If You Want To Change The World, Change Yourself

Take a look around. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, stop and examine your surroundings. Everything that you see: your couch, your chair, your desk, your fridge, the food you eat, the bus you take to get to work… all of these things at one point did not exist.

To go way back, people did not exist. The earth has been around for over 4.5 billion years, the modern human being has been around for about 200,000 years. The exponential growth and progress that the human race has accomplished in just 200,000 years—0.004% of the earth's existence—is frighteningly wondrous.

So how was so much created from nothing? Thanks to the human mind, thanks to Imagination and Thought itself. Once human intellect made its appearance on this planet, things started to change rapidly and have continued to grow and mold into novel things ever since.

The power of the mind is truly magnificent. We have come so far and learned so much, yet are still unable to unlock all the secrets of the human psyche and the human brain. The sad truth is that most people don't bother to think about things like this; most people don't realize the power that they have—the power to change the world.

While you could quite literally change the world if you set your mind to it, you first have to start small—change the things in nearest to you. Then you can build your way out from there. The best place to start is with yourself. Hell, the only place to start is with yourself—from the ground up. Picture the life that you want to live in all its glorious details.

Start with the basics: How would you like your apartment to look? Do you picture it neat, clean, and organized? Or like the shit-hole it is now? How do you imagine your day might look? Okay, so in your perfect world you don't plan on working—but how do you picture your perfect daily routine within the limits you are currently having to work within?

Would you be waking up early, doing some yoga and exercising, getting a fresh energetic start? Or is staying up too late, not getting nearly enough sleep, and yanking yourself out of bed last-second working for you?

Change the daily routine that you know you are unhappy with, change your poor habits, and change your life, all with the power of your thought. The key is focus. The world works in a relatively simple way, generally speaking. Something occurs and it triggers the occurrence of another event, an effect.

The only way to get the ball rolling is by concentrating your thoughts on the task at hand, which in this case is creating the life that you want—the life that you were born to lead.

Your thoughts must be centered entirely on the particular aspect of your life that you wish to change. Focus on the way you want things to be. If you want to get into shape, then focus your thoughts towards healthy foods, exercise, and healthy living. Imagine how it would feel to have the body that you want- a body that has built its cells from nutritious, minimally processed, natural foods—a body that is dexterous and strong.

If you want to become a great musician, then engulf yourself, your mind, and essentially, your life in music. You want to be a painter or sculptor? Then live that life. Everything has a starting point—you don't need to take things slow, or to take baby steps.

You could be living the life of an artist, architect, musician, entrepreneur, chef, or even the life of a damn porn-star, if you focused; you need to create that world in your mind. Don't confuse the life that you wish to live with the successful version of the life you wish to have. Becoming the mold of the person that you want to be is easy, adding all the details takes a lifetime.

Becoming a successful dancer, for example, takes years, even decades—but becoming a dancer takes only a millisecond. You just need to choose to be a dancer, choose the lifestyle of a dancer, and choose all the good and all the difficult that comes with being a dancer. Then you need to live within that mold the best you can.

Staying focused day in and day out can be difficult—but it gets easier as time goes on and as you start seeing progress. If you focus on bettering yourself and bettering your situation, then progress you shall have. But remember: there are no shortcuts.

Things may blow-up for you all of a sudden and you may find yourself on the Progress Express barreling down the train tracks, but you may not. It may take some time for you to really feel like you are making big progress.

However, any progress that you make, even the littlest, is still progress. So stay positive and don't lose focus! Don't fall for the same trap that has consumed the minds of too many people well on their way to success, on their way to the life they feel they must lead in order to be whole.

Negativity has killed more dreams than communism. Staying positive and only nurturing positive thoughts is necessary for progress. If you stay positive and believe that you can accomplish the goal that you set out to accomplish, then you will. If you allow your mind to be poisoned by negativity, then no matter what you touch, you will be bound to fail.

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't—you're right.” - Henry Ford

The world was created from nothing. You can likewise create your own world from nothing—using nothing more than the mind that you were born with. Stop dwelling among the negative thoughts that are weighing you down and throwing you into a state of stagnation.

If you want progress, then you need change—you need to be the change. Cut out all the extra junk that you have taking too much part in your life; keep things simple. Pick a mold for yourself and start to fill it. Allow yourself to focus on positive thoughts, thinking of the way you want things to go—focusing on the reaction, the effect, that you wish to cause.

Do this over and over again, blocking out all your negative thoughts, until you have taken those positive thoughts and made them into a reality. Once you get things rolling, the force that you bring with you makes your travel much easier. You have the power to change the world; you have no excuse for not being able to change yourself.

Paul Hudson | Elite. 

For more from Paul, follow him on Twitter @MrPaulHudson