Don’t Let Your Ignorance Stop You
This is the fourth article in a series on Positive Change. My goal with this series is to give you the tools necessary to manifest positive change in your reality, or simply put, to get what you want and eliminate what you don’t want in your life.
Before you read this article, make sure you read the first three in the series in this order –
- Is It Really Possible To Create The Change You Want In Your Life?
- What I Can Teach You About Getting What You Want
- Why Creating The Change You Want Is All About You
I re-read the first three articles in the series before beginning this fourth chapter, which led me to a realization that I was potentially missing out one of the most important points. Based on observation of people who struggle in life, this sticking point is something critical to eliminate early on, otherwise you’re going to hit a brick wall every time you look to make changes.
My intention is to complete this series with an insight that is literally the key to not only having whatever you want in your life, but also making the entire planet a better place, but before I do that, we need to get one roadblock out of the way. Let’s do that now…
We’ve laid a framework that can lead you to realizing positive changes in your life, which is based on the following five core principles -
- Those who truly excel in life do so by repeating processes over and over again, resulting in a compounding effect that can eventually take you to amazing places. A “success ladder” is available to achieve almost anything in life, so if you’re prepared to go through steps and repeat something often enough to get good at it, you can have or be almost anything you want.
- Your awareness – how you interpret everything around you – is what governs your ability to get things done. How you see the world impacts how you think about the world, which impacts how you feel, and thus how you interact with the world. Your interpretation can help you or hinder you, and this is regardless of what is true – the choice is entirely up to you. You decide your truth, so choose to see the world in a way that is beneficial for making the changes you want in your life.
- Some things are out of your control and you’re not always going to get what you expect. You must master the art of continuous improvement, regardless of conditions. You’re human, so you’re going to feel emotions that have the potential to derail your progress, but only if you let them. It’s necessary to keep taking steps towards change, even when you don’t feel like it.
- There’s always a smart choice you can make, given a set of conditions, but unfortunately most people do what other people do, which often is NOT the smart choice. Don’t let social conditioning, peer pressure or accepted practice govern your choices, instead, assess what you personally have to work with, and make the best decisions from where you are coming from and where you want to go.
- Follow the success patterns of other people – the smart decisions other people made who presently have what you are now seeking are there to be modeled any time you want. Don’t follow anything blindly, but don’t go in blind either. There is so much information available to learn almost anything, so use these resources to help you discern the smart choices for you.
Beware Your Own Ignorance
These five principles can take you far, but there’s an insidious force that has a nasty habit of derailing people before they adopt and practice these ideas, which I label “Ignorance“.
Valentines Special: How To Find Your Business Love Balance
Chris Crowe is a friend in Brisbane who specializes in coaching people to create loving relationships, with a focus on the importance on polarity between partners.
We were talking recently about relationships and business. Chris noted the importance of your relationship with your partner and how much it impacts your business success. He often deals with people who act as though a relationship and a business are two elements of your life that can not be developed at the same time, yet in reality can be so powerful when in harmony.
I know plenty of entrepreneurs who if I asked why the run their business, the answer they would give me is for their partner and family. If that’s the case, it’s pretty clear that keeping your relationship full of love and passion is actually good business advice too.
In this guest article Chris is going to explain briefly how he attended an Anthony Robbins event, resulting in a “dissection” of his relationship with his girlfriend Kahlia in front of 3,000 people in the crowd, which led to them first breaking up, then reuniting and finding a new, deeper connection and sense of love. He will then relate some tools you can use to help foster a holistic approach to your relationships and your business.
Just in time for Valentines day, I now hand you over to Chris…
The Anthony Robbins Intervention
Anthony Robbins called for me to stand; we were at a Date With Destiny event in front of 3000 other participants. My partner Kahlia had already stood and asked Anthony Robbins for help with our relationship as we were tired from struggling to connect and had considered walking away even though we loved each other deeply. We needed to reignite the excitement and passion between us, to meet each others needs and connect from our hearts. We did not want to feel the hurt and emptiness inside anymore. We just wanted to be “us” again.
We thought we had exhausted all our options so we stood hoping Anthony Robbins could guide us to find the solution to reconnect our relationship.
