Beliefs determine how we see, interact and experience the world around us. Beliefs are ideas that are made after repetition and contemplation, that are accepted as truth and reality and therefore impact how we see life.

Belief and knowledge are often in conflict. The difference might be subtle, but substantial. Knowledge is something that you and others, who might be considered experts in that field, consider to be true and there is reasonable, plausible, and provable scientific explanation for that knowledge.

A belief on the other hand is based on personal experience or pure faith.

Too many people require you to accept their belief based on blind faith. Belief is not knowledge and therefore usually not provable beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Remember, it wasn’t long ago that people believed the world was flat, and that we thought women were witches, hunted them down, and burned them.

Welcome to belief, which is based on superstitions, or blindness.

Stupid humans who once believed that the Earth was the center of the universe, and that it was flat. Really it demonstrated that what really was FLAT was the human ability to think outside the box and perceive something that others could not perceive.

When scientists discovered great things, hundreds of years ago, they were imprisoned, tortured and murdered. The Catholic Church did not want people to see beyond, and therefore stopped the voices of these researchers.

Actually, during that time in history it was thought to be common knowledge that these ancient flat world beliefs were true. Even though humankind was sincere in its ignorant beliefs, those beliefs were false and by not believing as the others told you to, you were subject to arrest, imprisonment, and torture which often lead to death.

Times have changed. Today, things that you believe have changed, and you may believe in something so firmly that you count it as knowledge. When, in fact, there may be considerable evidence from the past experience that a particular belief is a truth,” its only truth for you from your personal experience. Just because you believe it is true, does not make it true. Although it might become a truth for you personally, by believing it you are limiting yourself by holding on to self-limiting beliefs.

The trick is to pull back the veneer and see the real truth. That is one that is universal and does not need to be believed, it just is. These are referred to as universal truths. They exist and work beyond our own self-limiting beliefs. They shape and work through the universe and in our lives.

Gravity is a truth. Believe in it or not. Its still a real truth. If you drop something it will fall to the ground. If you trip, and fall, you could hurt your butt. You can only fall DOWN, you don’t fall up.

Now this is only a truth that exists here on Earth under normal circumstances. There are other forces that can resist this law such as a strong wind. You may have been programmed since childhood to believe things that you thought to be true – but, once you realized that they were not true, you may have wondered why you wasted time and energy believing in them at all.

Take the case of Santa Claus. You believed he was real. You believed that by some mystical miracle he went around the world in one night and brought presents to every well-behaved child. You may have further believed that he ate the burnt cookies you left for him and he drank that horrible lactose free milk. You believe that it was all related to your doing good things and not bad things, and that Santa was well, almost like God!

There was potent evidence to your faith:

Your parents told you he was real. (You trusted your parents without question)

The cookies were disappeared and the milk glass was empty. Even the crumbs disappeared.

There were presents under the Christmas tree in the morning.

You saw Santa at the supermarket, and you had a picture of Santa to prove it.

Your friends believed in him also.

All of this evidence pointed toward knowledge, you just knew he existed. It pointed to a truth in that not only did you know he existed, everyone around you knew also. This belief as you found out was not true. It had shaped your view of the world as a child and still may have a lingering impact on your current belief system.

The point is that there are other things that you may believe are true, but are not. You have been told things all your life for a variety of reasons: to make you feel better, to be funny, to hurt you, because other people believed it was true, and for other noble and not so noble reasons. You made the choice whether to believe what was being told you. You weighed this information and decided whether it fit or not into your already existing belief system. You either rejected the idea straight out, accepted it as part of what you already believed, or it changed your belief system.

Beliefs are very powerful, and they do shape our reality. If you believe in something strong enough, it becomes real in your life. There is a universal law that states that likes attract like. If you believe in something strong enough it not only becomes your reality, it attracts similar things to your life.

