What do you think is standing between you and the life you want?

You think I’m going to say “your thoughts,” right?

But what if I told you it was your ability to sell?

To sell YOURSELF.  

The only thing standing between you and your dreams is your ability to change your thoughts about yourself. 

That’s it.

Do you want to make more money in your business?

You have to be able to think of yourself as someone who makes a lot of money.

Do you want to find the next great love of your life?

You have to be able to see yourself as worthy of great love.

The space between where you are at right now and where you want to be is the belief that you can be a different person.

It seems simple, doesn’t it?

But when it comes to actually doing the work of changing your thoughts about yourself and what is possible for you, the reality probably doesn’t seem quite so straightforward.

Why?

Because brains don’t like to change.

Brains will do just about anything to prove their current beliefs true. They will go on the offensive. They will object. They will present loads of evidence supporting their current beliefs.

We all know that if you want to persuade someone else of your opinion, you have to really be committed to selling them on your idea or position. 

And if you want to change your life, you have to get better at SELLING your new thoughts and beliefs…to yourself.

So many of us just passively expect our thoughts to sell themselves to us.

We’re used to allowing our brains to do whatever they want, unsupervised. So even if we come up with a new thought we want to believe, we just sit back and expect the thought to make us believe it. 

But this is like standing in the middle of a clothing store and getting frustrated when the perfect clothes (in your size, no less!) don’t magically leap from the racks and onto your body just because you spotted them hanging there.

Ridiculous, right?

When you go shopping, you know that you have to look around a little, browse the displays, and try some things on if you want to find something great. And then probably take it to a tailor, break it in, try styling it a few ways and spend some time wearing it before it really feels right. 

And yet, this is exactly how many of us are currently relating to the new thoughts that we would like to believe about ourselves.

We’re sitting back and wondering why our brains aren’t generating new, positive beliefs to help fuel the lives we want.

We have the most powerful thinking device on the planet at our disposal, but we expect it to do all the work without even a prompt.

Even when we DO have some ideas on a new thought that might serve us better than our current ones, many of us will abandon it at the first objection that our brains provide.

Which, by the way, is literally the brain’s job – to protect its well-worn neural pathways from new thoughts that may threaten it.

We expect our new thought to convince us, to sell US on our potential, while eradicating any doubt our brains produce.

But I want you to think of the new thought as a newborn. A seedling.

It is fragile and young.

It has the potential to change our lives, but only if we care for it and nourish it.

How do we nourish our new thoughts?

By PRACTICING them.

By SELLING OURSELVES on their value.

By encouraging our brains to look for evidence that they are true, even when our brains want to object. 

After all, if we’re committed to convincing someone else of something we believe in, we don’t just give up at their first objection, do we? No. We bounce back up and try again, and again, and again. 

That is what we have to do with our own thoughts. 

Because if we don’t believe in our ability to change, no method or coach or teacher will be able to help us change.

Whenever we are trying to believe something new, there will be all the reason in the world not to believe it – simply because we haven’t yet made it come true.

Our job is to lead ourselves, to sell ourselves on our vision of what is possible for us.

Do you think that’s delusional?

It may be.

But so what?

Thomas Edison had to believe that the electric light bulb was possible – and that he was capable of inventing it – in order to bring it to fruition. Without that belief, he would’ve just thrown his hands up and read a book (or whatever else the 1870s equivalent of Netflix was).

The Wright brothers were “delusional” to believe you could fly through the air. 

Madame CJ Walker was “delusional” to believe she could become the first black woman (or any woman) to be a self-made millionaire.

None of them had evidence that these things were possible.

They believed, and so they were able to create them.

A thought, a belief, a dream, a vision – it can’t sell itself to us.

We have to sell ourselves on it in order to create it.

We have to look for any reason to believe in our vision, in our capacity to create it. To believe in it and to love it.

The more you sell yourself on your thoughts, the more you can create the results that you want in your life.

You can keep selling yourself on your own limitations, incapacities, self-critical thoughts.

Or you can go big.

Bet the house.

Dare to believe in yourself, your potential, your story, your capacity to grow and evolve and embrace the suffering and joy of a fully-lived life.

The only thing standing between you and the realization of your dreams is your willingness to sell yourself on your new thoughts.

So get to selling.