Before you read this article, make sure you read the first three in the series in this order –

1. Is It Really Possible To Create The Change You Want In Your Life?
2. What I Can Teach You About Getting What You Want
3. 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 -

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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“.

Ignorance can come in many shapes and forms and is pervasive in our current society. Almost everyone “suffers” from it in some way.

The problem with ignorance is that it creates a rigid belief structure that stops certain ideas even having a chance. If you’re stubborn, and you believe certain things must be a certain way, or you’ve learned a certain way of looking at the world that you refuse to change, then you’ve locked yourself into a box.

Some people, even if their own framework is flexible, suffer from the ignorance of people around them, which can include your immediate family and friends, or more wide reaching social structures, political and religious systems and cultural norms. These structures impact you if you choose to partake in them (you could always become a hermit and live in a cave).

You have a choice in how you interpret everything, so even if you are forced to adhere to a rule or system you don’t think is right, you can choose how you respond to it. This is why people locked into a life sentence in jail can still find happiness, yet those who have abundant freedom can still find a way to be miserable.

I’m sure you know what it is like when you’re talking to a friend in a bad relationship, or a job that’s not right for them, or they have a habit they refuse to quit like smoking, yet no matter how hard you try and make them realize what they are doing is not beneficial, it just doesn’t get through. This is frustrating because of course you want what is best for the people around you, but ultimately you can’t make decisions for other people.

The problem becomes especially pronounced when you don’t share a basic framework, ideology or world view that is compatible with the person you are communicating with. If you’re talking about something that is blue, but your friend is wearing red-tinted glasses, you have no possibility of “making” them see what you can see. They need to take off the glasses first – or try putting on another pair of glasses – which is something they have to decide to do for themselves.

It’s not your responsibility to change anyone, however you do have control over your own reality, and becoming aware of your ignorance is the first step to eliminate it. Some form of rigid thought process or belief system is holding you back right now, and you’re not even aware of it. This impacts how you make decisions and what actions you take, so until you deal with your own ignorance, you’re going to struggle to change.

Take Off Your Glasses

The first step you can take immediately is to start watching to see if you are wearing any “glasses” that are stopping you from making change.

Being open minded is great, but what I’m talking about here goes much deeper than that. You might consider yourself open minded already, but if you monitor your own reactions to what other people say, or what happens around you, you will see that even you have knee-jerk responses to situations, or behavior patterns that are entrenched in your lifestyle and impact your choices in ways you don’t currently see.

We’re all a product of our upbringing, cultural story, personality type and previous experiences. We interpret the world through our own lens that is constructed of all these things.

• If you believe that only bad people get rich, that will stop you from ever becoming rich yourself because you believe you have to be dishonest to get there.
• If you believe that people should treat you a certain way then you get upset when they don’t and immediately write them off as not worth knowing.
• If a good life is marriage, children and owning your home, but you’re single, broke and childless on your 35th birthday, then you must be a failure.

There are countless expectations like this that impact how we think and act in life, some of which we can see, some that we blindly follow every day without realizing.

Most people I know, myself included, make initial impression judgments based on things like how a person looks and what clothes they wear. Even though I’m open minded, I can’t help but make a judgment on some level, that’s what humans who are driven by egos do.

The key is to realize you are making judgments constantly, become aware of that, then drop them if they are hindering your progress or causing you to suffer. It takes work because you’re trying to unlearn patterns of behavior and thoughts you’ve likely continued for years, possibly your entire adult life.

Be careful not to fool yourself either. It’s easy to say something to the people around you based on what everyone expects because of social standards. No one expects you to be racist, so saying you’re not is expected behavior, but if the conversation in your head is actually racist, then you’re just lying to yourself.

This doesn’t have to be about something as severe as racism either. If you watch your thoughts you might be surprised at how often you tell yourself things you don’t really want to believe simply because of habit or conditioning. Changing what’s going on outside starts with reconstructing what’s going on inside you.

There Is No Such Thing As Truth

At this point in our discussion it’s important that I introduce an idea that might take you a little while to fully come to terms with. You might think you “get” this – I did at first – but then realized I really didn’t fully understand the implications of this concept.

It is something I have struggled to fully integrate into my life, but once you do, it can dramatically change how you perceive the world and all the people in it. Let’s take a look at this concept now, and in the next article in this series we will dig a little deeper. Here we go…

Truth, is only truth in your mind.

