A simple organism swims along and enters a patch of acidic water. It reacts and swims away. For a patch of food-rich water, it swims in and enjoys the bounty. The condition of the water changes the behaviour of the organism. Our selves swim in a sea of thought. Change our thoughts and change our behaviour in a manner no less significant than water for the simple organism.

To quote Steve, “Change Your Thoughts is a place to visit to help you try and change your thinking patterns, behaviours, beliefs and thought processes to live the life you were truly born to live…” My guest post is about the organism between the sea of thoughts and the consequence behaviour – the human body.

Where do thoughts come from? If you say “your mind,” you speak a tautology. In a physical sense, in a neural, biochemical sense, what gives rise to thinking?

Changes to your body are the essence of experience. And in the right context, specifically with the right kind of central nervous system and brain, the changes are the raw material for experience. Body changes are the precursors feelings, thoughts, consciousness and the persist sense of self we think of as our essence.

Hold your breathe.

What happens?

You start turning blue. Your body’s oxygen meter registers a decline in available oxygen and triggers various reactions designed to get you to breathe. If you hold your breathe long enough, you pass out. Then your body resumes breathing.

Don’t blink.

What happens?

I tried several times while watching the timer on my iPhone. The longest I lasted before blinking was 23 seconds. Even then, tears welled in my eyes after just a few seconds as if I were crying. My body strove to take care of its eyes even as I wilfully caused distress.

Our bodies are filled with the equivalent of thermostats for every conceivable system of internal regulation. Readings of “too hot” generate body changes much as the expansion of the thermostat spring turns on the air conditioner. The systems or our bodies respond whenever we push the meter outside a prefigured comfort zone.

We can screech, pinch our skin, lick our dirty feet, frown for a long time, and spin around until we puke. Each action sets off some regulatory response. We cower, yelp, feel disgust, become sad, or throw up.

(Twirling around affects the inner ear and creates a sensation similar to the disorientation cause by many natural poisons. We vomit after spinning to expel possible poison.)

If each body-regulation system was pixel on a screen, these systems would display an image of amazing size, complexity and color depth. The screen for this giant image is called a neural map.

When our body perceives an object (which could be physical, like a snake, or mental, like the notion of snakes on a plane), the neural-map image changes. The more salient the object, the more significant the change in the imagery. But how do we have a mental experience of these neural, biochemical changes?

(I am going to speak about prominent, well studied, neuro-scientific theories of consciousness as if they were fact. A fascinating book, by a leading neuroscientist in this field, is Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, by Antonio Damasio.)

We have a sixth sensory “organ,” a sixth way to perceive information, a ghost sense if you will. We have a second neural map which records the changes to a small and varied portion of the comprehensive neural map of the body. It is the mental equivalent of a physical eye ball, optic nerve and associated brain systems. Like eyesight, this second neural map notices only a few things, a small range of ‘color,’ fixates on change, and is given to significant distortion and bias.

This second map records an ongoing sequence of body-state changes from the point of view of the body. It’s like a mirror for a mirror. The second mirror/map reflects (with all its distortions and biases) the content of the first mirror/map. The first mirror/map in turn reflects the content of the second.

These two reflections are highly combinatorial and recursive, the necessary ingredients for infinite experience and infinite expression. Together, the comprise a system of one body, one point of view, one emerging collection of feelings and thoughts, one mind. These maps detail a ghost for each body.

What do we do to care for our ghost? When we intentionally change our thoughts, we are tending to its mind, much as a therapist attends to the mental life of a client.

The client has a real body, and our phenomenal ghost has a real body. Change the body, change the ghost. The neuroscience of emotion invariably highlights the significant of the body-mind connection.

Thoughts are mental objects. When we think them, our body changes (see the NYTimes article about embodied emotion).

Think about a moment when you felt intense despair. What specific event or circumstance would give rise to the belief, “I should have known better!”

How did your body change? Try the imagery again and pay attention. What are the body sensations of: “I should have known better!”

