The Holy Grail For Figuring Out WHY you Aren’t Getting The Results You Say You Want

For people who are aware of themselves enough to know what they want, how to go about getting it is often another issue. They work hard…or maybe just tell themselves that…but in spite of effort…they lack results.

Problem is, most people just aren’t aware of the difference between those parts we habitually, reflexively act from and the higher Self that directs those parts toward what we really want.
People are acting and doing things all the time, but how many of us are acting consciously most of the time? Few do, but if you can do it even half of the time, you’re doing better than most.

Acting consciously is acting effectively. Not from what this part or that part of you says, but what You say. Ultimately it’s important to practice making decisions from your higher Self. You know what’s right in your heart.

How do you do this?
Like anything, it’s a practice. I’ve heard people say they hear their Voice more clear when running, or hiking, going for walks, prayer, meditation, in the shower, whatever suits you. The common denominator is breathing, though.

Take a space of time to concentrate on at least 10 deep breaths. Have a piece of paper or a journal ready. You’re going to write a letter to yourself about whatever topic you’re having a challenge with.
You might say, “Dear Heart, This is from your higher Self regarding the topic of (fill in the blank). Here’s what’s going on and what you need to do … ”
Then almost close your eyes and start to write. Don’t edit it. Write as quickly as you possibly can. Don’t think. Thinking will kill the message you’re getting. Trust is big here. You’re practicing trusting yourself.

We all get messages, some of us easier and some of us with a little more challenge, but we all get them.
When you’re conscious of your true Self, you’re going to find that the answer(s) is so freaking obvious. However, if it doesn’t appear so, it’s usually because there’re these parts of us that uses the mind to auto-react: “Yeah, but you don’t understand … There’s this, that … ” and back to that chatter that keeps people stuck and frustrated.

Compassionately acknowledge those parts, but assert your ability to ensure that things will be okay. Your higher Self will tell you what it is you want, why, and what you need to do to get there. Again, don’t edit, just write.
Somewhere in your journaling is your to-do list, actions that can be meaningful because you’re more in touch with what your higher Self is really calling for. Actions that come from clarity, not fear and self-loathing.

And when I say to-do list, not the picking-up-groceries, stopping-by-the-dry-cleaners-kind of list, but steps that come from having a clear direction; steps that are bite-sized and achievable; and most importantly, actions that excite you!

Do you need to make some phone calls or send emails to people who have the information you need? Do you need to set up some meetings? Sign up for a course? Do some research? Write your bio? Create a marketing plan?

Whatever your items, prioritize them. The bigger-ticket items get those smaller, bite-sized actions that don’t overwhelm you yet keep you moving forward. This system allows you to win and succeed. You will work smarter and better, and you will get through more things.

Sounds so simple and obvious, yet it never ceases to amaze me how many people I teach, frustrated by a lack of results, don’t prioritize their actions according to what they say they want.
To compound the problem, those desires often come from parts that are fearful, hurt, sad, angry, whatever the case may be, and it causes them to act from that place with predictable results.
When you are constantly not doing what you said you were going to do, you feel like a failure. You feel out of integrity. No wonder you don’t want to take on more things. It’s crazy. Who would want to?

But that’s usually because we’re not being clear or honest about what it is we really want, or because we’re letting our parts take over.
You know you’re acting and being from your higher Self when you’re calm, confident, creative, courageous, and clear.

Regardless of the action, what we do may or may not have the impact we’re looking for…when we’re not acting consciously from grounded awareness. This is why what we consider meditation is so universal across time and cultures. When you’re confident, you’ll start believing in the very real magic of it all.

Create that space for yourself and let that higher voice do what it wants to do…help you succeed!

Allow Yourself To Be Imperfect… Even If You’re A Perfectionist

One of the most painful, disturbing problems in life is perfectionism.
Some people are perfectionists only at work, not in other areas of life. Still it kills positive energy and decreases efficiency. It’s exhausting and it affects mood and health.


