I had to imagine two disempowering core beliefs that I had carried to this day and brought myself to the future in 5, 10 and 20 year increments.  I was to “create the pain” with the weight of each “time warp” was painful, humiliating, embarrassing, and everything negative I was able to conjure had I held those two core beliefs all the way into the future.

Those two core beliefs were:

1.  I don’t have enough energy right now.

2.  I don’t have enough drive, passion or determination to get me through to learn and apply my accounting courses and ultimately graduate.

After this exercise, I felt so beaten down and old.  My physiology suggested it as well, as I hunched over as if trying to protect myself from physical harm, I was in tears and my knees bent.  Fearful of the future I envisioned had I continued to carry these core beliefs – the pain was unbearable.

Covnersely, when I had installed my two new core empowering beliefs to fill in the void created by the pain felt by feeling those previous beliefs, I felt energized, powerful and excited of my future.   My two new core beliefs are:

1.  Graduating is just another job that I need to pour all of my passion and determination into to craft a life that is fulfilling.  Short term pain for long term gain, otherwise it would spell pain or perhaps death.

2.  I am a power plant and I can tap into an abundant amount of energy, so I can wake up at 5 AM and power through a productive and  fulfilling day.

This has probably been the singularly most effective day in all of his programs.  The effectiveness depends on the level of pain you are willing to induce upon yourself, so that your re-conditioning over your old patterns are nullified.

Beliefs affect attitudes.  Attitudes affect behaviours.  Behaviours affect actions.  Actions affect results.  Results affect beliefs.

- Will

Today I had learned in the first day was along the lines of harnessing the power of decision. It is within us to take consistent action in order to make permanent, healthy and empowering changes in our lives. This is the antithesis to procrastination, the inability to take action whereby we find it to be more painful to take action than to sit around.

As Robbins tells us is that what ultimately keeps us from taking any meaningful action is fear: fear of failure, success, rejection, pain, the unknown or anything else you can imagine. There’s nothing more crippling to have this emotion take control our lives and dictate the level of fulfillment.

Also, I had learned that Success leaves clues. It shouldn’t be a surprise that people who are considered “successful” did end up that way because they were “lucky”. They are that way because of a certain mindset or psychology. It is an unwavering belief in themselves that whatever they set out to achieve, they can attain and have a plan in order to reach those goals where they take action and follow through.

Having access to these people as “role models” would be the ideal situation that you would model yourself after. I’ve had role models before, but never in the context in improving my life all across the board.

Way before taking the program, I took it upon myself to surround myself with a positive social circle, all “go-getters” who share the qualities of integrity, substance, humility and constant hunger for growth and achievement. This falls in line with the saying, “birds of a feather, flock together”.

From today’s CD, I’ve learned that in order to attain any goal we set out on, we should never let it fall between the cracks without taking some sort of action towards its attainment. By taking that first step, we’re able to build momentum.

As part of today’s exercise, the two decisions I’ve made that I had been putting off that until I had made them NOW, would affect the trajectory of my life:

1. Follow through on the Personal Power II program and constantly journal my progress
2. Go to the gym/pool or at the very least have some sort of physical activity every day in order to give me the energy and vitality to take on life full on.

As for taking action, three simple things that I would do immediately that are consistent to my new actions were:

1. Get my gym bag and toiletries together to go to the gym/pool
2. Call to extend my online course

While seemingly insigificant, I have a feeling that I will have some major breakthroughs over the course of the next month or so.