Millions of people all over the world would love to become a success.
Even with the best ideas and clever concepts virtually all fall by the way side.
Millions of people will never become a success even though plenty of them try.
Maybe you are one of these? Perhaps you have experienced wanting it all and getting none of it. After all there are countless intelligent, skilful, determined souls out there (just like you), so how come so few ever reach the heights of success? What is it that’s in the way of major success?
Amazingly it’s NOT a failure in planning or too large an amount of challenges to battle away nor any economic downturn or lack of viable support that pulled down the curtain on all their dreams. It was ONE simple factor that we all suffer from at one time or another. Or all the time.
Let’s take a look!
Put yourself in their shoes – a bright exciting project or product, even image to promote, and it’s a certainty that it’s brand new and the likes of it have never been on the scene before. Yeah, you’ve spent time checking it out; it’s got legs, there’s huge potential here, in fact the more you look, the more you can’t help but keep seeing it taking off. Months of months of inner excitement leads to going for it and working out how to bring it all about……and then!
You have to get started for success…..WRONG!
I have read book after book (especially the so called ‘Smart Thinking’ ones) and seen business guru social media post in their thousands all shouting up the key to creating success is…..TO JUST GET STARTED. To get on with building it, forming it, improving it, learning from it, expanding it….you get my drift.
Except….THAT WON’T WORK!!
It won’t work due to one factor and the No.1 reason most people will never be a success.
And here it is…….
They don’t believe that they will be a success. Personally believe about themselves. Sure, the idea is a sound, if not an incredible idea, it’s just that it’s THEM that is going to develop it. And that won’t ever happen because inside where it all counts a voice is telling them/reminding them that they aren’t good enough or clever enough or possess the ability or always have been a failure before yada, yada, yada. The list could go on. The BS list.
As soon as the actual cool, mega idea gets time for action to get it off the ground, in comes those personal negatives shouting, ‘FORGET IT!’ louder than a town crier announcing the King is dead.
Success is an inside job. True success means conquering our own lesser beliefs about ourselves and the destiny that we will experience being who we are. A confident, self-aware, self-accepting soul can scale mountains and overcome any obstacle because they just know they are enough.
So, if you want to be a success be the kind of person who will never give up……at breaking anything within you that ever tells you that you won’t make it. Face it, tackle it, bust it, and get rid of it once and for all.
When you do, you will start feeling one hell of a success anyway!
Do you feel all mixed up?
Feeling confused and unable to process your emotions? Or not sure what to believe and from who and what to do about it? More importantly struggling to make sense out of right and wrong inside you?
At times like these it’s easy to look outside yourself for the answers. Going over everything that’s happened and who is involved and acting all Sherlock Holmes in detecting how on Earth you have ended so mixed up and all over the place.
But, it’s not on the outside where you will discover the real reason your head is spinning. It’s on the inside. And that’s why you keep bouncing around feeling you know why one minute your emotions are on a rollercoaster ride and then the very next moment you’re brought right back to Earth without a clue. The good news is there’s nothing wrong with you. Your are just so trapped in a mixture of everyone else’s views, opinions, standards, and values that you can’t see the wood for the trees to be able to get to your own.
Knowing Yourself.
When you were growing up all manner of people gave you advice and insight on how to best live life – parents, family, authority figures like teachers or coaches, peer groups, friends, even your local community and society itself. Without realising it you absorbed this like a sponge without ever asking yourself how YOU believed life should be lived. YOUR beliefs, standards, values, and principles got put on the backburner meaning knowing yourself took a back seat.
Trouble is you can’t switch off those you own even if they are deep within you. They are part of you, they are your DNA, your blueprint as a human, your emotional centre. If you don’t open them up and connect to them they sit in the background whispering and bothering you but YOU NEVER KNOW WHY.
Suddenly situations develop and you don’t know what to make of them. What you have been taught simply doesn’t fit with what’s before your eyes and as you haven’t honoured (or perhaps were allowed to in the past!) your personal ethics and moral compass, you end up all mixed up unsure of which way up or down is or where to turn for good or bad.
A Beautiful Mix.
So unmix yourself. Now is the time to get back to you. To finally accept what matters most to you from standards to behaviours, choices to actions, feelings to have and the way to treat others. Knowing yourself is the best relationship you can ever have in your life. And the one that will solve pretty much any problem you could ever have.
Prioritise the right way to live and be that feels right within you. Take onboard the well meaning input of others since you were born, but it’s firmly all about your self awareness of right and wrong as a person living THEIR life that is the key.
