As we approach a new year, it’s customary to reflect on a few very important factors that can make or break us. This applies in everything, in business, in health and personal life.
2011 may have been a tough year for some but I’ve had the time of my life. It has been a very productive year and I’ve had to reward myself for some small victories too!
Unlike the previous year, when I had a really discordant time, what with two surgeries, three deaths among friends and family, one really tricky product creation process, plagued with all sorts of problems, an Internet Business that I really worked hard at but wasn’t working all that well and many other little problems and snags I don’t even care to remember!
There were also hoards of hindrances, complications and hurdles I had to tackle to achieve my goal which was to retire early from my nine to five so I can engage fully in my internet business which Id been building from the grounds up for three years. There were moment of doubt, moments, when I was so stuck, I thought I would never get through!
But even in my darkest hours, I always had hope. It was that hope that kept me going until I finally made it to the end of the year. I pushed on relentlessly and fought Murphy’s Law all the way to the end and succeeded. I managed to get my cake and eat it too.
So this year, 2011, has been comparatively easy going and It’s been somewhat enjoyable too. I had achieved my most important goal and that was to free myself from my nine-to-five drudgery! I have been running my own internet business from home and created some new products too.
Remember, “Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which one has overcome”.
What kept me going is something that I want to talk about here. Certain kind of belief that holds many people – people who are quite capable and talented – back from reaching goals, realizing dreams, and becoming all that they can become.
The concept of the “Absolute Presupposition” is central to this dialogue. (The term was originally coined by the British philosopher R.G. Collingwood, in a somewhat different context.)
What is an absolute presupposition? For our purposes here, I will define it as a statement that is necessarily, unquestionably and inarguably true. You cannot imagine circumstances under which it can be false. “Two plus two equals four” is a statement of this kind.
So is “If you throw a ball up in the air, it will fall back to Earth.” Absolute presuppositions are statements we must accept as true if our world is to make any sense to us at all.
However, as I will explain in a moment, sometimes we mistakenly believe a statement to be an absolute presupposition…and it turns out that it really isn’t.
What I have discovered is that if you are encountering an unusually tough problem in life – whether it is in business or in your personal life – it is because you are believing something to be an absolute presupposition when it really isn’t one.
You believe something to be necessarily true that isn’t even true at all, never mind necessarily so! Let’s look at some instances:
In the Middle Ages people believed that if you sailed a ship out to the line of the horizon, where the sea and sky met, you would fall off the edge. Why? Because they believed the Earth was flat. They could not possibly imagine that it could be otherwise because they had no knowledge of the laws of gravity and physics – a round Earth was simply inconceivable. “The Earth is flat,” was an absolute presupposition, and every single person who was alive on the face of the earth at that time, believed it to be true. Yet we now know it isn’t true.
Similarly, at one time in history it was thought to be impossible for a human being to run a mile in less than four minutes. People believed this to be true for untold centuries – millions, even billions, of people at one time took it to be an absolute presupposition. Yet it was shown to be untrue when Roger Bannister did it in 1954. I watched the film “Four Minutes” not so long ago. If you ever get a chance to see it, do so. It is inspiring.
So then beliefs exist in your own life that are similar to the two examples I gave you. These beliefs are what hold you back from your greatest potential.
We set up obstacles and impediments by taking for granted, and by not questioning beliefs that we mistakenly hold as sacrosanct.
By identifying these beliefs, and by examining how we might break free of the restrictions they impose upon us, we begin to make incredible progress in all we want to do.
Dreaming of success doesn’t make you successful, setting goals and fighting to achieve them does. Success is not a given right, it has nothing to do with luck and it’s not an accident.
You can only achieve success if you have the desire to succeed and the desire to realize your dreams. All you need is determination and some hard work.
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