by Graham Sampson

I was having breakfast with a friend when he said something that indicated that he was struggling with getting enough customers. I recalled that he had told me a similar story in the past. I also recalled that in the past I had tried to help by giving him reassurances and tips, and that it seemed that my best advice had not helped.

Recognizing that doing the same thing in the same old way and expecting a different outcome is tantamount to insanity, I sought a new approach and asked myself, “How can I best help him?”

I felt intuitively guided and asked him, “John, is it normal for you to struggle like this?” He reflected briefly before answering, “Yes.”

We had an interesting discussion about what different people might perceive and experience as normal. We agreed that having an abundance of ____ (fill in the blank) seems normal for some while scarcity and struggle are normal for others. We came up with some examples of normal that raised interesting questions. Is it normal to have colds and flu in the winter? Is it normal for health to deteriorate with age? Is it normal to live beyond ninety years of age? Is it normal for teenagers to experiment with drugs and sex? Is it normal to have bad luck follow good luck?

Neither of us likes being known as average or normal so we also explored our resistance to being normal, and the inbuilt resistance to labeling an experience as normal when we are really resisting it and struggling to change it.

Since we both agreed that our beliefs create our experiences, it was easy for John to accept that he had two impeding beliefs in operation in his consciousness. One was, “It is difficult to find customers,” and the other being a judgment of the belief and the resulting experience, “I don’t like it that way.”

Recognizing that attention directed through the filter of our beliefs manifests as our experience put John’s problem into a different perspective. Instead of having difficulty getting customers, he saw that he was having difficulty overriding his ingrained belief system. His best efforts at positive thinking were swamped by the undercurrent of his own subconscious beliefs. The problem was not between him and others, but within his consciousness.

The further we went, the more we felt that we had opened the path to different solutions to the everyday problems of life. John decided to concentrate more on learning about himself with a view to empowering himself rather than just working harder trying to attract customers.

The Avatar Mini-Course, Belief Management, provides an excellent way of exploring your own beliefs and gauging their impact or measuring their strength and influence in your life. Questioning a belief releases its stranglehold and reduces its power. Changing your belief changes your experience.

Graham Sampson, Australia

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