Because your are the perfect mix of human emotions and preferences and viewpoints that make you…well, YOU.
And that’s the only person you ever have to be!!
‘Have you seen the latest blockbuster film?
That’s a question that goes round every office workplace or friends group every week. It might be the latest big Hollywood movie or the hot drama show drawing in the viewers on TV. It’s a leading question that most fall for.
If films or TV series aren’t your thing and you respond, ‘No, not seen it…and probably won’t’, you will be met with shocked looks and the classic retort, ‘You HAVEN’T seen? Everyone has watched it!’. Not everyone, you haven’t. You have become one of the people who don’t do things. Things that everyone else does because, well, everyone else, is too.
Now, that’s a challenge because us humans are tribal. It all began in our prehistoric times. With few human beings on the planet then survival depended on joint efforts. As a group they combined together to catch food, stay safe, form relationships, forge unity, and procreate. That ethic was forged into their mentality – the lone person is at risk, unsupported, out on their own, and their future is grim.
The backdrop has changed (there are no T-Rex’s roaming outside or woolly Mammoth’s to snare for dinner), but the principal remains to this day both mentally and emotionally. Be part of the group, or be exiled as a outcast never to be able to return, talked about and ridiculed. Which is why centuries later we all go to the same hit movie because everyone else is just like we all wore sabre tooth jewellery back in Neanderthal days as they were cool and popular. Our psychology is still prehistoric. We want to fit it, we want to be part of the tribe.
The Road Less Travelled.
Poet Robert Frost in his epic work, The Road Not Taken’, wrote the immortal lines, ‘Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less travelled by and that has made all the difference’. His poem is an allegory – the road is our lives and which route we choose to go ‘when we can’t see the wood for the trees’, i.e. the way ahead is not clear. Most do not take the road less travelled. The tribe walks the other path.
But Steve Jobs did in his thinking and design for the I-Phone. Dick Fosbury did in his jumping style in the high jump. Clarice Cliff did in her brand of art deco styled ceramics. And Pablo Picasso certainly did in his surreal art. They and many other outliers and renegades were people who DIDN’T do things others did. They never cared about mammoth hair as a fashion statement or T-Rex claws to eat their meals with. And they wouldn’t be in the cinema line to find out what the fuss is about at the movies or catching every episode of TV’s big ratings buster just so they can be part of the chat over the watercooler.
They are people who don’t do things others do, they do things they do. Backing that up they think how they do, see what they see, believe what they believe, and choose roads other don’t. It makes them happily individual in a tribe of one. If you look at most truly stand out people who have made and left a mark on this world, that’s what they have done too. They did only themselves. And that led to a blockbuster life that could be a movie itself!
How is it time in your life that you didn’t do what others do?
We all know a four letter word or two.
We probably have a few favourites too.
But did you know there is a four letter word that underpins every successful person, product, or business?
As soon as you read that you probably thought of a few four letter words. But it’s true.
That four letter word is….IDEA.
Ok, I know I have tricked you but I needed to get your attention. That’s because millions of people over the years have had incredible ideas for businesses or products and even for their own futures, but never did anything about them because they were just an idea.
But it’s never JUST an idea. That word is one of the best four letter words ever. Everything we use in our lives came first from an idea. It’s the original source. An idea, a flash of vision, a concept, something that has legs that is different, new, ground breaking, and even lucrative. That simple idea built upon and developed grows and grows until it’s a living shiny come to life item of success.
Coffee anyone?
Starbucks was formed by two teachers and a writer to put a coffee shop on a corner of every city that came out of an idea to simply share coffee made from fresh beans with others. Subway, the take out sandwich store, evolved from the founder’s love of subs which they thought would be a great snack to keep travellers on the go. And more famously Ralph Lauren started his brand because he had an idea that many men would look suave and sharp just like he felt when wearing more bolder, colourful ties.
None of the above and heaps more other big successes had any proof it would work but they gave the idea a chance and ran with it. And ran with it all the way to the bank. So take a leaf out of their book. Polish up those ideas you have and start doing something about them. Let them loose and see where they take you. Nokia started life as a single paper mill operation that morphed into the mega million earning mobile/cell phone manufacturer. Wouldn’t have happened if those pieces of wood didn’t get cut to begin with.
And if you do open up your ideas so that they can be turned into a success, you might be shouting lots of four letter words in happiness the day you hit the jackpot.
Do you hate your job?
Is that the phrase you tell your friends and is the one in your head?
