Life Success Habits

So your sales are down 30 percent.

You have to choose how to move forward with your business. You can focus on all the downsides and reduce your business to meet the market – or you can choose to build on past achievements and current profitable capabilities.

This choice of mind set changes you from React > Rebound > Build Momentum

Your focus is now on assets, not deficits.

Start with yourself – your personal assets, relationships and situational assets. Magnify what is best – and focus on what is next.

Tell yourself that your motto is to ‘Try’ not ‘Deny’. And tell yourself at least twice a day for 21 days.
When your vision is focused, your assets will align and you can identify what you can grow and what has to go. Start each day with what is possible, with what you want. Be guided by the vision and evaluate each action towards its power to move your forward towards your goal or back.

Each of us, little by little create the perfect storm. The only difference is that you either create a good storm or a bad storm.

When things get tough – small businesses and large businesses alike feel the pain. Employees and owners share the same feelings of being scared, insecure, and financially exposed. Most businesses have surplus capacity during downturns and things need to get pared down quickly, otherwise capital is wasted in the wrong areas.

The seven secrets to surviving tough times include:

1. Attitude – you are totally in contol of that. It won’t stop crappy stuff happening, but it will help you get through it faster.
2. Communication – keep employees informed so they feel trusted and valued. Communicate with your market so they know you are the best.
3. Loyalty to your team – every success depends on a great team. This is two way loyalty. If you look after your team well during good times – they are more likely to have your back in tough times
4. Systems – get focused on processes for product development, and financial management
5. Controls – ensure you have a reliable feedback system so you know what results you are getting
6. Production – focus on product innnovation, not big scale innovation and ensure service delivery is well optimised
7. Quality – during times of information explosion it is difficult to distinguish the real from the reactionary. Ensure your business intelligence systems are filtering information correctly.

This is a great time to tighten up the sloppy areas of your business. When the market starts recovering you will be the more efficient machine to take adavantage of it

Have you ever noticed that when you really want something and you fully intend to have it or achieve it you feel stronger, more energetic. This is the difference between an intention and a ‘wish’.

Intention is driven by spiritual passion. It drives action. If you really want something it makes you feel physically and mentally stronger.

But you intentions can be blocked by your internal beliefs. For instance, if you don’t believe you deserve to prosper, your belief system will sabotage your intentions.

Your intentions are also guided by your destiny. When you are on the right path for YOUR destiny, you retain your energy and focus. When you turn from your destiny – your body feels suffocated.

If your actions feel comfortable, they are moving you forward towards your goals. If you feel stiffled or depressed, you are likely moving away from your purpose.

Thus, you must control the messages being sent to your mind – make them mindful, not mindless. Whatever you want, without exception, is because you think you will feel better for having it. It’s not the money, car, person you want – its the feelings that you think you are oging to get that you want.

Recognise yourself as valuable.

Treat yourself as wonderful.

Act as valuable.

Receive as Valuable

In this way, you train the world how to treat you.

We are all connected – our hopes and dreams are reflected back in each others eyes. We cannot reach our destiny alone, because our destiny is joined to that of others.

We sometimes feel alone in our struggles to achieve our goals and can be quite hard on ourselves when things don’t turn out as planned. However, we must remember that our journey is never done in solitude. Every action we take impacts someone else, regardless of how unaware we are of that impact. Our words and actions may inspire someone to follow, our choices reflect the knowledge we have collected from others.

No matter what your path – there is most likely someone who has trodden it before you. The energy they leave behind for you to reap is in their knowledge and wisdom to help your journey just that much easier than those before you. And your contributions make it easier for those whom follow.

The message is to not try to do it alone – tap into the collective wisdom there for all to share. Never before have we been so priviledged to have knowledge at our fingertips, in our homes 24×7.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help – it does not lessen the magnitude of your success, it just makes you wiser.

It is commonly held that when we apply effort we get rewarded. A trait common to really successful people is that they have ‘meaningful work’ embedded in their consciousness.

For instance, before the Beatles became a worldwide sensation they played in a Hamburg strip club 8 hour sets, 7 nights a week. During this time they taught themselves to be a great band. By the time they got to USA they had played together 1200 times. What made them special was that they were willing to play 8 hour sets 7 times a week as a single band. Together they put in meaningful effort that most other people would not.

In 1969, Bill Gates as a 13 year old school boy spend hours at the school teletype doing real time programming – when no one else was doing real time programming. He threw his heart and soul into it and never left the room, running up huge computer bills.

Another computer magnate, Paul Allen found there was a mainframe computer at the University of Washington that was not being used from 2am – 6am weekday mornings. So sneaking out his bedroom window he spent every weekday early morning stealing computer time!!

Each of these world successes put in time and effort that most others would not endure. That’s what separated them from the masses following in their wake.

Today I want to talk with you about learning to gain better control over your mental state and how to engage your mental performance supply chain to prepare your brain for the right action. The four main supply elements our brain needs daily for peak performance are:

1. Exercise
2. Relaxation
3. Quality sleep
4. Good nutrition

Until it becomes an ingrained habit to supply all four of these elements to our bodies we cannot attain a state of optimised health and wellbeing. We cannot reach a state where our brain is fully equipped to manage our emotions, thoughts and behaviour.

When faced with unexpected demands for fast and clear decision making, we need to engage a clear mental state ‘in the moment’. This means you must restrain your learned emotional response : outburst, fear and panic. The first effect of this response is a physical one, so our control mechanism must also first be physical: Breathe out, slow your mind and your pulse, and pay attention to your heart.

