What to Do When You’re Falling Behind | Steve Pavlina

When I was a kid, it took me longer than I would have liked to learn how to ride a bike. I kept using a bike with training wheels and I didn’t practice much, so of course I didn’t learn how to balance.

One day I observed that my sister (younger by 2.5 years) was getting close to figuring out how to ride a bike. She wasn’t quite there yet, but she was clearly much closer to balancing than I was. I couldn’t let her beat me to it!

So I grabbed my bike, pushed it out to the street, and decided that I was going to learn how to ride it then and there. I hopped on — sans training wheels — and swerved all over the place like an out-of-control maniac. I tried to stay near the grass when I could muster some degree of control, so when I fell, I’d hopefully crash onto the lawn instead of the street or sidewalk.

After many short-lived attempts, I finally learned how to balance. Then I was off and riding. I rode my bike a lot that summer and have had the skill ever since.

Up until that point, I’d been making a big deal out of the whole process. It seemed scary and daunting. I was afraid of falling. But once I confronted the fear and mustered the courage to risk getting hurt, I quickly emerged on the other side with a whole new skill. From the moment of decision to the time I emerged with the basic skill was probably less than an hour.

What finally motivated me to face the fear and take action? It was the feeling that I was falling behind. My peers were leaving me in the dust. They could ride and I couldn’t. If my younger sister got there first, I’d no doubt be unfavorably compared to her, and I really didn’t want to deal with that.

That build-up of pressure worked to my advantage. I was capable of facing the fear and developing the skill, but I’d been delaying. I was letting fear get the better of me. That pressure gave me a much needed kick in my complacency.

Many years later, I found myself in a similar situation. When I started college, I didn’t take school seriously and goofed off a lot. I basically triple-majored in shoplifting, alcohol, and poker… and was eventually expelled. By the time I had a second go at it, my old high school friends were all starting their senior year, while I was starting over as a freshman. I was three years behind my peers, and I really felt the weight of that.

Once again, the feeling of falling behind became a powerful motivating force for me. Instead of taking four years to graduate, I made a huge commitment to master time management and tried to earn my degree a lot faster. I took about 3x the normal course load, and I earned not one but two Bachelor of Science degrees (in mathematics and computer science) — in only three semesters. Additionally, I received a special award for the top computer science student (as selected by the faculty) when I graduated.

I had no idea I was capable of that, just as I had no idea I could learn to ride a bike so quickly. The feeling of falling behind served as a powerful motivator. Instead of trying to squelch those disappointing feelings, like I’d been doing up to that point, I allowed myself to feel the weight of that pressure. I used those seemingly negative feelings to motivate action and overcome resistance.

The Positive Side of Social Pressure

There are many ways to deal with social pressure, especially when you feel you aren’t measuring up to some external standard. You can question or reject the standard, which is often the best option for standards you disagree with. Or you can agree with the standard and use the pressure to elevate your performance.

I’ve seen other people leverage this same kind of pressure to their good advantage. People who’ve been languishing in their careers unleash dormant ambition. Shy or socially awkward people push themselves to master social skills. People who’ve been mired in scarcity unlock financial abundance.

Very often, these people succeed, sometimes remarkably so. They turn the feeling of falling behind into a powerful source of motivation. They redefine their old relationship to their peer group. Instead of being the late bloomer, the laggard, or the underachiever, they become the fast learner, the leader, the performer.

Accelerating Your Growth

Using social pressure to beat yourself down is pointless. Using it to motivate fresh progress is powerful.

When you perceive that you’re falling behind, how can you leverage this feeling to speed up your growth?

First, let yourself feel the heaviness of the pressure. Stop trying to repress it, minimize it, or distract yourself from it. Feel the pain. Feel the disappointment. If this makes you feel like a complete loser, let those feelings flow freely for a while. Own those feelings. They’re temporary.

Once you’ve had a chance to let those feelings circulate and you no longer feel like you’re repressing those emotions, then pause and forgive yourself. So you fell behind. It happens. It’s okay. Acknowledge your humanness. Say, “I forgive myself fully and completely.”

