Back to School—Change Your Belief System!

Last week I was called to school on behalf of my six-year old son who has developed a rather bad attitude toward school.  He can’t be bothered about losing his pencils and erasures.  He can’t be bothered with finding his notebooks. They’re in his bag somewhere but he won’t look for it.  He just tells the teacher, it’s not there.  He’s the same with homework.  Can’t be bothered to write it down properly, let alone actually doing it!
 

Got two calls two days in a row, so I went to school on a little fact finding mission to see what’s really going on.  Thankfully, it’s not as bad as I was led to believe.  Primary school kids, the headmistress told me, were constantly dropping stuff and not bothering to pick it up.  They constantly misplaced their books, and—believe it or not—really don't like to do their homework!

The biggest problem, as far as I could see, was his attitude.  If we could change his attitude toward school and teach him to be a little more responsible about his pencil case, his books, and his homework . . .

How about your own attitude?  Is it as good as you think it is?  Our attitude is based largely on our belief system, a system that was put into place when we were children, stuff we picked up from our parents and relatives, from our teachers, from our classmates, and from our friends.  How we view success and failure.  How we view money.  How we view work.  How we view ourselves.  That’s our belief system, and like most normal people, it is largely based on negative beliefs.  Ask yourself, how do you view wealthy people?  Is it positive or mostly negative?  How do you view your own success? Is it positive or mostly negative?  Are you diligently striving toward your goals or complaining about how unfair life is?  Or how bad the economy is?  Or how you can’t get any decent breaks?

What many success psychologists say, our belief system is holding us back.  And the biggest part of that belief system is fear.  Our fear of failure, fear of rejection, and our fear of success! But who in their right mind would be afraid of success?  A lot of people.  With success comes responsibilities.  With success comes pressure to maintain that success.  A lot of people believe, once you are successful, once you’re on top, the only way is down. 

Lisa Jimenez, author of Conquer Fear, says “Fear is the dominant problem in your life today.”  She also says “Fear is a gift that was instilled in you as a means of protection and way to bring you closer to God.” But “when you run away from or deny your fear, you leave the gift unopened. “ However, “when your fear of success or fear of failure is exposed,” she added, “you break through their control over you.  Your belief system is the driving force behind your behaviors and your results.”  She says, “Your everyday habits are broadcasting your belief system, your fear, and your unmet needs loud and clear.” 

This explains why we often put stuff off until the last minute, or why we dramatize stuff when it goes wrong so we can “be the star in our own live dramas!”   See, the whole world is out to get me!  No wonder I can’t get a head.  If you had a boss (spouse) like mine…

Lisa also said:

Change your beliefs and you change your behaviors.

Change your behaviors and you change your results.

Change your results and you change your life.  

It’s not easy. To change your belief system, first you have to acknowledge that it was you all along who was holding yourself back.  That’s hard on the ego!  Here’s a video of Lisa Jimenez talking about the day she realized that she, too, had a fear of success.  But once she realized that, and changed her belief system, and started to do the things that would make her business a success, she became . . . wildly successful.  It all began when she learned to get out of her own way!

So ask yourself, are you ready to take that big leap?  I am.  Not only am I willing to change my own belief system about success, but also change my son's belief system about school.
              --Robert Raymer, Borneo Expat Writer 

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I 

The Cycle of Success and The Power of Five

Success, according to Lisa Jimenez in Conquer Fear!, is a cycle of enthusiasm and discipline.  When you lack enthusiasm to do something, that discipline had better kick in, and when it does, that brings results, and results bring more enthusiasm, and enthusiasm brings in more discipline which bring in even more results, and this is where you want to be in the success cycle.  Still, it all comes down to discipline, doesn’t it?  For a writer, discipline is what you need to produce results, whether it’s five pages written, five query letters sent out, or five stories submitted.  This is what I call The Power of Five.

Robert Collier said, “Success is the small efforts, repeated day in and day out.”  So I keep Power of Five reminders on my computer table, on my computer, and in my 3-5 keep-me-motivated goal cards.  I know, overkill.  But I don’t want to escape those reminders and that’s good – so long as I actually do it!

Well this week I did.  Among doing other things, I finally submitted five short stories each day for five consecutive week days.  So that’s 25 stories out this week.  For a mailing, that’s not particularly huge.  In the past I’ve done more than 25 in one day on several occasions.  But then weeks would go by, months before I got around to sending out my stuff again, and I got a lot of stuff to send out.  Maybe 200 or more of what I call writing assets, be it articles, short stories, novels, screenplays, plus about 50 more that could be written fairly easily, then there are query letters for articles that I would like to write, and letters to agents and publishers that I need to get out if I really want to take my writing career to that next level.

    

During the years that I was teaching writing full time my efforts at marketing my work or myself as a writer were erratic at best, and now I want to change all that.  I want to be more consistent in my approach to success.  The Power of Five is my answer.  I learned about this from Jack Canfield’s Rule of 5 in The Success Principles.  He and Mark Victor Hansen would do five specific things that would move their goal toward completion, to get Chicken Soup for the Soul to the top of the New York Times Best-Seller List.  It took them a year to make the list and another year to make it to the top.  Those five things, day in and day out, created this momentum, as they pushed a huge rock up the best-selling mountain, but when they reached the top after two years, going down that other side was much easier.  They now reaped the benefits of what they sowed.  The Chicken Soup for the Soul series went on to become the publishing phenomenon of the decade.

For me, if I apply my own Power of Five every working day (Power sounds more powerful than Rule), it will require discipline.  After awhile, this discipline will become habit, so even if I don’t feel like doing it, even if I lack even a spark of enthusiasm, the discipline will kick in, then the results will come, and then I start seeing the possibilities and I get really excited, and I enthusiastically, send out some more.  This is the energy I felt this week.   Sure most editors will say, thanks, but no thanks, but every now and then, one will say, “We love it!”  That’s how I recently got my 100^th short story publication! 

 

When I start doing this for the small stuff, like short stories, I start thinking about the big stuff, like novels and screenplays, agents and movie deals. It has always been about submitting, submitting, submitting what you write.  Already I can see the possibilities.   If it works for others, and not just for Jack Canfield, maybe it’ll work for me too and that’s worth finding out.  So come Monday (or maybe even this weekend), I’ll send out five more.  In fact yesterday, I actually sent out six, and that sixth one was a biggie, to a publisher in the US for a collection of short stories.  See, already I can feel it’s working and that after one week!
 

So what five things can you do today that will take you a step closer to your goals?  

Of course my wife just found five things for me to do around the house, but that’s ok.  We’re in this together. I definitely want to keep our marriage in a success cycle, too.

              -Robert Raymer, Borneo Expat Writer

*Here's a link to more on Lisa Jimenez and a video too.

**Update, the 20th anniversary of Lovers and Strangers Revisited

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I