No one else on this planet shares what you consider true because no one else can be in your body at the same time as you, at least from the perspective of the individual (we will look at universal “oneness” later).

What you determine is true is based on what your senses interpret. The data from your body is sent to your mind, which determines how you perceive something. From there you use language to label what you have perceived, to make it possible to communicate with other people and categorize what is around you.

A red apple is a color that collectively we have agreed is red, however it’s only true because we’ve learned what the red label represents. Although I know what red looks like to me, I can never really know what red looks like to you. It’s safe to assume that most of us see it in a very similar way since we use our eyes – and we all have eyes that are constructed in a similar manner – but we can never be 100% certain what another person sees, it is impossible without becoming part of their consciousness.

Given the limitations of physical existence and our system of labels for language, it’s absolutely critical that you never attach yourself to an interpretation of truth. If you become attached to it, then you will start to emotionally identify it as your point of view and feel a need to impose it on other people, or defend it when others disagree. If your desire to make the world be something is so strong that you find yourself suffering as a result, you need to let go.

The awareness of just letting things go and pass through you, can be a wonderfully liberating realization. When you decide that what other people think about you, or how they see the world, or what they do, is not your responsibility, you enjoy an immense sense of relief. Deciding that it’s not your job to control the universe, but to flow with it, will make your life significantly easier.

Your only responsibility is to determine what you consider the truth – your truth – and act on that in each and every moment. If your truth is dynamic – not rigid – and you understand you are simply choosing to see things in a way that creates power in your life in that moment, then you’re doing the best you can.

Challenge Your Reality

Once you start monitoring and adjusting your own interpretation and you start to dissolve your judgments, something interesting will start to occur. You will get curious.

The great thing about opening your eyes to other colors is that suddenly the world doesn’t seem nearly as black and white as it used to. The more structures you have in your life, the more liberated you will feel as you break them down.

With this new sense of freedom you will desire more stimulus. Everything in the world will become more interesting because you won’t be focused so much on trying to make everything and everyone around you fit into “boxes”. The boxes of course, don’t exist, they are just mental constructs you’ve created to help you feel safe. When you drop the need to “feel safe”, let your ego go, the world and the people in it, don’t seem nearly as scary.

You will still have problems of course, but given your focus will be less on conformity and more about experience, you will gain an ability to solve problems with much less friction – in fact it will become a lot of fun.

• Instead of being so depressed because you can’t find a boyfriend or girlfriend, you will relish the challenge of meeting new people and breaking down your previous belief structures about your romantic life and what it means to be single.
• Instead of struggling with how hard it is to make money, you will look for more powerful ways to earn a living. Your eyes and mind will be open to doing things like starting a business and quitting the “secure” job you’ve previously stuck to because that’s just what everyone does and it feels safer.
• You will reassess what exactly it means to “be rich”. Money will have a completely new meaning to you.
• Instead of suffering the behavior of certain people in your life you will realize that you simply don’t need them and it’s okay to not be friends with everyone.

The fear of being lonely or “losing someone” will never impact who you decide to associate with. You will naturally gravitate to and draw in people when you need them. People who don’t empower your life will drop away. You will make the decision to not participate in the “drama” of interpersonal relationships, which so many people in the world today are addicted to.

Once you let go and expand your universe, suddenly the vastness and potential – including all the amazing people you could surround yourself with – will inspire you to make new friends and build a social structure that reinforces the changes you want to make in your life.

In short, you will stop acting in fear because of your narrow viewpoint and start acting with a sense of wonder and possibility because you can see the world is much more dynamic than it used to be. Instead of being trapped into a box, you will see that the world is too large for you to ever understand completely, so will seek to challenge your reality without being encumbered by what other people think or standards of behavior you used to adhere to.

Can Your Problems Magically Change Overnight?

One area where people suffer from ignorance is how you create problems when they don’t really exist. Or, using our new understanding of what is truth, you might choose to see a situation as a problem, where alternative interpretations could see the situation as an opportunity.

No matter how bad a situation is, you always have the choice to see it as something beneficial.

If we take what most people on this planet would consider a pretty bad situation – you’re stricken down with a disease that is going to kill you – even this can be interpreted as something positive. You’re going to die, that means you’re going to find out what it means to be no longer in your body and find out what happens next. This, for a curious person, could be the most exciting adventure ever experienced in life.

