Life Success Habits

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.

There are times in our lives where we finally wake up and recognise that things have changed, and life just isn’t working for us….well not as well as it could!.

These are often times following major life changes – new jobs, retirement, change in family, empty nest, divorce etc.

Each of these events means that some part of our life no longer exists or did not previously exist. Yet many of use do not change the rest of our lives to accomodate that change and wonder why the feeling of happiness has turned to a feeling of helplessness or hopelessness.

For instance, adding a new role in your life means that room needs to be made for that role, and others pertaining to that role – this may be a new relationship or a new job or new family addition. If we don’t adjust the time and focus spent on the other roles in our lives we end up with conflict, overwork and stress.

On the other side, if when children grow up and leave home, and particularly if you were a stay at home mum, your life roles change significantly. The role of a mother is all encompassing. It doesn’t stop when your children leave home, but the daily input certainly changes. Not replacing this commitment can lead to feelings of worthlessness and despondency. You not only lost the child, you lost the role. And this loss needs to be grieved in the same way as any other loss.

So what to do – Reinvent Yourself.

Each role in your life relates to a pseudo activity. By defining your participation in terms of activities for each role, you can more clearly determine your time constraints, and overlaps. You can also evaluate how balanced your time and focus is between each activity group.

This is a time to be selfish – that’s not a bad thing. Look at what each role and activity means to you, and establish what you are willing to contribute to that role and what you are not. Write these down. Now allocate the hours of the weeks, and organise your schedule accordingly. Share your time commitments with those relevant to the rule and state your boundaries of commitment. This is where being selfish is a GOOD thing, not the big black hairy monster many make it out to be.

When we over commit ourselves, we simply cannot achieve our goals. We let ourselves down and we let others down. So set your expectations clearly – then do everything you can to live up to them. Remember – your job does NOT come first all the time, your wife/husband/partner does NOT come first all the time, your children do NOT come first all the time, and YOU do NOT come first all the time.

Congratulations – you have just reinvented yourself….and all it took was a little time invested.

In my last blog I talked about how important it is for you to decide for YOURSELF what constitutes success for YOU.

Once you have come to terms with your own values and goals – the next most important step to achieving that success in BELIEVING IN YOURSELF.

It doesn’t matter what others think of your plans. And believe me, everyone will have an opinion. Whilst I always listen to what they have to say, I then just thank them for their input and say nothing further. If they have a new piece of knowledge that helps you further define how best to achieve or not achieve your goals – then you have gained some more valuable insight. If they haven’t then nothing they said matters in terms of your chosen life path.

It is not for any one person to choose the path of another – and parents – that means you do NOT have the right to chose the path for your children. At best you should enrich their knowledge of options available and the pros and cons of each – then leave it up to them.

Believing in yourself is essential to keeping your focus and putting out the right vibes that make things happen. It gets you through the tough work and reminds you why you are making the effort. What others think of you or what you are doing is none of your business.

Go For It

The road to success has many diversions. Some of them good and some of them not so good. Either way – a key success attribute is to always give yourself permission. Permission to succeed and permission to fail. To many, this may seem obvious. But on many occassions we are too hard on ourselves when things don’t work out as planned.

In the past few days I ‘potentially’ lost a large sum of money in a term investment that was safe as could be when I entered it, but two years later and a coup in Fiji has brought this once stable finance company to its knees – just six weeks before my 2 year term was due to mature.

Naturally, I was bummed, big time. But, rather than beat myself I gave myself time to deal with the outflow of the next years plans to which that capital was assigned. Whenever something like this happens I never look back. I remind myself of two things:

1. All I need is a place to stand
2. I forgive myself for stumbling during my learning adventure.

It reminded me of a great quote by 17th Century poet – George Herbert ” He who cannot forgive, breaks in the bridge over which he himself must pass”

When things go wrong you have to forgive yourself – because there will be plenty of others that will remind you what a fool thing you have done [all experts after the fact of course].

I am a person who lives by the value – it’s not the years in your life that count; its the life in your years. I pack a whole lot more into my life than most, and so naturally I am going to stumble more often.

I now have a system – i remove myself from all communications with others and work on how to adjust my life going forward. It is “my system” and it works for me [ along with a fine bottle of chamgagne]. Within 24 hours I am back on track in a slightly different path – but still heading to the same destination.

I urge you to have your own emergency system, so when something major happens you have a well defined response on how to manage it and get back on track.

And if you need help with that – post a comment here, I will be happy to help.

Nicola