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 “Work harder.”

“Work more hours.”

“Put your nose to the grindstone.”

“You have to pay your dues.”

“Climb the ladder of success.”

Do all of these sayings sound familiar? These common phrases often espouse ideas that become anchored as limiting beliefs in your brain. Here’s the shocking news; these phrases often put into motion a cycle of struggle and failure. These common teachings may have kept you from having the kind of success you desire. The missing ingredient is not your work; it’s your thoughts.

Just reading that first paragraph may have made you mad. You may disagree so strongly that your emotions may cause you to disregard the possibility of truth from the message intended. If so, this is a direct reflection of those often well ingrained lessons. Dwell upon this for a minute: If these commonly held beliefs were true, why aren’t more people happy, successful and rich?

The answer to the question is those beliefs by themselves are wrong and harmful. People who dig ditches work hard. Salespeople work lots of hours. Corporate people try to climb the ladder of success. People who manage you often want you to pay your dues. How many of these people do you know that are wildly happy, successful or enjoy their success? The answer is often few, if any.

What you generate in your brain is the key. More hours and more work with misguided thoughts will only speed up your frustration and failure. The first step is to throw away and clean the slate of all the damaging sayings, lessons and beliefs that you have been taught. Start by writing down your 20 earliest thoughts about money. Do the same with work. When you are finished you may notice that most of these memories are negatively based or entrenched in scarcity based thinking.

Those memories and beliefs are exactly why when people tell you to just think positive that they are not only wrong but potentially harmful. Until you erase the negative programming that you have acquired, you will not be able to truly have positive thoughts that are believed and lasting. Everyone has a tremendous amount of negative programming that you have acquired from parents, teachers, bosses, newspapers and books.

When you are programmed over and over with those messages, you begin to buy into those messages and accept them as universally true. Over a period of time this leads to negative cycles occurring repeatedly and you don’t know how to change them. So what do you do? You revert back to your programming. You work harder. You work more hours. You put your nose to the grindstone. You pay your dues. You climb the ladder of success.

I have a little saying, “Stop the train.” If you aren’t getting to your destination, you have to change something. The most critical thing to change is your thoughts. Thoughts create action and action creates habits and habits create results and results create your destiny. It’s that simple.

In Robert Ringer’s book, “Winning through Intimidation,” he talks of the “Leapfrog Theory.” His idea is that you can leapfrog your way to success. You don’t have to climb the ladder rung by rung. He is absolutely correct. However, if your subconscious has been bombarded by messages your whole life that teach you that you must pay your dues and you have to work harder, you will either disregard the message or sabotage your actions. Everyone either has at one time or knows someone who when they were experiencing success began to take actions that lead to the demise of that success.

Most people chalk those experiences up to fate or bad luck. That belief will forever keep you in a cycle of frustration and repeated failures. Sheer luck by itself is a rare thing. Success and failure are almost always created in your mind first. Any other belief is simply allowing you to be lead by other’s beliefs. When this happens you are now in bondage and slavery. Slavery of the brain and spirit is the worst possible fate.

There is a saying, “Pray, but move your feet.” You can pray and you can move your feet and get going, but if you control and guide your thoughts you will learn to attract more success than you ever would have before dreamed. The amusing thing is that much of the success you attract will seem to come effortlessly and the phrase “Hard Work” will not even be a part of your thoughts.