If you want to improve your standards, the quality of your life and your success level, the time has come for you to manage your strategies, your focus and interpretation of events and most importantly, your emotional state.
One of the biggest challenges that you might face when chasing your dreams is to be able to manage patience and perseverance in a constructive way. Consistent action and hopeful patience are important factors in realizing your vision – as that process might be an intense one.
How do the winners of life manage this phase and finally prevail?
The fulfillment of your own dreams and the ability to succeed in the areas of life that are most important to you can be realized only when you embrace the conviction that the “impossible” is possible and most importantly, that you deserve it!.
If you want to succeed in any area of life, you must adopt the thinking that you will not compromise with anything else than absolute exceptional performance.
If you want to achieve an important result in sectors like:
- Leadership (of self and/or others)
- Financials
- Business
- Career
- Personal life
- Emotional empowerment
- Health and body fitness
There are three areas where you will need to make the extra effort to be able to break the barrier that impedes your path towards constant happiness:
1. CHOOSE THE MENTAL STRATEGY THAT EMPOWERS YOU
The first area refers to the choice of strategies. What is that make some people achieve their goals, whilst others, although apparently they display the same enthusiasm or passion for the tasks that need to happen, constantly fail? The first group has adopted a way of thinking and the strategies that allow them to succeed faster and more thoroughly in their targets.
For instance, think of someone that was born very poor and did not have the privilege of getting an education and nevertheless, despite the social and emotional challenges, found the way to be very successful and is now living a comfortable and inspiring life. One such person could be Aristotle Onassis. Do you think that this person was just lucky? Luck, if you believe it exists, can bring you a very ephemeral result. What create the real difference are the thoughts we make about the possibility of achieving our targets and thereafter, the strategies that we implement with consistency. Those factors eventually bring us the results we want and make those results to be long term.
Another point that influences the long term success or failure of a person is whether he or she manages to overcome his/her limiting thoughts or not.
Let me illustrate this with an example. We are all aware that there are hundreds, or even thousands of strategies out there to support us to lose weight and most of them have proven to be effective. If someone is looking for it, he will find a strategy that suits him, as there are gyms in every corner, innumerable nutritional experts, personal trainers, DVDs, CDs, books etc. Despite this fact, statistics show that around 65% of the global population is overweight and 35% is obese, and these numbers are growing exponentially.
Why is that? Most people, although they have picked up a strategy, they do not know how to make the best of it. And the reason for that is the disempowering story that they believe about themselves which influences negatively their actions. All of us have stories that we repeat to ourselves, regarding what we can or we cannot do to achieve some specific goal. If you believe you can do something, or you believe that you cannot do it, you are usually right, because your expectations control also your focus, your perceptions and the way you feel or act.
When people succeed in a target, it is because they have found not only the right strategy, but also have adopted an empowering belief that motivates them to move forward. Such beliefs could be “I can achieve any goal I want”, “Nothing is impossible for me”, “I deserve the best and I am now working for it”.
On the other hand, the people that want to lose weight but cannot, usually have a belief that is not supportive, like “I am built like that”, “it is my genes’ fault”, “to lose weight I have to suffer”. With this kind of belief system embedded in the core of their thinking, they will not be able to find the strategy that will really support them to lose weight. And even if they find it, they soon will abandon it.
Please do not misunderstand me. Your situation might be real, you might have had a tough experience of life so far, or gone through a heavy disease; you might have been physically abused; lost a love one or be currently under heavy debt.
What I am saying is that these events are not the real causes that deprive you from living the life you want to live right now.
Let’s say that you have had a bad professional experience 2 years ago, when you tried to start your own business. That event is not the reason why you have not found nowadays the success and financial freedom that you deserve. What is impeding you is possibly the disempowering interpretation that you repeat to yourself about that event; the meaning that you have given to what happened – possibly concluding that you are not good enough for such ventures. That would definitely limit your view of a possible different outcome in the future, and thus will hinder your actions towards that goal- if you decide to take any action at all, that is.
Most people keep close to their heart (usually subconsciously) such disempowering interpretations, so that they do not need to increase their effort towards finding a new strategy and consequently avoid facing again the fear of failure. To manage to stop these non-productive spiral of thoughts and actions, and to get out of your vicious cycle, you must get triggered from a great desire to change, that is, make your will power very strong.
2. TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR EMOTIONAL STATE
Whether you will embrace an empowering interpretation of an experience, or a disempowering one is strongly influenced by the psychological and emotional situation in which you find yourself at any given moment. As a human being, we have all developed emotional patterns, psychological states or emotional situations that influence the way we filter what is happening in our life. This influences also the stories that we use, when talking about our own self, about what is possible and what is not.
The emotional state that you fall into more often will become the more powerful filter of all. And will define if you will be able to acquire the empowering belief to support you in taking action and identifying the strategies that you require to succeed. The big question we have to answer is: what is it that we need to do to change the situation of our mind when we feel that we are not in a position to magnify our real potential?
RELEASE STRESS USING YOUR PHYSIOLOGY
One of the biggest scientific discoveries of the last 60 years is that we can change our emotional state with a radical change in our physiology.
For people that experience anxiety every single moment of their life, an easy and fast way to gain some relief can be just to take 2 deep and slow breaths. Most people use only 20% of the capacity of their lungs as they usually take shallow small breaths, but the 70% of the toxins of the body can really be released when we allow for a deep breath.
Giving time to yourself to get a deep breath, to fill in the lungs and to excel slowly, not only can improve your health, but also achieve an important decrease of anxiety that you might be feeling at any given moment.
Apart from deep breaths, there are many other ways to change your physiology, as it is to changing the posture of your body, doing a sport, walking or running, dancing or even singing. I am absolutely sure that, from mere intuition or experience you know that your emotional state, if positive, adds energy to your body. So, you can just decide to do it. It is the most easy and approachable tool of all.
3. CHOOSE YOUR FOCUS AND CHANGE YOUR RESULTS
The second thing that influences our state is the theme or issue on which we have concentrated our focus. But that can also change in a second. For instance, you might be living in a country with financial crisis – as I am – and feel trapped due to the fear and misfortune that you observe around you. If you choose to also see the situation under those lenses, you might feel as a victim and powerless to change it. But if you set up your mind to actively search for the opportunity behind the seemingly disempowering situation, you will feel a master of your life, a leader of your circumstances and your brain will support you by discerning an empowering path to follow.
In a second our state can change, depending on where our mind is focusing on. And you can focus wherever you want, if you take control and become conscious about it.
You must not forget that, what is “wrong”, “ugly”, “difficult”, “painful”, “scarce” is always available, but so is what is “right”, “beautiful”, “easy”, “pleasurable” and “abundant”. What we focus on influence our state and thereafter, our beliefs about who we are, what is life, what is possible or not. And is that choice of approach that determine whether you will magnify your potential and follow the strategies that will support you in achieving what you are really aiming for, in a viable way.
To learn to put yourself on a situation of positive disposition, mentally and physiologically, systematically and consistently, is one of the biggest gifts that you can offer to yourself. It is the means to transform your beliefs and to be able to design the strategies that will lead you to succeed.
At true-me® breakthrough coaching, we teach and coach people on the processes and tools to engage both, mind and spirit, so that they can shift the quality of their outcomes.
It does not matter if you are an athlete with great performances, the president of a company, a parent, an employee, a house wife or a student, if you really want to change something in your life or it overall you must take conscious control of the things that influences it the most, following the three basic steps mentioned here:
- Choose your strategy – change your outcome,
- Choose your focus – change your life,
- Choose your emotional & mental state – and all will change!
