If you’d like to fulfill your long-held dreams, try a radical approach. Radical people create their own breakthroughs for getting the job, love and health they really want. Nonconformists open to options for achieving “extraordinary” goals that others don’t see.

        Take Christopher Columbus for example. Columbus played outside the box. When conventional wisdom proclaimed as fact the world was flat, he held the extreme notion that he could sail over the edge and land in China instead of deep space. This rebel sailed his clipper ships where no one had ever gone before—and reshaped people’s view of the world!

Discovering Fresh Options

        Five centuries ago, Europeans reacted with disbelief when they heard that the world is round. So mind-blowing—and threatening to their current belief system—was the discovery that people wanted to discard the news as rubbish.

        What about enlightened people of the 21st century? If Columbus were to sail into our modern lives with revolutionary factual information about our world, would people believe him now? Let’s see how open we are!

        Besides demonstrating that the earth is round, Columbus made another equally mind-popping discovery. His revelation is about the power of cultural belief systems and how people see only what they believe they will see. And, like the Europeans, most people of our time want to discard Columbus’ radical news as rubbish.

        What information could be so extreme that our educators and media—our mythmakers—would try to exclude this vital data from schoolbooks and public knowledge?

A World of Beliefs

        Columbus’ arrival in the New World revealed how cultural belief systems determine what people see—or don’t see. Columbus found that the native people in this new land couldn’t see his clipper ships. The natives were unable to see the big ships because they didn’t believe that big ships existed!

You See What You Believe

        In 1492, Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola, now the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Until Columbus’ arrival, the islanders had only seen and heard of small boats—like their own canoes. The tribe had never seen nor heard of large ocean-going sea craft. So when the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria arrived, the natives couldn’t see the big ships of Christopher Columbus! And the vessels were floating in plain sight right off shore!

“I Don’t See Any Big Ships!”

        Why couldn’t the islanders see the big boats? Because nobody in their culture had ever seen big boats before. And nobody had ever written or talked about big boats in their society.

        In any culture, the mythmakers—teachers, historians and media—decide people’s reality. The specific world that mythmakers talk and write about determines the aspects of reality that people are able to perceive. The world that these storytellers talk and write about creates a belief system unique to each culture. And this belief system acts as a filter, screening out realities that don’t fit into the cultural conditioning of the society.