Life Success Habits

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.

The true personality of a person does not surface when everything is great – it surfaces when the chips are down. For some, the drama doesn’t need to be happening to them – they are happy to dwell in the pity pit with anyone who will invite them in. Some people just love a drama.

I realized this recently when I had a bit of a set back and happened to share it in passing with a long time friend. I was happy to acknowledge the event as a passing life experience and move forward on to chatting about more positive things that had happened since we last talked. But they wanted to know more – making sympathetic agonizing comments and asking question that would have me going deeper into the negative feelings I must be experiencing, how terrible it must be. I suddenly realised they were getting a buzz out of this – they loved the drama, fed on it, almost  desperately needed it. These are the people that love helping you at the bottom of the cliff.

Then there are those who see you at the bottom and give you a helping hand to the top. The people that some may judge unfairly as being unsympathetic. Who, instead of helping you linger in your loss or desperation, help you start taking action to turn things around – who encourage you with positive, reinforcing words. The matter of fact approach – shit happens, but lets focus on getting you out of the pit.

The ones that want to help you at the bottom, are the ones you want to get OUT of your life. The ones that want to help you get back to the top are your guiding stars, the heros of you life. You want to love them, keep them, cherish them and thank them. They are the ones who truly care about you.

The term ‘faith’ generally conjures up a religious connection, yet it is not connected to religion at all. In many ways, organized religion is just a vehicle to have faith. Faith can be derived from many avenues, different Gods or the universe itself. I am not a great believer in organized religion –  for the crimes it has committed on itself over thousands of years, and because it is the source of destructive fervor by those whom become fanatical – leading to war, terrorism and unspeakable acts of inhuman action.

However, I am a believer in universal energy, in having faith, and the connection between the mind, body and universe – what one deems as quantum physics. Everything is formed by energy matter, and we are all connected at various levels through vibrations emitted by different forms of energy matter. I have personally experienced some amazing ‘coincidences’ when I gained a connection with a higher energy and asked for that which I desired. I have also suffered from a lack of connection.

When things in your life just seem to fall apart, no matter how hard you try, and no matter how many times you pick yourself up and start out again in a different avenue, there comes a point when not only your drive to succeed dissolves, but your spirit is broken. This is the time when we need to call upon the universe the most. You need to be rescued, so you need to make the call to be saved. Start scripting some bold statements. Statements of firm resolve not to be defeated by negative emotions and circumstances. Start creating an escape path. By leveraging the universe you can do all the things you want – just stake your claim, don’t give up and ask to be saved.

This is when you must put down all the baggage you are carrying and let the universe carry it for a while. You need to regain your faith by connecting with the universal energy flow as say to yourself:

I will [INSERT SUCCESS ACTION]. So I shall be saved.

Repeat this statement adding in all the deeds of action you must perform to be successful in your current goal. And then trust that the universe will support your goals. It renews your strength.

Too often we worry about not achieving our lifes purpose – yet the only day that really matters is the day you know you are going to die, and that day is only one day in the thousands that precede it, so save that worrying thought for that special day and live in the moment of today.

Yesterday was history, tomorrow is mystery, but today is the day that you can change your life.

The Economic Research Institute recently reported that the average total compensation of the highest paid executives at U.S. public companies fell 4 percent for the year ended in November 2008. With top executives receiving compensation packages worth an average of  $17,760,518, this represented a cut of around $700,000. Whilst I would darely love to be receiving this sort of remmuneration for my many, many invaluable skills and shining personality, I can’t muster up a lot of sympathy for this outcome.

It does raise the question again though – how fair are executive packages?  Should such levels of remmuneration even exist?

Would love to hear your thoughts?