At this stage in my life I had worked successfully as a Business Coach and was qualified within Neuro Linguistic Programming, Time Line Therapy, Life Coaching & Hypnosis, so I was no intellectual dummy! Mentally we understood what was happening, but emotionally we were confused and hurt.
Within our relationship and regardless of our qualifications and experience, there was something missing for me to fix my relationship “problems”.
At this point in the story any woman would say I was thinking like a true guy -”trying to ‘fix’ the relationship problem“. And yes I admit back then I was making one of the standard male mistakes of trying to “fix” instead of connecting and creating an environment to allow Kahlia to trust me and go deeper into her soul.
But at this stage as with many I had not learned and applied the foundational keys of a loving passionate relationship.
What unfolded at this event was one of the biggest learning curves of my life, instead of walking out arm in arm passionately looking into each others eyes. We BROKE UP!
Yes that’s right after 3 hours in front of 3000 people with Anthony Robbins we broke up…???
But luckily I had finally found my limit, and I was guided there thanks to Anthony Robbins and the 3000+ awesome people at that event that day.
This was just the beginning of our journey. From that moment I knew that I had to find out the answer, I needed to understand how to create a passionate relationship. I had to understand how to meet her needs and my own and do it from a centered, masculine healthy place.
Just as I learned to educate myself within business to increase my success I also had to understand relationships to live the exciting passionate loving relationship I desired.
From here we submersed ourselves in the study and understanding of creating a real relationship that would last the distance and is sustained with the feeling of true Love & Passion.
Let’s be honest, relationships are one of the most emotional areas in our life and can truly make us feel we are floating on heavenly clouds or bring us to our knees in pain.
Kahlia and I broke up at Date With Destiny, and from our journey we now share an intimate, open, sensual and passionate connection in our relationship, that grows deeper and stronger every day. We are expecting our child in May this Year.
We are so grateful to share that we have a passionate polarity and energy that we had never experienced prior to this journey. Only through the discovery of some key relationship tools, never giving up and not being afraid to put our hand up and ask for help have we made it this far.
Every area of our life has increased from this deeper connection. Our life is juiced from the passion we share together.
If you can relate to not living your relationship at the level you and your partner deserve, there is a solution and we would like to share some of our journey and the tools we learned to create a Passionate Loving Relationship.
Passion In Your Business
What Andre Agassi Can Teach You About Being A Better Person
I just finished reading Andre Agassi’s autobiography titled Open.
I LOVE tennis bios, they are possibly my favorite book genre because I love tennis, but more than playing it, I love following the professional tour and especially the people in the game. For me, it’s the personalities and the human stories that really inspire, hence I love it when the top players release books about their life playing the game.
Agassi’s bio was different to others I have read (I have Sampras, McEnroe, Newcombe and Scott Draper in my collection so far). Why it was different was because how much the book focused on Agassi and a few key people in his life and less specifically about the game of tennis, the matches he played and the people he played against.
Tennis tournaments and players certainly play a role in the book, but the focus is more on Agassi’s personal journey to discover himself. Reading the book felt a lot like reading what an angsty teenager goes through growing up. Lots of uncontrolled emotions from a person locked into doing things he doesn’t want to do.
Surprisingly, Agassi actually hates tennis and states so many times in the book, further demonstrating how bizarre a life can be for someone who is brought up to do one thing and one thing only, when he doesn’t actually want to. As Agassi grows up he gains control over his life, yet his hatred for the game he keeps playing remains, which makes the contrast even more bizarre, since he is choosing to continue to do something he doesn’t want to do.
Then of course, if you really think about it, Agassi is doing the same thing most people do today.
How many people continue working jobs they don’t want to every day because they feel they have to for whatever reason? Lots. Probably more people do this than people who actually enjoy and have passion for the job they do. This unique form of insanity is shared by many people on this planet, but the fact that Agassi excelled as he did, makes his story even more compelling.
Hard Work Pays Off
Do Your Belief Structures And Behavior Patterns Block Your Success?
Are You Aware Of Your Blind Spots?
