Nick Williams

At sometime during my GCSE years (1992-93) I read a poem by Kipling called “If”. The basic jist of the poem is that “If you think you can you will, If you think you can’t you won’t.” I forgot about the poem, however it stayed stuck in the “grey matter”.

Fast forward a few years, several times between the age of 20 and 27, I was exposed to the theories of talking a dream into a goal into a reality, auto suggestion and postive thinking. I took it in, but didn’t really understand it.

Sometime between my 27th and 31s birthday I went out and bought a pile of books (How To Win Friends and Influence People, The Richest Man In Babylon, Think And Grow Rich, The Seven Steps Of Highly Effective People, Who Moved My Cheese and a few more). I read “Who Moved My Cheese” and “The Richest Man in Babylon”.

Step back to 1999. Star Wars Episode 1, The Phantom Menace. Qui-Gon Jinn says “I’m sure a solution will present itself” or something very similar. Didn’t think about it at the time, but it sunk in.

Jump to 2010. In the earlier months of this year I picked up “Think And Grow Rich” and read it. It was the right time. The stuff that had sunk in earlier began to bubble to the surface. i found a like mind to bounce ideas off, and headed out into the world with the following views:

“A solution will present itself”
“I can conceive it, and believe it and will achieve it”
“I can do it”

and more

I started putting into action snippets of what I had newly learned. I have started following the guiding principles of the books that I have read and listened to, and am currently, and as previously mentioned “rewriting my own programming”, looking at life with a can do attitude, and also learning to dream again.

I can’t remember if I have already mentioned it, but it is so powerful that I will mention it again, “Look around you, everything started as an idea”.

Look around you, everything you see started as an idea

Dare to dream.

Nick

p.s. If you think you can you will, thats the only bit of the Kipling poem you need.

Fear stops us from doing anything that puts us outside of our comfort zone.

Fear stops us from doing things.

Superstitions are fears.

I am conquering my fears, I have thrown my superstitions to the wind, (magpies, touching wood, etc, etc). I workng on my fear of heights, which this weekend just gone had me standing at the edge of a cliff and looking down (without having to do it lying on my belly). It is an empowering feeling to look down at the cliffs, and the 20 or so metres of sheer drop and say “I’m not scared of you”, for what is there to fear? Although, I may not fear the sea and the cliffs, I still have respect for them.

In the philosphy of the self fulfilling prophecy being afraid of something happening will almost make it happen.

I write this post from the family pile (3 bed detached) in Cornwall. Its a gorgeous bank holiday weekend, with the weather in the right place and the rain at bay. This, dear reader I promise you is not fiction, it really is a sunny bank holiday.

This year has been interesting to say the very least, and I am pleased to say, an emotional phoenix of a rollercoaster that has done a loop the loop of the ashes and is now on the climb back to the starting position.

Nurturing a young business is probably not too far removed from the car of a young child, in fact being currently of the childess disposition my business is my baby, and this year it has been learning to crawl, teething and trying to use the video as a toaster!

I am not a holiday person, I love travelling and visiting different places but am more than happy to do day trips or city breaks., however this weekend I am in Cornwall for a christening. Violet, my 4th Godchild gets dunked in approximately 12 and a half hours time. Driving to Cornwall on a Bank Holiday can be an adventure in itself as you battle through traffic jams, struggle to get past those caravanists who tow their shed on wheels down a single carriageway at 27.5 mph, whilst the navigator directs their mobile chicane along the path of most annoyance. Therefore I drive to Cornwall at night, it has its advantages, all the burger places en route are closed so it is both safer on my wallet and my arteries, plus the roads are so much quieter you acutally have a chance of getting up to and maintaining the speed limit.

Having arrived just before sunrise and having had a little bit of sleep I found myself with an afternoon without and requests on my time. On the drive down I had, in a conversation to a close friend spoke about my desire to find a quiet cliff and sit on it and feel the breeze. So I set of to an area off the beaten tourist track, where locals go. Its beautiful and quiet and peaceful and you have to walk a couple of miles to get to it. I went armed, I had a large tradional steak pasty and two cans of wild cherry pepsi, my blackberry and that was it.

After a good hour of walking I found my spot, close to a beach, with soft grass, a clear blue sky and deep blue water. A check of my Blackberry showed it to be outside of signal range, so to be fair the spot was perfect. It was time to Stop.

I ate my pasty and washed it down with one can of wild cherry pepsi. Then I just sat, taking some deep breaths to slow myself down, relaxing myself. I felt the wind rolling off the Atlantic Ocean and wrapping itself around me. I thought about the things I wanted to think about, the people and things in my life that deserved that level of attention. As I relaxed and dove deeper into my thoughts I could hear buzzards overhead, the wild life in the grasses, the sea crashing on the rocks, the wind breathing over the flora, it was tranquil. It was removed from the noises of humans and machines. Perfect. As I concentrated on my thoughts I found myself coming in an out of conciousness. This was my aim, my goal, me and the sun and the sea and the wind. This was all about me, and me taking care of me, mentally, spiritually. Me taking care of my Angels. I call this Angel Maintenance.

Carry On. When the time felt right to go back to life I did, finishing my maintenance session with a cliff top walk to a quiet golden sanded beach where i could put my feet in the cold Atlantic waters that were breaking around me.

It was exactly what I needed, so much so that on return to the house I then crashed out and slept for several hours.

Maintenance complete!

As children we are fearless, we want to explore and discover things and find new things. This is where we learn the word “no” and this changes our outlook forever. We learn that if we hear the word “no” we are not to do the thing that we were either thinking about or doing.

I am currently working on my outlook to life, and I have noticed that if I got out not wanting something bad to happen it unfailingly does. What you don’t want to happen is exactly what happens, and your fears become a self fulfilling prophecy. A couple of months ago, while ploughing through “Think And Grow Rich” by Napolean Hill. I started to change my outlook. Remembering some words of wisdom from Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace “I am sure a solution will present itself” I started looking at the challenges in from of me, repeating the words of QuiGgon to myself and thinking and believing that the solution would present itself, I noticed that I was able to approach these challenges and sort them out.

What the mind can conceive and believe you can achieve or to quote Kipling “If you think you can you will, if you think you can’t you won’t”

Try looking at everything today thinking that it will happen and be done and believe what you are thinking to yourself.

You’ll have an amazing day when you try it and understand it.

i have recently been studying the works of Napolean Hill, Wallace Wattles, Sean Rasmussen and Paul McKenna. I have been trying to read “Think & Grow Rich” since I was 18. This year I have succeeded and, maybe the time was right, but I have understood it fully.

The mind is an interesting thing, and without realising it we create our own futures, normally but thinking “I Don’t Want This To Happen” where it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

I was reading the chapter on desire, where, it is stated that if you desire something enough, it will happen (I have used artistic license and shortened the whole concept), or in another phrase “What you can conceive and believe you can achieve”. Thinking about this I realised how true it was, and remembered a time from my youth (about 6-7 years old). I really wanted a typewriter (yes I am that old lol), and I mean really wanted it, I used to dream about it, think about it and one day the family were out at a fete or similar and there on the bric a brac stall was a typewriter. Guess who got it? Yep, Me.

Thinking about this more, as a kid i used to look through the Argos catalogue at the toys and imagine what it would be like playing with them, and the ones I imagined the most and desired the most I got. I find it amazing that as a child I understood Napolean Hills Desire theory, before I had heard of the man.

I also learnt that desiring and planning something is a skill that I had not used in a very long time. Until now.