Do you have a Blindfold on?
How come other people can see what we can’t see in ourselves and in the situations around us? How can others be so positive that what they see and say is true? What is the matter with us that we can be so blind to what they can see? Positive thinking can challenge the beliefs that are holding us back.
Perhaps the reason we can’t see our real possibilities is because we have been programmed by our parents’ view of our potential. Perhaps our teachers or people of influence have spoken words, sometimes carelessly or in a joking manner, over us like birds drop their seeds when they fly over the garden. We grow up believing these words to be true and they take root and flourish. We are blindfolded and believe our life has an electric fence around it. Try to get out of the paddock and you get “stung”. We can remain in our blind-spot electric fence paddock sometimes for a lifetime. Living within our perceived limitations exterminates our potential for exceptional accomplishment like an electric fence controls huge animals in a paddock.
Like those electric fences, if we try getting out, they can hurt us and we become constrained. We justify our lack of ambition because of our perceived limitations and then we close down. Our siblings and peers laughed at us when we said what we want to be when we grew up — words stung. Our family told us why we couldn’t do whatever — using the explanation that no one in our family ever had done anything like that. We accepted these prophetic, stinging words as total truth and they became our own beliefs — our electric fence. We have been adopted into the family of mediocrity. We have put on our blindfolds — and we can’t see that the fence isn’t really there. These adopted, limiting beliefs can be about who we are as a person and about what our life purpose and achievements could be.
What thoughts do you immediately think when someone suggests you do something you never have done before? Do you think, “Wow! How exciting!” or do words — excuses — your past programming — come out of your mouth immediately as to why that idea wouldn’t be possible? Are these words your blindfold and your electric fence? Take a moment to listen to these words and then ask yourself if these words are really true. Ask, ‘When did I adopt this belief about myself?’ ‘Am I blinded by past words and hurts and just accept these fences?’ ‘Who programmed me to believe in the electric fence?’ ‘Why do I believe these things about myself and about my potential?’ ‘Were these people transferring their own fences and blindfolds — their limiting beliefs — to me?’
Asking these questions simply will help you see the stuff that has been your blind spot. These beliefs are like that electric fence, constraining you to a paddock with no feed where you eventually will die. Beliefs about relationships, money and success no longer need to control you. You can eliminate those old beliefs and views about yourself. You can make your own choices about who you are and what you want to be remembered for. Just take off the blindfold and see that, in reality, there are no fences around your life at all!
Elation is seeing what you haven’t been able to see before, those new possibilities, new horizons. Elation is eliminating the blind spots — the electric fences — from your life. Just imagine what you could do if you truly could see “no fences” and knew you could be successful! Success has no sympathy for the validity of your excuse. We need more people in the world who will rip off the old blindfolds and choose to live a life of 20/20 vision with no electric fences constraining who they can become. We need more people who will live in integrity with the vision to make a difference. It is a vision of healthy relationships, where we encourage each other to have a go and reach the top of the mountain where the view is unlimited as we gaze at the distant horizon of possibilities.
