do I want to end up? What do I want to create?” Set the goal FIRST and the necessary informa­tion will get through. Having all the information first, without the goal only confuses the mind and works against you.

It is worth remembering that information does not come through first. Before the informa­tion can be filtered through, your brain-mind mechanism must lock onto the goal or end result. Once that is set, everything you need to know to accomplish the end result will present itself to you.

Unless something has personal value or threatens our security, we will not be conscious of the infor­mation that we need. In order to be conscious of this information, we must have the goal first. High performance people, people that get things done, know this secret:

Believing is seeing

Everybody else wants to have the facts first before they will believe. But it does not work that way. You must believe in the goal first, and then you will see how to do it, because the necessary infor­mation will get through. You must determine what is of value to you before it gets through.

Thinking outside our limita­tions

Another reason we do not see opportunities is that we limit ourselves by the way we think. We must be willing to think outside our limitations.

We often feel uncomfortable psychologically when we experi­ence contradictory or conflicting opinions, beliefs or attitudes at the same time. It is possible to hold different attitudes without emo­tional disharmony only as long as a situation does not occur in which these attitudes are brought into direct confrontation. Gener­ally, when people are placed into a new and unfamiliar environment or situation, a change of behavior or a modification of an attitude is necessary to lessen or eliminate the anxiety caused by the change.

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Another reason we do not see opportunities is that we limit ourselves by the way we think. We must be willing to think outside our limitations.

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BY CAPT. SAM ADDAIH