Now, when you change the way you look at things, the way you look at things actually changes. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, if you’re always a grump person, or if you’re always assuming things are gonna go bad, you start to notice all the bad things in life. All the bad things are happening in your mind, your body, your soul, your relationships, your business.
Conversely, if you always expect the best, you’re always looking for the good in people, you see the good in your Five to Thrive as well as all around you. Now, I know this sounds a little abstract to many of you, so let me use an analogy that I use time and time again that really, I think, drive it home. Have you ever found yourself really interested in a car? Now for me, several years ago, it was Sprinter vans. I wanted a 4×4 Sprinter van so I could convert it into my ultimate off-road lifestyle vehicle. Where I could work from, I could play from, and travel the world.
As you are becoming the author of your own story you really need to give yourself permission to fail and permission not to succeed. Now, of course, you want to succeed and you should be striving for that, but you need to give yourself permission to fail because if you don’t you won’t jump. You won’t jump forward. You won’t take that great leap or even that first step that’s necessary to become the author of your own story.
Now, almost all the clients I’ve worked with when I’m coaching them they all have this fear. They all have a fear around something; something around their five to thrive. Often times that’s business and relationships, but it could be something different, or whatever it is for you. The body comes up often as well. What it is is a fear the fear to actually take that leap, to take that job, because you what if I fail. What if I don’t succeed? What are people going to think of me? What are people going to say? Am I ever going to be able to show my face in this group or with my friends or my family again? Or am I going to lose my house? Am I going to lose my money?
Today I’m going to answer a question that was put in the Author of Your Own Story group by Barbara. Barbara essentially is asking, “Hey, look. I’ve been going really hard towards this solution, or towards this direction, but now it’s just not filling me up. I’m not finding that this is a viable path for me, and I just don’t think this is the way I want to go, but how do I know that I’m not just giving up because it’s getting difficult, and moving onto the next shiny new object instead of actually pushing through and finding something? Or, finding my other passion?”
Beginning with the end in mind is something I learned from Stephen Covey from his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Now this is an older book, but its application is still very valid today. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend picking it up. Today my wife and I are traveling. We’re in beautiful Santa Barbara and I’m sitting overlooking the ocean and when I was talking to a client of mine I was talking to him about his goals and his dreams. We started to go through this exercise, which I’m about to share with you.
I want to talk to you about something that’s really not a secret, but something that most people aren’t utilizing, or are at least under-utilizing, and that’s the power of visualization, and more important, the power of visualization right before you go to bed.
When you think about it, CEOs, athletes, people from all walks of life that have been successful have utilized visualization as a success tool. One way that they do this is, right before bed, they’re going to visualize themselves being successful at whatever endeavor they’re embarking on right before they go to sleep. Why is this important? Well, this is important because, when you go to sleep, your mind’s subconscious is going to process the last thing that you were thinking about. The last thing that was in your mind is something that you’re going to be thinking about while you’re sleeping.