I recommend dwelling on the forgiveness step until you really feel that you’ve forgiven yourself. Try journaling about your decision to forgive yourself. Write or type, “I forgive myself fully and completely,” over and over again. Keep your attention on forgiveness and self-compassion until you feel some emotional release, especially some tears. If you truly forgive yourself, you’re likely to feel some relief and lightness afterwards.

Forgive yourself, but don’t let yourself off the hook completely. It’s okay that you slacked off in the past. It’s not okay to keep slacking off. Resolve to be done with that dissatisfying past behavior. No more falling behind.

Realize that you can get caught up. You can go faster. You can redeem yourself.
Accept that it won’t be easy. It doesn’t need to be easy. The challenge will be good for you. It will help you grow. It will wake you up. It will help you raise your standards.

Now turn your attention to creating a positive vision of fresh action going forward. Redefine your short-term vision of success as a vision based on action, not on immediate results. One reason we fall behind is that we make a big deal out of failure. However, many results (such as learning to ride a bike) practically require you to fail — sometimes a lot — before you can succeed. So don’t put so much pressure on yourself to achieve a specific result just yet. Instead, feel the pressure to take simple actions. Turn this pressure into movement.

When I committed to learning to ride a bike, instead of focusing so much on the end goal, I pushed that desire to the back of my mind. I focused on facing the fearful action I was dreading. For me it was trying to ride and falling and getting hurt. So I made the commitment to go ahead and try my best, to fall as much as I might have to fall, to endure the scrapes and bruises, and to quickly get back on the bike and try again. I accepted that there might be some pain and blood, and if so, I’d hurt and bleed and keep going. By accepting the possible outcome I feared, I reduced my resistance to action. I decided I’d rather be a bruised and bloodied boy who could ride a bike instead of a pristine boy who couldn’t.

What’s the equivalent bloodied version of yourself that you’re avoiding and thereby causing yourself to fall further and further behind? Is it a vision of yourself having to work or study for long hours? Is it a vision of yourself being repeatedly rejected? Is it a vision of yourself making mistakes and losing money? You can endure all of those things. And you can keep right on going after they occur. They’re all petty fears to begin with. You’re strong enough to handle them.

In college my commitment was to sign up for as many classes as I could schedule on my calendar. I decided I’d do my best to attend those classes, do the assignments, take the exams, and learn the material efficiently.

Doing Your Best

Define success as doing your best. Face the fear. Make the valiant effort. Don’t worry so much about the end result.

One reason you may feel like you’re falling behind is that you haven’t been doing your best. It isn’t the perception that other people seem to be passing you that’s such a bother. What really gets under your skin is believing that you could have prevented it. The consequences of not doing your best can be very unsettling when they finally catch up to you.

Ask yourself the question, “What would my best look like?”

This is a powerful question to ask, but so often we don’t ask it because our answers will shed light on those situations where we clearly aren’t doing our best. And that’s where the feeling of falling behind starts creeping in.

Let it creep in. Immerse yourself in those feelings. Feel the unpleasant heaviness and disappointment of falling behind.

Then define your best in the form of simple and direct action. What is the best effort you can make? What can you do? What’s the action to take?

You can try and fail. You can try and get rejected. You can try and learn.

If you keep making your best effort again and again, you’ll power through old fears and sniveling worries faster than you thought possible. And soon the results you desire will become visible… and then fully realized.

Where do you feel like you’re falling behind? In which areas of your life are you underperforming? Let yourself feel the weight of those disappointments. Forgive yourself. 
Identify what your best effort could look like. Then go take action. Make the attempt. Fall. Get bruised. Get up and try again. Persist until you create your desired results.

It’s just like riding a bike.

Source

HOW SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE THINK - Motivational Video

Wonderful insights into what successful people think.  
Speakers:
Magic Johnson
Arnold Schwarzeneger
Idris Elda
Serena Williams
Conor McGregor
Usain Bolt
Roger Federer

Music by Really Slow Motion
Let me know what you think below!
Source 

How Incredibly Successful People THINK | Brendon Burchard

Successful people think differently.  They are not stopped by their limitations.  They consciously design their lives.  

