How to Get Past Unbelief and Create the Life of Your Dreams

Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Now describe your ideal life! Ready, Set, Go!

What does it look like? Where do you live? Is it a bustling big city penthouse or a quiet cottage overlooking the ocean? Do you spend your days as the owner of a big business? Maybe it is doing mission work for those less fortunate. Or maybe you are constantly flying all over the world as an international music scout looking for the next great sound that will flood the airways.

In this image are you married with a big family? Maybe single with an active group of friends. What do you look like? Do you finally have that set of six-pack abs you've always wanted. Or maybe you have an amazing collection of designer jeans that look like they were tailor-made for your perfect toosh!

OK, Open your eyes. Take a look around at your real life current reality. Sorry to snap you out of that awesome fantasy. But now that you have allowed your mind to wander, I have a question for you.

What is keeping you from living the life you see when you close your eyes?

If you are like most people you immediately go into a laundry list of reasons you could never live the life you imagine in your dreams. Let me guess, the list probably has one or more of the following:

Not enough money
Not enough time
Lack of talent
Lack of skills/training
Scared to fail
Family commitments
Lack of approval from others
Too tired from the demand of my current crappy life

I list those because I've crutched on all of them at one time or another in my life as well! But as I take the time to get to the root of all these excuses I find one prevailing theme:

A serious lack of belief!

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Belief is the conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence.

The end of that definition jumped off the page and smacked me in the face. Isn't that the biggest reason we don't believe we can do something? We haven't seen the evidence that it is actually possible!

So how do you get past unbelief so you can create the life of your dreams when there is no evidence that you can actually do it?

Let's take the example of obtaining your ideal body. Many times creating belief all starts with changing the gaze of where we are focusing. Think of it as if you were in a valley staring up at a huge mountain. While you are standing in the bottom of the valley that mountain seems huge. You know you would love to be on top of that mountain, but you have no idea how you are going to get there and lack the belief that you can actually do it.

But instead of concentrating on the top of the mountain, what if we adjusted your gaze down a bit and picked out a small trail with a gentle slope that looks like it may get you to a little higher ground than where you are now. Then we devise a very simple plan of exactly which rocks we are going to step over to get to the trail, and we plan on meeting again just a few feet up by the large tree right where the trail seems to disappear. After mapping out that short little plan I look at you and say, "Can you do that?" And your response is, "Of course I can, its only a few feet up over a couple tiny rocks."

Congratulations, you just created belief!

You may say that is silly. "Anyone can take a few steps over some rocks and walk down a well-worn trail. I still didn't climb the mountain!"

Yes, you are right! Anyone can take the first few steps over some simple obstacles and follow an initial path that others have created for you, but so many people never take that first step. They never allow themselves the possibility of creating that baby belief because they are too busy staring at the top of the mountain and constantly reminding themselves of why they will never get there.

But you are different. You chose to adjust your gaze to something that is less intimidating. Maybe it even seems insignificant at the time. But what happens when we meet up at that tree a few feet down the trail, take a minute to catch our breath, and then devise a new plan on how we are going to tackle the next few feet? Maybe this stretch of trail has a few branches cluttering the road, maybe its a little more treacherous than the first path. But now your outlook is different. You are already on the path, you came this far, might as well see if we can get past these branches and pick another landmark to rendezvous at before going forward.

Each of these little stretches of path may pale in comparison to climbing the big mountain that is the life of your dreams. But when we put these little doable paths back to back over time, that is where the magic happens. There comes a day when we not only look forward at what that day's little path holds, but we take a moment to look behind us and realize the miles we have come since standing in that valley. And when you see exactly how far you have come your belief in what you can do grows, because you have examined the evidence of what you have already done!

Are you ready to take that first step over that rock to your left? If so, let's Go!