Many of my readers have skills they can apply to earn incomes that are far above average — if they desire to apply those skills for that purpose. A lot of them are programmers or engineers. Some know how to invest or trade stocks. Some are just really good poker players. These people can earn six-figure incomes (sometimes more) without much difficulty. Many of these people aren’t earning anywhere near their potential. They know this. And for the most part they aren’t particularly concerned about that. Many have found that earning lots of money isn’t fulfilling. Some of these people made plenty of money in the past. They explored what it was like to have most of their material desires satisfied and then some. They went through that phase of material abundance, and it was fun for a while, but it no longer means anything to them now. Others in this group never bothered to make much money in the first place, even though they had the skills to do so. They aren’t motivated to bother. The financial gains don’t excite them. I remember talking to a programmer who was only doing the minimum amount of work necessary to cover his basic expenses, not because he couldn’t earn more but because he didn’t care to make the extra effort. He told me that he used to earn $40K per month programming device drivers, and then he shrugged and said, “So what though… it’s just money.” Sometimes these people go through a period of mild depression, feeling down on themselves for not doing more with their skills. Some feel they should be earning more. Others feel they should stretch themselves or contribute more, regardless of the money. Occasionally these people find temporary pleasure in interesting projects. They may still like getting paid now and then. But they don’t feel much ambition to go any further.
There may be still be some growth on this path, but it’s modest. Even learning new sub-skills feels too familiar after a while. When considering more ambitious goals, financial or otherwise, the question that keeps coming up is: Why bother? You explored more, and now more is boring. You explored better, and now better seems pointless. You explored different, and now different feels the same. What do you do when more, better, and different are no longer satisfying? Well… that’s when you get to have an existential crisis. 🙂
Finding the growth again
Many people find themselves with the skills to do more, but the motivation is lacking. They don’t care about earning more. They don’t care about contributing more. They barely care about covering their expenses. Some are able to travel through this tunnel and find new fulfillment on the other side. Some seem to remain adrift indefinitely. What’s the difference between those who pull out of this funk and those who don’t? I’d say that the main difference, if I may generalize it, is that the people who find fulfillment again perform a different kind of upgrade than those who don’t. The ones who continue to struggle seem to circle around the same area looking for solutions. They look at their skills. They look at their habits and routine. They look at their projects. They look at their lifestyle. They may make some shifts, but they largely maintain their original philosophy of life throughout these shifts, and that philosophy keeps them trapped. The ones who move beyond this struggle make deeper changes. They reassess their overall relationship with life, and other changes stem from there. But these people who upgrade their philosophy of life don’t all shift it in the same way. One person’s upgrade is another person’s downgrade. These people reassess their relationship with reality, and they change that relationship. It’s almost like going through the breakup of a human relationship. The old relationship is finally done, and a new way of relating is envisioned and created. Since your relationship with reality exists in your mind — as a collection of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs — you can change it. You can reinterpret old events to mean something different. Just as people reinterpret their human relationships before a breakup, they can reinterpret their relationship with life itself. These people realize that little by little, a breakup has already been underway. They’ve been checked out from this relationship for some time. The effort and investment have been drying up. The rewards have weakened. Life seems dull and pointless. There’s no point in staying. It’s time to move on. When someone redefines his/her relationship to reality, lifestyle changes often follow. I’ve seen people quit their jobs, go travel, do charity work, explore open relationships, and more. But these changes may have been on the person’s someday/maybe list for many years prior. What seems to flip the switch is the underlying reconfiguration of the person’s philosophy of life.