Source 

The Power of Clarity | Steve Pavlina

H.L. Hunt, a man who rose from a bankrupt cotton farmer in the 1930s to a multi-billionaire when he died in 1974, was once asked during a TV interview what advice he could give to others who wanted to be financially successful. He said only two things are required. First, you must decide exactly what it is you want to accomplish. Most people never do that in their entire lives. And secondly, you must determine what price you’ll have to pay to get it, and then resolve to pay that price.

Clear Goals Are Essential

Clear goals and objectives are essential to the success of any business, and this is no less true of building your own career. If you don’t take the time to get really clear about exactly what it is you’re trying to accomplish, then you’re forever doomed to spend your life achieving the goals of those who do. In the absence of a clear direction for your life, you will either meander aimlessly or you will build a career that you don’t feel good about. You may make some money, and you may do some interesting work, but the end result will not resemble anything you ever made a conscious decision to build, and ultimately you will be left with the sinking feeling that maybe you took a wrong turn somewhere along the way. Do you ever look at your career and think to yourself, “How on earth did I get here?”

If setting goals is so critically important, then why is it that so few people take the time to define exactly where they want to go? Part of the reason is a lack of knowledge about how to set clear goals. You can go through years of schooling and never receive any instruction on goal setting at all. A failure to understand the immense importance of establishing clear goals is also common. But those who truly know what they want often outperform everyone else by an enormous degree.

A frequent deterrent to goal setting is the fear of making a mistake. Teddy Roosevelt once said, “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” Setting virtually any goal at all is better than drifting aimlessly with no clear direction. The best way I know to guarantee failure is to avoid making clear, committed decisions. Every day is already a mistake if you don’t know where you’re going. You’re probably spending most of your time working to achieve other people’s goals. The local fast food restaurant, TV advertisers, and the stockholders of the businesses you patronize are all very happy for that. If you don’t decide what you really want, then you’ve decided to hand your future over to the whims of others, and that’s always a mistake. By taking hold of the reins yourself and deciding where you’d like to go, you gain a tremendous sense of control that most people never experience in their entire lives.

Many people assume that because they have a direction, they must therefore have goals, but this is not the case and merely creates the illusion of progress. “Making more money” and “building a business” are not goals. A goal is a specific, clearly defined, measurable state. An example of the difference between a direction and a goal is the difference between the compass direction of northeast and the top of the Eiffel Tower in France. One is merely a direction; the other is a definite location.

Define Goals in Binary Terms

One critical aspect of goals is that they must be defined in binary terms. At any point in time, if I were to ask you if you had achieved your goal yet, you must be able to give me a definitive “yes” or “no” answer; “maybe” is not an option. You cannot say with absolute certainty if you’ve fully completed the outcome of “making more money,” but you can give me a definitive binary answer as to whether or not you are currently standing on top of the Eiffel Tower. An example of a clear business goal would be that your gross income for the month of April this year is $5000 or more. That is something you can calculate precisely, and at the end of the month, you can give a definitive answer as to whether or not your goal has been achieved. That is the level of clarity you need in order to form a goal that your mind can lock onto and move towards rapidly.

Be Detailed

Be as detailed as possible when setting goals. Give specific numbers, dates, and times. Make sure that each of your goals is measurable. Either you achieved it, or you didn’t. Define your goals as if you already know what’s going to happen. It’s been said that the best way to predict the future is to create it.

Commit Goals to Writing

Goals must be in writing in the form of positive, present-tense, personal affirmations. A goal that is not committed to writing is just a fantasy. Set goals for what you want, not for what you don’t want. Your subconscious mind can lock onto a clearly defined goal only if the goal is defined in positive terms. If you put your focus on what you don’t want instead of what you do, you’re likely to attract exactly what it is you’re trying to avoid. Phrase your goals as if they are already achieved. Instead of saying, “I will earn $100,000 this year,” phrase it in the present tense: “I earn $100,000 this year.” If you phrase your goals in future terms, you are sending a message to your subconscious mind to forever keep that outcome in the future, just beyond your grasp. Avoid wishy-washy words like “probably,” “should,” “could,” “would,” “might,” or “may” when forming your goals. Such words foster doubt as to whether you can really achieve what you are after. And finally, make your goals personal. You cannot set goals for other people, such as, “A publisher will publish my software by the end of the year.” Phrase it like this instead: “I sign a North American retail publishing contract this year that earns me at least $100,000 by the end of the year.”

