What makes you think you can?

A seemingly simple question that stops many would be self-improvers in their tracks. You stop and think yeah, what makes me think I (can insert dream). My fiancée refers to these incident and people who ask these types of questions as “Dream Squashers.” That is what it can be if you let it. But guess what you don’t have to let it. I am going the answer the question for you once and for all so when the “dream squashers” come a callin’ you can stand up tall and say “I think I can because…!”

An ant, a bumblebee, a slug, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Michael Jordan, Anthony Robbins, Thomas Jefferson, Christopher Reeves, Stephen Hawking, YOU and ME!

What do all these animals and people have in common? They have all accomplished amazing feats. They have all done things that they should not have been able to do. The thought that the people on this short list, and there are many others that could be added (my parents, Coach B-my junior high football coach etc.), is that they were all just like me and you. They weren’t born successful or leaders. They became them after overcoming the odds and the question “what makes you think you can?” They went beyond reason and science. They have been able to do things that rules, laws and people say are impossible. Some of them I am sure overcame it by never allowing the question to creep up or simply because they didn’t know any better. Melvin Van Peebles tells a great story of becoming a writer, director and producer. He tells the story of doing all these things because he didn’t know any better. He didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to be able to do these things on his own. The same is true for many successful people they simply didn’t care they were not “supposed” to be able to run as a third party candidate and become the governor of Minnesota. Who decides what we are “supposed” to be able to accomplish? Who has the most credibility about what you can and cannot do? You do!

I have come up with a concept I call rebooting your mind. Have you ever had your computer not be able to start up and you have to go into safe mode. In this mode it gives you an option of starting the computer with settings from a previous date. You can pick a date before you had this problem. Maybe you see where I am going with this already. Sometimes you can just think back to a time when you were on track and feeling better than you are now and “reboot.” Start doing, thinking and acting like you did at that happy, successful time in your life.

If you ever need to convince yourself, do your research and just look around you. Nature and everyday life give us examples of why you should think you can do anything!

PS You have to do the research to figure out why the animals and people on the list are examples of what you can do.