For me, I frown. My heart is in my throat. My eyes feel like they want to cry. If I add voice, I might wail, “why me!?” I feel a tinge of nausea as if my chest were hollow. My skin crawls around my shoulders and feels chilled. These sensations are unnerving.

If we change our thoughts at this moment, we block changes to the body. We simply turn off the experience. We avoid pain rather than provide healing.

What heals?

How does your body feel when you are at peace with the unpredictability and unknowability of life? Try to evoke body sensations for this idea. It’s a lot harder, and the sensations are fleeting. These are the sensations of homeostasis, of wellness, of – from the body’s perspective – finding home.

I believe our sixth sense is much more sensitized to threats, problems and the experience of our own failings. These cognitions are ‘visceral,’ because they change the body. After a shocking thought, we might hold our breathe and stare in alarm. The red lights flash on the first neural map, and are second neural map is vigilant to this color.

Like a fish not noticing water, we have a hard time noticing the sensations of healthy regulation. When a body-system is well regulated, it might generate a neural image hardly noticed by the second map. This sixth sense notices distress rather than wellness.

Monks practice compassion-mediations for years to develop the capacity to the access this state by choice. From the perspective of our sixth sense, compassion is a wispy, ghosty sensation spoilt by the interruption of almost any other emotion. Cultivating the ability to evoke emotions of well being and peace are not just elements of personal development, but rather they are (in a strong, neurological sense) significant sources of comfort and healing.

If we can re-mind our body of such positive sensations before or after moments of torment, we are reminding it how to get home. The body’s journey home often takes time, as healing does, but on the way, our thoughts get better too.

Change your body*, change your thoughts, change your life.

*Thoughts, of course, can change the body.

A lot of people have been using EFT to help release their limiting beliefs with great effect and I wanted to explain a little about how to use it.  This video is a very brief look at EFT and how you can use it to change your life for the better.

I first discovered it over 12 years  when I signed up for the manual and have been receiving emails from Gary Craig ever since.  It is one of the tools which has helped me in my life and I think you will love it if you start using it as well.

I am not affiliated in any way with the company.  You can download the manual at www.emofree.com and the other ebook I mentioned in the video can be downloaded here Attracting Abundance with EFT

The video is by no means a comprehensive look at EFT it is a very brief introduction and to really get you thinking about it and trying it out for yourself.

If you have any stories about using EFT to help in your life I would love to hear about them in the comments below.

Change, in any form, can be hard. We have all changed either by force or naturally to get to where we are today. However, what if we want to go farther than we have in the past, what if we would like a better life, a better relationship, more money, to start our own business or just be a stronger person? We have to make a quantum leap in our minds, hearts and souls.

We have to make a concerted effort to change parts of our life. Most of us want to change some aspect of our life, but find it difficult for one reason or another. Change means doing some work on yourself, it means growing as a person, and maybe discovering a few things about yourself you would rather not know. This is the reason a lot of people live within their comfort zones, it’s easier than having to challenge yourself and make the changes necessary to live a happier life.

Forced change Vs desired change

Forced change, however harsh, can be easier than desired change, as the change is taken out of your control, you have no choice but to change your life in some way. For example, if you lose your job you are forced to change your life in some way, if you get divorced you are forced to change. Desired change is like a dream, it seems a nice little daydream that you can think about as you drive your car to work, unless you have just begun to drive in which case you will need to concentrate on the driving as you won’t have time to daydream: experienced drivers can of course drive unconsciously. Seriously, many people view desired change as a pipe dream.

What you have to decide in your life is: Do I like the pipe dream simply because I like having something to dream about or do I really want the pipe dream in my life?

Here is where we can talk about changing any aspect of your life. It’s called the three pillars of change.

The Three Pillars of a Quantum Leap

Desire

One of the first things you have to ask yourself is: is my desire to change strong enough to make an effort?

Only you can answer this, however, here are a few questions that should help you answer that question:

* How long have you wanted to make this particular change?

* Have you done anything about it up until now?

* What are you willing to sacrifice to make the change?

* Is it going to affect others in a significant way?

