I started elementary school at the age of seven and finished at the age of twelve. That was the standard followed at that time. What makes all these memories vivid and alive is that the school still exists as it was with only slight changes. It is more than sixty years old and consists of seven or eight classrooms. Each classroom accommodates twenty-five to thirty students.
It was usual in those days for schools to have a morning line up with all the students gathered at the same time in the school courtyard before the lessons started. The gathering started immediately after we heard the school bell rung by one of the teachers. The only exception was when it rained. What a bell! You could hear the sound from a distance of more than half a kilometer.
The gathering and line-up was standard for all the schools across the country for hygiene, grooming inspections, and to make sure all the students were there as well as to sing the national anthem. The headmaster maintained strict discipline that was to be followed by the students, the school’s faculty, and even the janitors.
Going back to the morning session-when everyone stood in the school’s courtyard at seven o’clock, after some random inspection of the students, we were told to sing the morning rhyme. Then one of the students would voluntarily start singing the rhyme, because it was optional to come forward and sing, most of the time it was the same students. It was a short song, lasting for not more than four or five minutes. If I recall correctly, there were only three or four students who routinely came forward to sing.
When one of the students left his row, walked forward and stood in front of all singing the rhyme, I would admire his courage, wondering how he could do it so confidently with no sign of fear. I used to tell myself, “It is really a feat for a school boy to act so courageously in front of the head master, teachers, and his schoolmates.” I kept telling myself this every morning for more than four years and I always wanted to be one of them. I asked myself what should I do to be smart and brave like them, why can they do it and I cannot?
There was something inside telling me to go ahead and do it—impress the head master, teachers, and other students watching you. There was a burning desire every morning for three or four years to step forward and say something. On the other hand there was something bigger and stronger than my burning desire that had stopped me, holding me back, hinting that what I was about to do was not safe and it’s better to be safe than sorry.
I felt the uplifting and the defeating self-talk fighting each other, going through the same scenario every morning. Do it, do not do it, you can, you cannot and so forth. Unfortunately the defeating and depressing self-talk won at the end of the day. Saying, “You know your limited potential, do not let other students laugh at you, you are not smart, and you have never done it, do it tomorrow.”
I was mentally suffering each morning with all those negative emotions, stranded between two choices awaiting a committed decision. A decision that I could not make resulted in a feeling of more guilt and unworthiness. Imagine you want to do something good that could move you towards something even better but you are restrained by fear, indecision, procrastination, uncertainty, or a hundred other possibilities.
My feeling was swinging from a state of being totally uncomfortable had I gone ahead and stepped up and started singing the rhyme to a relieved feeling of going back to my comfort zone. I just could not make up my mind. I wished I had tried to find out the outcome so I could have at least added something to my experience.
The reason for such negative behavior was not obvious to me at that time nor has it been for the past forty years; the “not go” has had the upper hand over the “go”. I have been adopting the same negative attitudes for many years. Abstaining from living the life I wanted or being the person I wanted to be. Just imagine living all those years with what psychologists call, “ambivalence”.
I could not overcome the problem nor find a better way to deal with the situation, which was my fear of standing in front of the students to sing the morning rhyme. Therefore, I was in the dark all those years suffering silently and getting stuck in a vicious circle of zero progress. I was hoping that as I grew I would naturally overcome these problems, but that didn’t happen.
Now I know the reason and what the difference is between being ignorant and being knowledgeable. I came to know this after studying Bob Proctor’s material. Now I know what was holding me back from fulfilling my desires. Had I done what I wanted to do it could have been a stepping-stone to real success instead of a stumbling block in my life for all those years.
It is crystal clear now and I have no doubt what it was. It was my paradigm; a multitude of habits that had shaped my life ever since my school days. Here is some of what Bob mentioned in his “Success Puzzle” about paradigms.
“Paradigms could be controlling virtually every move you make. When you understand how to build a paradigm that will lawfully guarantee the progressive realization of your worthy ideal… a paradigm to replace the one that presently controls your life, you will have opened a door to a brand new world.”
Paradigms can be likened to a program that has been installed in your brain; a program that was very likely written by people who loved you—good people, people who sincerely wanted nothing but the best for you. The people who were writing your program were giving you what they had been given, what they believed to be true. Unfortunately, they had no idea of what they were doing, the limiting beliefs that they were writing into your program, that could control the remainder of your life.
Ali Danesh
Ali Danesh was born and raised in the Middle Eastern country of Bahrain where he lives today. He has more than 35 years of international executive business experience, primarily in management and banking. Ali has just completed his first book Awakening Journey where he shares a series of moving tales from his fascinating life that will mirror the thoughts and feelings you have about yourself every day. Check it out by going to: http://alidanesh.co/awakening
