A Guide to Clearing Your Energy Space with Energetic NLP | Art Giser

Discover how to clear your energy is this simple and powerful process outlined by Art Giser.
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The skill of self confidence | Dr. Ivan Joseph | TEDxRyersonU

As the Athletic Director and head coach of the Varsity Soccer team at Ryerson University, Dr. Joseph is often asked what skills he is searching for as a recruiter: is it speed? Strength? Agility? In Dr. Joseph's TEDx Talk, he explores self confidence and how it is not just the most important skill in athletics, but in our lives.
"I am the captain of my ship and the master of my fate."
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How to Bypass Resistance | Steve Pavlina

You may have heard this quote from German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer:

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Here’s a variation on this idea that we can use for personal growth transitions:

All growth passes through three stages. First, you’ll be ridiculed. Second, your efforts will meet with serious opposition. Third, you’ll be accepted as the new person you’ve become.

Have you seen this pattern show up in your life? I’ve run through it many times. Lots of readers have run this pattern. It happens with career transitions, relationships transitions, lifestyle changes, health improvements, and more.

Schopenhauer was a pessimist. In fact, his worldview is called philosophical pessimism.
If we apply Schopenhauer’s model to personal growth, aren’t we being a little pessimistic then? Pessimism isn’t truth. Pessimism is just one of many lenses we can use, and if we go into a growth experience with a pessimistic lens, aren’t we more likely to create a journey that looks like Schopenhauer’s stages?

Are these three stages really necessary? Is the ridicule necessary? Is the violent opposition necessary? Do we really have to go through those first two stages to get to the third stage? Can’t we just skip to the end?

Seduced by Schopenhauer’s Script

Blogging about my personal growth journey since 2004 has given me a lot of feedback. For many years I basically ran Schopenhauer’s script. It was there from day one. What! You’re quitting the computer gaming industry? What the heck is blogging? You’ll never make any money doing that!

After many years of such transitions, the script became all too predictable, and because of its predictability, I got faster at running it. Instead of taking weeks or months to play out, I’d be at stage three within days. Eventually I’d get there within 1-2 days. The criticism and resistance would blow up and then burn out within 24-48 hours. It was Schopenhauer’s script running on Internet time.

Exploring subjective reality gave me a different perspective on this model as well. Were my own expectations creating these stages? If I changed my thoughts, feelings, and beliefs, would it be possible to skip ahead to stage three?

I had to admit that I was indeed expecting opposition when I embarked upon some transitions. I’d prepare myself by raising my psychological shields. I’d pre-load my personal Schopenhauer script. And my expectations would largely come true.

For many years I thought I benefitted from strong personal shielding. I made decisions carefully, weathered the criticism, and plowed ahead. The stormy parts didn’t phase me. I was comfortable with ridicule and opposition.

I even gave myself extra practice by deliberately inviting critical feedback, such as when I made this April Fool’s post inviting people to apply to become my slaves, or this one announcing a fake D/s workshop. The criticism came flying in as expected. Some people even launched new websites specifically devoted to criticizing me, such as StevePavlinaIsTheDevil.com (that one eventually went offline).

To me this was just a form of resistance training. The more criticism came through, the easier it was to handle it. It wasn’t going to phase me.

Did I really want to keep running this pattern for the rest of my life though? Was there any more growth to be squeezed out from stronger shielding?

For many years I figured it was indeed necessary and that I should just accept it as normal… at least normal for me. I’m a public figure. I write about many controversial topics on the Internet. I have some pretty strong opinions. Of course the criticism will keep happening. There’s no way around that.

As the pattern sped up, however, this mindset began looking increasingly ridiculous to me. I wondered to what extent I was creating it through my own expectations. These rapid burns poked holes in my beliefs. I didn’t understand why the criticism would surge and then die so quickly.

Challenging the Script

In 2011 I did a 30-day trial of learning music composition. No one criticized me for that, and that probably doesn’t surprise you. It didn’t surprise me either. But I wondered… Was there a lack of criticism because learning music wasn’t objectionable to my readers? Or was there a lack of criticism because I didn’t expect any criticism for such a trial?

That led to me to ask:

What if I stopped expecting resistance in areas where I’d previously expected it? Would the criticism still happen?

And that spawned more questions:

Were people criticizing me because they objectively didn’t like my ideas? Or were they criticizing me because I was broadcasting incongruence, defensiveness, or the expectation of criticism?

So I began to experiment.

I started paying attention to my attitude, energy, and expectations as I made new decisions. If I felt defensive in advance, I began working through those feelings privately. I imagined the public criticism that would come, but instead of inviting it, I pre-processed it within myself. I worked on getting to a place of peace with my decisions first.