Suppose you believe you are clumsy. Your parents said you were clumsy, your coach as school did and so did your friends. They told you that you were an accident waiting to happen. You thought this to be true. Your whole life you tripped over your shadow. Not only did you believe this, but you also created that reality and circumstances of being clumsy.

Examine your beliefs and draw back the veil. Well, Ill be. They seem to have constantly hypnotized me to trip myself up — all my life — well, I’ll be! And, then – you don’t have to be! It’s all your belief.

Dr. Jay Polmar, author of Thinkright, was a teacher and instructor at colleges and universities in the Southwest and Hawaii about the quality and power of Thought being an active force in creating the quality of your life. Learn more in Thinkright.

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The management tactic known as DFSS, or Design for Six Sigma is a discipline which is rapidly growing in popularity with Six Sigma aligned businesses. In Six Sigma, certain procedures are identified and enhanced, whereas DFSS studies the needs and incorporates that into the initial solution. DFSS is associated with product development, specifically initial product development. Rather than concentrating on the enhancement of existing procedures, it relates to the creation of the procedures.

Some other terms associated with Six Sigma are DMAIC which is an acronym for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control of Six Sigma procedures and also DMADV which stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Design and Verify existing Six Sigma procedures. Both of these stress the enhancement of production procedures already in place.

DFSS is designed for a different reason in the Six Sigma methodology. Rather than act as an agent which identifies and enhances existing procedures, it is normally employed before production begins, allowing the processes to be refined from the beginning. The client will experience better results if proper procedures are put into place at the onset.

DFSS originally came into being when Six Sigma companies recognized the need to move back a step in the refinement of their business processes. Rather than develop systems and controls, then later attempt to correct and enhance them through Six Sigma, they wanted to have the systems and controls correct and refined from the onset. While DFSS and DMAIC are similar in some ways, it may be said that DMAIC is the arbiter of things that go on in the back end of the system, while DFSS addresses front end procedures.

Primarily, the difference in DMAIC and DFSS is that DMAIC is useful in refining what already is in existence. DFSS is there at the beginning, and through interviews and analysis of feedback from clients, new procedures are designed and implemented from the beginning of the production process.

Paul Zane Pilzer, a leading economist, predicts that nearly half of the jobs people will have in the next five years haven’t even been invented yet. Today, over 90% of the jobs in the U.S. weren’t in existence when most of us were born.

What that tells me is that understanding the learning process is a major key to our future success. There are four stages of learning anything.

* Unconscious Incompetence This is when you don’t know that you don’t know how to do something. For instance, a young child isn’t aware that he doesn’t know how to drive a car.

* Conscious Incompetence In the second stage, you become aware you don’t know how to do something. You know that you don’t know. This awareness is critical. Attempting to drive a car without knowing how to drive a car could prove fatal.

* Conscious Competence The third stage is when we know how to do something, but it requires we be very much aware of what we’re doing.

To continue with our example, when you first learn how to drive a car, you must concentrate on blending the power, easing out the clutch, watching traffic and the many other skills that are part of operating an automobile.

* Unconscious Competence This is when you’ve reached a level of competency, which requires little or no thought. The skills are ingrained so deeply that you can talk, adjust the radio, open the window and think about your next presentation-all while orchestrating the direction, speed and performance of the car.

As we progress through the new millennium, being able to learn new skills and quickly access information will be critical to our success. Knowing how to learn will become one of our greatest assets.

Successful people usually are very social and outspoken people. If you are the kind of person who is shy, then it may affect your success. Lets take a look at some of the main causes of this shyness and how we can resolve it.

So what causes a person to be shy? There are various reasons for this. One common reason is the fear of making mistakes. People who are shy tend to have this innate fear of screwing things and up and so they would rather not particpate in talking to strangers or do certain things in order to avoid this potential embarrassment.

As a counterpoint, to be successful in life, one has to actually make a lot of mistakes before they arrive to success. This is something commonly observed among successful people. Of course one should also learn from their mistakes in order to benfit from it.

