The Stevie G. Success Show Notes
Episode SGS-0025 – Marisela Jimenez – Own Your Life: Challenge Accepted
Welcome to Episode 25 of The Stevie G. Success Show where we help you live more, play more, and rock the world. We have a fabulous guest interview for you today with Marisela Jimenez, a trainer, consultant and expert on the subject of emotional intelligence which is essentially the study of how we process and react from or control our emotions.
Before we embark on that journey, I want to talk briefly about the power of our choices and owning the life we create based upon those choices. We have said it before, that until about the age of 7, your decisions are primarily made for you, or at least heavily influenced by your parents, guardians, teachers and other adults. Based upon all that training, conditioning, and programming you begin forming beliefs about how the world is, how people behave, and how things are supposed to be.
As you continue to experience life, you become exposed to other people and situations which may mirror the beliefs that you already have about a certain topic, and therefore your existing belief is strengthened. Other times you may encounter people whose beliefs contradict your own and you have a choice to make. The choice is to accept their belief as accurate or better than your own and use it to change or modify what you believe; you can choose to disregard their belief altogether convicted that yours is the correct way to believe on that topic; or, you can acknowledge their belief and continue on with your life believing the way you do and allowing them to believe how they choose.  Now those are not the only 3 reactions that one might have, there could and are certainly variances among the choices that I described.
Of the 3 types of responses that I have presented, the majority of people will react by attacking directly or indirectly the beliefs held by the other person, and will even argue with you in an effort to show you how wrong you are. There are several causes for this, one is preservation. They are so committed to their own beliefs that they disallow any other thoughts or ideas that conflict with theirs. We may recognize this as pride, ego, stubbornness, superiority and the like but in reality it’s part of the survival mechanism. Those people who attack your beliefs and argue to change them have become so identified with their own beliefs they are afraid to change or alter their beliefs because to do so will cause them to lose their identity.
Now, whatever you currently believe about love, religion, politics, money, sex, humanity, spirituality or whether you should be single, married, pursue a career, be a stay at home parent, have kids, do not have kids, or whatever you believe about any other subject, is just a belief.  These are beliefs that have developed over time based I upon information that you have received about that subject.  Not everyone has the same beliefs that you have because they have received different input or different programming. Even for siblings for example that grew up in the same household, under the same influences, they see, feel, and process things differently, hence it is not unusual for these people as close as they are to have differing beliefs about the same topic.
Do you remember that once upon a time there was a segment of the population that believed that the world was flat?  I can assure you that if we traveled back in time and spoke to some of those people, and explained to them what we know today about our planet, they would not believe us. They would not believe us because the only truth they would accept, is what they believe about the world -- that it was flat. It was not until someone provided direct evidence that some became willing to dismantle their beliefs and create a new one. And then, little by little the information spread and as more people became aware of the incontrovertible evidence that the world was round and not flat,