* What would it be like when desired change happens?

You can’t measure desire on any kind of scale as it is purely subjective, but asking yourself the questions above will at least give you some indication of how strong your desire is. The questions will also help you look at the desired change in an objective way – but you have to be 100% honest with the answers.

Belief

Belief is a strange creature, without belief we would not be the person we are today. Our whole life has been shaped by our beliefs from a very young age. The subject of belief is my passion and it amazes me how many people don’t question their beliefs about their life, from religion to why they listen to a certain radio station. A lot of our beliefs have been instilled in us from an early age and we saunter along quite happily not questioning them, until the day comes when we are forced to question them.

Beliefs are a powerful force, this is why Hitler was able to get into power as he installed his own beliefs into millions of Germans, it’s how big brands like BMW can ask, and get, us to pay $100,000 for a car, it’s how some of us are extremely confident and some of us have very low self esteem. We have all been led to believe certain things as we have grown up and some of the beliefs are outdated.

If you want to change an aspect of your life you have to really believe you can do it. Once you know you have the desire and you want to go for it, you have to install the belief pattern to make the change.

Installing a belief

This might sound a little crazy: how on earth can we install a belief? well, if you think about it all the beliefs you have at this very moment have been installed in some way. There are two steps to install a belief: rote learning and evidence.

Rote learning is basically when you tell yourself over and over again that something is true. However, this is not enough to install a belief, if it were, I would be able to fly without the help of British Airways. The other part of installing a belief is evidence: you have to find evidence to make the new belief believable.

For example, for years I used to believe I wasn’t intelligent, my report cards said so, my teachers said so, my friends said I was a bit slow, I was no good at English, Maths or any other subject. I had lots of evidence to prove that I wasn’t intelligent and I looked for more and more ways to confirm it. It didn’t occur to me to look for evidence that I was intelligent. That didn’t come until I was about 17, when I questioned my beliefs. I then found evidence to support my new belief: I was good at history, I loved reading, I loved writing, I loved having conversations about how the mind worked, people were telling me that I was good at using computers, etc etc.

So installing a new belief really is simple, all you have to do is repeat the belief to yourself over and over and then go out and find evidence to support the belief. Think that’s oversimplifying it? try it for yourself.

Passion

Once you have the desire and you have installed the belief, the passion will come a lot easier. When you have the passion you will have the drive to keep going, you love what you are doing, and it doesn’t seem like hard work even though you may be putting in eighty hours a week to make your desire happen.

Passion can’t be learned, but it can be harnessed. The simple fact that you love doing something and love learning as much as possible about it will keep your passion alive as long as you want it to be alive. There might come a time when the passion burns out and leaves you altogether but that will be a choice.

Conclusion

 

Think about something you’d love to change about yourself, look at the three tenets above and work your way through a new belief you want to install. Do it for only 1 belief at a time to start with, and then progress from there.

Are you willing to take a quantum leap?

You’re already using visualization every second of every day, so why not take conscious control over it and start creating the life you want? Visualization is essential if you want to get what you want and make your dreams come true.

Most people dwell on the negative and constantly stress, worry, fear and hate. This only creates more of the same and makes you feel bad. You are the master of your life and only you can decide how it will play out. You are the only one that can take responsibility.

When I started reading about visualization, I thought I couldn’t do it, because I didn’t see anything when I closed my eyes. I had read about people being able to see vivid images and colors.

I have since then discovered that this is a very common problem. The truth is that you don’t have to have your own high-tech LCD monitor in your brain. When I visualize I mostly see black, red and other colors, but I FEEL what I see.

We’re all different, so let whatever you “see” be okay. The most important thing is to feel the visualization and invoke the feelings of having what you desire. With all that said, let’s look at how you can make this happen. This is deceptively simple, so read on…

Clarity

Before you start, you have to get clear on what you want, and I mean what you truly want. Visualization is effective, but if you’re visualizing money, cars and things you don’t really need, it’s not going to work as well, at least that has been my experience.