Objectify Subjective Goals

What if you need to set subjective goals, such as improving your own level of self-discipline? How do you phrase such goals in binary terms? To solve this problem, I use a rating scale of 1 to 10. For instance, if you want to improve your self-discipline, ask yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate your current level of self-discipline? Then set a goal to achieve a certain specific rating by a certain date. This allows you to measure your progress and know with a high degree of certainty whether or not you’ve actually achieved your goal.

Goal Setting Is an Activity

Setting clear goals is not a passive act. It doesn’t happen automatically. You must take direct conscious action in order to make it so. Everything counts, and nothing is neutral. You are either moving towards your goals, or you’re moving away from them. If you do nothing or if you act without clarity, then you are almost certainly a victim of “being outgoaled.” In other words you are spending your time working on other people’s goals without even knowing it. You are happily working to enrich your landlord, other businesses, advertisers, stockholders, etc. Each day you spend working without a sense of clarity about where you’re headed is a step backwards for you. If you don’t actively tend your garden, then weeds will grow automatically. Weeds don’t need to be watered or fertilized. They just grow by themselves in the absence of an attentive gardener. Similarly, in the absence of conscious and directed action on your part, your work and your life will automatically become full of weeds. You don’t need to do anything at all to make this happen. And when you finally get around to taking a serious look at where you are and where you want to go, the first thing you’ll have to do is pull out all those weeds.

Reading this article will do absolutely nothing for you unless you turn it into some form of physical action. The best thinking unfortunately gives you zero results. In reality, you won’t even be paid a penny for your thoughts. You can have the most creative idea in the world, but ideas themselves are utterly worthless. You only get results from the physical actions you take, never for the ideas you have. In order to get any kind of tangible results at all, you must act on an idea. You must communicate it, build it, implement it, and make it real.

Clarity Is a Choice

If you’ve been running your career in an unfocused manner, just waking up each morning and seeing what happens, then it is absolutely crucial that you take the time to decide and write down exactly where it is you want to go. How much longer will you continue to climb the ladder of success, only to realize too late that it was leaning against the wrong building? Just pick a point in the future, whether it’s six months from now or five years from now, and spend a few hours writing out a clear description of where you want to be at that time. I know many people who aren’t sure where they want to go, so they avoid committing anything to writing in order to “keep their options open.” What would happen if you pursued that attitude to its logical conclusion? If you always kept your options open and never made any firm commitments, then you’d never get promoted, start your own business, get married, have a family, move to that new home, etc. except to the degree that someone else made that decision for you.

I used to have a friend like this, who still hasn’t decided what he wants to do with his life. He yields control of his life to others without even realizing it, simply because he’s unwilling to take the time to define a vision for his own life out of fear of making the wrong choice. His life is ruled by others who push their goals onto him, which he accepts by default. Ask yourself if you’re in the same boat. If a friend of yours became totally committed to getting you to change something in your life at random — your career, your living situation, your relationship, etc. — could s/he do it just by being absolutely certain and committed that it’s the right thing for you? Could a business associate come along and radically alter your plans for the week without you ever deciding consciously that such a change is consistent with your goals? We all suffer from problems like these to the degree that we fail to set clear goals for ourselves. There is a big difference between recognizing and acting on a true opportunity and being knocked off course without making a conscious decision to shift gears.

Waiting for something to inspire you and hoping that the perfect outcome will just fall into your lap is nothing but a fantasy. Clear decision making doesn’t happen passively; you actually have to physically put in the time to make it happen. If you don’t have clear goals simply because you don’t know what you want, then sit down and actively decide what you want. That sense of knowing what you want isn’t going to just come to you in a form of divine inspiration. Clarity is a choice, not an accident or a gift. Clarity doesn’t come to you — you have to go to it. Not setting goals is the same thing as deciding to be a slave to the goals of others.

