DIVING FOR PEARLS The American Dream Mindset

Pretty much every country around the world is known for something. Whether it’s a message they themselves pushed out into the world or the world has pushed onto them.

France is known for romance, Germany for precision, Italy for food, Australia for beautiful landscapes, Japan for technology – you get my drift.

But there’s one country that has managed to encapsulate an aspiration, and that’s the United States of America.

The US has long been dubbed ‘the land of opportunity’. A place where anyone and everyone can live the ‘American Dream’. And by that they mean that it doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, what you have or what you don’t have, in America anything is possible and you are only limited by your own imagination.

In essence the US is a place where limiting beliefs are left at its shores, and what you find on land is the freedom to be whoever you want to be.

Isn’t that what we all spend our lives trying to create for ourselves? A mindset where boundaries don’t exist? Where we don’t waste our time thinking we aren’t good enough, or fear that we will fail, doubt our abilities and carry the traumas of our childhoods into our adult lives.

As a coach (applies to therapists and counselors as well), I spend the greatest portion of my time working with clients to work through subconscious blocks that are holding them back from living their dreams. These blocks can be so strong that clients are convinced that there is no possibility to change as it’s intrinsically who they are.

Yet so many people have left their countries and moved to the US and have managed to created the life they’ve always dreamed of, because they are convinced that it was ‘the land of opportunity’ that made it possible.

Now I agree, America as a system does provide a structure and platform that opens doors to a better life, but what if I told you that that would not have been possible, had it not been for the mind shift that a person would have gone through to invite possibilities into their lives.

What if I told you, that it wasn’t the land that created the opportunity, rather it was the shift in mindset that paved the road to achieving one’s dreams.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter where in the world you live and under what circumstances, it’s how you see yourself and the world around you that dictates the life you create for yourself.

It’s in your hands, or better yet, your mind whether you achieve your dreams or spend your days allowing your limiting beliefs to hold you back.

Your focus is your reality, so do yourself a favour and focus on what you want as opposed to dwell on what you don’t.

Visionary Steve Jobs was masterful at focusing on a limitless mindset, and leaves behind a legacy that is testament to that.

I leave you with the inspirational opening voiceover that was used in Apple’s 1997 Think Different Campaign;

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes … the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. … You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things. … They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”