So what should to visualize? I’ve found that visualizing who I want to be and how I want to help people works amazingly well. I believe we all have something to share. We all have to ability to help someone.

Get clear on what you want. What would you do if money wasn’t an issue? The more you follow your passion, the happier you’ll be. There is no need to make money just for money’s sake, not in today’s world.

Relaxation

Once you’ve gotten clear on what you want, you can lie down or sit, whichever you prefer. Start to relax and go through your whole body beginning with your toes and working your way up to your head, slowly.

Usually when I’m done with this exercise I take it a step further and count from 10 to 1, telling my body that with each number, my relaxation doubles. You can do this as many times as you want and use whatever commands you desire.

Visualization

Now that you’re completely relaxed, start visualizing and see yourself already having what you want. If you want a new job, see yourself in that job. Include every little detail you can imagine. What does it smell like? Who do you work with? Do you have to commute?

Add anything that is important to you. Imagine it as vividly as you can. Try to feel, smell, see and hear everything. If you aren’t getting a strong enough feeling, it’s time to supersize. Make everything bigger, brighter and louder. Use the operative system of your brain.

What I do is I ask my brain questions while I am visualizing, such as:

• What would this feeling feel like two times stronger?
• How would this feel like with the picture ten times bigger?
• How would it feel to have everything I desire?

Your brain automatically answers questions, so make sure you ask the right ones. For example, avoid negative questions, such as “what should I avoid.”

Letting Go

I’ve identified a pattern in my life. I have no trouble attracting smaller items, but when I go for the big stuff, it gets harder. The bigger it is, the more emotional charge it has. We’re often very attached to the outcome if we want to attract something significant, like a house or a relationship.

This is why it is so important to let go once you’re done visualizing. This can be done through many different ways. I personally like to use EFT, which helps neutralize resistance and bad feelings by balancing the energy in your body.

Conclusion

Visualization is not rocket science. You were born with an exceptional imagination. Use it. You can visualize as often as you want for as long as you want. There are no rules. Experiment and figure out what works for you.

It may take some practice until you get comfortable, so give it time. Visualization is a powerful tool that allows you to get what you want faster, at least that has been my experience. your mileage may vary .

This video is about ‘Crossing The Lines’ in your mind to change an aspect of your life.  To change anything in your life you have to believe, perceive, think and emotionalise the person you want to become.  If you can’t believe in the person you want to become, you will not become that person.  If you can believe in the person you want to become and you can think like the person and perceive the world like the person and have the emotions of the person you want to become you will eventually become the person you want to be.

This video will explain it a little better and I tell you a little about ‘Crossing The Lines’ which I am working on just now.  I am putting my heart and soul into this to make it the best product ever, and it promises to help change your life to where you really want to be in your life.

Cutting down on your negative thoughts might seem like a daunting task to some readers but the benefits make it well worth the time and the effort.  This article will look at only 5 methods of changing your thoughts and making and turning them into a thought virus whereby your positive thoughts spread to affect all of your thoughts.

Our days are filled with thousands of thoughts and a lot of these thoughts are negative or self critical in nature.  These are the thoughts we are looking to target.  I have read somewhere that 40% of our thoughts are negative (I don’t know where so take that statistic with a pinch of salt).  So if we have 60,000 thoughts each day, 24,000 are, on average, negative thoughts or self critical thoughts. These thoughts can stem from what we hear on the news, the radio, read in the newspapers, etc so I believe that the figure of negative thoughts is much higher than 40%, but we’ll stick with 40% just now.

5 Methods to Cut Down Negative Thinking

Infusion

This method looks at introducing new, positive, thoughts at a conscious level.  This means that they are not naturally occurring thoughts, rather thoughts that you have pre planned and introduced to your conscience by way of thinking about them at planned times throughout the day.

