Paul Harvey tells a story of a young artist who had just been commissioned to paint a portrait of a local builder. The artist was so excited, feeling so good, since it was his first major commission. He went down to his favorite café to enjoy a glass of wine & celebrate. While sitting there, he looked over a saw a newspaper lying in a chair at the next table. At the top of the front page in bold letters were the words “Hard Times Are Coming.” The more he looked at it the more uptight and worried he became.
The restaurant owner came by in a moment and said, “Shall I get you another glass of wine or something to eat?” “No,” he said, “Just bring me my bill. I must go right now.” The owner replied, “Is something wrong?” The artist said, “Hard times are coming, and this is no time for me to be frivolously spending my time and money. I must get to work.”
The artist left and the restaurant owner began thinking, “Hard times are coming?” And the more he thought about it, the more uptight he became. He picked up the telephone and called his wife and said, “Sweetheart, that new dress you ordered for the annual banquet is awfully expensive for something that you are only gong to wear once. I believe hard times are coming, and maybe you should call them and put the dress off for now.”
She reluctantly said, “Well, all right.” So she called the local dress shop and said, “I know you’ve already ordered the material for my beautiful new dress, but my husband said that hard times are coming and we need to pull in our purse strings and be more frugal. I’m going to have to cancel the dress.”
The proprietor said, “Well, I certainly hate to hear that but I understand.” The dress shop owner began thinking about it and the more she thought about it, the more uptight and worried she became. She called her local builder and said, “I understand that hard times are coming. It’s a bad time for me to be doubling the size of my dress shop. I can’t take on that type of obligation right now.”
The builder thought about what she had said. And he picked up the phone and called the young artist. He said, “Hard times are coming and this is no time for me to be spending money on a portrait. I’m going to have to cancel it.”
The young artist understood. It was just what he had anticipated. Feeling rejected and sorrowful he went, you guessed it, down to his favorite café to drown his sorrows in a bottle of wine.
As he sat there drinking he looked over and in a chair about ten feet away he saw the newspaper with the headline that said, “Hard Times Are Coming.” He walked over, picked it up and examined it very closely. The dateline was ten years old. Someone had left the newspaper their when they were unpacking dishes for the restaurant.
The thought that the headline conveyed had infected the thinking of many in the community. They began preparing for the worst for no real reason at all, except that they let their unfounded negativity create an undesired reality.
The preceding story is about the power of thoughts in your life and how your thoughts, words and actions bring the reality of your mental world into your physical world.
Thoughts, words and actions are like powerful magnets that attract the circumstances of your life.
To create the future you desire you must start by controlling what you think. Your thoughts lead to words spoken and result in actions (including the action of inaction)
It’s a bold yet true statement that your thoughts, words and actions are the root causes of problems you may be experiencing or of the successes you may be enjoying.
That’s why your greatest return on effort comes from learning to control your thoughts.
You choose…whether to employ faith filled thoughts, words and actions or fear filled thoughts, words and actions.
Faith or fear? What will you choose? Both are creative forces and in fact are opposites of one another. In other words fear is “negative faith”.
Not convinced about the power of your thought life? Let me put it to you plain and simple.
Companies (perhaps even your company) are spending large amounts of money to produce advertising campaigns that will influence our thinking. They would not do that if they were not getting a return through influencing people’s thoughts and subsequent (buying) actions. [Of course it’s another matter entirely as to whether that return is being optimized – and that’s one of the areas The Right Team helps businesses in]
You may have heard the saying, “People often buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have to impress people they don’t like.” Sad but often true.
People who are centered and in control of their thoughts, think before they respond. They deal with the negatives of life while they are in snowflake form and never let them turn into a snowball or avalanche. They in effect fire a small retro-rocket, make necessary adjustments, and move on with their life. They quickly get back on course.
They don’t let negative thoughts turn into big negative circumstances.
What about you? What do you do?
From There to Here
Most people in life seem to be trying to get from “here to there”. They may not even really know where “there” is (big problem), but they feel they will be happy, peaceful. successful and prosperous when they get “there” someday.
Yet an important principle to recall is:
• Regrets keep you in the past
• Desires keep you in the future
To fully live “now” one must be fully “here”, fully in control of your thoughts with a positive expectation that something good is going to happen TODAY, in your life, relationships and business.
I am not taking away from the need to plan and make informed business decisions. However it is critical to your overall success in life and business as to what you believe, think about and inevitably act upon.
This is even more so the case in times of rising home ownership costs and fluctuating consumer sentiment and…
What will you choose to believe, think about and act upon?
Are Hard Times Coming?
Or
Will you begin or continue to succeed and thrive no matter what others (media, RBA, Federal Reserve; Government, unions etc) say.
“There is nothing so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it in expecting evil before it arrives.”
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Time Management:
This is an issue that we all have to get a grip on. For my part I have not arrived yet I have found it very helpful to recognize and accept that I cannot manage time. I can only manage my activities or actions that consume time as it passes.
Therefore it can be extremely helpful and more logical to break your day down into something you can control – your own activities.
For some the subtlety of the difference may be sublime, however it is very important.
Think you got it all under control – take our Stop Procrastinating Quiz
By visiting http://www.ribi.biz/quiz/procrastinate/DoYouProcrastinate.htm
Or if you know you need to deal with this perhaps you’d like to get the Stop Procrastinating E-Book (Value $47) FREE by visiting
http://www.paulwright.biz and following the directions.
This is a new initiative being launched officially later this week.
But as a Your Business column reader you can get in first as it were.
This great book is written by Bill Lee-Emery successful author, Executive Coach and corporate trainer with more than 25 years experience and I am pleased to be associated with Bill. | 