I didn’t do this with every decision, but when I did apply this, it worked. I could write congruently about topics that previously would have invited plenty of critical feedback, and I wouldn’t receive a single negative piece of feedback. I want to say that this surprised me, but oddly it didn’t surprise me. Somehow it made perfect sense to me.

When I was able to fully accept my decisions, I stopped broadcasting defensiveness, which stopped attracting criticism. Perhaps no one wants to bother criticizing someone whose mind is already at peace, at least not to that person directly.

I realized that people can smell incongruence a mile away, and it’s that incongruence that riles them up and makes them want to set me straight. Otherwise they don’t bother. They might still criticize an idea on their own for whatever reason, but they wouldn’t send such feedback to me directly.

The very presence of armor and shielding makes people want to hack at it with a sword. They really can’t resist. But when there’s no armor and shielding, people don’t even think to grab a sword and take a swing at you. There’s no reason to do so.

An Environment of Acceptance

As I thought about how to bypass the resistance stages, I recalled an effect I’ve seen many times at our workshops. When people spend days surrounded by other growth-oriented people, the deep and immediate acceptance really sinks in. In an environment of such acceptance and encouragement, people realize that it isn’t necessary to explain and defend their decisions. So the shields go down. The defensiveness vanishes. And the mind reaches a new level of congruence and peace.

These kinds of experiences were an important part of my journey as well. When I began leaning into the idea of open relationships, I had doubts about the path and wasn’t congruent with it. When I first started writing about it several years ago, boy was there a lot criticism! But when I would hang out in person with people who’d been living that lifestyle for years, I couldn’t help but notice that they had zero defensiveness about it. For them it was a perfectly normal and sensible way to live. I couldn’t find their shields, even when I tried to play Devil’s advocate with them.

This became a powerful tool for me, one that I like much better than polishing my armor. When I’m considering making a change, I find it really helpful to hang out with people who are on the other side. For me it’s a change. But for them, it’s just their normal everyday lives. When I see how normal it is for them, it helps me imagine the shift as being totally normal for me as well. It gives me a vision of what I’ll be like on the other side.

Starting in the late 90s, I used this approach to transform my once failing computer games business into a successful one. I began hanging out with successful independent software developers, both online and in person. It sounds a little dumb in retrospect to say this, but I was struck by just how comfortable they were with their success. To me at the time, it was a really big deal to earn six or seven figures a year from selling one’s own software. But I couldn’t detect any of this amazement in the people I met. They didn’t feel special to have done it. It was just a normal thing to be doing.

I realized that seeing a transition as special is a form of incongruence. When we project extraordinary qualities onto a change, we push it away. We invite ridicule. We invite opposition. We slow ourselves down. We remain stuck.

It took many more years before I connected the dots between these two ideas and saw how sensible it would be to use an environment of acceptance to bypass resistance.

This is how I skip the first two stages in Schopenhauer’s worldview. But really I still go through three stages. They’re just different stages. The model I use now looks like this:

All growth passes through three stages. First, envision the change as possible. Second, invite support for your change by meeting people who are already living as you desire. Third, realize you’re already one of those people — and that you love it!

Suppose you want to transition from a scarcity mindset to an abundant lifestyle using Schopenhauer’s original model. You’ll start by getting ridiculed by other scarcity minded people. Then you’ll deal with lots of obstacles and setbacks. And finally — hopefully — you’ll be spit out the other side. Does that work for personal growth? Not really. You could just as easily stay stuck indefinitely with this approach… unless you build some really strong psychological weaponry and fight your way through.

Or you could take a gentler, more optimistic approach. Realize that other people are already living on the other side of the change you want to make. For those people your desired change is a perfectly normal and natural way to live. There’s nothing to debate. The benefits are self-evident. You can simply go and join them. They’re happy to welcome you. Leave your shields and armor behind.

You can also create this environment of acceptance in your own mind by imagining it as real. Some people are really good at that. I usually get better results by talking to real people though, at least initially. Visualization is helpful after I’ve met people who are already on the other side, so I can better understand the subtleties of the vibe they have.

You can still use Schopenhauer’s approach if you like armor and shields. It’s a little clumsy at times, but it does work. It can even be fun, especially when people go out of their way to swing their swords at you. That’s where the pessimistic model leads. You’ll eventually become a champion pessimist.

But also recognize that there are alternative approaches that can bypass the resistance altogether. Connecting with people on the other side of your desired transition is one of the most effective. Other approaches are possible too, as long as you begin with the idea that you have the power to go straight to the acceptance phase.

We don’t have to follow Schopenhauer’s model of truth either. We can encounter a new truth, welcome it, and accept it smoothly and easily. The challenge is to love the truth more than the untruth.

