Sample – One Plus One Equals Four, The Keys to Success

 Chapter 5 

The Keys To Success

Unlock Your Power

The people who get on in this world are

the people who get up and look for the

circumstances they want, and if they

cannot find them, they make them.

— GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

 

In the previous chapter we discussed the creation process and how thoughts turn into things. You were given the unusual and interesting task of the 30-Day Mental Diet. When the majority of people complete the Mental Diet, they finally notice all the habitual negative thoughts that run through their mind.

I was in my early 30s and still living in Kenya when I first followed the Mental Diet. I was astounded as it dawned on me how much negative self-talk was running through my mind – thoughts like, ‘I can’t achieve this’ or ‘I’m not as good as other people’. Did  you know that our minds process roughly 60,000 thoughts a day? We can liken negative thinking to eating bad food all the time, as a result of which we may experience persistent diarrhoea. What would happen if we kept on eating the same foods? Would anything change? No, it would be very unlikely. We would only see a change if we changed what we ate. If you notice that your thoughts are often negative, it is paramount that you change your thoughts. This is the essence of the 30-Day Mental Diet. I say that awareness is the beginning of change.

Do you remember my client Judy from the first chapter? You will recall that Judy had experienced very abusive circumstances in her early life. As a result, her mind was conditioned to being very negative about all men’s intentions. After Judy completed the 30-Day Mental Diet, she was stunned to realise how her own negative thought processes were sabotaging her happiness and reflecting negative experiences in her life. Crucially, the Mental Diet brought this awareness into Judy’s conscious mind. This was the beginning of change for Judy and the starting point to lift herself out of her existing circumstances.

Prosperity and achievement
are mental conditions.

In this chapter my intention is to guide you through very specific steps to create what you desire and, in turn, take your life to the next level – whatever that level might be for you. Do you desire to have more wealth and prosperity in your life? Do you desire to be healthier and have more energy and vitality? Do you desire to have a wonderful relationship or to take your existing relationship to a higher level? Or maybe it is to venture into business or take your existing business to another level? Or do you simply want to advance in your profession or career? Whatever it is for you, my friend, my desire is for you to have a better, fuller, more prosperous and richer life.

As with all things, prosperity and achievement are mental conditions, and their physical existence is merely the result of the cause that exists within one’s mind. In order to achieve, you must first think achievement. In order to create, you must first think creatively. In order to prosper, you must first think prosperity.

Few of us are in the situations we most desire. Therefore, if we want to achieve our goals, we have no alternative other than to rise above our circumstances. Importantly, we must not allow our thinking to be governed by the conditions that surround us. In short, if you do not like your current circumstances then create the circumstances you do want. People often blame circumstances for how they are. George Bernard Shaw’s insightful quote for this chapter instructs us well:

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they cannot find them, they make them.

Desire

You cannot desire something if inherently within you, you do not have a way to accomplish it.
— JOHN KAMAU NGATIA

What do you really want? Most people have no clue about what they want. The first step on your road to success is to identify exactly what you want. You need to decide and know – right now – what you want. What do you truly desire? Make up your mind. You must have a target that you are aiming at. Do you have goals for your life? Goals in all aspects are pivotal – health goals, financial goals, personal development goals, spiritual goals, relationship goals, career goals, business goals, and so on.

Identify and decide exactly what you
want and desire in your life.

Let’s look into the idea of what we want from a different context. At the beginning of this book I shared with you that when I was in my mid 30s I moved from Kenya and migrated to Australia. One thing that I sincerely miss about Kenya is the wildlife. Kenya is renowned for it – the country is endowed with many national parks and reserves with a massive amount of spectacular wildlife. A thrilling phenomenon known around the world is the annual migration of wildebeest between the Serengeti and Maasai Mara National Reserve. In search of greener pastures, about one and a half million wildebeest, zebra and several species of antelope together make a circular tour between the Serengeti in Tanzania and Maasai Mara in Kenya. The mass exodus of these majestic creatures is regarded as a wonder of the world. It is an incredible spectacle, and always a great opportunity for people to witness nature at its best. It’s breathtaking to watch the drama unfold as predators lurk in the bushes and prey scamper for safety in what has been dubbed ‘survival of the fittest’. The world’s most spectacular sights occur at the mass crossing of the swollen Mara River each year.