This is a tough one because perfectionists don’t like to hear any answer that don’t paint them as perfect.

Let me speak for myself and a lot of my students, and then you see if you might fit this. A lot of my students and I got our perfectionism from a place of either over-criticism when we were young or an over-reliance on approval from others.

If you take a look at those two things that occurred when you were young, you can ask, “Did my parents, teachers, elders, brothers, sisters or whoever I respected criticize me so severely, once or often, that it still pains me to this day?”

If so, then there’s a fear that when you do something wrong something bad will happen. It’s a good reason to not want to do things wrong.

You’ve got to take a look and see where this comes from. For example, was everything cool in your life except for at school where your teacher was really harsh and you were really criticized? If you didn’t get the approval, were you ostracized at school and the kids didn’t like you?

Very often what people don’t realize is that your work life is a direct reflection today as an adult as your school life was when you were a kid, so I would look to that arena and see if there’s anything there. That will give you the why.

Once you know why you’ve got this perfectionism going on, then you have to ask, “Is it worth it and does it help me?”

There are some really positive elements about being a perfectionist, and there are really negative ones. What can possibly be good about being a perfectionist?

The obvious one is that usually perfectionists attempt to do things with excellence. The result is generally pretty decent, or at least you’re going to have pretty high quality when you’re dealing with a perfectionist versus someone who doesn’t give a sh*t, yes?


You should take that, enjoy it, embrace it and say, “That’s a great thing that I have this perfectionism. It gives me an opportunity to want to be excellent, and that is a very great trait.”

On the negative side, it hurts energy. It makes you feel like it can never be right or good enough, you never achieve enough and you’re never good enough. Because you’re never good enough and you don’t feel good about whatever you do you start to not want to take on new things, because you know you’re just going to get that bad feeling back again.

Here’s what you can do about this:

1. Locate where your perfection/imperfection comes from and accept it without judgment. 21st century Buddha says, “Sh*t happens.” Getting over it is a process, but knowledge is empowerment.
2. It’s a conditioned process. You can un-condition it.

You can say, “Thank you for sharing,” get yourself back into the game and acknowledge it, “I’m going to start fresh today. Today I’m perfect in the universe.”
This is literally true, by the way. On a spiritual level you’re perfect the way you are, with all of your flaws, good things and bad things.

If you see something is not perfect, allow yourself to play. Allow yourself to be imperfect and messy, and allow yourself to screw up once in a while. See that you’re not going to die.
Here’s one of the homework assignments we give for people in some of the courses for perfectionists: dress with your clothes backward. I want you to have your shirt half in and half out. I want your underwear to be showing, and I want your hair to be all messed up.


Allow yourself to be imperfect. Allow yourself to love yourself no matter how you are.

Love yourself unconditionally no matter what. That is the answer.

What do you think? Do you have any experiences you can share about perfectionism? We want to hear from you!

Why You May Be Sabotaging Yourself From Finding Your True Path In Life

When we talk about right directions, the biggest issue that people have is not being able to make a decision on what direction they think they should take for fear of making the wrong choice. When we are fearful of making a mistake, then it’s got to be the “right” direction.
 
I want everyone to write down these words: “What is it?”

Everyone wants to know, “What’s the right thing for me?”

That’s a bad question. Why? Because it puts way too much pressure on you.
I don’t blame you for being afraid to make that kind of choice, because what if it’s the wrong one?

It’s like a forever question: what if you get stuck with that choice forever?

Go back to that question “What is it? ” and cross out the word “it.” I want you to replace that with the word “next.”

What is next? What’s the next thing you want to try or do?
What just happened is you gave yourself some breathing room. You let yourself off the hook. You took the massive stress out of the question.

What is next could be a day, a month, a year, three years, or whatever.
You’re not necessarily going to find the perfect direction, but as I say in my Life Directions course “The idea is to try on different coats”.