Profound shifts
These profound shifts don’t seem to have a pattern in terms of their direction, at least not one that I can discern. People go in wildly different directions. It’s much like a human relationship breakup. What happens after the breakup is different for everyone. There’s usually a period of fear, excitement, and resolution all mixed together as the person gets moving. The word relief is frequently used to describe it. Life is rarely perfect on the other side, but I can’t recall an instance where someone wanted to go back. They know the shift had to happen, but the shift by itself didn’t magically solve all their problems. There’s still more work to be done. Although I can’t identify core commonalities in the new directions that people take, I have seen some patterns in how they create these shifts. These are essentially the same patterns that people go through when they transition out of a human relationship. Usually these people begin to pay attention to the resistance and resentment they’ve been feeling. They see that they’re resisting their current situation and wanting it to be different. They resent their apparent lack of motivation. Many feel disappointed that their peers seem to have surpassed them. They begin to notice this resistance. Next, they begin taking responsibility for creating this resistance. They see that it isn’t helping and is only keeping them stuck. They decide to stop resisting and to surrender themselves to the present situation. They gradually become less stubborn. They conclude that being stubborn hasn’t worked, so they loosen up and decide to be more flexible and observant for a while. They relax more. In the past, these people saw the road to change as requiring a change in conditions. They needed a better lifestyle. Or better projects. Or a better workspace and tools. They needed more self-discipline. More focus. More control. This is like the person who tries to work on their partner to salvage the relationship. I need you to help me solve problems X, Y, and Z, and then our relationship will be better. How well does that usually work? Sometimes the other person in a relationship doesn’t identify X, Y, and Z as problems. Sometimes reality doesn’t seem to agree that your problems are problems either. When you try to solve those problems, it may feel like reality is deliberately working against you. Or you may sense that you keep sabotaging yourself. You resolve to make changes, and your efforts have fizzled within a few days. Eventually the person reaches the point of surrendering to the obvious: This whole relationship is broken. In this case, I’m referring to the person’s relationship with life, the universe, and everything. That relationship has become nonfunctional. You and reality seem to be at odds with each other. You’re not in agreement. Many people enter into a period of stuckness here. They know the relationship is broken, so they try to fix it. That usually doesn’t work, partly because they’re still running the old patterns that perpetuate this stuckness, even as they consciously try to change it. Those who succeed tend to do so by abandoning the goal of trying to change their partner. They surrender to another obvious notion: My partner wants something different from what I want. They finally decide to allow their partner to be someone else. And with that comes the realization that it’s time to transition out of this relationship. How does this play out with your relationship with reality? It’s a similar dynamic. The person stops trying to change reality and finally allows reality to be what it is. There’s no point in fighting, resisting, or trying to solve problems since reality is only going to resist. How does such a person break up with the old reality? They do this by envisioning a new way of living and a new way of relating to the world, to other people, and to life in general. They envision a new way of experiencing reality. To some it really feels like stepping into a whole new reality — a whole new life. Surrender is the key. When you stop resisting and surrender to what is, you stop feeding what you don’t want, and the undesirable relationships tend to drop away. But as long as you keep fighting for change, you’ll experience a counter-force pushing back against you, keeping you stuck. One man decides to no longer relate to life on the basis of fear avoidance. From now on he’s going to face, accept, and welcome what he fears. He’s tired of seeing his reality shrink as he sidesteps his fears. He adopts a new rule for himself: Whatever I fear, I must face. He stops resisting life’s challenges. And lo and behold, he finds that the fear was just an illusion anyway. He was the one feeding it all along. One woman decides she’s tired of business as usual. Her life is filled with people who look up to her for accomplishments that no longer mean anything to her. She’s done fighting her lack of motivation, so she surrenders to it and lets her business decline, regardless of what people may think of her. Eventually she wraps up her business affairs and starts her own nonprofit foundation. Henceforth her relationship with life will be based on contribution and service, which she loves but could never give herself permission to do before. She had to surrender to the fact that her business was no longer the right vehicle for her future growth and self-expression.
From tolerance to completion
These people all have their Jerry Maguire moments. For many of them, the most powerful part of the shift is when they experience profound feelings of doneness with the old way of living. They’re tired of the fear, the inauthenticity, the disconnection, the shallowness, the indifference, or some other misalignment. They decide it’s time to throw out the old way of living and move on. One friend described life after the shift with these words: Steve, I feel aligned now. Another guy said, while going through the shift: I am so fucking outta here. As people shift, it’s common to experience inconsistent progress for a while. Taking two steps forward and one step backwards happens to almost everyone. That’s okay. The seed has been planted. It may take time for that seed to mature, but it will continue to grow. The more we take an occasional step backwards, the clearer it becomes that the old territory can no longer be called home. Those who remain stuck don’t seem to reach this point of doneness. The most common reason is that people get stuck in a state of tolerance. They continue to tolerate their relationship with life as-is, even though it doesn’t serve them. Tolerance isn’t surrender. Tolerance is still resistance. When you tolerate a situation, you permit it to exist but you refuse to surrender to it, so you can’t extract the lessons from it. You can’t graduate. Tolerance is like not wanting to go to school but going anyway. You show up, but you refuse to be a student. Consequently, you learn very little. What’s the point of showing up if you’re going to resist? When that resistance finally drops, and the person surrenders to reality and decides to stop fighting, the remaining lessons can finally come through, and the person can progress. Graduation is within reach. There are lessons to be learned from being broke. There are lessons in a difficult relationship. There are lessons in illness. There are lessons in periods of drifting. If we resist these experiences, we resist the lessons within them. If an unwanted experience seems to be sticking to you like glue, try practicing non-resistance for a while. Try surrendering to that experience. Give reality the benefit of the doubt, and assume that there are valuable lessons to be learned right where you are. Let yourself complete the experience. Allow yourself to have the experience you’re having without stubbornly resisting it. Let yourself reach the point of doneness. Then you can progress.
Byron Katie talks to Joginder Bola about relationships and love using The Work to question and turn around our thinking.
Byron Katie is the founder of The Work. Katie (as everyone calls her) not only shows us that all the problems in the world originate in our thinking but gives us the tool to open our minds and set ourselves free.
The Work is based on FOUR QUESTIONS which can be done on your own or with another person, ending with a process called a "Turnaround": The four questions are:
1. Is it true? 2. Can you absolutely know that it's true? 3. How do you react when you believe that thought? 4. Who would you be without the thought?
