My company newsletter has some great stuff.

WHERE YOU ARE NOW AS OPPOSED TO WHERE YOU WANT TO BE

Editor's note: This article first appeared in a July 2004 issue of our award-winning (debatable) newsletter. We're running it again because we're pedagogomaniacs. (Yes, we made up the word) It's an excerpt from Jack Canfield's book "The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want To Be."

If you want to create the life of your dreams, then you are going to have to take 100 percent responsibility for your life as well. That means giving up all your excuses, all your victim stories, all your reasons why you can't and why you haven't up until now, and all you're blaming of outside circumstances. You have to give them all up forever. You have to take the position that you have always had the power to make it different, to get it right, to produce the desired result. For whatever reason -- ignorance, lack of awareness, fear, needing to be right, the need to feel safe -- you chose not to exercise that power. Who knows why? It doesn't matter. The past is the past. All that matters now is that from this point forward you choose -- that's right, it's a choice -- you choose to act as if (that's all that's required -- to act as if) you are 100 percent responsible for everything that does or doesn't happen to you.

If something doesn't turn out as planned, you will ask yourself, "How did I create that? What was I thinking? What were my beliefs? What did I say or not say? What did I do or not do to create that result? How did I get the other person to act that way? What do I need to do differently next time to get the result I want?"

It is not the external conditions and circumstances that stop you -- it is you! We stop ourselves! We think limiting thoughts and engage in self-defeating behaviors. We defend our self-destructive habits (like drinking and smoking) with indefensible logic. We ignore useful feedback, fail to continuously educate ourselves and learn new skills, waste time on the trivial aspects of our lives, engage in idle gossip, eat unhealthy food, fail to exercise, spend more money than we make, fail to invest in our future, avoid necessary conflict, fail to tell the truth, don't ask for what we want -- and then wonder why our lives don't work. But this, by the way, is what most people do. They place the blame for everything that isn't the way they want it on outside events and circumstances. They have an excuse for everything.



You can change your thinking, change your communication, change the pictures you hold in your head -- your images of yourself and the world -- and you can change your behavior -- the things you do. That is all you really have any control over anyway. Unfortunately, most of us are so run by our habits that we never change our behavior. We get stuck in our conditioned responses -- to our spouses and our children, to our colleagues at work, to our customers and our clients, to our students, and to the world at large. We are a bundle of conditioned reflexes which operate outside of our control. You have to regain control of your thoughts, your images, your dreams and daydreams, and your behavior. Everything you think, say, and do needs to become intentional and aligned with your purpose, your values, and your goals.