I’m a fence sitter. This can at times be a hindrance, but if balanced well, it’s an advantage.
What I mean by this is I don’t 100% commit to a point of view. I have a point of view, but it’s not so rigid that I will default to it without being capable of seeing other points of view.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. No doubt thanks to learned behaviors and pure animal instinct, I do default to certain behaviors in given circumstances, but for the sake of this article let’s focus on issues that we can consciously make a decision about using our awareness. These are areas of our lives that are open to interpretation.
My fence sitting stems from an understanding that everyone sees the world through different glasses. We all perceive things differently, and in our own minds we make choices based on how we see things at the time. There is no right or wrong, only perception and choice, which is how we drive our entire lives.
Since you can’t share someone else’s physical experience (you can’t borrow their senses or mind and see what is it like to “be” them), you have to go with your own perception, which unfortunately can be very dangerous if you start to form rigid belief structures.
Are You Open Minded?
Most people, especially in liberal cultures gifted with plenty of freedom, like to think of themselves as open minded. You likely feel the same, saving your judgments until you’ve had a chance to weigh up the options, opinions and data until you feel comfortable enough to make a decision.
Open mindedness is good, however it can slow you down. If you’re willing to assess information before making a conclusion, you have to invest time and energy into the process. Sometimes there just isn’t enough time to do this and that’s when intuition and experience, or as Malcolm Gladwell calls it – a Blink moment – comes in handy.
A Blink moment refers to the ability of the mind to process data at instantaneous speed, forming an opinion and coming to a conclusion in a matter of seconds, if that. Malcolm Gladwell calls it rapid cognition.
The idea here is that the mind is capable of taking all kinds of inputs, including what data it is receiving from the body’s senses in the moment, plus previous experience, to decipher a conclusion. This is why your first answer is usually the right answer.
While you might think of yourself as open minded, if you’re human your response is instant judgment. We judge at the speed of blink, very quickly forming opinion based on what we see, hear or feel, using our own personal preferences to decide what we like and don’t like and how we respond to a situation.
There’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s important you are aware of it. We like to bend the world into the frame that best matches our present state. Our snap judgments are reflections of how we choose to see situations at a given point in time. We want to make sure we are “right” in what we are doing and thinking based on our current opinion. If you aren’t aware of these tendencies, you can find yourself trapped into patterns that may make you blind to seeing things in a different, more beneficial light.
This is why fence sitting can be an advantage. Although you have to be careful not to sit on the fence permanently, as not making a decision can be detrimental, having a flexible world view gives you the power to adjust and respond to things as needed. It gives you control and thus freedom over your reality, as counter intuitive as that might sound (a dichotomy).
Your Patterns of Behavior Are Anchors
Blog Action Day: Will Climate Change Impact You?
Today is Blog Action Day, a movement that brings together bloggers, no matter what subject they cover, to create awareness of a cause by all writing about it on the same day. This year’s focus is climate change.
This article interrupts a series of blog posts I’ve been publishing on creating positive change in your life. It’s interesting timing given the issue of reducing climate change may be the one greatest change we all have a vested interest in making, yet presently we struggle to make shifts significant enough to save us from what looks like a bleak future, depending on what predictive models you trust.
Writing the series on change made me realize an intriguing and at times contradictory relationship between changes that the individual can make, how those changes impact overall change as a society and the motivations behind change in the first place.
My article series on change focused on your favorite subject – you. I agree with you, my favorite subject is me too. Hence we tend to make decisions to change very much based on what we want as individuals.
Collectively, all our individual decisions dictate what we choose as a society. If enough of us adopt a change, it becomes part of our culture and who we are as a people. This is why the power to change things on a global scale really does rest in the hands of the individual.
The impact of climate change presents some pretty uncomfortable scenarios, many that most human beings would prefer to avoid if possible.
Although not everyone agrees on the science, simply looking at some of the physical manifestations around us (like the weather) is enough to convince me that something is up. I have a feeling we’re all walking a path that can only lead to major disruption of what we take for granted today (things like ease of access to food, water, electricity, transportation), not to mention all the wonders that are at risk in nature and animal life.
Something needs to be done, but who’s going to do it?