Here’s something you have to accept – death is an experience you’re going to go through, so you can suffer this fact, or frame it as something you face with courage, curiosity and a sense of fluidity – you will surrender to it, rather than fight it. The choice is up to you.

If we look at less finite “problems” in life, things like not having enough money, or not having a romantic partner, or wanting to lose weight, or move to a better city, or find a new social circle, or stop feeling depressed, or to quit smoking, or start waking up earlier, or buy a car, or stop being afraid to fly in airplanes, or fall pregnant, or leave your marriage, or become famous, or pretty much any change whatsoever you want to make in your life, the same rules apply.

Every situation above can be looked at as something you are “suffering” from, with the frame of what you stand to lose or what you will never have. Or these things can be completely re-framed as opportunities for new experiences, or as a challenge to find an alternative solution, or even as a point of self-reflection to figure out exactly why you want something so much, or why you fear losing something so much, etc.

Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, is in constant flux and the only reason you choose to feel or do something in any given moment is because you choose to, nothing is making you do it. The situation you are in is not the reason you feel as you do, it’s merely a set of circumstances you are choosing to react to in a certain way. If you can’t see a good way to interpret something and a “way out”, then you’re simply addicted to being a certain way – you’re too ignorant of your own behavior and mindset to change. It’s entirely your fault.

Ouch.

That could hurt a little, but I hope you see it as more liberating than painful.

Accepting Change

When I face problems in my life I have benefited from reminding myself of one of life’s constants -

Change is permanent.

I love the dichotomy in that statement. I could have said that change is constant, which is is, but there’s something compelling when you realize the only thing that will never change is change itself.

The practical implication of this understanding further enhances the importance of how you interpret every single moment and thought in your life. Everything is going to change, the situation that you are suffering from right now will not last forever.

Death ensures this. You won’t be lonely forever because you’re going to die. You won’t be married forever because you’re going to die. You won’t be sick forever because you’re going to die. You won’t be young, beautiful, rich, poor, hungry, full, tired, bored, frustrated, angry, bitter, happy, sad, relaxed, excited, joyful, retired, employed, or anything forever, because you are going to die.

Yah, morbid I know. This realization could be about as depressing as it gets, but again – that’s a choice you’re most welcome to make if you like.

I recommend instead that you see death as the greatest reason to always interpret life in a powerful and positive manner, unless of course, you enjoy suffering.

Any problem you have right now doesn’t exist and will disappear, I promise you this with a 100% guarantee. It will change – and to relax a little after all that talk of death, many of the changes you want in life will occur while you are alive. You don’t have to die to rid yourself of your problems, you can do it right now.

Practical Problem Solving

Problem solving begins with first understanding what your problem is really about. I hope, by reading this article to this point, you understand that your problems aren’t really as severe as they are, or really aren’t problems at all.

If you have previously focused energy on what you don’t have and don’t like, it’s time to change that to focusing on what you are doing to make the change you want happen.

You now have the power to never again suffer from your own ignorance. Open your mind to possibility and opportunity and get excited about all the positive changes you could experience in your life in the very near future.

With this new found mindset, the next step is to take the appropriate actions that lead to your desired goals. To make this as practical as possible, here’s a process that can lead you to any change you want to make happen in your life. Remember to apply everything you learned in this article, and the previous in this series, as you go about creating positive change in your life.

1. Start “looking for doors” that will lead you to your goal
2. Once you find the doors, open them
3. Evaluate what you find inside and decide which path to follow further
4. Once you follow a path, focus on dynamic refinement of the process until you achieve your desired outcome (remember that everything can change, including your desired outcome).
5. Accept that you can’t know everything or be everything within the confines of your physical body and mind, so narrow your focus to objective problem solving based on what’s in front of you

While you go through this process, keep in mind your view of the world, including your insights and your ignorances, are helping and hindering your progress. The more you increase your awareness and decrease your ignorance, the easier your life will be and the less friction you will face as you make change.

Coming Up Next – Understanding Your Power As A Change Catalyst

In the next and final chapter in my series on positive change, I’m going to tie in everything you’ve learned so far and leave you with I believe is the single most important insight you can gain from this series.

While everything I’ve talked about so far has been about you helping yourself, you obviously don’t exist in isolation. There is an entire universe that is influencing you, but perhaps more importantly, you are influencing it.

