That voice inside your head is a LIAR!

We all have that voice inside our head, it tells us what we can and can't do, what we are capable of, and what we cannot achieve. It's the voice that tells you, go ahead you can make this traffic light, and the voice that keeps you from doing something foolish. This voice has likely been with you your whole life, and most likely has served you well for the most part.

The problem with this voice is while sometimes it helps you, more often than not it's actually holding you back. You see that voice is a liar when it comes to what you are capable of.

Here's a short example, my two year old son hasn't been exposed to the limiting beliefs and negativity of our society and hasn't yet had the chance to permeate in his psyche. You can't tell that little man that he can't do something. A couple of days ago when he went to bed and I was packing up his toys from the day, I accidentally set his "favorite" toy (a blue lion) on the bar counter in our kitchen, now this counter is probably about waist high to me, but definitely much higher than my son can reach. This counter is where we put the things that he isn't supposed to play with, like Daddy's iPad. Well he came out and saw his lion up on that counter and at first he stood on his tip-toes to reach it, then he tried jumping, then he tried asking Daddy, but as we're teaching him that he doesn't ALWAYS get what he wants I told him that he wasn't going to play with his lion right now, but he could have it after breakfast. Well being as he was my son, he decided that he didn't like that answer, and I confident in my knowledge that there was no way he could get it let him try. After about 5 minutes of trying he got a funny look on his face, the same look he gets when he sees a cookie across the room, and ran out of the kitchen laughing. He went into the living room and got a small end table that we have, climbed up on that, and triumphantly retrieved his favorite blue lion.

I told that story to ask you this, what is the "blue lion" in your life, what do you see as just out of your reach? I know that I've been challenged in life before, and tried then given up because that little voice in my head was telling me that I couldn't get there. My son didn't have that little voice all he knew was that he had a goal and he was going to achieve it, and he didn't stop until he reached it. Move with that sort of faith, that sort of purpose and you can achieve whatever you desire, that little voice inside your head is a LIAR!

Have you "Decided" to jump off your log?

A wise friend recently told me a fantastic story that I just had to share. Three frogs are sitting on a log, one frog decides to jump off the log, how many frogs are left? Simple math right, this is kindergarden type stuff, I bet you didn't even have to use your toes to answer this one! You answered two, right? Well if you did, you'd be wrong, you see there's still 3 frogs sitting on this faithful log. The key word here is that I said that one frog decided to jump off of the log, the problem is he never actually did.

How many of us in our personal or professional lives have been that one frog, the one that "decides to jump" but finds himself still sitting on the log? The real lesson to be learned here is that you will never get anywhere by simply making a decision. While making the choice to do something is an important step, as there are few truly successful people that ended up there purely on accident without first deciding that they would be great, but the common thread in all great successes is that there is an action that follows the decision.

You see Thomas Edison decided he was going to invent the lightbulb, but it wasn't until after over 1,000 times "failing" to create that lightbulb that he actually came up with a working bulb. The decision to create the lightbulb was integral here, but without the action of creating it, Sir Edison would simply be another one of histories great dreamers, and it is likely that you may never had heard his name.

For every Michael Jordan out there that has put in the hard work, time and effort to become the best in their field, sport, or vocation, how many others "decided" that they were going to be the best, but never jumped off their respective logs?

So the biggest question after realizing this is how do you make the leap, how do you take the action, what is the magic formula to actually getting off that darn log? Well the answer is simple really, so simple that most of us miss it because we, as humans, must endever to complicate things to the point that our productivity simply becomes activity and we never actually get off the log. We love to plan how to get off the log, talk about the different technologies and philosophies surrounding log jumping, even read books from people who have jumped off the log before us, but it is the rare person that actually makes that fateful leap and pursues their dreams.

The answer to how we jump off the log is this; just JUMP!

Not to complicated is it? Here's my question for you to ask yourself, if it's this simple why haven't you jumped?