Over the past year and a half, I’ve seen just what a vital role purpose plays in the pursuit of personal growth. I believe that growth is an inborn human need to a certain degree, and apparently so does Tony Robbins, who includes growth on his list of the six human needs. However, I’ve found that if your only interest in personal growth comes from the level of biological need, you’ll be very limited in the amount of growth you can achieve. As an end it itself, personal growth is certainly motivating, but for some goals it just isn’t motivating enough. Fulfilling our needs is obviously a strong driver of human behavior. If you’re hungry or thirsty, you’ll be compelled to seek food or water as your highest priority until that need is filled. There’s no motivation quite so great as that which comes from an empty stomach or a dry throat. Are you familiar with the story about Socrates where a young man came to him near a lake and asked Socrates to teach him how to acquire wisdom? Socrates grabbed the man and plunged his head under the water. As the young man struggled for his life, Socrates continued to forcibly hold him under the water. Finally, Socrates let him up to breathe, and when the man, gasping for breath, asked why Socrates nearly drowned him, Socrates replied, “When your desire for wisdom is as great as your desire to breathe, then you will find wisdom.” I love that story. I don’t know if it’s actually true, but it sure makes a great point. If your motivation for a goal is high enough (as compelling as the desire for air, food, and water), then you’re virtually assured of success if the goal is possible at all. However, in most cases our motivation to achieve a goal isn’t anywhere near the level of biological need. This is especially true when taking on growth-oriented goals. Consider the example of waking up early each morning. For many years of my life, I wanted to become a consistent early riser. My goal was to condition myself to get up every morning at 5am. But during the decade I ran my computer games business, I largely failed at that goal despite making many serious attempts. I could do it for several days at a time, but I could never get the habit to stick consistently. I’d be lying in bed when the 5:00 alarm went off, and as my brain faced the choice between mustering the discipline to get up vs. sleeping in, invariably there would soon come a time when I chose to sleep in. It’s not that I didn’t get enough rest or that I physically needed the extra sleep. It’s just that waking up early wasn’t motivating enough for me. The growth element gave me the drive to make the initial attempt at getting up early, but come day 3 or 4, that element was considerably reduced as the novelty wore off. When I was at my best — when I made the decision to become an early riser — my motivation was at its peak, and I felt certain of success. But at those pre-dawn moments of decision when I was jolted awake by my alarm, my brain still drenched in sleep hormones, the power of my conviction couldn’t always overcome the desire to continue sleeping. So I’d sleep in. However, months after starting my personal development business, I made the attempt to become an early riser again. And this time I succeeded right away. Yes, I had a good strategy, and certainly the previous attempts helped a little. But the main difference was that my motivation to get up early was now much higher. And that extra motivation boost was just what I needed to get past the hump and establish the habit once and for all. Why? My main reason for getting up early was to be more productive. I wanted those extra early morning hours while the rest of the family was still sleeping, so I could get a head start on my day. I also loved how I felt about myself when I got up early and dove straight into action. It felt wonderful when I could actually do it. The difference in motivation came from what I was producing though. What was the real value of that extra productivity? What was I going to do with it? With my games business, those extra hours would ultimately mean producing more entertainment value for people. With my personal development business, it meant spending more time helping people grow. For me, the former seemed moderately motivating… perhaps a 7 on a scale of 1-10. Most of the time, I genuinely enjoyed running my games business. But getting up early to help people grow was far more motivating… on a scale of 1-10, it was an 11. And the motivation I needed to get up early every morning was about an 8 on that scale. What made the difference between success and failure was purpose.