We have this imagination that says, “Here’s what my perfect dream life looks and feels like. If I was just a writer, and I wrote books all day long, or if I was on stage teaching all day long, I would be a happy camper.”

And here’s where we get stuck. We have this image of the perfect situation for us. We’re not in that perfect situation, and we’re not living that perfect lifestyle or direction, but we say, “This will be it.”
Here’s what happens: You do “it,” and pretty soon you’re saying, “This isn’t it. There’s something missing.

What is it? Do I need to make a revision to where I’m at now or do I need to change to something completely new? I’m so disappointed that this wasn’t it. I still don’t feel great.”
Now we’ve got a big problem, don’t we?

If your issue is career, then I would ask, “What is next?” In other words, what would you love to try, especially if you weren’t afraid of the money thing?

Whatever the answer to that is, you may think, “I don’t know if I can make a lot of money at that.”
Here’s my contention. I’ll go back to the original teachings and principles that I think I’m fairly well-known for, which is solving people’s’ problems.

If you help people in a way that they need or want to be helped, and it’s in the area that you love to help people in, you’re going to love what you do, and you’re going to make a lot of money, assuming you learn the business elements we teach in our Million Dollar Business Secrets course.
You need to have a little bit of skill, but the most important thing is: are you helping people? Are you really helping them solve their problem?

Also, do you love helping people in that area? Is that something that sings to you? We all love to help, but we all love to help in certain ways more than others.

This is for those people who are having challenges with choosing their direction:

1. A lot of this is about fear. Instead of putting pressure on yourself to choose “correctly,” choose what’s exciting for you to imagine how you would help a lot of people in a way that’s fun for you, and that you’re good at.

2. Get a private coach. Let them help you for at least a few months. Whatever your goal, it’s much harder to accomplish without someone who can mentor you through that process. Learning the skills from someone with proven experience makes a huge difference.

The problem with most people is that they are so busy being fearful of choosing the wrong thing that they lose focus on what’s exciting for them to pursue versus what’s correct.

What’s a path that sounds awesome for you to pursue? Do you believe you’d never make the kind of money you’d like to make pursuing that path? Is that absolutely true?
If so, is there another way you can stay in the field you want but apply your skills and talents in a different way?


Bouncing ideas within the community could be a valuable way to help brainstorm the path that’s true for you. Leave your feedback in the comments below, I would love to hear from you!


Henk

What This Football Coach Said “Struck A Chord” With Me… And How It Will Help You Create Life And Business Success

All leaders have the same problem. This matters to you because to get what you want in life, at some point you’re going to have to lead. That’s what successful people do in some way, shape or form.

The problem is that you have a team, a group, and they all have personalities. They, like us, are all robots. They want to do things their way because it suits them, and they think their way is better.

When you have a team that’s on the same page despite their individual robotics, you have a group primed for success. If not, you get mediocrity or worse.

I have an example that really brought this home for me. I have a place in San Diego, so I’ve grown an affinity for the football Chargers. They got a new coach year before last, Mike McCoy, and ended up doing well in a tough division even though they really actually weren’t that great of a team talent-wise.

At the end of his first season, McCoy was asked, “When you took over, how did you get the team to start performing so well?”

What was so profound for me about his answer was that I heard the exact same thing in basketball on the exact same day. Another first-year coach was talking about his new success.

He and the Charger’s coach gave the exact same answer, so I thought, “This must be important.”

The answer was: “I came from a system, and I installed a system that they’re not used to. The reason we’re doing better now is not only that the system works, but everyone’s following the system. A lot of coaches have systems, but the players won’t play the system, so you have a losing team.”


They key is not just to have a system that works. The key is to have the players “buy into the system.”
In other words, successful coaches are great salespeople.
You have to give your team a vision of how change is actually going to be fun and exciting because it’s been proven to work–as long as everyone commits to it.

They get to be part of a process that will turn the tide from mediocrity (and those not-so-joy-joy feelings that go along with knowing you can do and be better) to tangible, noticeable success.

