We obsess about the bad things. Well I do anyway. I can have 30 people say something nice to me and I focus on the one person who was shitty with me. God help me if I start reading blog comments. This is super common, I know everyone does this but this is a great way to sabotage your success and sow your brain with seeds of doubt.
So I spend a lot of time these days working on my mindset and retraining my habits. I’m re-programming my brain to be geared toward positivity, not naïveté, but belief that I can accomplish my goals by putting in the appropriate work and learning the needed skills to succeed at it. This involves daily meditation repeated focus on affirmations but also regular meetings with my mentor and team, reading, and podcasts.
One of the people whose videos I watch a lot (he posts them almost daily) are Eric Worre. The other day, he was talking about a mentor of his, Jim Rohn – an entrepreneur, an author and a motivational speaker who wrote books like The Art of Exceptional living. You may not be familiar with his name but you’ve heard his quotes, trust me.
In the video I watched for the third time today Eric Worre went over three points that Jim Rohn shared with him that changed his life and his perspective.
- For things to change you need to change. For things to get better, you have to get better.
This is the reason that in the business I’m developing, all successful training focuses intensely on the entrepreneurs personal development. You only really succeed when you learn how to do things differently than you have been. Basically, if I’m now where I want to be yet, what I’ve been doing, which got me where I am, is probably not going to get me to somewhere new. So my attitude, skills, thinking and level of belief in what I’m doing need to change.
- Success isn’t something you pursue, it’s something you attract by being the person you become. So basically, I need to become more attractive, get stronger and better then I don’t have to chase success and be desperate.
Desperation is never sexy, but confidence is intoxicating. What this means for me is spending time with people who have achieved the success that I am working toward. It changes your belief in what is possible. When success is just an amorphous idea rather than a real experience, it is easier to give up and believe I’ll never get there. When someone, or several someones, say yes, you can do it, if you are willing to do the work you can get there too. It makes it more feasible. The belief imbued by surrounding yourself with people who know without question, that what you are working on can be done, eliminates doubt and makes it more about putting the time in and doing the work. It boosts your belief in yourself and your journey. This means you move through the world with a surety that makes your path clear to the people you talk to, they can see where you’re going when you do.
- Formal education will get you a paycheck. Self-education will make you a fortune. When you stop learning, you start dying.
This is all about personal responsibility. Whatever your level of education, the work you put into building yourself and utilizing the tools you gather, helps shape your success. Thinking outside the box, growing your projects, or building a new business, all take learning new skills and new ways to see things.
As I go through this process, building my own pathway to freedom I am noticing themes. One of them is the recommendation to start by reading a minimum of 10 pages a day, at that rate you can get through a 300 page book in a month. Reading opens your mind to new tools, skills and ways of thinking. One of the common threads between some of the most successful people in the world is that they read voraciously. Many of the people I’ve been following lately read a minimum of two books a week. I had to stop and think about that: people who run massive organizations, multiple businesses and make ridiculous money prioritize taking the time out of every busy day to learn something new that will help them grow. It reminds me of the phrase “The more I learn the less I know”.
So I’m learning daily, to walk in the footprints left by people who have made it where I want to go and sharing the information along the way to make the path open to anyone else who wants to put the work in. There’s room for everyone out here if you are hungry enough to do the work for the freedom it offers.