I think one of the reasons many people will initiate new goals and then fizzle out after just a few days is that the motivation to succeed just isn’t strong enough. If you’ve been struggling with a goal where you’re suffering from this pattern of repeated failure, instead of beating yourself up, get curious instead. Ask yourself what the ultimate purpose is. If you were to succeed in achieving your goal, what would it ultimately mean to yourself, to others, and to the world? What’s the actual value your goal would create? We’re all unique individuals, so we may each have a different motivation threshold for achieving a particular goal. Establishing the habit of getting up at 5:00 each morning required me to have a level of motivation of about an 8 on a scale of 1-10. For some people that same habit may only require a 3, while for others it may require a 10.5. Interestingly, I not only mastered the habit of early rising, but later that same year, I blew that accomplishment out of the water by adapting to polyphasic sleep (which for me required about a 9.5 in motivation). And once again purpose was a key factor in my success. I’d love to be able to report that having all that extra time for myself was enough to succeed, but that isn’t remotely true. If that was my source of motivation, I’m certain I would have failed. But being able to share the experience with thousands of other people pushed me over the edge. If you find yourself facing a big goal and you just aren’t making much headway with it because you keep giving up after a time, consider the motivation threshold for the task. On a scale of 1-10, what level of motivation do you feel is required to succeed? Notice that different goals have different numbers. Your motivation threshold for checking email might be a 2, whereas the motivation threshold for doing public speaking might be a 9.5. Everyone is different, so your specific numbers may vary. We often get blindsided by failure because we compare the success threshold to our level of motivation when we’re at our best. When you’re at your best, your motivation may be a 9 or 10. But that isn’t where you make the decision to give up. When you’re at a 9 or 10 in motivation, you will get out of bed early, you will make the trek to the gym, and you will read that book that’s been sitting on your shelf for months. But we aren’t always at our best. There will be times when you aren’t at your best, and you’ll still have to make the decision between getting up vs. sleeping in, between going to the gym vs. going out to dinner, and between reading a book vs. watching TV. Where will your motivation be in all these moments of decision? Will your motivation to succeed ever dip below your goal’s motivation threshold? An inspiring purpose is like getting an automatic +4 for all of your 2D6 attacks. That’s a role-playing analogy that loosely translates as, “Purpose provides a motivation bonus for every goal you set, making it more likely that you’ll pass your motivation threshold.” Suppose your goal’s motivation threshold is an 8. And suppose your level of motivation for this goal normally falls in the 4-9 range. When you’re at your best, you’ll succeed, but there will eventually come a time when you aren’t at your best, and then you’ll fail. But with a +4 purpose, now your whole motivation range shifts from 4-9 to 8-13, and in every situation, even when you’re at your worst, you’re still above the goal’s motivation threshold. So no matter what, you’ll succeed. With a strong purpose, you’ll score more hits and suffer fewer misses. Just as a 2D6+4 will grant you victory in battle against fiercer opponents than a plain old 2D6, a compelling purpose will enable you to successfully achieve more goals and establish more new habits than you’ll be able to achieve without it. For my RPG-challenged readers, a 2D6 means to role two regular six-sided dice, and the total you get represents the strength of your attack (higher numbers are better). A 2D6+4 means to take your 2D6 roll and add 4 to it. So the range of possible rolls for a 2D6 is 2-12, but the range for a 2D6+4 is 6-16. Now if as you read that description, you were thinking, “You forgot to mention fumbles and criticals,” you really need to get out more. 😉 All purposes are not equal, so you may need to experiment to see what purpose gives you the greatest motivation bonus. For me, entertaining people is perhaps a +2 bonus, but helping people grow might be a +4 or +5. The former is like a short sword, while the latter is like a two-handed magic axe. For someone else, however, such as a stand-up comedian, those numbers might be flip-flopped. What motivates you most is something you’ll have to discover for yourself, but I will suggest that it almost certainly has to do with finding a way to be of genuine service to other people. What would get you out of bed early every morning? What work would be so compelling to you that you’d joyfully lose yourself in it? What do you find so motivating that you’d even ignore a growling stomach for hours just to stay with it? Purpose isn’t the only thing that provides a motivational bonus. Consider that all parts of your life either add a motivational bonus or penalty. Is your job a +4 or a -2? What about your relationship, your home, your friends, your family, your diet, your income, your spiritual beliefs? Are these giving you positive bonuses or dragging you down with penalties? If you really want to learn about yourself, make a list of the various factors of your life, and assign each a bonus number, perhaps in the range of -5 to +5. Sinking into debt might be a -3, while falling in love may be a +5. This will show you where you have the greatest opportunities for growth. If you’re mathematically inclined as I am, you may enjoy thinking of personal growth as a numbers game. Look at all the bonuses and penalties in your life, and see how they add up. Where can you add new bonuses? Where can you eliminate penalties? What can you do to take your character to the next level? Source
How do you feel about people who are very successful? What’s your attitude toward the movers and shakers in your field? Do you admire and respect them? Do you speak highly of them? Or are you suspicious of them? Do you criticize or attack them? What’s the true role of these people in your life? What do they represent? Subjectively speaking, your relationship with the most successful people in your reality represents your relationship to success itself. Those people represent your potential and how you feel about it. I use the term “relationship” to mean your general attitude toward people who are ultra-successful. It doesn’t matter if you know them personally because your relationships are all in your mind anyway. If you don’t know any very successful people personally, but you still hold strong opinions about some of them, that is very telling as well. It indicates that you don’t have a close personal relationship with your own success potential. On the other hand, if you count highly successful people among your closest and dearest friends and family, that’s equally telling. It suggests that you have a close personal connection to your own success potential.