Now let us suppose we make the decision we are going to fly to Kenya to experience wildlife at its best and witness the wildebeest migration. We have a wonderfully engineered aeroplane that will take us to Maasai Mara, which has everything needed to fly and comes with an experienced pilot. The only thing lacking in our plane is navigational equipment to direct us. My question to you is: under these circumstances, how easy would it be to get to Maasai Mara National Reserve? Obviously, it would not be easy at all, and in fact we may not even get there! However, what if the plane had everything we needed – including excellent navigational equipment? In this case, we could be sure of getting to our destination in Kenya — it would be almost guaranteed.

If you do not know what you want in life, it is
like taking a journey with no destination.

It is the same with life. If we do not know where we are going and if we do not know what we want, it is like taking a journey with no destination. It is like taking that plane with no navigational equipment. It would be nearly impossible to get to the Mara, or to any destination for that matter. Goals – knowing what we want – provide us with a target at which to aim. Goals give us direction. They are a key ingredient for living a fulfilled life.

Having said that, it is important to understand that while goals provide us with a target to aim at, what is really important is not the goal per se, but who we become in the process of achieving our goal. For instance, if you set a goal to earn one million dollars a year, there is no doubt that you will achieve your goal so long as you are committed and you do things in a certain way. The most important factor is not the goal itself, but the person you become in the process of earning a million dollars. Consider the services you will provide, the creativity involved in delivering the services and/or products necessary for you to earn the million dollars. That is what is truly important. It is who we become in the process of acquiring the goal that is paramount.

What do you really want out of life? When your time is up, what will you be remembered for? Are you going to be a warning or an example? These questions are not only pertinent, they are extremely important. I know that I am writing my eulogy every waking moment of my life.

Ensure your dreams and desires are worthy.

Once you have established your desires, it is crucial that you are certain your desire has within it ‘an element of good for many’. Being of service to others is a very noble cause. I know, for example, that the amount of money we earn is directly proportional to the number of people we can serve, and the difficulty there is to replace yourself with someone who can perform the job as well as you. The more people to whom you can be of service, the more you will be compensated financially.

Ultimately, for anything we do, any business that is worthy, any venture that we enter into – anything that we are engaged in – the purpose is to provide a service or product to others. A good enterprise is one that solves people’s problems and meets their needs. Therefore, the more people we can be of service to, the higher our compensation will be.

Now, to provide an exemplary service, you must become an expert in your field or have around you people who are masters in that field. Invest time and resources into developing yourself. Once you have established the desire, go inside and ask your higher self – your spiritual self – what is the perfect idea to see the manifestation of your desire, to have what you want?

Imagination

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.
— ALBERT EINSTEIN

Over many years of coaching, one pertinent short exercise in which I always engage my clients is to ask them to observe everything they can see around them. I then proceed to ask, ‘What is the origin of all these things that surround us? The clothes you are wearing, the chair you are seated on, the mobile phone you are holding, the car you own and the house you live in – where do all these things come from?’

More often than not, the answer that I receive is, ‘From the material they are made of.’ And then I normally say, ‘Before the material aspect, what was the original genesis of all these things?’ When I press along these lines, most clients look confused and wonder what I am driving at.

I then explain that everything we see was once an image in someone’s mind: it all began as somebody’s idea. Imagination is the power within us to create good or evil in our life. The world in which we live is a world of imagination. Through their imaginary activities, people create the realities and circumstances of their life. We do this knowingly or unknowingly, consciously or unconsciously. Either way, we create through our imagination.

James Allen, the phenomenal author of the classic As A Man Thinketh, wrote, ‘He thinks in secret and it comes to pass: environment is but his looking-glass.’

No words have ever been truer than these. I have often told my clients, ‘I will never know what you are thinking; however, based on the results you are achieving, I can get a very accurate assessment of your thought patterns.’ The point is, as I articulated in the last chapter, our thoughts are reflected in our life.

