*************************************************
Notice a trend? This is the second time that I have allowed my pen pal, Douglas Cartwright, to be featured on my blog. He has insight like no other because he is a Man of God and studies his craft. His newest article below is a little deep. It might take a read or two but the points that he makes can help you break free from psychological knots that are holding you back from your next level in your business, relationships, and life
*************************************************
What the mind can conceive and believe…can cause trouble!
by Douglas Cartwright

You may recognize the mis-quote from Napoleon Hill “What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve!” This is a positive way of thinking and, in principle, I applaud it. But the Bible also warns: “Be careful how you think, a man’s life is shaped by his thoughts.” (Proverbs 4:23)

I want to talk about thoughts – not just your everyday thoughts but ‘concepts’. I admit this may seem a bit abstract to talk about on a business blog but the concepts you have actually affect your life in such a serious way that it is to your advantage to pay attention to them. Oh, and they affect your relationship with God.

Have you ever seen a piece of ‘modern art’ and wondered aloud “What on earth is that supposed to be?” Perhaps it was labeled as ‘high concept’ and, as you wandered out of the gallery, you thought that that kind of conceptual art was best left to artists as it doesn’t make sense to the rest of us!

The thing is, we can’t avoid concepts. We conceive our world through thousands of them, little definitions of what, how, and why the world and everything in it works.

These concepts determine our relationship with the item. For example, most Westerners do not include dog or cat in their concept of acceptable food to eat so they do not eat it.

My wife comes from Guyana, South America and she eats cow’s foot in some of her dishes. I don’t really like this, but when I ordered some Brazilian ants covered in chocolate from South America she didn’t want to eat those. Cow’s feet do not fit in with my English palette and ants do not fit in with hers – hence our different reactions.

Everything we do comes from and out of concepts.

So what does this have to do with business, and especially kingdom business?

Let’s say creating a business consists of such ideas (which are also concepts) as: customer, need, value, sales, marketing, finance etc

Let’s take ‘sales’ as an example.

In the UK, used-car sales people traditionally don’t have a good reputation.

In fact, they are considered to be unethical con-merchants who would throw in their grandmother for free if they could get you to buy their over-priced, rust-concealed, barely-legal death-trap on wheels. And smile as they do it.

In fact, being a sales person in general doesn’t have a great ring to it here in the UK over here for reasons that the 1980’s, a TV series called Only Fools and Horses, and a load of tele-marketers have to answer for! In that decade the emphasis (on and off television) was to get the sale whatever it took. Now if someone says they are in sales the assumption is that they have something slightly unethical about them. We even have telephone exclusion lists to stop sales people calling us at home.

What if, as you thought about setting up a business, your frame-of-reference for sales-people was:

Unethical
Cheats
Don’t care about customers
Thieves

… and so on.

Is that the kind of business you would like to do with others? Even if you are sure that YOU won’t act that way – what if you believe others will perceive you that way?

Would you be motivated to pick up the phone? Would you want to push a little bit when the other person sounded reluctant? Or would the image of the unethical car sales person pop into your head – and make you want to retreat from that final “What could I do to make a decision easier for you?” kind of question?

In my field of coaching – Meta-states coaching – we call this having a toxic relationship to words: a semantic reaction.

You can tell if you have a semantic reaction if you wince when someone mentions a particular term. Here’s some general one’s that people struggle with:

Commitment
Submission
Authority
Sacrifice

I mentioned above that concepts can affect your relationship with God.

A few days ago my wife and I looked after a little boy whose daddy was currently not around. That 3-year-old followed me around like a lamb after its mother.

He wanted to hold my hand, and when he climbed on our bed in the morning he just wanted to snuggle up with me.

For those little boys and girls that grow up without a father – or with one who cannot provide the kind of love children need – might they not grow up believing father means:

Distant?
Unloving?
Not around for me?
Angry?

As we filter the world through our concepts, what happens when we bring this kind of thinking to our relationship with God? It can stop us progressing to the kind of closeness that He wants us to have with Him.

I work as a Meta-Coach helping people ‘untie their psychological knots’ so they can ‘get unstuck, start moving and taking action’ – and one of the things I find is that if someone is carrying around an unhealthy concept of something, the minute they pick it apart and design something new is the minute that progress in that area becomes more likely.

But what you can do if you’re reading this?

I suggest you pick a word that bothers you and write out every answer you can to the following question:

“What comes to mind when I think about….x?” (x being the word)

When you have done that take a step back and ask yourself:

“How much of that do I want to keep?”

For the lines that don’t work for you, ask “What would I prefer to believe?”

Write that out.

You might be surprised at what you learn about what you really think. Of course, this works well with biblical concepts as well and can send you back into your Bible to find out what mindset God wants you to have.

If you’re interested in learning more about what I, Douglas Cartwright, can help you with come to www.livingwords.net and look around. Feel free to contact me with any questions.

God bless

Douglas Cartwright is a Meta-Coach who wants to help you ‘get unstuck’ and ‘live your words’. For details of the free ‘explore your breakthrough’ session he offers come to www.livingwords.net/freeintro.html

PS. I have created an audio product to help with the process of updating your concepts called ‘Restructuring your concepts’: you can download and purchase it at www.livingwords.net/products.html