Day 4, in which I commit to taking my own damn advice

In one of my businesses, I spend a lot of time educating and coaching grownups to achieve some big goals around money and finance.

I've been doing this for, like 20 years, which is a lot of years for a 39 year old, and so I've noticed some things about how mindset and behavior correlates to success, at least in this other business.

There are some things I say so often that they've begun to sound trite even to me, but which I really, really find to be true. So much so, in fact, that I believe that if I could actually make any one person believe and act on them all, that person would quickly morph into the Captain America of my business, growing in size, strength, skill, success, and all around goodness in mere moments.

Here's all of it:

• The difference between the 20% who make it and the 80% who don't isn't how much information they have; the same information is available to everyone in our business who seeks it out. It's inner game: are they telling themselves the things they need to tell themselves so that they actually implement their knowledge? KNOWING means absolutely nothing in this business. DOING what the knowledge tells you to do, over and over, even when it's scary, or hard,  or frustrating, or boring, or not working like it's supposed to, is what makes you successful, and whether or not you do that is all about what's going on in your head, not in the outside world. 

• If you're waiting for the exact right time to get started, when you've got  clear schedule and it all feels right and you've got no fear about it, you'll die never having started. Your life will ALWAYS get in the way; the challenge is that you have to move things that are already in your schedule out of the way to do this business, and it'll be hard, and some people will be mad or disappointed about you not doing what they want you to do, but if you want to achieve results you haven't gotten before, you have to do things you haven't done before. Even though it's super-inconvenient "right now". 

• Stop hanging out with negative Nellies who don't think you can succeed, don't want you to succeed, or just drain you emotionally with all their Eeyore-ism. Go find some positive people to spend your time with. Yes, this includes family. Sorry. You can still love them without letting them take up too much of your precious time. P.S.You're never going to fix them, no matter how much energy you expend trying to show them that you're on the right track and the world doesn't totally suck. They're getting something out of all that negativity, and it has nothing to do with you, and no amount of evidence, logic, or comfort is going to make them feel better. Stop wasting your valuable and limited time trying.

• Similarly, stop taking advice from people who aren't more successful than you are. Lots of folks are full of lots of thoughts about what you need to be doing. Take them seriously only if they've already achieved what you want to.

• Sacrifice some time and money to learn what people who are already being successful are doing, and then do that. Chances are, if you're doing what they did, you'll get the results they got.

• Get some accountability. We're just not great at holding our own feet to the fire, and motivation is never enough to carry us past the scary/hard/boring parts. Having to tell someone else that we didn't do what we were supposed to do (or getting to report that we did) often does. Make sure that your accountability partner is someone who wants to see you succeed, won't be envious when you do, and is also committed to succeeding themselves. For God's sake, don't pick someone that will let YOU slack off because THEY'VE slacked off. You need a friend or coach, not an accomplice.

• You don't operate in a vacuum; make sure you've set up your various environments to make it easy for you to do the right things, and hard for you to do the wrong things. You have your personal environment (Do I WANT to do this thing? Do I have a strong WHY? Do I have the KNOWLEDGE to do this thing?), your social environment (Do people I hang around with want me to do it? Can they HELP me do it?), and your physical environment (Do I have to resources I need to accomplish this? Have I removed distractions? Set up rewards for doing the right things?). Trying to achieve what you're trying to achieve is already like pushing a giant rock up a hill. Trying to achieve it while there are big, hairy roadblocks out in your environment is like trying to push that rock up a hill with someone else pushing back.

• Don't worry about taking it more than one step at a time. Creative people also tend to be worried people; they sit around and think about what might go wrong 4 steps up the path, when they really don't need to, because they haven't taken step 1 yet. Most of what you imagine will go wrong will never come to pass, and what does go wrong will be brand new and exciting, no matter how much you try to 'prepare' for it. Just keep your eyes on the current step. Know what the next 10 are, but don't wear away your willpower fretting about them.

• Do something  EVERY DAY. There's a lot to be said for momentum; even if you just have a few minutes on any given day before you have to move on to the next thing/fall into bed exhausted/etc., that few minutes gets you a bite out of some goal and, just as importantly, reminds your brain that you're a __________. It's frustrating when you can't spend the hours you'd like to on achieving a goal you're excited about, but it's a lot easier to get started again the next day if you've done a little today. Picking up--or even WANTING to pick up--after a long period of inactivity is hard. Doing a little every day isn't as satisfying, but it will eventually get you to your goal.

Seriously, I say these things ALL THE TIME, like ad naseum, to people in my business.

In fact, if you're IN my business, you might have gotten lost in the fact that this is all good advice FOR my business.

But go back, as I did today, and re-read it, inserting "mental and physical health" or "strength" or "fitness" or whatever word resonates with you wherever "business" or "success" appears.

Because I think it's good advice, even if it's my own, and I don't think I've been following it all that well.

I still have alcohol in my house, despite being on a 30 day challenge to avoid it. That's not setting up my environment to make doing the wrong thing hard.

I fret a lot about whether I'll lose 40 pounds have a bunch of loose skin and have to have an operation and how much that will cost and whether I'll die on the operating table. This sounds ridiculous, even as I write it, but I swear I've had that thought at least a dozen times in the last 4 days. It can't be helping me.

I have a lot of overweight, unhealthy people that I hang out with, and most of them are full of information about how to get fit, and very few of them are interested in any kind of serious journey toward health, and as much as I'd love to see them change I have no reason to think they will. Some of them are going to be hurt by reading this, and some will be royally pissed, and I hope they'll understand that I love them and, of course, don't mean THEM. But the truth is, I hang around with basically no one who makes their health a priority, who has kept their health on track or who's successfully turned it around and kept it turned around. And I have no idea how to hang out with such people, because, as I may have mentioned before, I'm an introvert. This is a problem that has to be solved.

I mean, I'm doing some stuff right, too--I'm definitely spending hours each day focusing on my health; I'm working out every day; I've gotten a form of accountability by publicly posting like this; I don't have potato chips in the house...but yeah, I definitely need to take my own advice and do what I'd tell anyone else to do.

Now I just need to figure out how.

________________

Adding later: I wrote this on May 25th and published on May 26th, and a couple of interesting things happened in that 24 hour period:

First, a business acquaintance who is actually a decade older than I am but in great shape invited me to a "bootcamp" at the gym to which he and I recently discovered we both belonged. He's never read this blog, and doesn't know anything about my 100 day challenge, but just thought I might like it. It was REALLY hard, but also has everything I want (combination of strength and aerobic training) and it's 5 days a week, and at a convenient time, so it should be easy to stick to.

Second, TWO people I've known for years pointed out that they, in fact, HAVE successfully made their heath a priority, and, since they know me well enough to know that I'll hide from human interaction if allowed to, more or less INSISTED on continuing the conversation off line. One is now an accountability partner, the other I'll see in a few days and we'll see what happens

Ask and ye shall receive.