Some successful people when interviewed about how they became so successful would say that it was because they made ten times more mistakes then the average person. So if you are shy due to this reason, understand that making mistakes is not a bad thing if you can put it in perspective.

So besides knowing this, what ways are there to overcome shyness? One way is to join a group. It can be any group, so as long is something that you are interested in and enjoy doing. The key here is that you socialize and interact with the group members. Now, since the group members have common interests as you, it would be easier to talk to them. This is a great way to start getting comfortable in socializing.

Or if you prefer, you can take courses like languages or dancing. You not only pick up new skills and learn new things, but also get to interact with strangers and make new friends as well. Once you have a little bit of confidence and start to be less shy, you can challenge yourself a little more by making a pact with yourself: Getting to know a new person each day.

What you do is simply approach someone on the street or is sitting in a caf and introduce yourself. Just say Hi. You dont need to make a long conversation out of it. The key here is to get used to approaching strangers. Once you become comfortable with it, you can then try to prolong the introduction by making small talk. Small steps and incrmental improvement is the key here.

Are you having difficulty staying on task? Is it tempting for you to stray from your goals? Are you discouraged in your work life? Do your close relationships cause you pain and grief?

Still hunting is a practice used by Indian people. When Indian children are very young, their parents diligently teach them to still hunt.

Simply stated, Still hunting is the very act of sitting quietly and watching any living thing for a period of time; then going within and using meditation and prayer to determine what can be learned from what has been observed.

The well known pointillist, Ralph P. Brown, a Mohawk, related the following experience, which helped me gain some insight on my own actions. I offer it now, in the hope that it will help you, as well.

Ralph was charged with the responsibility of building the fire to heat the rocks that were to be used in a sweat lodge ceremony. The fire would require large sized logs to be stacked around the rocks. Whenever he performed this sacred task, he made every effort to start the fire from the inside, as close to the center and as near the rocks as possible.

On this occasion, when the fire was well underway, Ralph observed that there were beetles coming out from inside one of the logs. The heat had no doubt rousted the beetles from their hiding places. Ralph actually saw the beetles come out of the holes long enough to scamper around the log for a time.

Ralph was surprised by what he saw next: Even though the beetles had time to run down the logs and escape the consuming heat of the fire, they retreated into the holes from whence they came!

Ralph was puzzled by this beetle behavior, so he prayed during the ceremony for understanding. He shared with me what he was shown. We humans are not so different from the beetle in this way: each of us creates a safe place to be. This safe haven can be physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual in nature.

It is in these safe places we are comfortable. We feel these places we create are dependable, predictable. Just the way the beetle made a safe place in the log, we humans gravitate toward the familiar, the comfortable, whatever we think will protect us. Just like the beetles, we are creatures of habit. Change can seem painful and dangerous to us, even though not changing can snuff out our lives, as in the case of the beetles.

Ralph came away with new understanding. The little beetles had caused Ralph to examine his beliefs and look carefully at what could be trusted. He offered these probing questions:

1.In what shall we place our faith?

2.How could my own beliefs fail me?

Ralph also came away from the experience of still hunting with a profound sense of gratitude for the little brother who had sacrificed his life in order for Ralph to gain a better understanding of himself. Ralph told me that the beetles death was not in vain because of the lesson Ralph took from the experience. He said that by sharing the story with me, if I take something positive from it the sacrifice becomes even more meaningful. He encouraged me to share the story about the beetles with others, for if someone else takes something positive from the story, its value redoubles.

If you find it difficult to stay on task, is something about that task making you feel unsafe or uncomfortable? When you allow yourself to stray from the goals you have set, could it be because you are creating change that takes you out of your comfort zone? In your close relationships, are you feeling uncomfortable?

You might like to try still hunting for yourself. Simply sit quietly, watch any living thing for awhile. Then, go within. After making some observations of your own and praying for understanding you might gain some insight that will prevent you from sharing the fate of the beetles Ralph saw when he went still hunting.