You hear it all the time in sports: nothing squashes minor squabbles and drama amongst a team better than success.
But most importantly, you’ve got to show proof that the system works.

McCoy was a coordinator on the Denver Broncos the year before he joined the Chargers. That year, the Broncos went to the Super Bowl.

It wasn’t hard for him to sell the fact that the Broncos went to the Super Bowl–the one thing every NFL player wants–and the Chargers didn’t.

He didn’t say, “Do you want to play the system?” He said, “Do you want to go to the Super Bowl?” They say, “Yes,” and he says, “Good. This system takes people to the Super Bowl.”
Not a hard sell at that point.

What needs to happen next, though, is to make the system very simple to understand, which makes the buying-in that much easier. Make it very, very easy, and one tiny thing that they do that’s within the system.

Show them the benefits of the system. Have them learn the habit of using the system, even just one tiny part of it.

The basketball coach said he showed his team that in his system, when you’re in the best position you pass the ball off to the right, and that player passes off to the corner, and then the corner player passes back off to the original passer, who now has a clearer path to the basket than before that first pass. Going two more steps moves the opposing player and opens up the lane to a much greater extent.

So that’s what his team practiced 100 times. They became perfect at it. They only drove the ball to the basket after it’s gone to the third corner player and the lane is open.
You’re dealing with habits here. You are the leader. You must lead a process of having people change their habits and buy into the system.

You’ve got to show its effectiveness by:

1. Making the system super-easy to buy into (does this not apply to your customers as well?).
2. Making the system super-simple to learn.
3. Repeat Repeat Repeat … practice changing the habit.
This goes for athletics, personal habits, group habits, or your business.
Without a system in place, you’ll never have a self-sustaining business, and without proof of success and practice, your group won’t use an otherwise potentially good system.

Why You Need To Be Like Bamboo

Personal development can sometimes get a bad rap in some intellectual circles, labeled generally as hoaxy, New Agey, feel-good cheerleading in vain.
That is how it turns out, sometimes. Like every product, there’s going to be some with better quality and some not so much. The consistent success of personal development teachers speaks for the difference.

Just taking personal development for what it is, though, how could that ever be a bad thing? If you’re not busy growing…you’re busy dying, yes?

However, as usual with life there’s still a big complication. It’s called impatience.
My students are often not newbies to the personal development space, having taken one or more courses before, whether with me or with other teachers.

This begs the question for people: “How many courses do I have to take?”

Answer: as many courses as it takes for you to do what you say you’re going to do.
It’s a progression. Where you are on the ladder will determine how many programs, how much learning, how many books, how long it’s going to take to get there.

Learning and personal development are musts. And having impatience is not an option.
In a lot of cases nothing happens after the first course. You know the info is good if you’ve chosen a proven teacher, but it’s really just the appetizer. Most people aren’t ready to take on the whole enchilada at that point.

After the second course people start getting a little hit. After the third course, you start to really get some good understanding about your life and what’s going on but still nothing major.

However, then come the doubt-devils: “I should give this up. What a waste of time all this personal development crap is. I don’t even feel good. In fact, I feel worse than I did before when I was a factory worker in the dark. What a drag. Business is hard. Life is getting harder. Relationships are harder.”

“How will I know when I’m ready?”

When you jump and the water is blissful, you’ve done it.

Now is it always going to be blissful? No.

Have you noticed even if you go into a pool and it’s pretty nice, if you stay in the pool for an hour, you get cold and you’re all wrinkled? Even that pool has to be changed a little bit.
You have to love growth. And you have to keep on growing.
If you do then one day you’re going to wake up and things are going to click for you. Your money, relationships and house are going to be there. Your life is going to be beautiful…unless you get impatient.

Don’t be looking. You’ll see it when you see it.
All of sudden you’re going to see…
Money, success, relationships and happiness are all coming my way.

My life is finally together.
 
How did that happen?