Well, if it is, it’s not true.
The big word that fills your mind and feelings is hate. You have told yourself that you can no longer put up with the manager’s poor leadership or your colleagues lack of standards or perhaps it’s the public and their incessant complaining and lack of patience or the unsociable hours are getting to you.
All of these seem valid at making the role far from enjoyable, but you DON’T hate your job.
Why? Your mindset is focused on the elements in your life that aren’t good or missing and it keeps nagging away at you about these because it’s become set at finding fault in things. As work is the prime time consumer and energy taker in your life, it gets thrown the lions share of dissatisfaction from your mind. It’s also pretty much a daily occurrence in your world so that doubles the blame attached to it for ruining everything or holding you back.
Those negative beliefs grow and magnify and where once Jane’s usual lateness on a Monday morning as traffic is often worse her side of town, has now become a fully blown anger in your mind about her and how typical it is with others in this job. It’s been blown waaaaay out of proportion. Annoyance evolves over time into plain hate.
Where does this come from then? FROM YOU!
The Missing Potential.
Underneath it all you are working in a role far beneath your true ability not to mention your actual worth. But you can’t see it or most likely, can’t accept this as true. You have devalued yourself and taken a job that doesn’t represent half the talent and skills that you possess. Your own lack of self belief has directed you to lower the level you could and should operate at in your career plus the lesser salary and conditions that comes with it.
Hence you are not hating the job but simply picking at everything because it’s not where you want to be…..because you are not being WHO you want to be. But it’s your beliefs that are preventing you from living up to your own potential not the computer’s being slow again or the coffee machine taking too long to warm up in the morning. They are the scapegoats for your self sabotage.
You don’t hate your job. You dislike where you are probably in work, perhaps in life status, and maybe even in relationships or family. And you do that because you don’t have sufficient self worth to elevate yourself to a job or scenario that matches your real unique self.
So while you think about what those beliefs are that are keeping you small I’ll also leave you with one big question.
What great thing about yourself do you really ‘hate’ that everyone else can see (and have probably mentioned to you many times)?
Because if there is anything you hate, it’s that you hate you have done nothing about it.
And Mike’s terrible aftershave will never be the reason!
Do you play sports or enjoy a sporting hobby?
You are not alone. Millions upon millions also do. But sport also means competing which involves facing others and the bigger issue of winning and losing. And for many of those millions the possibility of victory or defeat in not won or lost on the field of play, but in the mind.
It is the playing of the mental game that we are all actually participating in.
If you play golf, how is your putting? I ask this because there is a well known affliction on the green whereby good, solid golfers fall apart and lose all confidence to slip the ball into the hole even if it’s only a matter of 6 inches away. It’s called the Yips and even professional players suffer from it. Top 10 golfer and Major winning star Ian Baker-Finch famously quit the game as he couldn’t seem to hit the ball cleanly anymore putting the reason down to one word, ‘Mental’.
He’s not alone. In the 1968 Rugby League Challenge Cup final Wakefield’s Don Fox missed the last kick of the game from right under the posts to hand the cup to Leeds despite just being voted man of the match as the enormity of the kick played on his mind.
It even hits Olympic champions! World class gymnastic legend Simon Biles actually withdrew from some events having developed ‘the twisties’, a mental block gymnasts experience making them lose their sense of space and awareness in the air and causing them to lose control adding an extra twist or two that isn’t required and potentially landing awkwardly or dangerously. Biles cited stress and the pressures focused on her for getting her mind bent out of shape.
Heads you win!
Truth is all of these skilful athletes and players are human like you and me. We don’t just play the mental game in a sporting sense, we play it in the very real living sense. A missed penalty in a football match can lead to losing and letting others down in our heads. Missing an opportunity for promotion due to giving a poor job interview can also destroy our self belief and remain with us for years, Not hitting the bullseye in darts ends up in a loss you should have won and not asking that cute guy or girl out who seemed to have an eye on you becomes saying goodbye to the one you could have married and been happy ever after with. That’s the mental game. It’s in our heads and nowhere else.
You are beaten before you’ve done anything if you play the mental game that way with yourself. You will always miss, lose, blow it, fail, and confidently collapse if you keep believing and expecting to. Whether it’s a five inch putt to beat your best buddy Walt or a 25 yard field goal to snatch the Superbowl in the dying seconds.
It’s never the physical game that we play that tests us, it’s the mental game that’s our true opponent to beat. On the sports field or in the game of life itself.
How do you play the mental game?