Once you have reached a physical state of calmness, you need to engage your cognitive capability – controlling your thoughts – and focus on some positive element of the situation. Even if this is generic as appreciating the opportunity to find a better way to do something. Focus on what can be learned from this situation. This help you find the silver lining. It also helps you respond calmly and positively.

Evoking this controlled response takes some practice. After all, you are trying to overcome a lifetime of learned response behaviour. So start practising with less challenging situations where you can be more mechanical in adopting your controlled response, just as you would if you were engaging a physical challenge.

One of my favourites is when stuck in traffic. In many of us this evokes a stress response, But instead, see this as a moment in time that you have to yourself and relinquish control. It’s about accepting that there are moments in life you simply cannot control despite your good intentions.

Practicing with interactions with children is another rewarding environment – in fact with any close personal relationship.

The result of this practice is that you develop the emotional flexibility, strength and capacity to respond readily to times of diversity and you quickly learn to recognise how much power you have over the way you feel. For instance if you feel tired, you can dial up a wave of exuberance and passion about the task you are currently working on. If you are irritated and angry in a traffic jam, activate care and compassion. Sit there are try to imagine where all the other people are going. They may have some personal emergency – whereas you are only late for a meeting. I’m not try to suggest this is an easy thing – it takes a very strong will to break a habit that has taken a lifetime to perfect and one that results in a vicious spiral of negative emotion.

The result of this old response is a downward spiral of negative emotions focused on how bad things can get – as if they had already happened. So many of us worry more about what might happen that what is actually happening. A lot of you will know the book – How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. The author talks about living in day tight compartments, visualising the very worst possible outcome, building the resolve to accepting that – then everything better than that is a bonus and not to be stressed over. It really helps put things in perspective.

One of the surprising outcomes of adopting your new mental performance response state is that you start welcoming more challenges, strong challenges that would have sent you into a frenzy of anxiety. You start to appreciate the change in focus and the heightened state of awareness you feel.

Are you finding that in spite of all the success seminars and goal setting that you are just not reaching the level of success you desire?

Is the road to riches proving to be much harder going than you ever imagined?

Maybe you are aiming for the wrong thing, or going about it the wrong way. If you are struggling to make progress, it is likely a sign that you are not operating in accordance with your wealth DNA.

Your wealth DNA is a mixture of your natural skills, your personality type, the way you tackle a problem and the way you relate to people. If you are a naturally systematic type of person, yet you have chosen a business or career path that relies heavily on gaining the co-operation of others – you may have picked the wrong path. Alternatively, you may be doing the wrong role in the pursuit of that goal.

A new section on LifeSuccessHabits.com looks at your Wealth Profile. It outlines how each of us is coded with a particular wealth DNA. By aligning your road to your dreams with your wealth DNA you are opening the right channels of energy to work with you, instead of against you.

Find out your Wealth DNA here

When things get really tough it is easy to slip into the negative zone that we all experience from time to time. With the global economic situation declaring that things will be a little different for the
next few years we can start managing the situation right now. And the first thing to do is to start rephrasing your words into positive rather than negative perspectives.

For instance, I could have written the above sentence as “with the global economic crisis declaring that we are heading for a depression that will last more than 3 years“. You get my drift. It’s not an attempt to ignore what reality we are dealing with, but choosing to send the signals to our brain in positive terms. We may need to make adjustments in the next few years – sure, I can cope with that. But I wouldn’t cope anywhere near as well if I continue to listen to every media event spelling out doom, crisis, depression, recession etc.

If you have to tighten things economically, think in terms of managing credit, rather than managing debt.

It may be a small thing to do, but the impact can be significant. Try it for a few days. It can be quite revealing as to how often you phrase sentences in negative terms instead of chosing a more positive spin.

After all, one of your goals is ‘happiness’ right? So choose words that support your goals.

Let me know how you get on!!

Often we believe we fear failure, when in reality we fear success. This poem by Marianne Williamson from her book A Return to Love was worth sharing:

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate,
but that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.
It is not just in some; it is in everyone.

And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.

So just why is it that other people make us feel unacceptable for succeeding – and we join in by responding in kind.

I am sure you have heard the saying “Old habits die hard” – but fortunately with the right effort, they do die. Most people trying to change a habit attempt to go at is hard and fast and burn out their efforts in the first 10 to 14 days.

The only way to kill a habit that has taken a lifetime to build, is to spend a lifetime killing it. Now this may seem a bit strange to you – but consider this. If you tell yourself you are going on a diet – guess what you end up thinking about every waking hour. Tell yourself you are going to improve your nutrition so that by nourishing your body it will better serve you, longer [and look better] – and the only time you think of it is when you are faced with a food choice. The difference is amazing…and you end up losing weight.

By thinking in lifetime terms, your investment starts smaller, but lasts longer. Its like investing in slower return blue chip stocks, instead of the high return ones that crash within 3 years.

You need to give your brain time to accustom to the changes in your thinking, and in your body. Choosing the right conscious path triggers the right subconscious feelings, emotions and eventually habits. This is the key to self mastery in every aspect of your life.

You need to become aware of what thoughts and messages you send to yourself trigger the right and wrong behaviours

Now frame your goals in terms of those messages that prompt the behaviour you want. Since this is different for each of us, you will need to work this out for yourself. For those wanting to lose weight – the wrong trigger is ‘going on a diet’. The right trigger may be improving your nutrition, nourishing your body, creating great skin, getting fit…whatever resonates for you.