Our thoughts are reflected in our life.

Did you know that we actually think in pictures? Pay close attention to your thoughts and you’ll notice your imagination is running wild with images to match your thoughts, day after day. If I asked you to think of your dream life, you would see yourself in your ideal situation, not in words or texts, but in images. Now blow that analogy up to a grander scale: can we actually use our imagination to achieve or attain anything we want? Young children are excellent at this, but do you know what happens when we become adults? The majority of the population stops dreaming – they stop imagining.

When I share such knowledge with people, at first they often seem to think that I am being theoretical or philosophical, or that I am not looking at the hard facts of life. However, what I have learnt is this: words do not teach; it is life’s experiences that teach. If you experience something for yourself, then you do not need anyone or anything to be convinced – you just know.

There can be no outer change until there is first an internal change — first within, then without.

At this stage of my life, I have come to the conclusion that the true cause of humanity’s suffering is ignorance – not knowing. If our imagination creates reality (and there is no limit to what we can imagine) and all people are endowed with this creative faculty, then how come there is so much suffering? I say it is due to ignorance. Human beings pay very little attention to the priceless gift of imagination. Obviously, this gift is non-existent if you are not aware of it. And if you are not conscious of the gift within you, then you will not use the gift. I liken it to being in a prison where the door is completely open: you are free to walk out into freedom but because you don’t know you are in prison, you do not walk out. In other words, you cannot get out of prison if you don’t know you are in one!

All humans possess the power to create the reality they want, but when not consciously exercised, this power sleeps as though it is dead. The person who understands the power of imagination and uses it to create the good that they desire is the master of their fate.

I have observed that most people attempt to solve their problems using the wrong approach. I am referring to the attempt to change their life circumstances by taking action without first changing what is inside themselves. There can be no outer change until there is first an internal change – first within, then without.

The person who understands the power of imagination and uses it to create the good that they desire is the master of their fate.

So why not experiment with your imagination and see what you can discover? Why not have an open mind and discover what you can do with the marvellous tools that you have within you?

During my past two decades as a performance enhancement coach and speaker, I have found that most people’s ‘thinking’ is controlled by things that are external to them. For example, their thinking will be determined by the circumstances they find themselves in – what happened in their past, the economy, how they were brought up, the amount of money they have or do not have, and so on.

The danger here is that if your thoughts are controlled by such external factors, and those factors are not what you want, then you will continue experiencing those same situations and circumstances in your life. We must not bow down to the dictates of facts, or external factors or circumstances, and accept life on the basis of the world without.

To change the world without, we must first change the world within. What we focus on is what we get. Therefore, we must have an understanding; and we acquire understanding through knowledge of ourselves.

You must think of what you want, and if you do not have it, then you must use your imagination to create it in your mind.

You see, my friend, you cannot create wealth by thinking of poverty or thinking about hating poverty, just as you cannot become healthy by thinking of disease. Things are not brought into being by thinking of their opposite. For example, the law of floatation was not discovered by thinking of things that sink, it was discovered by thinking of things that float. So think of what you want, and if you do not have it, or if the circumstances you are in are not conducive to what you want, then create it in your mind.

We have marvellous faculties which, when put to good use, will allow us to live a life that is superb. One of these faculties is our imagination. Albert Einstein put it this way: ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge’. He further said:

Everything is energy and that is all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.

Einstein is essentially saying that if we imagine the life we desire and we become emotionally involved with that picture over and over again, then eventually that is the way we will live. It was the great Abraham Lincoln who said, ‘To believe in the things you can see and touch is no belief at all – but to believe in the unseen is a triumph and a blessing’.

Many years ago, when I discovered personal development, I made a promise to myself that I would share this crucial knowledge with my children. Jane and I are blessed with three wonderful children. Our eldest son Ian is 27 years old, Bruce is 24, and Makena is 14. When Ian and Bruce were about ten and seven years old, I commenced a routine whereby each Sunday afternoon we would all sit together and go through a personal development program. We would share our learnings and discuss what we were going to implement from our learnings. This went on for a few years, until I started coaching each of my children individually.

