Personal Development: Reetika Gupta-Chaudhary warns against a phrase that could be the difference between success and failure: I know that.
Let me begin by asking this very pertinent question: have you ever caught yourself saying to yourself ‘I know that’? I am sure you have, at some point or other in your life. When someone was advising you about something or when you went to a personal development seminar or while reading a motivational book, for a fleeting second, albeit subconsciously, yes, you have thought to yourself ‘I already know that’. Now you must be wondering what’s so wrong about saying I know that? The truth is, if you are saying these three words every time you are faced with some information, you are closing yourself off to all the new opportunities that life has to offer.
These words could be the difference between success and failure in your life. Just replace your ‘I know that’ with ‘I do that’, and you will find the success you have always been looking for.
Ask yourself the following questions:
• If I already knew this then what has been stopping me from following/doing it?
• Yes, I know that, but am I living, following or doing it?
In my personal development journey, I started by reading the book called The Secret, and I found it really fascinating and learnt a lot about manifestation and positive thinking and visualizations. I continued attending seminars – Tony Robbins, UPW and other meditation retreats, all of which taught more or less the same stuff of forgiveness, gratitude, affirmations etc. I even practised it for a few days, a few weeks and in some cases even a few months, and then life took over and I never did them again. There came a point in my life when if I went to a seminar or if I watched a motivational YouTube video, I inevitably said to myself ‘I know that’ – I have been there, done it all, this does not work.
In the journey of becoming a coach, I went through some intensive coaching and my coach once said to me: “In my training there will be several times that your own mind will take you out of the game and tell you that ‘you know that’, but knowledge alone is fruitless, unless you do something with that knowledge and become a living proof of what you know. There is no use holding that knowledge in your mind, become a living proof of it.” After going through in-depth training and awareness exercises with my coach, I was able to understand what was stopping me from applying what I had already learnt.
I learnt two important lessons:
• Knowledge that is not implemented is far more dangerous than not having the knowledge in the first place.
• In order to learn new things and practise them it is important to unlearn what you already know so that you can make space in your mind for more useful and productive information.
With awareness, the right action will lead to a new start. Now we come to the most crucial piece of information/knowledge. We all know that our thoughts lead to feelings and feelings lead to action and action will get us the results. Has anyone ever wondered where thought comes from?
Most of our thoughts/beliefs are as a result of the environment we live in. I call it the ‘process of living’. During this process, we see, hear and experience things that contribute towards the building of our thoughts, ideas and our entire belief system. Some of these beliefs we are aware of, we can explain why we acted in a particular way. But some beliefs get relegated to our subconscious minds, and we keep acting and reacting according to these subconscious beliefs without even being aware of where this thought came from in the first place. For example, as a child if our parents told us that money is hard to earn, then this becomes our belief and we carry it with us throughout our life.
Since we are not aware of this belief, it is difficult to take action to change it – how do you change something that you are not even aware exists? The first step is to become aware of what beliefs we hold and where these beliefs came from. These thoughts and beliefs play a big part in holding you back from taking action when you learn new information. You might try an affirmation about wealth, ‘I am a millionaire’. But your negative beliefs about money will lead you to not believe in this affirmation and you eventually stop doing the affirmation and then say, ‘Oh, it is not working!’
So, catch yourself out when you hear yourself saying ‘I know that’ and ask yourself ‘Am I living that?’ And if not, what beliefs are stopping me from living that?
Awareness = inspired thought = inspired feeling = inspired action = greater results.
