Why don’t people live up to their true human potential? Why are we frustrated and feel so limited and powerless?
Maybe some of the following will sound familiar:
Life is hard. I’m too busy to focus on myself. Relationships can be hard. Families take too much time and work. Distractions are killing me. Careers can take a long time to manifest, and I often fall short of my goals. There just isn’t enough time for everything I want to accomplish. My future is limited. There is so much I can’t control. I’m held back by others and by my circumstances. Change is really hard. I’m also really concerned about what others think of me. I have an ego to protect. My health could be better. Proper nutrition is too hard, exercise doesn’t work for me. But I’m a positive thinker, so I’m actually doing okay. It could be worse, so I’ll settle for this situation.
The fact is, we become hardwired to think and behave as we do because of a lifetime of external conditioning and mismanaging of our energies. We allow these false and limiting beliefs to take root. We become complacent and comfortable with the status quo. It becomes who we are, our personality. But it’s built on negativity, and energy mismanagement. It’s the mind’s perception of who we are and not what we could be.
The status quo is the perceptible environment that we have been told to trust as the truth. What we can easily see and sense with our five standard senses reinforces all the negative and limiting beliefs we hold. We actually hold these beliefs dearly because they become our comfort zone, the familiar world.
We become addicted to comfort, and it leaves no room for new possibilities. We think creating a new mindset would involve a lot of effort, risk, discipline, and time, or isn’t even possible.
Further, we believe that our chances of success are small anyway. Some people pray to a higher being to ease their pain and fears and ask for good things to happen because we believe it’s mostly out of our control. There seems to be no way out.
Recent scientific evidence shows that biologically, our genes (DNA and proteins) are quite adaptable and receptive to formation and change based on their environment. In fact, this is how our personalities become hardwired to be the way we are now: They have been conditioned to follow the instructions of our brains, which have been conditioned by our environment.
Also, our brains have been conditioned to push aside our hearts and have built an internal self-limiting mindset. It’s also a fact that genes, except in very rare circumstances, do NOT pre-determine our fate in terms of our health, personality, and skills.
For example, it’s scientifically inaccurate to state that cancer, type II diabetes, heart disease, etc., run in families. So far, less than 5% of diseases can be traced to gene mutations at birth. The rest are a result of our environment.
Science is the pursuit of truth and is ever changing. Many genetics theories have been debunked ever since the Human Genome Project was completed. Consider the shift from “the world is flat” inaccurate scientific thinking to the new thinking today of quantum physics versus Newtonian physics and the nanotechnology that has allowed us to understand that our minds can change and re-wire our brains to create new environments.
What can I do about breaking through and creating my future?
Here’s the reality: Our thoughts create our beliefs, and our beliefs become our personalities, which dictate the way we operate. Our experiences create emotions (feelings), and those emotions guide our thoughts leading to new beliefs. The mind has over 60,000 thoughts per day, and 90% are the same every day, day after day. Those repeating thoughts create our beliefs and thus our personality which we think cannot change.
Talk about hardwiring! But what stands to reason is that if we can create new thoughts, we can have new experiences, new feelings, and new beliefs. If you believe that our thoughts and feelings create the wiring of our brains, along with our hearts and our genes/DNA, then you can use new thoughts and experiences to create new emotions and new beliefs. You can reprogram your brain and DNA to operate in a new way that allows you to create a better future for yourself.
In addition, if you believe that we are spiritual beings living a human life versus humans attempting to become spiritual, then you will realize the answer lies within us. We need to remember our spiritual selves, our true selves, that do not know fear or limitations or scarcity but are wired for abundance and possibility.
The key to transformation does NOT lie outside of us through some miracle of fate that graces us with health, wealth, and happiness. Waiting for “our ship to come in” – for success to just happen, or for true love to just happen – just doesn’t work.
Instead, we have the power to bring these into our lives by rewiring at the genetic level and literally changing who we are, becoming entirely new people. This change to a new personality and an elevated level of belief in new possibilities then allows us to attract whatever we want in life.
Practices to start down the transformational path
I suggest the following to give you a good start on the path to rewiring our brains. I believe in deep meditation to become fully aware of ourselves and find a supernatural level of consciousness for transformation. More on that in future discussions.
In the meantime, these practices will begin the rewiring process for you in a meaningful way, and you will definitely see results in a short period of time.
There’s no real order to follow here, as these are interconnected anyway. I would suggest doing all of these in combination rather than picking and choosing.
Practice being PRESENT
We miss over 50% of what life has to offer and miss out on much of the rest by not being PRESENT. Too often we’re thinking about something else, analyzing, worrying, and more.