Birds of a feather
Objectively speaking, successful people flock together. You really don’t see highly successful people all by themselves, surrounded by those who have a negative attitude towards success. The movers and shakers in any field tend to be friends and often hang out together. Similarly, people who have a negative attitude toward success flock together as well. If you want to get a better picture of your own relationship to success, look to the people you hang out with. Do you befriend a lot of successful people? Or do you hang out with those who resent them or who are envious of them? This will give you a good picture of your relationship to success itself. It’s all too easy to say that you have a successful attitude, but if you keep company with those who shun success, you’re incongruent. Successful and unsuccessful people tend to repel each other, at least in terms of forming close friendships. One reason is that unsuccessful people are constantly complaining. They’re veritable fountains of grievances. They do it dozens of times per day, usually without being aware of it. If you ask them what they think of any random celebrity, it’s a virtual guarantee they’ll focus mainly on what they don’t like about that person. Successful people, on the other hand, are constantly talking about their dreams, goals, and projects. This doesn’t mean they’re blindly optimistic about everything. They simply have a strong tendency to focus on what they want. They inspire and motivate themselves, and they inspire and motivate each other. When you put the two different types of people together, you have the unsuccessful people talking about their grievances, which annoys and disturbs the highly successful people if overdone. Initially a successful person may try to help out by offering advice or mentoring. But when s/he observes that the unsuccessful person applies none of it and comes up with excuses to maintain the status quo, it’s an immediate turnoff. The successful person will usually bow out and go where his/her talents and skills are appreciated. Similarly, you have the successful people constantly yabbering on about their goals and dreams. This annoys the unsuccessful people to no end. They can’t stand it. They’ll often try to “help” the successful people by cautioning them about negative outcomes. But successful people aren’t phased and continue to press on anyway. The unsuccessful person can’t keep up and ducks out.
Attitude
Being successful or unsuccessful isn’t about how much money or status you’ve achieved. It’s an internal quality. It’s your attitude. I’ve met people who have a lot of money, but their attitude toward successful people is so negative, they repel such people everywhere they go. I’ve also met people who are dead broke, but they easily attract highly successful mentors to help them out, and it isn’t long before their external world begins to reflect their inner truth. When you harbor negative feelings toward successful people, you push success away. When you harbor positive feelings toward them, your own success draws nearer. I’ve seen a very basic form of this advice in many books on wealth and success. You’ve probably encountered it as well. It goes something like, “If you hate wealthy and successful people, you’ll never be one of them because you won’t allow yourself to become something you hate.” There’s some truth to that, but I think it’s easier to see why it works when you view it through the lens of subjective reality. Since your relationships are all in your mind, your relationship towards any particular class of people is a reflection of your relationship with whatever those people represent to you. This means that you can understand your relationship to success by exploring your relationships with the most successful people in your reality. Are the most successful people in your life close to you? Do you count them among your dearest friends? Or are they way off in the distance somewhere? Do you love successful people? Do you speak highly of them? Do you feel loved and appreciated by them? Or do you shun them? Do they shun you? Do you move in totally different circles? Who do you think is responsible for that?
A simple exercise
Select a person you regard as very successful. It doesn’t matter if you’ve actually met the person. Take a few minutes to write down your thoughts about this person, including what you like and don’t like. Then read back what you wrote as if you’ve been writing about your own relationship to success. I think you’ll find this exercise very insightful. What if you’ve never even met the other person? How can you possibly know what they’re like? Where is your attitude really coming from? Your own beliefs about success are filtering it.
Seeing it from the other side
Have you ever been told that someone you’ve never met holds a certain attitude toward you. “Joe absolutely adores you; he talks about you all the time.” “Mary thinks you’re a loser; she talks about you behind your back.” Does it strike you as odd that people could form such strong opinions about you without actually meeting you? I get this all the time as a blogger. Lots of people hold strong opinions about me, but the ones with the strongest opinions have never even met me. To back up their opinions, they select a few clips to support their opinion from the nearly 2 million words I’ve written. Of course they’re really selecting to match their beliefs about whatever I represent to them, perhaps their own relationship to personal growth since that’s what I write about. I’ve noticed that people who hold a low opinion of personal development will invariably hold similar thoughts toward me. I’m lame or stupid because of what I represent to them. Those who love personal development and have a strong relationship with their own growth tend to feel good about me. I’m helpful or brilliant because of what I represent. I’m just using this as a general example. To a lot of people I represent growth and change because that’s what I write about, so this is the role people assign me in their reality. But of course it could be something entirely different. It’s your reality, so you assign the roles. What do I represent in your reality? Can you see how your attitude toward me is a reflection of your attitude toward whatever I represent? Is it possible you’re assigning qualities to me that may be inaccurate and that your opinion might shift if we had a face-to-face conversation?
How to become more successful
If you wish to become more successful, then work on improving your relationship with the most successful people in your life. Forgive them. Befriend them. Love them. Do whatever it takes. Forgive, love, and befriend the part of yourself that wants to have a positive connection to success. This doesn’t mean hanging out with people whose values and morals disgust you. Just loosen your grip on some of your criticisms. Realize that successful people are human. Notice what blocks come up. What is it about highly successful people that really bugs you? For example, if you get caught up in thinking about their character and personality flaws, what does that say about you? Does it mean that in order for you to have a close relationship with success, you must be perfect? Is that realistic? Can you see that you’re always going to repel success with that attitude because you’ll never be perfect? I’ve seen this happen with some of my long-term readers. I write hundreds of articles they love, but as soon as I write about that one hot-button issue where we have a difference of opinion, they send me a nasty email and tell me I’ve lost them forever, despite numerous breakthroughs they previously thanked me profusely for helping them achieve. This often happens when they’re getting close to success in their own lives, but they aren’t ready for it. Do you expect every teacher or mentor to be perfect? Do you expect to see eye-to-eye in every situation? Will you run away forever if someone challenges you in a way you don’t like? Is this how you’d like to see other people deal with your success? Do you want them to put you on a pedestal, to analyze your every action, to expect perfection from you at all times? Or would you prefer to be treated like a human being, accepted and loved as you are? Is this how you relate to the successful people in your life? What if you believe that successful people are greedy? Do you ever complain that they should donate more to charity? What does that say about you? Are you more greedy than you realize but secretly resentful of your own selfishness? Do you feel you should be donating more than you are? What do you think about enjoying the rewards of success? Can you feel good when some celebrity rewards themselves? Do you feel guilty about rewarding yourself with a treat now and then? Or do you feel good about it, knowing that rewarding yourself helps motivate you to create even more value for others?