When my boys commenced playing football (soccer) at the ages of four and seven, I also took it upon myself to empower each team my sons played in. Through sharing with the team the basic necessities for success, I could empower each team member with ideas on how to use the faculties of their mind – in particular their imagination – to create what they wanted. As a result, the young boys became very good at using the faculties of their mind to create the results they desired, especially from the perspective of football.

Bruce, in particular, developed his faculty of imagination so well that he could very easily predict when he was going to score a goal and if the team was going to win; and at times he did so with very accurate, precise results. Now, when something happens or someone predicts something and it happens, we often do not attribute it to anything. If it happens maybe twice, we tend to think it’s just chance or a coincidence. When it happens with even more regularity, we start to notice a pattern, and can clearly establish the cause and effect.

For it is true that all effects must have a cause.

As I have said, my son Bruce became so good at using his imagination that he would predict his performance (and that of his team) with precision. To this day, he still uses this mental faculty very effectively. He is now a professional footballer playing in the A-League, which is the top league in Australian football. Bruce has also been part of the Australian national under-23s football team.

In 2016, while playing for Adelaide United, his team had a very successful season and ended up playing in the Grand Final. As usual, Bruce undertook his imagination routine in the weeks preceding the Grand Final. Over the years, I have also developed my own faculty of imagination. I use it not only for myself, but also for others; I think the best gift we can give to others, our loved ones and friends, is to imagine them as already having accomplished what they desire. So I also went to work to imagine that Bruce’s team, Adelaide United, would win the Grand Final and that he would play an exceptional game. I saw and felt in my own imagination Bruce scoring a goal in the first few minutes of the game.

The best gift we can give to others, our loved ones and friends, is to imagine them as already having accomplished what they desire.

The whole of Adelaide Oval, where the game was played, was a sea of red, because the colours of Adelaide United are red. There were 54,000 fans attending this historic game against Western Sydney Wanderers. To this day, I can vividly remember that incredible match. The game commenced at a very high tempo, as all Grand Finals do. At around the twentieth minute I briefly turned to my wife and said, ‘There is a goal coming’; and within less than a minute Bruce scored the first goal in the Grand Final. Even now, when I watch the replay of that momentous game, I get goosebumps!

Soon after this, Bruce was involved again, just outside the Western Sydney goal; after getting through a few of the Western Sydney Wanderers players, Bruce was tripped by another player and fell over. As a result, the team was awarded a free kick, which Isaias, Bruce’s team mate from Spain, converted, and scored the second goal. The stadium erupted to unimaginable heights. The excitement was incredible; the atmosphere was electric. The historic match ended with Adelaide United winning their first Grand Final with a score of 3-1. The win was followed by an entire week of celebration by the Adelaide community. The whole city was buzzing with excitement and pride for their team, with everyone proud to be residents of Adelaide.

Leading up to the Grand Final, Bruce used vivid imagination and so did I. His imagination had once again borne fruitful results. Bruce has effectively used this mental faculty since he was less than ten years old. The truth is that each and every one of us has the capability and capacity to use our inner self to create what we want. It is not the domain of a few. From a physical perspective, we all have differing capabilities; however, from an inner perspective we all have the same capacity – if we just endeavour to use it.

You see, as I have explained previously, words do not teach. It is life’s experiences that teach. Knowledge is of no consequence unless it is put into practice. Ensure that you harness and use your God-given faculty of imagination, to create what you desire in your life.

The truth is that each and every one of us has the capability and capacity to use our inner self to create what we want.

Let the power within you find creative expression through you. What are some of the things that you would like to change in your life? What is stopping you from making these changes? If you know what you do not want, then that allows you to have clarity about what you do want. Do you remember this from the previous chapter?

Follow the guidelines of William James, the great philosopher of our times, who gave us three key points to remember:

To change one’s life:

Start immediately.
Do it flamboyantly.
No exceptions.

The deal is within yourself and no one else is involved. I suggest that you take time to reflect on your life. Make some decisions about what you are going to change to enhance and enrich the quality of your life and to enable your desires to be manifested.

 

Continued in the print book.