Everyone who is on the quest for true wealth, success and self-fulfillment knows that we are truly capable of achieving our dream life. We may have read everything from Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" to Alan Tutt's “Choose To Believe” and we believe every word of these and many other powerful success systems. In fact, we may have spent thousands of dollars in personal development articles, books, CDs and DVDs and yet, our dream life continues to elude us and ultimately, we may even blame the entire personal development industry as nothing more than a scam to empty our wallets.

Nothing could be further from the truth. We know on a logical level that these teachings are capable of changing our lives for the better but, when we try to put them into action, we consistently fail time and again.

The problem does not lie with the personal development materials but in our “level of acceptance” and because of our “level of acceptance'” we procrastinate, fail to take action and ultimately give up on our quest for personal development.

Our “level of acceptance” can best be described by explaining a similar problem that we have when we go on a diet. With the programming that we have had throughout our live, our physiology develops a set-point for our weight. If you have been on many diets over the past few years, we discover that although we may gain or lose 20 pounds in a very short period of time, at the end of the year, we are back to our old weight again or at least very close to our original weight. This is our set-point and it is very difficult to overcome.

In much the same way, our subconscious also has a set-point for our wealth, success and self-fulfillment. I call this our “acceptance level” and because of limiting-beliefs that we likely learned as a small child, our subconscious will fight tooth and nail to maintain our “acceptance level.”

It is most likely a matter of fear of the unknown that keeps us from achieving greatness as the subconscious fears change and will try it's best to keep us within our comfort zone. Our subconscious does not mean to hurt us and, in fact, is trying to protect us from stepping outside of our comfort-zone. Fear of the unknown is perhaps the greatest fear possible and our “acceptance level” although it may be a life of mediocrity is a safe and known place.

To overcome our “acceptance level” usually takes a traumatice life event to shake us out of our complacency. The death of a loved one, divorce or perhaps the loss of a job may be enough to destroy our “acceptance level” and let us take up the path to greatness.
This, of course, is not the best way to change the course of our life. It need not be a traumatic event to drive us on to greatness.

The first step in overcoming our “acceptance level” should simply be the conscious choice that we will no longer accept a life of mediocrity. In fact, it is the fear of mediocrity that has driven me to take up the quest for wealth, success and self-fulfillment.

Once that conscious decision has been made, we have a multitude of choices in reprogramming our subconscious for success. To mention a few, affirmations (properly used) can be extremely effective in reprogramming our subconscious. Hypnosis, self-hypnosis, hypnosis audios are other methods and the use of hypnosis gave me my first great breakthroughs in my quest for self-fulfillment. Although I am not an expert in the application of Neuro-Linquistic Programming (NLP), this is another effective tool. Recently, I have been using Alan Tutt's "Belief Entrainment" brainwave audio and have found this tool to be extremely effective. I have also recently found that success itself is habit forming. We normally think of habits as something negative but, now I am going about setting new habits to create success.

It really does not matter which tools that you use-just find ones that are comfortable for you and suit your personality and you can make dramatic changes in your life. No matter how much success we achieve, we will never actually achieve total self-fulfillment because success is a moving target-the closer we come to success, the greater we find our potential to be.

Take action and seize the day.

Stan Pontiere, former photojournalist for the New York Times and The Associated Press, now retired, has been a life-long self-help geek, having read thousands of articles, books and personal development programs, and now sees his life purpose as helping others live the life of their dreams.

Stan's websites
http://wealthbyaffirmation.com
http://wealthsuccessreviews.com