Napoleon Hill said “whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

It’s a simple quote with so much truth behind it. It’s actually so simple that many people will read it and just overlook it. That’s why Mr. Hill’s written a number of books to further explain how this concept can change your life.

Now as a kid, I was told by people to believe in myself, use my imagination, never stop dreaming and all sorts of things of that nature. I heard them all, but I never was able to understand how important all those things really are in life. It went in one ear and came out the other.

After reading Mr. Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich”, it finally made sense what everyone was saying. What we believe is what we’ll achieve. It’s really that simple!

The False Belief Experience

Just a few days ago, I heard a story of a student that works at a coffee shop and experienced something amazing.

He felt extremely tired at work and had a ton of studying to do afterwards. He drank a couple of expresso shots hoping that the caffeine wakes him up.

As he predicted, the shots did what is was supposed to. He changed from being tired and sluggish to excited and energized.

Then, the most amazing thing happened. He saw that what he drank wasn’t expresso shots. There was a huge mix-up. What he drank had absolutely no caffeine in it…it didn’t even have sugar!

Where in the world did all his energy come from then?

It simply came from him believing that they were expresso shots and once he drank it, he will have energy. It was easy for his mind to believe this because in the past, whenever he drank the expresso shots it gave him energy. So based on that, the mind told the body to respond in the same way as it did in the past.

Change Your Beliefs

The coffee incident a small example of how our beliefs impact our lives. But what’s great is that we can use this same system to change our beliefs completely.

Our past experiences are the main cause of our current beliefs. So most of the time, what happens is that our past creates our future for us.

What we need to do is let our present moment create our future instead.

For this to work, we need to make conscious efforts to destroy our belief system and replace it with a new one. This process is called conscious thought repetition.

Remember studying for a hard test in school? What did you have to do? Repeat the information over and over until it was stuck in your head right? Repetition can be used the same way to implant new beliefs into your mind. Repeat new beliefs constantly throughout the day.

To make the process more effective, we must mix it with emotional image visualization. When we imagine things, the mind believes it’s really happening. It can’t tell between false and real experiences.

When you visualize situations where you’re doing things outside of your current beliefs, the mind will remember them as “real” experiences. Keep in mind that our beliefs are mainly caused by experiences we’ve been through.

Stepping outside of our beliefs in our imagination first helps us open our minds and believe that it’s possible to do the same in reality.