You’re going to see that it’s not just for your own benefit that you need to adopt these positive change principles. It goes much deeper than that.

I’ll give you the final piece of the puzzle very soon…

Yaro Starak
Dissecting Truth

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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

Have you ever felt the passion that you get when you are winning in business or starting a new (ad)venture?

The deep stirring and excitement that comes from the endless possibilities…

We’ll now that you can measure passion in your life I want to ask you, have you ever felt this passion within your relationship? Have you felt this passion lately?

Many entrepreneurs think they can only have one focus while achieving their success; it’s either the relationship or business.

But what would you say if I told you it’s possible to have even more inspirational juice to build a business when balanced with a healthy passionate relationship.

If you already have a relationship and perhaps even work with your partner within your business, how would you like to renew and retain the passion while still achieving success in business?

Imagine that… You achieve all your financial goals and also share it with your partner in a deep and fulfilling relationship.

Now I know what you may be thinking, because many years ago I thought the same thing…

“I can sort my relationship when we are successful and have made the money we want”

OR

“It’s ok we are nearly at our goal. Than we’ll go on a romantic holiday and sort that out, I can still fix it later”.

Unfortunately the reality is that someday may never come, and regardless if you achieve the business success you will sadly find at the end of that journey you are often either no longer in a relationship, or the passion is so dull that once the distraction of the business is removed, the relationship end is only a matter of time.

You have heard the cliché that money is not everything and love is the most important thing, so I am not going to bore you with what you already know.

The simple fact is you may be focused on financial/business success right now and you feel this is required in order to be in a mindset to focus the time to realize success.

I am not going to speak further about the success time frame of business because this is not what this article is about. We are here to talk about your Relationship success while still achieving your business goals – We want Holistic Success.

This is for you if you are in a relationship or if you would like to attract one while still putting in the required time and focus to reach your business goals.

Business Love Balance

We are going to term this the “Business Love Balance” which also happens to be the name of the program we designed to achieve the passionate connection in your relationship, filling your life with depth and love giving you a life of holistic success… The Ultimate Success!

Just as there is a structure to follow to achieve in business more efficiently there is also a structure and tools that can be applied to create the passionate polarity in your relationship, whether you are already in a relationship or would like to attract one; And no matter what stage your relationship is at. It’s never too late to reignite with the right fuel.

Within the Business Love Balance program I teach, I provide members with step-by-step tools to help create the structure to allow you to ignite and retain the passion between you and your partner. One of the tools is “Love Communication” – This one resource alone if applied will make a massive difference to your relationship.

‘Love Communication’ is understanding how your partner receives love best for THEM and communicating to them in this way.

Whether it is to deepen a moment, create understanding and rapport when resolving an argument, or if you are in business together, you can make your partner feel love and connection while working.

In this article I want to briefly share some of the basics of ‘Love Communication’ to help you get started in connecting and deepening your relationship.

There are four main ways a person likes to receive love, these are called sub modalities and they are:

1. Kinaesthetic
2. Auditory
3. Visual
4. Auditory Digital

These are the basics of ‘Love Communication’ – and these love strategies are an important place to start if you want to connect with your partner.

We all like differing variation of these to receive love, but one will often be a primary.

The other important note is we ALL use these preferred communications methods in many areas of our lives e.g communicating with work colleagues, connecting to our children or taking in new information.

The key is to know first what your own Love Strategy is and secondary how your partner likes to receive love.

To understand these and recognize them we need to know how they might appear in some basic examples; some one who is primarily Kinaesthetic would like affection and often be touching, hugging and kissing their partner or wanting to express their feelings. They are the “touchy feely” ones and can bring a lot of connection to the relationship. They feel and express love when touched and being close.

A person who is Auditory will like to receive love through words, they like to hear you say it and express to them by speaking. You may find this also generally leads into the bedroom if while making love you tell them how you are feeling and what you are going to do to them Perhaps read up on some naughty romantic literature if you are out of practice.

Visual people receive love through what they see, it can be the effort you put into your appearance, the incredible looking roses you present to them or even cleaning the home so they can SEE the effort you have put in for them. So as you can imagine they love what they can see.

Finally Auditory Digital, these people receive love often by processing their feeling, which as you can imagine can be contradictory to the general definition of love.

