Your greatest obstacle to success is not what you have been told that it is! Forget the labels that have been placed on you by your parents, teachers, peers or neighbors. You are about to see in full color the sinister villain that is holding you back! This will be true regardless of physical, emotional or other so-called limitation.

Experiences and observations over a lifetime have taught me that your number one enemy in the fight for success is the dastardly bad guy called history! All too often we define ourselves based on faulty logic. Rather than orienting our minds on our future self, the one we ‘can and should be’ based upon our ongoing accumulation of experience, education and personal growth, we make assumptions based on past performance either entirely or enough to do ourselves great harm.

I think you have likely heard the commercials for the gold investment or stock broker company before. Usually, no matter what they sound like, they end in similar fashion. They tell you to read the prospectus information carefully because… ‘Past performance is not a guarantee of future results.” That is the general gist of their disclaimer.

I have a news flash for you. The same applies to our lives! Just because your past is filled with failure, setback or less than favorable results is or should not be any indicator of what your future should be like.

Learn from your failures and shortcomings. Gather educational resources to intellectually help you overcome areas that need improvement. If it is a physical or other disability that stands in your way, find others with similar situations that have already overcome them and devour every bit of information about how they did it as you can.

As for the ‘voices’ or ‘images’ from your past that haunt you, it is time to do precisely what the title of this article suggests, you must assassinate your history! What do I mean by this? As long as we continue to entertain these voices, thoughts, images, etc., you will keep alive the very things that have kept you from fulfilling your purpose. With the deadly accuracy of a sniper, we need to focus like a laser on the history that haunts us. In practical terms, how do we do this? Action! Stop worrying, over-thinking and deliberating and take some definite action towards your goals. Silence the voices by recognizing them and killing them off with immediate ‘replacement therapy.’ By this I mean, launch a counter-attack of positivity. For example, when the thought of you can’t do this or that enters your mind because you tried it before comes up, have a response ready. Instead say to yourself, “that was then, this is now.” I now know better what not to do. I have armed myself with, or am currently arming myself with information, education and experiences that will give me an advantage this time.

Definite, repeated, positive action will put down the negative history and begin to reveal the more positive, desired future. There is no other way around your history. Feed it, it lives. Kill it, and replace it, it is gone forever and you change your future. And one last news flash, there is a strange peace, satisfaction and sometimes even excitement that comes in the immediate here and now when you take this step. True the full fruition of the changes you make today can take time to unfold. But, rejoice in and savor the present satisfaction that comes from moving in the right direction, no matter how small the start. It is said the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. Go ahead, take it today!