There is a great old story that goes something like this…

During a momentous battle, a Japanese General decided to attack even though his army was greatly outnumbered. He was confident they would win, but his men were filled with doubt.

On the way to the battle, they stopped at a religious shrine. After praying with the men, the General took out a coin and said, “I shall now toss this coin. If it is heads, we shall win. If it is tails we shall lose. Destiny will now reveal itself.”

He threw the coin into the air and all watched intently as it landed. It was heads. The soldiers were so overjoyed and filled with confidence that they vigorously attacked the enemy and were victorious.

After the battle a Lieutenant remarked to the General, “No one can change destiny.” “Quite right,” the General replied as he showed the Lieutenant the coin, which had heads on both sides. If you take a moment to look at just a couple of the decision points in your life you will be aware that your energy, motivation and intention regarding the outcome of your decisions are all deeply related to what you ‘believe’ the outcome will most likely be.

For the most part, the reason the ‘rich get richer’ and the ‘poor get poorer’ is because of the expectation they have regarding the outcome of their decisions and actions. These expectations are based upon your unconscious (and conscious) beliefs about the world and yourself.

These beliefs are nothing more than pre-conceived notions about ‘the way things are’ based upon interpretations of ‘how life is’ created mainly in childhood and through strongly charged emotional situations (both positive and negative) throughout life. The General in the story knew this and could therefore influence his soldiers simply be creating in them the appropriate belief they required to win by manipulating the situation so that they could only interpret the meaning of the shrine and the coin in the way he wanted them to. That it was their destiny to win. Once this belief was ‘installed’ the soldiers then acted in accordance with it and went on to win.

Situations occur, things happen, people say stuff and we react to these things in a certain way based upon our beliefs. Every person has the capacity to choose to use a coin with ‘heads on both sides’ – which is simply the understanding that regardless of what situation you are in, what decision you have to make you can interpret it in the way that will work best for you.

You can choose what you want to believe about it and what you choose to believe will dictate your actions and therefore your outcome.

posted 2010 Apr 25 by Alistair Horscroft