A friend of mine (twitter @kcreamer) recently told me about a great blog site litemind.com that is “Exploring ways to use our mind efficiently.” I’m finding this site to be a very fun and productive read since I have an interest in Whole Brain Thinking and the impact that brain dominance plays in our own abilities to be creative, achieve success in life and work, and be happy. I’ve only just begun to explore the site but in that process have discovered that twitter user @lucianop is the site owner and primary author.

These recent posts at litemind.com can help us begin to understand how greatness can be achieved. You might want to go read these and come back for my commentary:

Einstein’s Secret to Amazing Problem Solving (and 10 Specific Ways You Can Use It)

This article deals with the importance of critical thinking and problem definition in solving big problems.

How to be Great: Rising Above the Talent Myth

This article deals with the myth that we are born great. It lays out some practical steps for what is termed “Deliberate Practice” for achieving greatness. One thing is certain, when striving for greatness; it takes lots of practice and work.

Deliberate Practice, Self Actualization and Meta Cognition

The process of achieving Deliberate Practice can help you achieve Self Actualization. The ability to look at your own performance, in a non-emotional, non-judgmental manner is so very important on the road to Self Actualization. And Self-Actualization is required for sustained greatness.

Meta-Cognition, the thinking about your thinking, is key to the ability to look at ones-self and examine the good and the bad, and then deciding what to change and how. Progress toward greatness cannot occur without this introspection and correction. Yet many of us get hung up emotionally about our failing and faults and then come to believe that we can never eliminate or overcome our failings. Our failing become self-limiting beliefs.

Strengths Alignment

To harness your greatness you need alignment of strengths, goals and values and the identification and elimination of self-limiting beliefs. Otherwise, the effectiveness of deliberate practice is limited.

People have innate strengths, as highlighted in the Gallop Organizations StrenghsFinder book and assessment (also known as Strengths Finder) and the VIA strengths discussed by Dr. Martin Seligman When your work or play is aligned with your strengths (your core abilities), your ability to achieve mastery rises exponentially. In addition, people that operate in alignment usually can achieve “flow” or right brain thinking easily. And as one of the leading positive psychologists Dr. Seligman has learned, being in the flow leads to sustained happiness or achieving the so called “Good Life”. Deliberate Practice becomes much easier when you love your work and this love emanates from the alignment of strengths and the resulting flow.

You can read more about strengths at Why You Need To Assess Your Strengths Now.

Self-Limiting Beliefs

Additionally we are conditioned to believe that we are limited beings. Most of us travel through life with many self-limiting beliefs. Teachers, peers, parents, friends and others condition us from very early on to believe that we can’t do this and we can’t do that. These beliefs then form self imposed barriers to our own achievements. Truly great people identify their self-limiting beliefs (or don’t have them to start with) and work to tear them down and replace them with greatness beliefs. Tiger Woods belief that he would be greater that Jack Nicklaus is a great example of replacing self-limiting beliefs with beliefs of greatness. Consider as well the 4 minute mile. Until Roger Bannister broke this barrier in 1954 no one thought it possible (other than Roger). Then a month and a half later his record was broken. And since then, the sub-4 minute mile has become routine.

People wanting to achieve greatness have to start off with a belief system that the impossible is possible, and that they will be the one to make it happen.

In future articles, I will outline simple steps for identifying and eliminating self-limiting beliefs and replacing them with greatness beliefs.

Its been nearly 11 months since I’ve written a blog post here at Vital Journey. My reluctance to blog has been a series of pure unadulterated excuses. Its easy to let the time slip by, living life and frittering away time in so many uncountable and unappreciated ways and not getting to the really stretch goals in your life. Nevertheless, in the end, blogging reluctance has manifested in my head like an ongoing series of mosquito bites. Each one not so bad, but the shear number of irritations has kept me away.

So you might ask, irritated at what? Well I’ve fallen into a trap that I have warned my kids about and my life coaching customers. I’ve compared myself to other friends and twitteriees that blog. You see, I work in IT in Higher Education. Many of my friends on twitter and elsewhere are well-established faculty or long standing members of the Higher Education community. There can wax elegantly about topics of passion. Many write and speak publically as part of their profession. Consider the excellent blog at Gardner Writes as the standard-bearer.

You see, I’m a technical geek that has a science and engineering background. Society tells us we are not good at writing, social skills and other forms of living in the community. I may be a geek, but I’m a full fledged member of the community and those stereotypes just don’t exist in my existence anymore. They are no longer part of my universe.

As I tell my life-coaching customers, don’t be denied by your self limiting beliefs. The more I believe I can’t blog, the more I can’t. I’m no longer going to compare myself to others in the blogging community. As Leo Babauta says, Life’s Enough: Stop Comparing Yourself to Others.

Today is the beginning: I’m making a commitment to tear down my self limiting geek beliefs and begin again. Knowing that with practice, my written expression will improve. There is no reason I can’t become a blogger extraordinaire.

So go identify some of your self limiting beliefs and tear them down. Dream big. You just might achieve something extraordinary.