Life Success Habits

Have you noticed how some people just seem to have power exuding from them, whilst others follow the power rather than possess it. Why is that? I was just reflecting on self power after a recent incident in my own career where I turned down a consulting engagement because my last experience with this particular client was the only stressful experience of my working career. I promised myself at the time that i would never subject myself to that again.

After 18 months, they asked if i would once again help them with some strategic work. At first I considered it, but then during the discussions I realised warning bells that sounded far too familiar. It’s not always easy to turn away work, but turning this one down was far more satisfying that any financial recompense could provide. I realised that I was also feeling something else – power. Not the arrogant maniacal power, but a deep inner self power. It made me realise that in the previous situation I gave my power away, and in doing so lost control of the outcome. Not so this time. I was prepared to accept the outcome and had the power to say yes or no. And in doing so it felt fantastic.

We are all born with power – during our lives we make constant choices as to whether keep it or give it away. Its like a bank account – when we do empowering things – perform well with our work, make good decisions, lead with compassion, we are topping up our power account. When we let others undervalue us, mislead us in our negotiations, fail to deliver to a promise, we draw down on that account. Its so easy in life as we try to please those around us to keep making withdrawals and not topping up.

I have had a year of massive change in my life – and many of the secure elements of my life from which I drew self power were cut away. After a year of rebuilding my life, I feel more self power than I have in years. And this time, I am going to keep my account in a much healthier state.

I had a set back this morning – in the big scheme of things it is only minor. Simply another $1200 for no real gain, but a necessary evil. Yet for some reason it has gutted me – it frustrates me. Why? Is it because it reinforces a self-sabotaging perspective that everything I do is a struggle. Even when it shouldn’t be. Is it really that EVERYTHING is a struggle, or does it just seem that way? Am I giving too much weight to the things that don’t go smoothly, and not enough focus on those which do? Am I simply attracting more struggle because I sort of now expect it.

I decided to ‘get out of state’ by going for a quick walk and planning how I was going to overcome another struggle I am having with formatting some Kindle ebooks – it seems that Amazon is doing everything it can to incorporate all the whizz bang multi media elements into Kindle books, but one cannot simply format up headings and lists in a way that is pleasing to the eye. This is not uncommon in the world of technology – everybody wants to provide the super smart features at the expense of the basics. So I have had to pull back my desire to give the reader a thoroughly pleasant reading experience and give them unformatted bullet lists and headings that cannot be linked to via the device controls. Hardly an ideal product but one that Amazon had unfortunately deemed acceptable.

During my walk I decided to come back to my office and invest 2 hours in attempting to get at least one Kindle book published to a reasonable standard. Yet, I got back here with my gut in a knot, not wanting to take on another problem for the day that was going to deliver a less than satisfying outcome. So I decided to play one game of FreeCell. During the game, I realised that things were not going to work out and had to back out of a few steps and try again. It struck me that I could calmly [and even enjoyably] tolerate the struggle and multiple attempts during a game, yet for work purposes I would feel anxious and tend towards procrastination.

How could I approach these tasks in the same way I do my game. After all, I have agreed with myself that I will surrender and let life happen through me and not to me as outlined in my previous post. Just saying it allowed all the anxiety to drop away. I reframed my 2 hour tasks as an ‘attempt’ to resolve the Kindle issue, rather than expect any outcome. This may sound like I am accepting failure – but for me at the moment, failure is not trying. By giving it an honest attempt to get a good outcome in two hours I am succeeding by overcoming my anxiety and my procrastination and learning to attack problems with a different focus. I am gamifying the task. It’s all a matter of perception and finding a state where the energy flows.

Wish me luck !

After years of hard work and struggle I realised that there was something wrong with the ‘formula for life’ I was using. For 35 years, everything went great – I knew where I was going, and why. I knew what I wanted to do and things just happened. But then I got my turn at the flip side. For the next 20 years my life turned into a turmoil of constant struggle. In the last few years I decided enough was enough – my current state just wasn’t working. I needed to make a change. I was working hard, had more chaos than I could handle, and didn’t seem to be able to make progress. Fortunately, I decided that the main thing to focus on was keeping healthy. So on that level, things were going okay. I had an accident with my arm that put me out of work, with no financial help inspite of years of cover payments, and not able to work or sleep. Things just went from bad to worse….until I took back control – I said STOP. I am not playing this game any more.