Becoming congruent with success
We all have blocks that keep us out of harmony with our great potential. The people in our lives are always reflecting that inner attitude back to us. To fix the inner attitude problem, you must at some point admit that you were wrong and forgive yourself for it. “I was wrong about so-and-so. Perhaps he isn’t such a bad guy after all. Maybe he’s just human. I will do my best to love and accept him as he is.” You can extend what I’ve said about success to any quality or character trait. Your feelings toward sexy people reflects your relationship with your own sexiness. Your feelings toward healthy people reflects your relationship with health. Your feelings toward rich people reflects your relationship with wealth. Your feelings toward creative people reflects your relationship with your own creativity. Your feelings toward highly productive people reflects your relationship with productivity. Your feelings toward highly spiritual people reflects your relationship with spirituality. How do you feel about psychics? Are you skeptical? Do you feel they’re all frauds and charlatans? Do you harbor serious doubts about their so-called gifts? If so, does it surprise you that your own psychic senses are virtually nonexistent? Do you wonder why your intuition is so cloudy that you can never trust it? On the other hand, do you feel that psychics are loving people with a special gift to share? Do you accept their guidance with gratitude? Is it any wonder that you’re also able to gain much value from your own intuitive and psychic senses? Do other people comment on how gifted you are? If you hate or distrust certain people, you’re pushing away that part of yourself. If you love and accept certain people, you’re in harmony with that part of yourself. You can massively accelerate your personal growth by tweaking these relationships consciously and deliberately. It’s all in your mind anyway.
As within, so without
When you make the inner adjustment, your external world will shift to reflect the inner change. Recently I did some inner work on my attitude towards certain people. My block had to do with people who spend money on nonessentials, sometimes as a way of rewarding themselves. Spending money on nonessential items would usually make me feel uncomfortable, even if I could easily afford it. Erin and I had a 13-year old couch in our home that was ripped in a couple places and pretty ratty looking. One of the built-in recliners was broken. She’d been talking about getting a new couch for at least a couple years, probably longer, but I always blocked her. “This couch is fine. We don’t need to spend money on a new one.” We had plenty of money though, and a new couch wouldn’t make a serious dent in our finances. She tried to get us to go couch shopping a few times, but I rejected her choices. There was always something wrong with them. After doing some inner work on my attitude toward spending money and enjoying the rewards of success, I was able to get past this block. We went couch shopping and were helped by an exceedingly gregarious and non-pushy salesman. We shopped with an attitude of positive expectancy and soon found the perfect couch for our space. We also found some great recliner chairs and small tables for one of our upstairs rooms, and we bought those too. When we got home, Erin posted an ad on Craigslist to offer our old couch for free to anyone who was willing to pick it up. We would have donated it to charity, but most charities wouldn’t take it. Erin got about 40 replies to her ad in 24 hours, and we gave the old couch to some people who were grateful to squeeze more life out of it. I’m very much enjoying the new couch and chairs. In retrospect it seems like such a silly block to have. The solution was that I had to reassess my attitude toward people who use their money to reward themselves. I went from “What a waste of money; do they really need a new X?” to “Great to see people enjoying the rewards of success; they certainly deserve it!” Once I shifted my attitude toward others, my inner relationship with that aspect of abundance also changed. And soon my external reality came into harmony with the new attitude. Even working through small blocks can bring more success into your life, sometimes in unexpected ways. Around the same time I was working through this block, some new interview requests came in. Later this month Deepak Chopra will be interviewing me for his radio show, and next month Jack Canfield is scheduled to interview me as well. Did they appear on my radar as a result of my inner shift? Who are the people you hate most in your life? Who are the people you love most? Can you admit that your attitude toward those people is going to have to change if you want to change your relationship with what they represent? Can you see that if you harbor ill feelings toward the top performers in your field, you’ll never become a top performer yourself? Before posting this article, I asked Erin to give it a quick read. When she was done, she asked me, “How do you feel about people who have decent patio furniture?” What, those losers??? 😉 Source
One of the big traps in life is believing that you’re making progress when there’s no actual evidence of it. It’s easy to keep learning and studying new ideas, methods, and techniques that don’t improve your results… while convincing yourself that you must be making progress simply because you’ve invested a lot of time and effort in learning and growth. It would be nice if effort equaled results, but it’s very common to apply effort without generating measurable results. Let me share a personal story to illustrate this… Based on my efforts at studying and practicing the game of blackjack, I could make a case that I’m an expert blackjack player. In my 20s I read a dozen or so books about the game of blackjack and a dozen more more about casino gambling in general. I did some independent study on games of chance in college, both for fun and as part of my education for my math degree. In high school I even programmed my Casio fx-8000G calculator to play blackjack, including