Get into a new mindset. Being present is a challenge for most of us because we are so used to distractions that the average person can’t hold a focused thought for more than ten seconds. Being present important not only for learning, good relationships and clarity, but is practice we need to be able to center our focus and attention on ourselves and tasks at hand. It can lead to more calm in our lives and better coherence with the energies in us and around us..
When in conversation, stay 100% focused on what the other person is saying, without judgment or interruption. After listening and without interruption, consider asking a question instead of offering your own response. This will allow you to better understand the speaker with added information and gives you more time to better consider your response. Example: “That’s interesting Mary, what do you think comes next, or how does this make you feel?.” Reserve judgment at first and seek to learn more. This extends your ability to be present to the speaker. Stay engaged in the present by maintaining good eye contact without distractions – no cell phones or looking out the window at the weird guy walking by. See how long you can keep this up. If you have a strong reaction to what you’re hearing, listen and consider asking for some time to think about the topic rather than reacting immediately.
When doing an activity such as watching something, listening, or reading, the moment you begin to drift, stop and rewind. Studies show that missing out on just a few seconds or even a single keyword can result in absolutely zero benefits for the entire time spent on a particular activity – in other words, you will get nothing out of it.
Of course, if this happens when you’re in a conversation, immediately apologize and ask the speaker to repeat themselves: “Do you mind stating that last part again? I’m not sure I fully grasped that.”
Avoid multi-tasking. There really is no such thing as multi-tasking, unless one task is the body doing what it has memorized and doesn’t need the brain. You need two brains to focus on two things at once.
Be present with your own thoughts. When problem-solving, planning, or in conflict, slow down and write out what is going through your mind. This allows you to focus and remember what you’ve thought of. Also, write down your feelings about a topic, since your heart is sending critical messages to your brain and body that likely matter more than what your frontal cortex is generating.
If these practices seem challenging at first, remember: You are breaking habits that have taken a lifetime to hardwire. You are beginning to rewire the brain!
Open your heart and be grateful now
Opening our hearts is just like opening another powerhouse brain! We can start small by becoming more aware of our hearts and the messages they send us. Getting in tune with our hearts increases our intelligence manyfold. The heart knows the true you, the real you that was born so long ago. By opening your heart and allowing new thoughts, new experiences, new emotions, and new beliefs to enter, you open yourself to a whole new world of possibility.
Mini-meditation. An easy way to start is to close your eyes and take a strong breath in through your nose. Allow your breath to settle in your heart area and focus your mind on that feeling. Hold the breath there for a few seconds and gradually let it go. Repeat this several times, even for ten minutes or so. This is an excellent prep for meditation. It’s also a great prep for any stressful situation, such as a presentation, a meeting with the in-laws, a big test, etc.
Grateful practice. Once you get good at this, use it as a self-meditation or use a guided meditation while focusing on your breath. Start thinking about being grateful. Focus on the feelings of gratefulness – these feelings are in your heart, not in your brain.
Remind yourself of what gratefulness feels like and let it soak in. Practice being grateful for the wonderful experiences the rest of your life has in store for you. Be grateful NOW, in advance of your future. We are taught to say thanks and to be grateful for what we already have, but in order to attract abundance into our lives, it’s important to know that the universe conspires to bring you whatever you are grateful for. This may seem odd at first.
Think of the emotions associated with what you desire and begin to feel those emotions as if what you are after has already happened. For example, if you wish to have more courage, that wish may make you feel empowered. Imagine that feeling of being empowered, and be grateful for it. Imagine that you already are more courageous, that you already are a deserving person. Feel those emotions in your heart.
You DO deserve to be unafraid. And if you can feel it in your heart, the mind will think it’s real. The brain makes NO distinction between what we perceive as reality through our five basic senses and what we imagine is real. To the brain, they are exactly the same thing!
Since the brain doesn’t distinguish between the two, it means that when we conceive of something we desire, feel the associated emotions, and believe in it, then it will be real in our brains. And if it’s real in our brains, then the rewiring begins, creating a new set of beliefs about who we are and what we believe is possible.
By being grateful for a better future, we start to believe in it, we start to attract it, and we start to imagine what things make up that better future. We can then already live in the world of a better future and leave behind the world of scarcity and limitations.
Here’s an easy start: Every morning, try a small mediation to open your heart and be grateful for what an awesome day it’s going to be (yes, even if you have to go to the dentist, pay your bills, meet with your boss, and listen to your mother-in-law complaining about her neighbor’s barking dog). The day will be awesome because you get to live it and be on the path of creating your future. You will also practice being present and discover things that will surely enrich you!
Change your habits, change your life
Habits are a key part of human life. Since we are not machines, we need repetition to establish our habits. We function best if we have established habits that give us consistency and allow us to feel normal. Bad habits are debilitating and destructive. Good habits allow us to use a system of behaviors that will accelerate our progress towards any goal. To some individuals, even winning is a habit!