I focused on what I could do – not couldn’t do

If something go too hard – it was not meant to be.

I surrendered!!

It took a lot of courage to let life go, but I realised that unless I let life happen through me, it would happen to me. Through me is much calmer, joyous and for some reason better. I let go a very high income, I let go financial security, but I also let go the pain of life.

Things are turning around for me. It is early days…but I feel lighter than I have in years. I feel less anxiety than I have at years. I feel happy, really happy. I cannot explain it, and I am sure many will say I am just running away from reality. My answer to them is…you are absolutely right – I am running away from trying to create my reality, and just living my reality instead….and it is truly wonderful!!!

There will be no more struggle for me.

Over the past few months I recognized that in spite of trying very hard to get my life back on track, I was still being bombarded with far too many major hurdles. Since I was attempting to instigate a building project, I was expecting things to be difficult – after all, they always are with building. The trouble was, I was having major difficulties that were outside the norm, and totally from left field.

So, anticipating the arrival of a new member of my family, I decided to step back from my life for a bit and just immerse myself in enjoying this new little person in my life. After 6 weeks of sheer happiness, I realized I had to return to the tatters of my life and pick up the threads again. But what to do now?

Firstly, I recognized that after a 2.5 year slog to get this project underway, it just didn’t seem to want to happen – was the Universe trying to tell me I wasn’t meant to be doing this? Finally, I decided to listen, and put a line through it…..at least for now.

I spent the next week reorganizing my energy – not my physical energy, which is always great – but my mental energy. I had tried everything else to get my life back on track, except let go. It seemed that the harder I tried, the greater I died. So I focused on my meditative yoga, on being grateful, on engaging in feeling loving towards myself and my life.

Aghh!!…sounds great, but I had a whole range of decisions to make. Major decisions. Stressful decisions.

Fortunately, I was financially okay to take the time to step back again, but I knew that I was slipping back financially way beyond my friends and family so I couldn’t rest there too long.  But getting stressed out was not going to help.

I decided to give myself a break. I set a plan that I would only make ONE major decision a week.

Week 1 – I must decide what to do about the building project – DONE

Week 2 – I will make the decision as to how i would rebuild my capital – DONE

Week 3 – I would decide where i would live for the next 3-5 years – DONE

Week 4 – I would purchase a new car [that was this week] – DONE

Week 5 – I will decide which of the many income earning opportunities I have that I will pursue

Week 6 – I will celebrate all my successes, then decide which decisions I need to make over the coming 6 weeks….and start all over again.

To start with it felt strange – how could I possibly make good progress just focusing on thing at a time. I normally have 4-5 balls in the air, having just one felt like a holiday – it no longer felt like work; I had the time to do the research, get out in the field and suss things out. It was actually FUN!!! It was important that I keep only my own counsel – as it seemed to be others that kept screwing up my life, and I was letting them have too much influence on my decisions. It doesn’t always pay to ask others for help.

THE RESULT  – Every week I have achieved my goal. These are major life decisions – but by tackling them one by one, and only giving myself ONE WEEK to make the decision was actually an achievable deadline because I DIDN’T HAVE ANYTHING ELSE I HAD TO THINK ABOUT.

It was sort of a freedom to think. I could free my mind to think of nothing else but that one goal.

And the funny thing is, that opportunities started falling into my lap. I would need some information that is not always freely available, and bang, next day there was an email for a free seminar, on just that top – that saved me a week of research right there. I would decide to do a short consulting project to get enough cash to live for the next 12 months, and got phoned to see if I was available for a 6 week project…and on and on.

