Life Success Habits

“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 If we keep wearing the same tired life, it gets outdated – we may not notice but everyone else sure does.

Don’t keep wearing the same outdated life – think about how you have grown, and continually update your life to better suit the person you are today.

If you continue to stay the same you are not only a sorry old pair of shoes – you are are a sorry outdated person.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