Clear Goals Sharpen Present-Moment Decisions

Your reality will not match your vision exactly. That’s not the point. The point is for your vision to allow you to make clear daily decisions that keep you moving in the direction of your goals. When a commercial airliner flies from one city to another, it is off course over 90% of the time, but it keeps measuring its progress and adjusting its heading again and again. Goal setting works the same way. Maintain a clear list of goals not because that’s actually where you’ll end up but because it will give you tremendous certainty in deciding what you need to do today. When someone contacts you with an “opportunity” out of the blue, you’ll know whether it’s a real opportunity or a waste of time. The long view sharpens the short view.

As you begin moving towards your goals, you’ll gain new knowledge along the way, and you’ll have to adapt your plans as you go. You may also change your vision if you get partway there and decide it’s not quite what you really want. Ill-formed goals are still far superior to no goals at all.

I was once told by someone that I should end each day by crossing it off my calendar and saying out loud, “There goes another day of my life, never to return again.” Try this for yourself, and notice how much it sharpens your focus. When you end a day with the feeling that you would have lived it the same if you had the chance to repeat it, you gain a sense of gratitude that helps you focus on what’s really important to you. When you end the day with a feeling of regret or loss, you gain the awareness to try a different approach the next day.

You’ll see a measurable difference in your life the very first day you establish clear, committed goals, even if your first few attempts aren’t perfect. You’ll be able to make decisions much more rapidly because you’ll see how they’ll either move you towards or away from your goals. On the eve of his death, Walt Disney had a reporter crawl into bed with him so he could share his vision for Disney World, six years before its completion. When Disney World finally opened, another reporter commented to Walt’s brother, Roy, “It’s too bad Walt did not live to see this.” Roy replied, “Walt saw it first. That’s why we are seeing it now.” Clear goals allow you to achieve the first half of H.L. Hunt’s success formula. By deciding exactly what you want to accomplish, committing it to writing, and reviewing it on a daily basis, you bring your goals into reality with the power of your focus.

Source: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/03/the-power-of-clarity/

How to Raise Your Standards | Tony Robbins motivation

Tony Robbins: How to raise your standards.

Tony Robbins is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, philanthropist & the nation’s #1 Life & Business Strategist. A recognized authority on the psychology of leadership, negotiations & organizational turnaround, he has served as an advisor to leaders around the world for more than 38 years. Author of five internationally bestselling books, including the recent New York Times #1 best-seller.

Find out more about Tony Robbins here: https://goo.gl/k48Fa6.

https://youtu.be/xPiw21RuTd8

So what did you think?  Pretty amazing, huh?

4 Steps To Live Your Life Fearlessly Beyond Approval | Art Von Sy

Each one of us was born with something unique and powerful to contribute to the world. And it’s living this deepest essence of our self that leads us to the outrageous levels of spiritual and material success so many seek. This electric sense of purpose is something we can all access and live out in the world.

But sometimes it feels as if the cards are stacked against us. Whether you become anxious the closer you reach these little nuggets of success, or hesitant to cultivate and manifest your dreams into reality, the fear and desire of approval can be a stifling force on your creative existence.

It’s not only liberating but also euphoric to live life without the stresses of wondering what other people think. A life where you are free to act, do, experiment, and execute in just the way that is unique to you, is a life that is not only worth living, but worth crushing all self-doubt for.

Here are the 4 steps to live your life beyond the need for approval:

1. Collapse All Hierarchies

It’s a default reflex. We constantly create hierarchies. Put some people above us and others below us, out of fear and self-preservation. These hierarchies are not real, they exist only in our minds. Yet most people never question them and subordinate their existence, their sense of self and level of freedom to those they place above themselves.

And this not only gives other people’s opinion power over you, it makes you diminish yourself in order not to upset anyone who has that power.

