Beyond my knowing

As long as you live, keep learning how to live. Seneca

I read a book long ago that promised to give me the secret of living life to its fullest. If you read no other book, it said, read this one and you will have the answers to living life at a ten every day.

I read that book, and then another, and another. I listened to tapes. Went to therapy and breath work, yoga and meditation, and still I kept thinking, I don't know how to live.

I was living every day, but nothing was changing.

Nothing changes until I change my thinking. And nothing changes my thinking like thinking different thoughts.

There is a story from Africa that goes, Every morning a gazelle wakes up with one thought on its mind, today it will have to outrun the fastest lion or be killed. And every morning, a lion awakens to its truth, it will have to outrun the slowest gazelle or starve to death. It doesn't matter if you are the delicate doe-eyed gazelle or the fearless lion warrior, when the sun comes up, you'd better be running. Author Unknown

That lion and gazelle are locked into thinking about their survival. It is what distinguishes us from them -- our thinking no longer has to focus on survival -- our thinking can focus on living life freely. The odds of our surviving today, are pretty high. Yet, often we greet the day like it's a battle to be fought from the trenches of our limiting beliefs. We hunker down into our positions. Stake out our turf, line up our arsenal of well-worn, well-oiled weaponry and get down to the business of winning the war on the day -- and forget all about living it fearlessly free of our comfort zones.

What if.... we were to change our thinking?

What if... we open our eyes in the morning and exclaim, "Wow! It's a brand new day! A day filled with limitless opportunities to learn new ideas, to meet new people, to encounter new situations. It's a day to make brilliant mistakes that will open the door to limitless opportunities to grow. What a wonderful day this is!"

Alexander Graham Bell, a man who made brilliant mistakes that led to one of mankind's greatest inventions, said, "When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."

Hunkered down in the land of limiting beliefs, we do not see that when we open our eyes we have the choice of seeing the world as a land of opportunity, or a warzone.

The choice is always ours.

Mine is to awaken to my morning asking myself the question that will catapult me out of complacency into inspired thinking and adventure, "What limiting belief can I blow up today?"

Yesterday, I woke up believing that because I was lacking sleep, my day would be filled with ennui and drudgery. I changed my thinking, blew up that limiting belief, and leaped into a day of wonder and joy.

Today, I woke up believing the world will be filled with wonder and joy. Already, the day is meeting my expectations. I received an email from a beautiful woman asking me a question that got my mind exploring 'what is love'. My response set me free of another limiting belief and opened the door to possibility. I didn't know I felt those things until I explored my thinking -- and questioned my knowing of what was true for me.

The question is: Are you limiting your thinking to what you know? Are you willing to let go of what you know to explore the world of wonder and joy beyond your knowing?