Which do you love more? The place where you are, or the place where you want to be? If it’s the latter, then stop defending the former.

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Dealing With Anger, Resistance And Pessimism | Eckhart Tolle

Eckhart Tolle discusses the decisive shift from identifying with a feeling and simply observing it in your energy field.
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Mile Wide, Mile Deep | Steve Pavlina

Have you ever heard the phrase “inch wide, mile deep” with respect to picking an area of focus for your education, career, website, business, etc? The idea here is that you should narrow your focus and concentrate on becoming highly skilled in one particular subfield. Then you’ll be able to carve out a space within your industry where you’re competent enough to compete… and hopefully make a good living.

You can do that. It does work to a certain extent. But this article is about why you may not want to do that.

You don’t have to use the inch wide, mile deep approach to niche down if it bothers you to do so. Many people have mixed feelings about it, and rightly so. There are some big consequences to consider.

I don’t use this approach for my work because I don’t like the lifestyle consequences of sticking to one niche for so long. I’d be bored within a few years no matter what I picked, even if I picked something I love. I like variety too much. This life is precious to me, and while I love doing deep dives, I don’t want to be so myopically focused on any one aspect of life or business for so long that I miss out on exploring the other aspects that also interest me.

You could say that my niche is personal growth, but that isn’t really a niche at all because anything fits into that huge space: productivity, relationships, career, finances, health, lifestyle, values, spirituality, social skills, and more. Name any topic you can think of, and I can link it to personal growth.

Mile Wide, Mile Deep

I prefer the mile wide, mile deep approach. It works well too, but the mindset and framework are different if you want to succeed with it. There are some consequences to accept, but you may actually like those consequences.

To make this work in business, it’s important to focus on the long-term relationship with your audience instead of deliberately trying to nichify or brand yourself into a corner. You want to connect with them as human beings with lots of interests, problems, challenges, and desires – i.e. people just like you – not as monodimensional prospects who care about your niche.

It’s important not to brand yourself in the typical branding sense if you want your audience members to relate to you as a real, multidimensional person. If I brand myself as anything, I prefer to just call myself an explorer. It turns out that many people like being able to maintain our relationship across a wide variety of interests – I like it too! – and branding myself into a singular niche would only get in the way of that.

Doesn’t it kinda suck when you discover a guru you really like, but all they do is speak and write about the same narrow topic over and over again? Wouldn’t it be nice to connect on some other dimensions too, especially if you like and respect the person? How many emails or blog posts can you read about the same thing until you’re drowning in boredom and looking for the unsubscribe button?

The 50-Year Audience

Ask yourself this: What kind of audience could you keep for 50 years? Who’d stay with you that long? In which niche could you expect to still be working in 50 years after you start, assuming you lived that long?

I’ll bet a lot of people in your audience would love to connect with you based on other interests beyond your main niche, and you’re probably not inviting them to do so. So they can’t bond with you as closely as they would with a real life friend with whom they may share multiple interests. But what if they could bond with you that closely?

Motivation can be a lot harder in a nichified business after the first few years. Eventually the repetitiveness and lack of variety start to grind you down. I see this happening in so many friends. The passion just drains out of them after a while. And it shows up in procrastination, lifeless work, and frequent fantasizing about doing something else. What once seemed like a great niche is now stunting their growth as human beings, providing them with too little stimulation and variety. Eventually they begin to think there’s something wrong with them for being experts in their field and not feeling driven anymore.

My business is a lot of fun to run because on any given day, week, or month, I can tackle any topic that interests me. I can switch topics seemingly at random, and I often do. This year I did three-day workshops on abundance, mental development, lifestyle design, and entrepreneurship. I spoke about relationships in Mexico and character development in the UK. I love, love, love that kind of variety.

Even after 12+ years on this path, I’m more in love with the work now than during the first 5 years. Whichever direction my current interests twist and turn, a sizable audience has proven they’re willing to come along for the ride. Of course I lose some people now and then, but in the long run, the narrow-minded, mono-focused people get filtered out as they smash into walls at every zig and zag and can’t keep up with the course changes. Meanwhile the ones who make it through multiple years with me are the ones who, like me, love the variety and enjoy connecting with and learning from someone who’s very much like them – a multidimensional human being.

Breadth AND Depth

You might be thinking that you can’t possibly go a mile wide and a mile deep. You have to go for breadth OR depth, don’t you? It’s an either-or decision. I think Leonardo da Vinci would call B.S. on that, and so would I. Breadth and depth enhance each other. You can have both. 
In fact, I think it’s a lot easier – and way more fun – to go for both.