Become aware of the unconscious hierarchies you create and collapse them in your mind. This will free you from the fear and desire of approval by stripping those you’ve unwittingly given that power over you and claim back for yourself.

“So rather than be frustrated with what you can’t control, try to fix the things you can.” – Kevin Garnett

2. Collapse Your Equations

Most of our reality is a reality created by language. And language has a binary structure. This leads to usual black and white thinking. The biggest fear we have is not the lack of success, but the opposite of it.

As you go through life, you are in a constant negotiation with your objects of desires and your objects of avoidance. Because of the distortions in our thinking, we mistakenly believe that our objects of avoidance and our objects of desire are mutually exclusive.

Put differently, sometimes we are so attached to success and afraid of failure that we put more energy into preventing failure than pursuing success. When you realize that your equations are just assumptions, you break out of the box and learn to act with a wider scope of effortlessness and possibilities.

3. Forget Yourself

Most people in the personal development world like to speak of our limiting beliefs and presumed obstacles. But we tend to forget the biggest obstacle of all. The idea we have of ourselves.

The more rigid our self-concept the more restricted our world. Things can only affect you if you cannot suspend your idea of yourself and adapt it to the situation. When your identity is rigid it becomes brittle, when it is flexible it is fluid, and things that used to unsettle you cease to do so. 

Why? Because if you have no fixed idea of yourself, nothing can break you.

Challenges just become a learning experience. Everything turns into feedback to integrate. And this flexibility dissolves the anxieties that you may not be good enough, because you are on the fast lane to growth.

"We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.” – May Sarton

4. Focus On Your Values, Embody Your Vision

When we are disconnected from our deepest values we are easily swayed to follow the hive mind. Your existential value is what you would readily sacrifice and give up anything for. Knowing this value, and remembering it in any moment gives you tremendous power.

And if you have a vision that resonates with it, the daily discomforts will barely register on your radar. Because when you play the biggest game possible by knowing exactly what you want on the highest level, the desire for approval disappears completely.

You become what you focus on. And focusing on your deepest values and vision, eventually turns you and your life into them. The freedom you will experience from the powerful clarity of not only knowing exactly what you want, but embodying it, leads to a profound sense of purposeful freedom.

This is the freedom from fear; the ability to be beyond approval that lends an effortlessness to all your actions to make your unique impact on the world.

Source: http://addicted2success.com/life/4-steps-to-live-your-life-fearlessly-beyond-approval/

Finding Your Purpose | Dr John Demartini

Your purpose is inherent. If you are unclear on what it is, it is waiting to be revealed from deep within your heart. It is simply clouded over by your mind’s seven primary fears that block its realization and fullest expression. To transcend these fears – kneel down at the side of your bed at the end of each day before going to sleep with a note pad and pen in hand. 

Think about everything you can be grateful for from that day and make a list of experiences that you can truly be grateful for until you are so grateful a tear comes out of your eyes. Then turn inward to your most authentic and powerful self – your soul – and ask: 

“What message do you have for me today?” 

“What action step am I to take to fulfill my life?” 

“What detail can you reveal about my life mission or vision?” 

If you don’t receive a message immediately then go back and think more deeply about what you’re truly grateful for and then ask these questions again. 

If you are truly grateful a vision or message will be immediate, loud and clear. When this voice and vision on the inside becomes louder and more profound than all opinions on the outside you have begun to master your life. Do these actions for at least thirty days until you no longer have to ask the question about what your mission or purpose is. You will then know with certainty. Then add to this insight by thinking about what you know you would love to do and write it down. Start with what you know with certainty and let what you know grow. Read it, refine it, read it, refine it, and keep reading it and refining it until it becomes crystal clear. 

Also review all the heroes you have had in your life and look for what is common to them – they leave clues and review all the jobs or careers you have had and look for what is common – they also leave clues. Add all this up and you will have a great idea or first draft of what your mission or purpose is. The true you, has a profound contribution to offer the world. The true you, does not play small. The true you, is brilliant beyond compare. 

Source: https://drdemartini.com/blog/finding-your-purpose/

Simple and effective.