drawing all the cards pixel by pixel. However, I soon learned that it’s one thing to hold this knowledge in my mind, and it’s quite another thing to apply it as a real-world skill to get positive results. Shortly after my 21st birthday, I made my first adult trip to Las Vegas with some friends. Before we left, I practiced counting cards just as I had learned from books. It took hours to memorize the correct play of every hand and to practice counting down a deck until I could do it in 13-14 seconds consistently (about as fast as I could physically flip through all the cards). I felt very well prepared before I ever set foot in a real casino. On that first trip, I played the lowest limits available, mostly varying my bets from $2 to $10. I won $125 total, giving me a nice reward for my efforts. This positive result encouraged me to keep playing. I made the 4-hour drive from L.A. to Vegas dozens of times, taking advantage of the cheap rooms and food that were in abundance at the time. I continued to invest in learning more about blackjack. I studied advanced techniques that could add a bit more edge. I learned more about the social aspects of the game. I started betting a bit more, usually $5-25 or $10-50 ranges, sometimes $25-125. I got used to bigger swings, such as losing $700 or winning $900 in a single sitting. I got kicked out of a casino for winning $200 in a few minutes, so I learned to disguise my play better. I learned how to get comps. I was very disciplined and never risked rent money or went on tilt. For me it was mostly about the challenge. I loved the combination of mathematics and emotional discipline that was required to do well. Now fast forward 20 years. I’ve been living in Vegas since 2004. There’s a popular casino just 5 minutes from my house. I can walk there if I want. I could go play blackjack at any time of day. But I rarely do these days. And if I do play, I don’t count cards. I would only play for fun, and only at a betting level that’s so far below my means that it can’t possibly make a difference in my finances. I would never go as high as risking even half a percent of my income over the course of a year. So on the one hand, I can claim that I have a lot of expertise in this area. I invested a lot of time in learning, and I have many hours of real-world practice. But what are the actual results? I certainly didn’t do anything like the M.I.T. blackjack team did. Given my low betting levels and infrequent play, I wouldn’t even earn enough to reach minimum wage. Over the long run, my results were insignificant from a financial perspective. If I evaluate this pursuit through the lens of study and effort and practice, then I could argue that I’ve grown tremendously in my skill at blackjack. But if I use the lens of real-world results, then I must admit that I have virtually no results to speak of. I never did what would have been necessary to generate serious results from this pursuit. It was merely a side hobby that I explored for fun. So can I claim to be an expert blackjack player? That may be an issue of semantics, but I certainly can’t claim to have won any serious money at the game, which is generally how a blackjack player would measure their long-term success.
Evaluating Your Progress
How do you assess your progress? Do you feel you’re making progress if you’ve studied and practiced a great deal? Or do you only give yourself credit for real-world results that other people can perceive as well? I think that both types of assessment are valid. I don’t think we should completely discount learning, study, and practice as ends unto themselves. However, I also think many of us need to move our evaluation criteria further in the direction of measurable, real-world results. Here are some questions to get you thinking about the differences between study and results… Study: Do you think you know a lot about relationships? Have you read books or attended workshops on relationships? Do you know how to approach people and start conversations? Do you know how to build rapport? Do you know how to communicate well with people? Results: Are you currently enjoying positive relationships in your life right now? Are you happy and fulfilled in this part of your life? Do other people notice how happy you are with your relationships? How many people would name you as a friend? How many invites do you get in a typical month? Study: Do you think you know a lot about making money? Do you have ideas about what you can do to increase your income? Do you have goals, plans, and to-do lists? What financial skills have you acquired? Results: How much money have you earned so far this year? What does your financial balance sheet look like? If an independent financial consultant looked at your balance, would s/he say you’re wealthy, average, or pretty much broke? Would s/he see evidence of positive change over the past 3 years? Study: Do you believe you’re a caring and compassionate person? Do you care about people, animals, and the environment? Do you have ideas regarding how to make the world a better place? Do you ever wish more people would think as you do? Results: What is the measurable evidence of your ongoing contribution in the real world? What results are other people now getting that they weren’t before, thanks to you? Which specific people will testify that you’ve helped them, and how will they say you’ve helped? Which parts of the environment are better off now, thanks to you, and how are they better? Is your caring and compassion flowing out into the world and affecting real people, or is it just a feeling you have? When you look back at how your life was 3 years ago, which areas would seem to be about the same if examined by an impartial observer? Where would this observer testify that you’ve made measurable progress? Where would s/he testify that you’ve failed to make any discernible progress? Have you been assessing your progress as objectively and fair-mindedly as this impartial observer would? Have you been giving yourself credit for non-existent results? Have you been failing to credit yourself for results you really did achieve?