If you explore a lot, you’ll become a better explorer. You’ll be able to go deep faster and more efficiently by building skills across multiple areas.

Most importantly, your mile deep will not be in the same spot as someone else’s mile deep. You’ll do your deep dives differently than nichified deep divers.

Your deep dives will also be more holistic because you’ll be able to connect the dots with other deep dives you’ve done. You’ll be better than most people at seeing the big picture and understanding each niche within the context of the others. And that’s going to allow you to offer up some really unique insights, the kinds of insights that even the so-called experts within a field aren’t commonly sharing.

There’s a huge advantage to being unattached to niches as well. You can be ridiculously disloyal to all of your niches and yet still be considered something of an expert within them. You can step into the role of expert within one niche and fire a shot at another niche, then switch sides and fire back. You can explore some really interesting paradoxes this way and find new truths beyond them. I’ll just have to let you chew on that one for a while. This one is hard to describe unless you’ve already experienced it.

Is Your Niche Draining Your Motivation?

Motivation is another key factor. You can dig more and deeper wells if you keep your motivation high. Do you think your depth is really going to be all that deep if your motivation is falling below a 6 out of 10? What if you’re constantly at a 9 or 10 for your motivation, but you jump around a lot? Can you imagine some situations where the 9+ will likely outperform the sub-6?

I’ll readily admit that there are some problems better suited to the stubborn sub-6 who can chip away for years. But there are other problems where the 9+ will win hands down. You can choose to tackle either class of problems. Do you have a preference?

You can actually solve many of the same problems with either approach. You’ll just use different strategies. For instance, a sub-6 might make money with a regular job or with stable self-employment, doing the similar work day after day. A 9+ might earn income by working in bursts, such as by setting up passive income streams (also called evergreen) or by doing income-generating projects.

Also, when you get burned out on some particular niche, you can always take a pause, switch to something else, and come back to it with a fresh perspective. You can go surprisingly deep when you’re able to stave off burnout indefinitely. And every now and then you’ll get lucky just by trying lots of different approaches to many different areas of life. Sometimes gold isn’t buried that deep; it may be buried where no one has bothered to look yet.

The Social Consequences of Nichification

There’s the social aspect too. If you niche down, you’re going to take a lot of your social life into that inch-wide pit with you. By resisting your own nichification, you could enjoy a more varied and arguably richer social life vs. one that’s overstuffed with the same types of people. Partly this is because you can offer up dozens of different interests that people may share with you. Some people will notice that they have a LOT in common with you, and they’ll often reach out to you. If you present more facets for people to connect with, you can attract a great variety of connections as well as more compatible connections.

Also, who really wants to be friends with a mono-focused person? If you go the niche route, there’s a good chance you’ll attract a lot of people who want to connect with you mainly because you’re an expert on that one particular thing. That can be cool for status and income, but it can also lead to a feeling of being used by other people and by society. Do you only want people to relate to you as a tool for their own advancement? That gets lonely after a while. It can also lead to a love-hate relationship with your work.

And there’s the health aspect too, although this tends to be more indirect. As odd as it may seem, boredom can actually become stressful in the long run. When you’re bored with your work, it takes more effort to push yourself to get things done. Your brain doesn’t automatically generate high levels of motivation if it isn’t engaged and stimulated. When you don’t feel highly motivated to work, it’s harder to get results. And when your results start to slip because you aren’t working as productively as you used to, this can create feelings of inadequacy, which makes everything worse. Eventually the external pressures will begin to pile up, and that can create a lot of stress. And that isn’t healthy in the long run. Sadly I’ve seen this happen to a lot of people who nichify themselves into a corner. The worst cases are usually lawyers (no pun intended), one reason being that they often earn a few hundred dollars per hour and get used to that level of income, but they have to keep doing the same work over and over to maintain their lifestyle. Try finding a lawyer who loves his/her work after a decade in the same niche, and I’ll show you a four-leaf clover. I’d probably want to hire that lawyer too… if I ever happened to need one.

* * *

Don’t swallow the nichification pill without reading the warning label first. It’s not the only way to build a following or a business, and depending on your personality and interests, it may actually lead you into a nasty pit of despair. Give some careful thought to the lifestyle consequences of nichification first, and decide whether it’s truly the right path for you.

If you don’t pick a niche, you’ll probably have to build more skills, face more fears, and build a stronger social support network. For people like me, those are powerful reasons not to niche down.

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Prime the Pump | Zig Ziglar

Zig Ziglar explains success in life using the analogy of a water pump. You must prime the pump before you start getting water. In other words, you must put something in, before you get something out.
"How much pumpin' are you gonna do to get a glass of water?"
"Anything is worth doing is worth doing poorly, until you can learn to do it well."
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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.

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