At the end of each decade of life, you should sit down and write a short essay entitled "What I Have Learned So Far."
Each decade is different, and the lessons you learn are different as well.
It's almost as if you get a new life during each decade. Your beliefs change about who you are and what you can do, and you actually become a different person.
I don't know whether cats have nine lives, but I am absolutely certain that I have had at least half a dozen.
During my first life, my parents and culture programmed my mind with beliefs that became the foundation on which I built a life.
I didn't get to choose those beliefs. Other people decided which ones I should have in my mind. Some of those beliefs were excellent, but many of them placed unnecessary limitations in my mind.
That's the problem with other people programming your mind. If they can't do something, they see no reason why you should be able to do it either. They end up installing all of their limitations in your mind.
One of the biggest challenges everyone faces is to go through all of the limiting beliefs installed in their mind by other people, and to get rid of those that are harmful and serve no useful purpose.
During my second life, I started reprogramming my own mind with beliefs that were meaningful to me.
I discarded old beliefs that did not work, and I adopted beliefs that made my life into what I wanted it to be.
My second life was hard because I had to reprogram my mind thought by thought.
Unfortunately, for too many people, this is a short life. By age twenty-one, most people have their beliefs set in concrete. They live the rest of their lives running programs installed in their mind during their first two decades.
That is a scary thought, because it means that they could write their book "What I Have Learned So Far" at age twenty-one, and after that, their writing career would be over. They would be on autopilot with their inherited beliefs guiding them through life.
They never think an original thought. They simply are in replay mode for the rest of their lives.
During my third life, I went to medical school, and followed that up with residency training in ophthalmology and a fellowship in retina and vitreous surgery. That life lasted seven years as I adopted the beliefs necessary to work as an eye surgeon.
During my fourth life, I became a medical officer in the United States Navy. That life lasted for only five years before other adventures beckoned.
During my fifth life, I worked for eleven years as an eye surgeon in Saudi Arabia at King Khalid Eye Specialist Hospital. I adopted beliefs that allowed me to live in a parallel expatriate universe in Arabia, and those beliefs served me well and actually transformed my life.
Sailing around the world on a catamaran is a major paradigm shift from the beliefs that carried me through my Arabian adventures. My new beliefs made it possible to survive storms at sea, go though global tsunamis, and sail up pirate alley into the Red Sea.
During my seventh life, I became Land Rover Man driving Land Rover Defenders around the world. I had six Land Rovers - three in Arabia, one in Australia, one in New Zealand, and one in the USA. You can follow our overland adventures on the Overland University at OverlandUni.com .
During my eighth life, I became the author of twelve books on positive thinking, positive spirituality, and positive self talk. You can visit the Positive Bookstore or the Positive Thinking Bookstore and start filling your mind with positive things.
During my nineth life, I created the Positive Thinking Network with hundreds of positive websites sending a positive message to one hundred ninety-six countries around the world.
During my tenth life, I became a Flying Doctor in the Indian Health Service in the American Southwest. I flew out to Indian Reservations to treat Native Americans who suffered from eye disease treating the Apache, Navajo, Hopi, Hualapia, Havasupai, Piaute, Mohave, and Colorado River Tribes. I served twenty-three tribes in the Phoenix Service Unit of the Indian Health Service.
During my eleventh life, I am once again Captain Dave of Exit Only on a sailing voyage around the world. From my catamaran, I run the Positive Thinking Network as I send Positive Newsletters and positive websites to 196 countries worldwide. I am a Daktari without borders and I have a positive message without borders as well.
Each of my lives was completely different and required an entirely different set of beliefs.
What I learned during each life was different as well.
Many times I felt like I had taken things to the limit, but on further examination, it was clear I simply had enough. I was done and was unwilling to do whatever it takes to continue. Hitting the wall of absolute limits has never been a problem. The envelope of possibility is infintely large, and the likelihood of encountering absolute limits is infinitesimally small. There are no limits. There are only limiting beliefs.
In the grand scheme of things, my grand schemes seem fairly insignificant. In a global sense it's easy to feel as if my life counts for nothing, or at most, counts for little. When someone tells me that I shouldn't be doing things that are important to me, and that I'm wasting my life, they are really saying that my dreams don't count in their scheme of things.
I am a daktari without borders. I am not sure when and where borders disappeared from my mind, but sometime in the last quarter century, I became a citizen of the world. Wherever I am on planet earth, I feel at home in my borderless world. Find out what it's like to live without borders.
When my life is over and on judgment day I stand in the final line up with all the rest, I hope millions of people can point their finger at me, pick me out of the line up, and say, "He's the one. That's definitely him. He's different from the rest. He didn't conform, and he is guilty of living his dreams.
You are never safe from negation. Unchecked negativity can rapidly flush the achievements of a lifetime down the drain. If you ever reach your dreams, it will be because you stopped listening to the voice of fear and negation. You stopped looking at your limitations and stopped constructing barriers that exist only in your mind.
Faith isn’t something that must be present before you move in the direction of your dreams. Rather it’s something that develops after you start moving. When you start out, you don’t see how your dreams are possible. Nevertheless, the moment you take the first step, faith instantly comes into your life. Never look at faith as the path to a life of leisure. God gave you faith so you could see things other people can’t see and do things other people can’t do.
I could write an entire book called, "Things I Feared That Never Happened," and follow that up with a second book entitled, "I Feared The Wrong Things." Almost always, fear is a waste of time. Most of the things you fear will never happen, and you fear the wrong things. When the hobglobins of fear start dancing in your mind, it's time to refocus on other things. Learn how to squelch the voice of fear with a positive focus!
For me, the dream is all about adventure, freedom, and being really alive. Although I like seeing the sights wherever we go, I think it's the sense of adventure coupled with the freedom to do what I want to do with my life, seasoned with a pinch of adrenalin that makes it all worthwhile.
The first step in moving toward your dreams is to doubt your limits. Once you doubt your limits, it's almost as if you are born again. You get an entirely new life with radically different rules of engagement. You enter the Promised Land of Imagine, Believe, and Receive. I know this to be true because I have been there.
WHO IS DR. DAVE AND WHY IS HE BLOGGING?
More than two decades ago, Captain Dave (aka Dr. Dave) started writing and creating websites as he sailed around the world on his sailboat, SV Exit Only. Those early websites and books evolved into the Positive Thinking Network you see today.
Captain Dave lived overseas for twenty-eight years in his globe trotting lifestyle until he became a Flying Doctor with the Indian Health Service working for ten years in the American Southwest flying out to deliver health care to the Apache, Hopi, Hualapai, Havasupai, and Colorado River Tribes.
Dr. Dave completed his work with the Indian Health Service in Arizona, and now runs the Positive Thinking Network full time either from his catamaran or his Land Rover Defenders as he travels around the world
The Positive Thinking Network has a global outreach sending a positive message to 196 countries, and it is your definitive source of positive thinking on the World Wide Web.
With hundreds of positive websites, and more than a million pages and podcasts downloaded each month, it's where you come to learn everything you want to know about positive thinking. The Positive Thinking Network focuses on positive self-talk, positive spirituality, winning the battle against depression, PTSD, and positive adventure.
Hundreds of family safe websites stand ready to fill your mind with positive things.
Dr. Dave and the Positive Thinking Network work around the clock to change the world, one person at a time, one web page at a time, and one podcast at a time.