People who are primarily Auditory Digital can struggle to express themselves and open up to depth within their relationship. These people benefit from practicing the other strategies where congruent in order to truly deepen the connection.

Remember we all use differing variation of these strategies within our life and with our love communication and we can practice deepening and connecting using other strategies at times.

Now the key to ‘Love Communication’ and connecting with your partner is to understand not only what your own strategy is, but also importantly what your partner’s is. You will often find one of the main reasons couples lose connection is that they try giving love to their partner using the strategies they prefer receiving themselves.

Now an example of how this can create a problem; imagine a partner is Visual and the other primarily Kinaesthetic.

The Kinaesthetic partner always wants to connect with their partner affectionately through touching, kissing, and sharing regularly to feel & express love.

Now the visual partner prefers primarily to see the love, sure they like to touch and hug but generally different amounts makes them comfortable and creates connection specifically at certain moments. So when they are trying to communicate something they feel is important they will naturally use a lot of visual stimulation and require you to look and focus into their eyes compared to what they feel would be distracting, such as excessive touching at this time. They want to see you acknowledge what they are saying to you or showing you.

The key to this example and all other love communication is to understand what your partner prefers for communication and build rapport connecting with them with their love strategy.

Often simply understanding and applying this strategy alone will allow you to resolve arguments quickly, turning them into exciting moments. As well as connecting more with your partner and deepening during sex.

The Importance of Communication

A lack of communication or misunderstanding through your communication is the major reason a relationship fails.

Relationships do not end from a lack of Love but a lack of Passion.

Passion is created through polarity and deepening connection from the quality of the communication.

Can you imagine for a moment how this could help your relationship or if you are looking for one, allows you to connect with someone early on in the dating stages?

Now within the working environment, when a couple is in business together, communication is a very powerful tool to be productive in business, yet still make your partner feel appreciated and feel loved…

And of course it is a definite requirement to re-connect passion after a day of business together, changing the mood and at times the roles to realign your love and romance, creating a balanced life.

Just like all resources for success, a strategy is only useful if actually applied. This is one of the main reasons for the creation of ‘Business Love Balance’ – it provides accountability and continued growth to commit you to deepen your relationship, creating a deeply fulfilling life. Something we all deserve.

Chris Crowe

Learn more about how the Business Love Balance program guides you to meet your partner’s needs and stay accountable to create romance and passion, which leads to the truly magic moments of your life.

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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

I took away a few key lessons from Agassi’s life as a tennis player that relate directly to all of us, no matter what we do.

Although Agassi had a unique talent, it’s pretty clear why he was as good as he was, is because of his work ethic and training regime.

It started with his father who made him hit a million balls a year as a kid to develop his strokes and reflexes. It continued as Agassi was molded into a super-athlete thanks to Gil, his trainer and bodyguard. Many times Agassi won matches because he had “more in the tank” than other players, playing just as fresh in the fifth set as the first.

You have to take this on board beyond just the physical advantage. It’s a huge mental advantage too, knowing you can outlast other players physically. This means you won’t give up mentally because you trust and believe in your abilities.

Knowing you can do something is often more important than actually being able to do it. Having the belief can make it true, and although you can never know what came first, the chicken or the egg, often it’s what you believe and thus act that makes things real.

I found Agassi’s book motivating because of how hard he worked. It made me want to work harder too.

One of the dangers in the lifestyle I lead, which you are likely striving for right now, is that you gain tremendous freedom. Once you meet your financial goals, set up some passive or near passive income streams, you find yourself with more time and too many options.

Some people become addicted to the rush of achievement and the thrill of making money, so they use all their time to grow an even bigger business. Others use their new found freedoms to do different things, to relax, have a holiday and indulge in leisure activities. Unfortunately most people tend to lose balance, either becoming workaholics, a slave to always wanting more, or they become lazy, and start to lose their passion altogether.

I personally strive for balance, but it’s not always easy. I’m lazier than I’d like to be, so I found Agassi’s story motivating. It made me want to achieve and do so on a grander scale each time. It’s made me want to turn 2010 into a big year, a bigger year than I may have otherwise if I didn’t read the book.

Giving Is the Purest Action

Although Agassi had a hate-love relationship with tennis, and you could say it continued beyond tennis – he had a love-hate relationship with life and he struggled to reconcile the two – there were some key moments in the book that stand out as beacons of clarity.

These moments focused on one very specific thing – helping others.

