Sunday, May 24, 2009

Faith - The Hardest Walk

The reason that true success is so elusive to so many of us is because the journey there is so damn hard and yet, it's not so hard at all.

It's one thing to have a clear goal to where you want to be in life but it's another thing completely to be able to have and maintain any faith of accomplishing them over the long haul.

According to all religions (that I am aware) and success experts the most fundamental key to success is to be able to believe that you can achieve it. In simpler terms, to have faith.

"Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve." - Napoleon Hill

"I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you." - Matthew 17:20

So if it's just that simple why aren't you rich yet? Simple. Because while we may be able to generate the necessary faith and enthusiasm to start moving towards our goals we simply cannot maintain it. Life always puts roadblocks in our way to discourage us. It's designed that way.

In a dream, if you are aware that you are dreaming, it's a simple matter to dictate the course of the dream. You simple decide 'x' event will happen - and it does. If you are unaware you're dreaming this process is done subconsciously. But a dream is pure thought energy, it's totally ethereal.

In the real world, you can still decide to dictate the course of your life but nothing happens instantly. Which is good, because otherwise every frivolous thought that came across our undisiplined minds would suddenly manifast into reality. That might sound good at first but when you think about it, you quickly realize we wish for a lot of stuff we don't actually want.

In the real world, for desires to become reality you must put them into motion and then maintain confident enthusiasm in their eventual success. However, far too often we either don't take any action at all. If we do, then when things start to look bleak we lose hope, lose steam and allow them to fall by the way side.

Generally speaking, things will always look darkest before the dawn. You can almost, always count on things to go wrong, or at least appear to go wrong. Sometimes things that might seem contrary to our goals must happen in order for our goals to be realized.

Recently, a friend of mine was greatly distressed when she was pressured into quiting her job. It was no secret that she was far more resourceful and productive than her manager. She frequently went over his head to get things done and was always granted her requests because they were sound and would make the company money. While some managers would be thrilled to have a rising star performer on thier teams, some are merely threatened by it. Hers fell into the latter group and had her transferred to another unrelated position under a harsher, stricker manager who immediately began to treat her unsavorably. Feeling like she was trapped in a no-win situation she quit.

This caused her considerable mental diress for obvious financial reasons. However she found work in a lower paying position in a related field which she maintained while she continued to actively persue other oppurtunites. She just landed a senior position with a large west coast company looking to expand into her city. A position and pay scale far superior to the one she had quit.

If she hadn't lost her initial job she would have most likely never been aware of the oppurtunity and also would not have had the breathe of related experience the lower postion afforded her. Now she's grateful for having had to quit that initial job.

Chances are you have had something similar happen to you or someone you know.

When it comes to pursuing our dreams though, these sorts of perceived set-backs cause us to lose faith or at least lose focus and enthusiasm. We tend to focus on what's gone wrong or could go wrong instead of focusing our attention where it needs to be, on our end goal.

This is why faith is so pivital. You need to be able to believe that things will work out when the exact opposite seems to be the case. Logical or 'rational' thinking will always betray you in this way. It will observe the current circumstance and decide that you have lost or are destined to lose. Never be concerned with the current reality, you must remain focused on the reality you are working to create and have faith that whatever must happen, will happen.

Why is life designed this way? To separate the wheat from the chaff.

To be continued...