Results-Orientation
If you’re beginning to realize that you have a strong bias towards over-crediting yourself for study, effort, and practice as opposed to real-world results, I’d encourage you to shift your evaluation criteria to the results side. This may feel a bit alien at first… perhaps a bit harsher than you’re used to… but I think you’ll like it better in the long run. I’m a person who loves to read, explore, and experiment, so it’s easy for me to get caught up on the learning side and convince myself that I’m making real progress simply by making an effort. But I’ve learned over the years that my study tends to flow much better when I’m working towards a results-based goal. During college I got a contract job to program some computer games for a local game company. At the time I only knew DOS game programming, and they were developing games for Windows 3.1. Windows game programming was a whole different animal, so I committed myself to the project before I really knew what I was getting into. But as “luck” would have it, I got jury duty right when I was supposed to begin working on the first game, so the start of the project had to be delayed. I went to a bookstore and bought a stack of books on Windows game programming. Since there was so much downtime during the court case, I was able to go through those books in a matter of days. Since my learning was results-driven from the get-go, I was able to learn a lot faster. I could focus on the concepts that I would need to apply and ignore the irrelevant bits. Consequently, I had a working demo of the first game running only 9 days after I started the project. About six months later, I got to see the 4-pack of games I had programmed selling in stores like Comp USA and Software Etc. I also received royalty checks for more than $20K in addition to my contract pay. My learning efforts generated measurable results. I wasn’t just learning for the sake of learning. Later I applied those skills to design, program, and publish other games as well. And I helped teach other independent developers how to do the same. When I engage in learning just to learn something new, I almost always learn more slowly. I learn fastest when my learning is results-oriented, such as if I’m figuring out how to implement some particular feature for a specific project. Learning just to learn can be very seductive. Read any random nonfiction book, and you may be able to convince yourself that you’re doing something valuable and worthwhile. But what are you going to do with that knowledge? Will it be largely forgotten a year later? Or will you apply it in the real world? I’ve read so many books that it’s hard to keep them all straight. I have bits and pieces of knowledge about a great variety of subjects. At the time I studied these topics, they usually seemed important. Yesterday I was reading a fascinating book about the history of Goldman Sachs, a powerful investment bank that started in the 1800s and took a lot of flak for its role in the recent financial crisis. But what can I do with this knowledge? How will it generate fresh real-world results? It may be an educational, eye-opening read, but since I’m not reading it with any results-orientation in mind, I could say that I’m better off learning something else that I can apply right away. Learning for the sake of learning can indeed be pleasurable, and it can offer up hidden benefits over time. But my experience suggests that learning for the sake of creating real-world results can be just as pleasurable — and a lot faster too. You not only enjoy the learning process, but you also get to experience new results. All else being equal, doesn’t it make more sense to learn with a strong results-orientation in mind? What are the results you’d like to achieve next? Can you direct your learning to help you achieve those results faster?
The Best of Both Worlds
Study, effort, and practice needn’t be in opposition to real-world results. The truth is that we can enjoy both. A straightforward way to do this is to clarify some new results you’d like to achieve, and then focus on learning what you need to learn to achieve those results. While I enjoyed learning to play blackjack, my blackjack knowledge doesn’t do much for me or anyone else in terms of real-world results; it never did. On the other hand, learning how to create a web business has allowed me to enjoy life without the hassle of a regular job, to provide a worthwhile and sustainable service for people around the world, and to give me sufficient freedom to keep learning and growing. Never say “I don’t know how” to excuse yourself from pursuing a particular result you desire. “I don’t know how” is the mantra of fools. It’s okay to say, “I don’t know how yet,” but better still is to drop such phrases from your repertoire altogether. Just dive in and start learning what you need to learn. Don’t excuse yourself due to a lack of knowledge. If you don’t know how, learn how. You learned how to walk and talk. Surely you can learn other skills too. I like Jack Canfield’s advice to “lean into it.” When you don’t know how to achieve a particular result, don’t worry about learning everything overnight. Just lean into it. Get one book that seems remotely relevant, and read it. That book should give you new leads to follow. It might turn you on to other books, teachers, workshops, or experiments you can try. Keep following the trail of breadcrumbs as you gradually learn how to achieve the new results you desire. But be careful not to fall back into the seductive trap of learning merely for the sake of learning. Again, learning for the sake of learning is still perfectly okay. I think it’s well and good to broaden your horizons, and not everything you learn has to be so results-oriented. But when you’re pursuing a particular goal, stick to results-oriented learning, and don’t let yourself get sidetracked. When you look back on the past several years of your life, are you pleased with the results you’ve achieved? Can you see that your investments in personal growth and learning are paying off in terms of measurable results? What is the evidence of your real-world progress? Is your “progress” all in your mind? Are you happy with your current balance between learning for the sake of learning vs. learning to achieve specific results? Source