This week was my ‘buy a car’ week – sure, I have been watching the market for a few months, and sifting out the options until i got down to at least ONE make and 2 models. It was now just doing a bit of research and seeking out the best car and offer available. Then,out of the blue, my son-in-law arrives in the country for a couple of days for work…….and he just happens to be an expert in BMW’s. I was tossing up between the economy of a 318i 4 cylinder or the power of the 320 6 cyclinder. Having driven a 6 cyl Mercedes most of my life, I resisted the thought of dropping down to a 4 cylinder, but my mothers little 318 really gets around nicely, and I hardly go beyond the city these days. I had previously looked at the 325i longingly, with its executive fitout, but it was out of my target price range, so hadn’t given it too much more attention. My son-in-law suggested I look again at the 325 as it was his previous car and he reckoned it was the best he had ever had [including the M3 he has now].

So I get back home and onto the car websites – and bang, a 325 that i had seen earlier in the week was just reduced $3000. Still a couple of thousand above my target price, but at that price it was worth a look, and it was worth the additional investment.

I decided next morning to phone the dealer, and if it was still there I would go down to take it for a spin, and if i liked it I wouldn’t even go to look at the other 5 cars I had on my list to view that day. It was….so I immediately got down there, went for a test drive, paid a deposit and booked in a pre-purchase check. Today, I drove that car home!!!

The message I am wanting to share here  is that when I stopped struggling, the struggling stopped. When I stepped back, instead of things not getting done, they seem to have got done faster than if I was intensely active working on every detail. In not trying to force things to happen, I somehow seemed to create room for things to come to me more easily. There are a whole raft of small things that have happened that I haven’t shared here, and it is only early days – but six weeks is a fair amount of time – and I am having one great opportunity come my way after another. New people, new business opportunities, new insights….

I have stopped planning every detail of what i need to do to achieve a goal – I decide what I want, by when, and then trust the Universe will deliver. I just need to be open and watchful for the opportunities when the arrive, and be willing to take action on them when they do. It’s what all the books on attraction talk about, but until now I couldn’t crack the code. Long may it last.

I have opened and raised my attraction energy. I am happier. I am receiving more. I am loving it!

Believe to Receive

Nina

P.S If you have a similar experience, please share it with us….it really helps raise the whole world’s energy.

“When you are on the Titanic, you lower the lifeboats. You don’t spend time yelling at the iceberg.”

When facing real disasters we tend to act with a rationality devoid of other less perilous situations. Why is this? Because as we go back down the scale our ego gets more involved. Real danger triggers the flight or fight response, whereas lesser situations do not engage this part of the brain, and allow the frontal cortex [ the judgement area] to consider alternatives. Many of these options involve the ego – and that’s usually what is behind poor decision making.

Whether it is personal decisions or business decisions, approaching every event with clarity and a sense of the present brings about the best results. Engaging in past memories or patterns links past emotions to the current event. Future expectations links fear or greed – both of which change the balance of consideration we apply to our decisions.

The more one operates in the present – the more objective one can be.

Life is like a pair of shoes. We chose a life style that seems appropriate at the time – we wear it well – but often fail to notice when the style no longer serves us.  Just as we wouldn’t expect a child to continue wearing a pair of shoes they have outgrown, that no longer suit them, we must also update our shoes.

Our shoes serve a useful purpose – so does our life style. However, it seems much easier to recognize when it is time to discard a pair of shoes, when they no longer serve us, when they are too small or looking too shabby, than it is to discard a chosen style of living when it no longer serves us.

We need to be aware that we need to update our life as often as we update our shoes. When we buy a pair of shoes, we don’t go out seeking to replace the exact same pair – we seek to improve the quality, the style, the comfort. To continue to grow as a person we must do the same with our lives. If we keep wearing the same tired life, it gets outdated – we may not notice but everyone else sure does.

Don’t keep wearing the same outdated life – think about how you have grown, and continually update your life to better suit the person you are today.

If you continue to stay the same you are not only a sorry old pair of shoes – you are are a sorry outdated person.

Give yourself permission to grow – give yourself space to grow. Just like you update your childrens shoes as they grow.

I would like to share the message I received this morning from Mike Litman – sorry Mike I cannot link to your email, but I can certainly credit you with this interesting bit of wisdom.

Mike related how just 8 years ago when he thought he was so ready for the big time – today he realises he would have been mediocre at best. The reason – his habits of his current level would not support this higher level of success. I think this is very profound – Mike recognized that every level of income demands a different you.