For example, if I want to lose weight I tell myself my target weight throughout the day and any time I feel like a biscuit or a cake.  So as soon as I get up in the morning I repeat to myself  ”I am 13 stones” (182 pounds), this immediately wakes my mind up to the fact that I am watching what I eat and it starts working to lessen the urges and cravings I get.  Then throughout the day I simply state to myself  “I am 13 stones”.  Whenever I see a cake  - “I am 13 stones”, when I see a biscuit “I am 13 Stones”, when I see a dog – taken that too far! You get the picture.  You are infusing positive thoughts and positive images which will spread to some other thoughts and change the way you think, over time, about your life.  You can try this with any are of your life.

Diffusion

A lot of the times we act on our negative thoughts which leads to more negative thoughts which leads to more etc.  Diffusion is a process of acknowledging your negative thoughts. This is changing the relationship with the negative thoughts that arise during the day.

For example, you are going about your business and suddenly the thought comes up:

“I hate this job”, you then acknowledge that that and say “I hate this part of the job, but there are other aspects I like, such as doing the accounts.”

Bombarding

This is similar to the infusion method described above except that you are repeating phrases in your mind over and over again, much like Émile Coué’s autosuggestion techniques such as “Every day, In every way, I am getting better and better”.  This was one of the first self help methods I used when I first started out and still use it today, although nowhere near as much as I used to, and this is because I am now naturally a positive person because of the techniques I am describing here.

Acceptance

This is a method which lets you accept all your incoming thoughts.  Whilst you are accepting of the thoughts you do not necessarily react to them.

For example you might have the incoming thought of “I’m hopeless at writing new posts.” You acknowledge this thought, keep on writing and say something like “That is how I feel right now, but not necessarily all the time.” You accept the thought and move on with what you are doing.  Pretty soon as you catch a lot of your negative thoughts you will develop a habit of thinking more positively in a natural way.

Reversal and association

This is a method used to reverse the incoming negative thought using recalled emotions and feelings.  It is particularly powerful as you are actively engaging more of your senses and feelings.  An example of using this would be:

Incoming thought: “I Can’t do a presentation, they will all laugh at me.” You then remember an event when you stood up and spoke about a topic you knew well, you remember feeling great and everyone congratulating you at the end of your talk, you felt fantastic after it.  Then you replace the original “I can’t do that…” thought with a new image, of standing up in front of everyone and it going great and you see everyone congratulating you and you feeling great.

There are many more methods for cutting down on your negative thinking habits and turning into a more positive thinking person naturally.  We can’t eliminate negative thinking, and nor would we want to as it can serve us well in some situations, however we do want to cut down on a lot of negative thinking.

Change – According to Merriam Webster, one definition of the word is to undergo transformation, transition, or substitution. Another is to make different.

As humans, it’s common for us to resist change in any form or fashion. If you study the lives of people throughout the world, you will find they’re deeply seated in a ton of ritualistic, routine-based functioning.

In light of the evidence, the old saying ‘we are creatures of habit’ is infinitely factual.

Now most of us are resistant to change. In general, I’ve yet to find a single person who is completely fine with changes in life, whether they be large or minute. We are resistant to change because it makes us uncomfortable; and no one wishes to revel in discomfort.

However, aspects of our lives are going to change whether we like it or not. We age, lose loved ones, change jobs, get fired, etc. Nothing in our world will be consistent forever. Change, in general, is usually a struggle against every fibre of our being. We’d rather live comfortable, meaningful lives without any disruption to our daily routine.

The great part about change, though, is our ability to learn and grow as a result of having to adapt. In fact, change is really the only thing we will ever experience on a consistent basis. So, while our struggles with change may seem cumbersome, we must accept and learn from them.

Embrace All Aspects of Change

From the time you entered this world, you’ve experienced a multitude of changes and you will continue to experience them until you return to the earth. What we must learn is that while change is inevitable, we don’t have to be so full of resistance. Change can be a great thing, if your perception is altered a bit.

In order to do this, we must first look at our struggles that pertain to whatever changes you may be experiencing in life. The struggles are there for a reason – to teach you something. If you never struggled, you’d never develop into a better person.

Think about any previous adversity you may have experienced and eventually surfaced from. If you cannot claim to have learned something or at least know yourself better as a result, I would like to take your pulse.

