How Shifting Your Mindset Will Help You Accomplish Anything.

One of my favorite movie series of all time is Star Wars. In the second movie, The Empire Strikes Back Luke Skywalker sets out on a journey to find Master Jedi Yoda. In a scene from the movie, Yoda teaches young Luke a powerful lesson on using the force and changing your mental attitude to accomplish amazing goals.

In watching this scene, you find Luke trying to rescue his X-wing fighter. He gives up, not wanting to move forward. He’d moved rocks and stones, but Yoda says he has the power to lift the ship. Luke responds with… “Alright, I’ll give it another try…”

Then Yoda says something powerful; “No. Try Not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.” It’s in that moment he proved to Skywalker the importance of doing and accomplishing goals.

So many times in life we want to give up. We think it’d be easier if we stop. Or worse, we use the saying… “I’m trying…” just as Luke said to Yoda. But what does it mean to try and how do we shift our minds to changing our end result?

1. Do. Or Do Not. There is No Try. I recently read a post by Michael Hyatt–and yes part of this post is borrowed from his–about Tony Robbins. Tony brought a lady up onto the stage to *try* and pick up a chair. When she proceeded to pick it up, she was immediately told she was wrong and to put the chair down.

He proceeded to tell her, “Try and pick up the chair.” Again she picked the chair up.

Tony said, “You either pick up the chair or you don’t pick up the chair. You simply cannot try to pick up the chair.

In other words when we say I’m going go to try we really are saying to ourselves, I’m only going to give partial effort. We are not putting forth wholeheartedness and out actions reciprocate that. We’re simply wasting time and making excuses. There isn’t a difference between trying and doing nothing. When we use this word, we are telling ourselves, it’s okay if I fail.

2. Tapping into the power of doing! Sitting idly by won’t get us anywhere fast. In-fact that’s what causes drift to happen. When we don’t put forth the effort to do something we’re simply wasting time. We should be tapping into the power of doing. When we place our mind and heart on doing, even if we fail, we’ve accomplished something.

Imagine if you’re working on a large project at work. Your boss tells you it has to get done. You’re response… “Yeah, I know… I’m trying to get it accomplished.” But the moment you fail, because of a lack of total commitment to finish the project, you’ve hindered your credibility and character.

Jesus said; “Let your yes be yes and your no be no.” In other words, we have the power to do what we set our minds to. Even if we fail, we know we gave it our best shot.

3. Eliminate the word try. This one word provides mountains of excuses. It gives us the permission to fail. Truth to tell, this word has been struck from my vocabulary. The reason, I don’t want to consider the possibility for failure. But if I do, that’s okay. I know that I gave it my all and my best. There’s nothing more to it.

So what should we do? How do we shift our thinking from trying to actually setting our whole mind, soul and spirit towards accomplishing our goals?

• Set your mind to the task at hand.
• Don’t give up.
• Even if you fail, you still succeeded because it’s a lesson learned.
• Get up and go at it again.
• Don’t stop until you see the desired outcome.

When you place your mind to the grindstone, stop trying and start living, there’s no telling what you can accomplish. Who knows, you’ll maybe just lift that X-Wing Fighter from the swamp and fly away into victory.

[reminder]Have you been trying lately? What can you start doing today to eliminate ‘try’ from your vocabulary?
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