Changing Your Beliefs Opens New Worlds

Changing your beliefs can definitely open up opportunities that would have never been available to you before.

Life Coach, Paulette Archer, has this reflection on the subject:
"As a Life Coach, my experiences and personal triumphs help me to be simpatico with my clients. My most powerful (and useful) experience has been discovering the value of changing limiting ways of thinking. This allowed me to do something that even in my wildest dreams I had never considered."

Learning How to Scuba Dive

Paulette Archer
www.fabmapcoaching.com

"Yes Virginia, you can change at any age
if that is what you want to do."
After 26 years in a relationship doing "our business", I found myself single again. I became a Life Coach. An integral part of becoming a Life Coach was my own personal development. I learned that you can do anything you want. You just need to have the desire.

Four of my friends were keen scuba divers. They wanted me to learn so that I could enjoy the same wonderful experiences that they did.

However, I had a "secret" which prevented me from accepting their invitation. I had an extreme fear of drowning. By way of an excuse I told them, "You've got to be kidding! I don't go into water deeper than a bathtub, don't know how to swim and can't imagine putting my head under water."

My fear (limiting thinking) controlled me so much that I had avoided going anywhere near water despite living only a few short blocks from the beach and didn't set foot in my own pool for over two years! When I finally got in I stayed in the shallow end and held on to the side. So long as I could touch the bottom I was okay. When I finally confessed my secret, my friends were dumbfounded. They all said, "But, you've been skydiving!

If you did that then anything is possible." I told them, "But I can breathe on my own when I'm skydiving! With scuba diving I have to be under water and depend on a tank." Way too scary for me!

I still had no desire to scuba dive but thought perhaps at the age of 58 I would learn to swim. I had private lessons for a whole year but I stayed in the baby pool. I refused to go into the deep water because my lack of self-belief (that is, my fear of drowning) controlled me. I kept saying I wasn't quite ready. My teacher said I was but I didn't believe her. My fear was so great.

A good friend Gayl suggested that she come swimming with me a couple days a week for practice. She didn't put up with my excuses and insisted I get into the deep pool. Gayl helped me to realize that I could do this if I set my mind to it (and I might just enjoy it). So once again I dug into all those resources deep within me and gradually overcame my fear of the water to learn to swim. Before long I was doing it and was doing a great job.

Until I changed my mindset and started believing that I could do it I wasn't ever going to learn to swim.

It took me six months before I felt ready to have a scuba lesson. Pete from Devocean Dive coached me in the most wonderful way as well so that I learned to love my diving and to be the best I could be. I am so pleased that I allowed myself to be "persuaded" because I soon achieved my Open Water certificate.

My first two dives after certification were in Maui in Hawaii. To hear whalesong was something I had only seen on TV and wow, now I was experiencing it firsthand. Those whales were talking to me, congratulating me for getting rid of my limiting thinking and achieving this hitherto unimaginable goal.

Diving off Lady Musgrave Island in Australia gave me a chance to experience the beauty and wonder of our waters here and to swim with fabulous fish and sea creatures including turtles and sharks. The wreck of the SS President Coolidge in Vanuatu has been my most amazing dive experience so far. The thought of ever going into a cave didn't thrill me in the past and now I'm not only in a cave (well actually, inside rooms in a ship) but one that is under water at depth! WOW!

I have now completed 28 dives down to 50 meters in three different countries.

If I had continued my old limiting ways of thinking, I would have deprived myself of these glorious life experiences. I am so thankful to my friends for wanting to include me in their wonderful sport and for the fabulous caring and patient teachers I had during this journey.

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