Therefore, every time you are presented with a major change in life, you must learn to embrace the struggle for all it’s worth and know without a doubt that the discomfort associated with the change will not last forever. It’s imperative to understand that you do have control over how you view the situation and if you learn to embrace the struggles for what they’re worth, you will learn and grow as a result of said change in your life.

Your Discomfort Is Only Temporary

Everything happens in seasons. The winter always springs and the summer always falls. New life and opportunity abounds for those who can weather the storm. If you are dealing with a rather difficult change in your life such as the loss of a loved one, a financial disaster, or a shaky break-up, remember that the pain associated with such a change is only temporary.

The most important aspect of the process is accepting that change is going to come; you must embrace the way you feel and all the struggles you experience as a result of your feelings. It’s okay to be mad and upset; the most important aspect of dealing with unwanted changes in life is to remember that the discomfort is only a season and it too shall pass.

Take Note Of Right Now

Right now is all we’ll ever have. Yesterday is gone forever and tomorrow is never promised. All we have is this moment in time. My grandmother once told me that nothing else matters except how you feel at any given moment. Now, of course we have to realize we only ever really feel (in the present tense) anything right now, not tomorrow or yesterday. All we ever have conscious control of is the now.

Stop for a second and recognize what’s going on right now. What is it that you can appreciate and be thankful for at this very moment?

What can you learn from the struggles you’re currently facing? What can you discover about yourself by choosing how to feel and by dealing with the changes that weigh so heavily on your mind?

Remember, changes are consistent with the daily lives of everyone in the world. No one will live and die without experiencing plenty, if not many drastic changes during their existence. The only way to cope with your struggles is to embrace them for all their worth and gain as much knowledge from each experience.

Change is never an easy thing to do in our lives. What is even more difficult is making the decision to change when we are unhappy about a certain aspect of our life but it is not so bad that it would cause us to take action to change.

In this video we will look at getting dissatisfied to make the change and why it is important.  Many people are stuck between satisfied and dissatisfied, but won’t make the change because the hassle is not deemed worth it.  If you want to be happy in all areas of your life – get dissatisfied with the status quo.

There’s a lot of talk about positive and negative thinking, and why just thinking positively does not change our lives.  When we first step out onto the road of changing our lives by changing the way we think we are aware that shitty things are still going to happen to us, no matter if we are thinking positively or not.

What we also have to be aware of is that thinking negatively will only exacerbate our problems and add to them.  When this happens our problems seem to multiply many times over and we say to ourselves things like:

“I was born unlucky..”

“It always happens to me…”

“Why do I always get the raw deal…”

“Good things never happen to me…”

So you’ve had all these bad things happen to you in the space of a few days: your washing machine’s flooded the kitchen and it’s now not working, your car needs repaired, the boiler has broken down, the hoover has gone bust, your partner is losing his job and the bank want to speak to you about mortgage payments. And then you meet a happy guy like me saying “never mind, every cloud has a silver lining” – Swift punch toward my face ensues.  Has all of the above happened because you weren’t thinking positively: of course it hasn’t.  However, neither has it happened to you because you’re an unlucky person, or because these things always happen to you – they don’t, that is called irrational thinking.

Why thinking positively helps

This is where positive thinking comes into it’s own.  If you are thinking within a positive frame of mind you will be able to deal with all the problems I described above.  You won’t get morose and start feeling sorry for yourself and look for the next disaster to happen, you will deal with each problem in turn until everything has been sorted out, knowing that nothing much else can go wrong.  You wouldn’t be expected to skip around the kitchen singing ‘happy days are here again’, but you will hopefully think ‘It’s only a setback and I can deal with this.’

Think of positive thinking like a camp fire, the more wood you add to the fire the less cold you will be.  If you let the fire run out you will be freezing cold and that cup of coffee you were looking forward to before getting into your tent will not happen.  Positive thinking keeps the negative thoughts at bay: you can’t think two thoughts at the same time so if you are thinking positively it is keeping a negative thought out.  So don’t think that positive thinking alone will change your life rather it will keep the motivational fires burning and keep you taking action toward the things you want in life.