You won’t find real success if you don’t break bad habits and replace them with good habits. Start by identifying the ones you want to break (you may need the help of an honest friend to point them out). These could include wasting time on social media, watching reruns, not listening, preaching to others, binge snacking, drinking, procrastination, being unkind, driving fast – you know them all.
Some great habits include what we have already discussed, such as being present, being grateful, being collaborative and having daily meditations. Just starting here will automatically remove some bad habits and give you a feeling of being a better person and someone who can accomplish whatever you wish. Start another good habit or two and gradually build on that.
To help rewire our brains, we can also start mixing up our daily routines a bit. For example, changing the order of our morning rituals, finding a different route to work or school or the store, or doing grocery shopping at a different time. Change awakens our brains and helps us be more aware of our environment. It’s like having meetings in different settings for different lengths of time. These all conspire to open up channels for creativity and new ways of thinking.
Stephen Covey’s book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” became a huge movement in the business world. Habits such as “begin with the end in mind” and “seek first to understand and then to be understood” have literally transformed people’s lives for the better – and not just in their professional careers.
Another popular book is “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. In it, he outlines a game plan for a transformed life by simply changing your habits. His book offers great advice on breaking old habits and replacing them with new, empowering ones.
Have daily intentions
Begin each day with a commitment to a daily intention that will improve your life and help you create a better future. Do this even before you get out of bed and start your familiar routines. These intentions are not what you are going to DO, but are about your way of BEING. Add: “ focus on what is missing or seems off to you” Or contemplate what is going great for you and you would like to continue.”
Examples of this practice include patience, humility, optimism, love, understanding, being present, focus, enthusiasm, gratefulness, personal discipline, honesty, authenticity, promptness, thinking big, not being too serious, and anything else you need to work on. These can be the same for forty days to create a new habit or they can be changed daily, as needed.
About Charlie
Charlie Horn, the GA Founder, has experienced several transformations in his life and continues a journey of new possibilities as he approaches his eighth decade on earth.
After flunking out of college after only three semesters and taking a job repairing termite damage in household basements and crawl spaces, as an 18 year old, he took night school classes and qualified to re-enter the University. He was also re-admitted to the college golf team and later became Captain of the team and set a career scoring record that stood for 35 years. While still in school he made a living selling cemetery lots. Upon graduation, he entered the life insurance business and immediately earned many production awards and in five years became a CLU, the industry’s highest designation. After three years he established his own agency, then two years later sold it and took a position as an executive at an insurance company where at the age of 28 with no prior experience or management training, he became the youngest officer of an insurance company in the U.S. Eight years later, after creating numerous innovative insurance products, and realizing his future potential could only be achieved as an entrepreneur, he co-founded two new insurance businesses with a partner. Two years later, not satisfied with the status quo, he sold his interest in one business and acquired the other business and moved his young family to Arizona to seek his next business venture. In 1994 he founded an innovative new company called ScriptSave that disrupted and transformed the way retail pharmacies engaged with their cash paying customers. Never before had a legitimate RX discount program been established, much less sold on a nationwide basis. The result of this was an entire industry was born. Charlie, with no CEO experience, led the company to achieve five consecutive Inc 500 designations, one of only a small handful to do so. He also co-founded a technology company in Denver, Colorado called HealthTrans which also was a two time Inc 500 winner before it was sold to a large PBM. In 2012 Charlie, with no experience in higher education, founded the Entrepreneurship education program at the University of Delaware, his alma mater. Horn Entrepreneurship has become a model for other entrepreneurship programs and is already ranked in the top 10% nationally and its high school program is recognized as the preeminent lobal leader and in 2020 launched a groundbreaking new high school Entre-Ed offerings in the U.S. market called EntreX Labs.
In 2014, Charlie once again ventured into uncharted territory by founding 5Lights, a boutique investment and management company to support highly promising new and early stage ventures. One investment example is Dr Martha Hall Designs, a company that commercializes revolutionary patented products in the medical device industry.
Genius Avenue was born as an offshoot of Ternian Insurance Group, a company he held a majority interest in until he sold the insurance side of Ternian to Axis Insurance in 2013. GA was the in-house tech platform that performed the administration for Ternian’s voluntary products. Today, after several iterations, the platform continues to evolve to meet the demands of the market. Charlies’ vision for GA is to develop an organizational innovative mindset where anything is possible. The business model is to identify under-served markets and deliver compelling new value proposition that can scale like a flywheel. GA’s team has pioneered several new concepts including Breakroom Benefits and Peppermint 401-k, digital storefronts and new digital payments technology offerings. These innovations are lead and supported by an outstanding team that is creating a very bright future for the company and for themselves.