The best way I can describe it is through a story, maybe some of you have heard, about this boy who plants two seeds. The next spring one of the seeds becomes a corn stark, but the other doesn’t appear to sprout anything.

This happens five years in a row; the corn stalk becomes this amazing cornfield but the other seed … nothing. However, within three months of the last time the boy checks the crops, all of sudden there are 20-foot bamboo shoots that tower all over the cornfield.
Five years with nothing and all of a sudden, explosion. Why was that bamboo able to grow so fast and so strong?

Because for those five years, it was growing its roots, its foundation. It was setting the structure for huge, sustainable growth in its life.
Some people are corn seeds. You give them a little bit and they sprout. But when people grow really quickly and have big success really fast, they usually don’t have the structure underneath to sustain it. The first wind that comes, it’s over.

Realize that like the bamboo, you are growing, developing, and learning for that day and in time you too will tower over the field, you will tower over your own doubt in yourself.
Everyone has a story of sudden growth or realization that changed life for the better after a period of stagnation. Be patient my friends.

How Focusing On The “Big Kahuna” Will Make You Rich

Let’s look at the question of life-balance.

In normal conversation, when we use the word “balance” we tend to think of balance being an even distribution. It might be weight, for example, where I’m balancing on one leg, or my arms feel balanced when I work out. We tend to think of balance as an even-Steven proposition.

We think, “Balance means equal attention given to both or to all.” If you’d like, write that down.

Now cross out the word “equal” because it’s wrong and it doesn’t work in your life.

Here’s the secret: I call it the Big Kahuna. I live in Hawaii, half the year. The Big Kahuna means the big thing. What it means is that, especially in your money and your business, there is one big thing.

What is the one big thing you can do that would have the most impactful effect on your entire business or money situation?

It’s the one thing; not the 10 things.

For my situation, I’ve been fortunate enough to do enormously well on my book Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. That book brought me a lot of clients and business, millions all over the world. It has sold almost 2 million copies now in 43 languages. It’s more than a blessing.

What could I do right now, if I wanted to, that would have the greatest impact? I could probably write another book and put the energy into making that another huge best-seller.

Do I want to do that? Not necessarily right now, but this is what I could do. That would be my Big Kahuna. If the Big Kahuna for me was to write another best-selling book, that would be huge compared to everything else that I do on a day-to-day basis.

Here’s what I want you to do:

Create a two-columned space. The left-hand column is for “Money and Business” and the right hand column is for everything else: relationships, health, leisure-time activities; the other areas of life that are important to us all. In the left hand column you’re going to divide it again into ‘Daily Business’ and ‘The Big Kahuna.”

Here’s the thing, and please, don’t freak out. Fifty percent of all of my money and business time, in that left hand column, goes into my Big Kahuna.

Do you want greatness or do you want mediocrity? Do you want wealth or do you want to earn a living? If you want wealth, you have to work on the Big Kahuna and make it happen. That’s what creates greatness in your life. Everything else is piddly. What we do is we spend 99% of our time on the piddly stuff. The Big Kahuna gets left out.

Let’s review. There are two sides, money and business on the left side, on the right side is the rest of your life.

On the business side you divide that into two categories. That’s going to be 10 hours a day, five days a week or however many hours a day, five days a week; whatever you want.

Out of those 10 hours you are going to split the 10 hours in half. Fifty percent of it goes to your Big Kahuna and the other half of it goes to whatever else you have to do in your business.

You’re never going to get rich on your other side of the business; the side that’s not the Big Kahuna. It’s going to be on your Big Kahuna. The rest of the time other than your 10 hours a day at work is going to be for your life.

You balance the money and business side of your life. Is it all equal compared to the right side, the life side? No. Does it have to be? No. Does this system work? Yes.

Will you get rich? Yes. Will you take care of all the other areas of your life? Yes. That’s how it works.

It’s the Big Kahuna principle. Fifty percent of all your business work time goes to the one big thing that is going to make the biggest difference and the highest impact in your business and your financial life.