A few weeks ago I was able to head up to the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii to see some of the biggest waves on the planet. In the winter months the north shore of Oahu sees monsters that draw surfers from around the world. Recently “The Eddie Contest” which sported waves up to 40 feet, was held, which drew thousands and caused massive traffic jams on the whole north side of the island. Mention the word Waimea Bay to any surfer and you’ll create drool from their mouths as if they were Pavlov’s dog.

I hadn’t been to the north shore before, as I recently moved to Hawaii via a one way, but was pleasantly surprised by its sleepy town feel and delightful sense of community. Families were barbecuing in parks along the beach and everyone seemed content. My friends and I made our way to the bay and grabbed our body boards as we stepped out of the car and ventured towards the crowded beach.

I’d never body boarded before, but there was a buzz of excitement and I was ready to go. The water was surprisingly cold and the rushing water began to engulf me and make me it’s puppet. The sleepy town feel was soon forgotten as I began a battle with the waves of massive intensity.

As the waves broke they exerted a surprising amount of force on me; Wave after wave it was relentless. With so much force built up and a momentum that could only be described as ruthless, these waves constantly rejected me from getting past the break point.

I struggled as I attempted to run, then walk, then swim past the never ending force. Giving it my all I pushed forward harder and harder. Suddenly, as if by magic, I had reached past the breaking point and the waves were no long crashing upon me.

As I sat there on my body board past the break point I began to realize that life is much the same, constantly beating us back mercilessly, until as if by a miracle we’ve suddenly made it. Many of the most successful people I’ve met in my life have battled with the waves of life for years or even decades before reaching past the break point. To many they look like overnight success stories, but they’re the product of their previous battles with the waves. We have to learn to overcome these waves by being even more resilient and more relentless then they are.

Life has many lessons to teach us if we’re observant, but these are the 3 lessons the waves taught me while body boarding on the north shore of Hawaii.

1. Waves Will Always be Headed Towards the Shore
Waves will always be coming in. They may change in intensity but, like clockwork, they’ll continue to break at the shore. Much like the waves I experienced when body boarding you’ll experience negativity in your life and forces that will want to hold you back. These waves of negativity are relentless and will never stop. You need to come to terms with this and act accordingly. Just like the waves kept knocking me back on my way to get past the break point, the waves of negativity and self doubt will keep knocking you back as well. That is, unless you’re more persistent.

2. Persistence Always Wins
In my continuous battle with the waves it was two steps forward, one step back. Then two steps forward and one step back; This happened over and over. With each two steps I took, I gained a little more distance and got closer to the break point. Through persistence I eventually beat the waves. Persistence is one of the most valuable attributes you can gain in body boarding and life, which was illustrated brilliantly by American President Calvin Coolidge:

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”

You may be the most talented body boarder in the world, or even the most educated person who can explain how body boarding works down to a science, but unless you persist each day against the waves, you’ll never truly know what body boarding is.

3. The Rewards of Persistence are Priceless
Once you pass the point where the waves are crashing you’ll be in calmer water where you can look back and see everyone else trying to get past the break. Sitting upon my board without resistance I was living the high life, but it got better! I had my pick of which wave I wanted to catch to ride in. What was once my enemy now became my ally as I harnessed the power of the wave and let it propel me forward with such force that it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. What a rush!

When overcoming your waves through resistance the fruits of your labor will be priceless and just as rewarding as catching a wave in Hawaii. The amount of persistence it takes is directly related to the reward, so the bigger the waves I overcame the bigger waves I got to ride down after I reached the break point. It’s a long journey to the break water, but catching your wave is oh so sweet.

Next time you’re struggling and fighting towards your goals think of the waves of Hawaii. See your battle as something that is necessary, but also think of the adrenaline rush of the results of your persistence. For me that reward was catching a huge wave and feeling as though I was flying through the air, what will your rush be?

For anybody who doesn’t know what bodyboarding is here is a short video:

Images from Maccanti and Smichael