I guess I relate so closely to that as I have previously had a very high income, and a high lifestyle. Since the accident with my arm, I have had to let my business fall away, along with my income – and yes, also the lifestyle. I have had to create a new me in the reverse direction. If I had tried to continue my previous “me” – my finances today would be a disaster, instead of just my wardrobe and social life.

As Mike said “ Every level of income demands a different you. You can’t build a $100,000 a year income inside a $20,000 a year mind. You can’t build a powerful mind inside a house filled with weak habits. You can’t build a organized life inside a chaotic and scattered mind…You just can’t.”

Just as I paid the price as I advanced up with each level of my business success, I have had to pay the price and adapt my life habits with the demise of that success. This was not easy, as many people with the economic disaster have also found. Many of those people will just not slow down and stop long enough to recognize exactly how they need to change.

This message works on both sides of the success. The new habits to support the new life stage need to support that stage. And before you get to the next one you need to start adapting, ahead of the change. So if you are on the way up – ask yourself “who do I need to be to double my success, double my income or double my happiness. If you have hit a major bump – ask yourself “who do I need to be to survive this, who do I need to be to recover and who do I need to be to find some value in this experience”?

• What habits do you need to replace or change?
• What decisions do you need to make?

And as Mike signed off – you don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going.

Thank you Mike for coaching me today.

I have been struggling recently to understand why I don’t seem to be able to move forward with any of several good ideas I have for making a good income. After a rather insignificant accident with my arm – that lead to significant impact on my ability to drive or use a computer, my consulting career came to a screaming halt. Since this happened when I was on holiday, I was not able to claim any ACC income support. This left me with 3 years of a series of painful procedures that did little to remedy the tendon injury to my elbow. During this time I did what I could to find ways to work within my limitations – but 10 minutes every 2 hours at a computer wasn’t going to get me far. I tried to stay positive and focus on the things i could do – phone friends and family to offer support in any way I could, think how I might change my business to avoid long periods of scrolling [I could handle typing okay, but not anything that required reading through large documents. I wrote a few books – I just couldn’t edit them down for many months later. Although this resulted in a successful outcome, it wasn’t replacing my previous high income by any means [but it was keeping me fed].

I became so successful at doing the best I could – and being happy anyway, that when the time came to get back into the game I couldn’t motivate myself. I still had cash in the bank [which is meant to be applied to repairing my home] – so I started to wonder whether I was just too comfortable slinking down to my home office in my trackies, and pulling down whatever capital reserve I needed each month to pay the bills. Every business opportunity I researched that showed incredible promise is still sitting in my computer drive, instead of my bank account. I was self-sabotaging. The fear of knowing that these businesses would be successful would mean I would have to get back out into the world – getting into the rat race morning traffic, grooming myself up in expensive suits to look professional, not getting my midday walk in the sun, dealing with people I really don’t want to deal with.

So how do I get out of this rut – the first step has been taken, I will cover that off in my next blog.

Are you also sabotaging your own success?

Once of the biggest reasons people are not successful is that they give up too early.

Being successful takes persistent effort, and that persistence comes from your own level of motivation. This is why it is important to work in something that you are passionate about. Tough times are the best times every for entrepreneurs.

So work this simple formula:

1. Find your passion
2. Build a great team of people
3. Stay with it

And remember – Most people give up just before they make it big. You just have to outlast the pack to be amongst the best in your field.

Clothe your mind in the right thoughts every morning, just as you clothe your body. Don’t enter the world of negativity naked – know who you are, what you value, where you are going right now and what helps you get there. Keep your mind clothed in positive feelings, activities, people and sensory stimulus.

You wouldn’t let go outside on a cold wintery day naked, we protect our bodies by wrapping them in clothing that protects us from harsh elements. Yet, every day we let destructive forces rip into our minds – because we didn’t do what we needed to do to protect it.

So, design a wardrobe of positive affirmations that remind you of your current purpose in life and what’s important to you – choose from it every morning as part of your daily get-ready routine.

Your Action – design a wardrobe of positive affirmations that support you, and choose from it every morning as part of your daily get-ready routine.