Agassi noted that he felt so right helping other people, whether it was the injured daughter of his trainer Gil, or starting a school for disadvantaged teens in his hometown of Las Vegas, or helping to save the life of a friend’s premature baby. There was no angst about these actions. It was just right, pure, what he – what all of us – are meant to do.

It appears to me that we are wired to find peace, enjoyment and contentment in helping other people. Whether it’s the smallest act of everyday kindness, up to grand gestures of giving or lifetime commitments to serving others. We’re meant to make other people feel safe, happy and find comfort, that in turn gifts us the gift of purpose and peace.

The wonderful thing about giving is that it’s not just about what you might term altruistic activities. Yes it’s a wonderful idea to be like Mother Theresa and spend your entire life helping those in dire need, but it doesn’t have to be as single-minded as that, if you don’t want it to be.

Giving has also emerged as the most powerful marketing technique available today. There’s nothing more satisfying in my life knowing I can write a blog post that has the potential to help thousands of people, and I can earn money doing so. It’s wonderful that you can write a report full of your best ideas, give it away so you can help lots of people without them spending a cent, and still make money when a tiny fraction of those people choose to give you money in exchange for more from you.

Helping others, giving of yourself and focusing on how you can deliver value, is the key to living a fulfilling life. However in yet another of life’s wonderful dichotomies, most of our focus is on what WE want. How we can get what WE desire, improve our OWN lives. When you realize what’s best for you is actually what is best for everyone else, you start to realize how connected we really are.

Life Is The Best Example

One thing I’ve noticed lately, since I’m more open to it than I have ever been before, is how life is one constant example.

Books, people, events, actions and consequences, whether it is your life or others, are all designed to help you discover what is your truth. Everything is a lesson, teaching you either what you want, or what you don’t want, creating clarity by simply showing you more about you.

The truth is already in you, but you need the stimulation of outside influences in order to crystallize it. Thankfully we can’t opt-out of this process, just by living you are participating. However you can choose to ignore it, which unfortunately leads more often to a focus on what you don’t like and choices made to perceive experiences in a way that doesn’t benefit you. That’s the only risk you face – choosing ignorance – of who you are and what everything around you means.

If you’re a tennis fan, or just enjoy a good character story, I recommend you check out Andre Agassi: Open.

Yaro Starak
Tennis Fan

P.S. In Agassi’s book he comes across as very different to the way I perceived him as a player, which I think except for those people close to him, is a statement many people will share. Agassi spent much of his career flat out lying to the media, saying what he thought people wanted to hear, rather than his truth, which was buried deep within layers of the angst, confusion and lack of identity he felt. The book feels very much like a decision to “wipe the slate clean” and come out with how it was really like for him as a person, rather than how the media portrayed him.

Consequently, due to the openness of the book, it’s garnered a lot of press coverage. Agassi did drugs. Agassi lied to the ATP about it. Agassi tanked in some big matches. Agassi is brutally honest about his opinion of other players, much of which is not friendly. The book is full of drama, and the media – and us – love drama. You could say it was a very smart marketing decision, given sensationalism spreads, but it was also a risky choice for Andre as he has damaged his reputation in the eyes of some people.

I like this book for its honesty, and as I said previously, it serves as a great example to come up with our own truths. Agassi is just as good of an example of what to do as he is an example of what NOT to do. I think the biggest example of what not to do in this book came from Agassi’s father, who didn’t let Andre grow up as a normal child and make the decision of what to do with his life for himself. Instead his father made the decision and then turned tennis into a jail for Andre. That’s not healthy, and it’s clear much of Agassi’s personal torments were born from this upbringing, even if his father was doing it out of love for his son.

Agassi made the choice to be honest with many things and he obviously prepared himself for the consequences, though he no doubt could never be truly ready for what was to come. I feel it’s more important to use his story as a tool to enhance your life, rather than simply a means to judge Agassi. Take Andre’s good traits and use them as inspiration in your life. Observe what you consider negative things that Andre did and make sure you don’t repeat his mistakes in your life.

It’s easy to label someone as good or bad based on their actions, but you should judge the actions and not the person. People are always a work in progress – life is a work in progress – and you’d have to agree you are too. It doesn’t matter how good or famous or gifted you are, we all are human.

Andre Agassi: Open

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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

We are all creatures of habit. One of the greatest challenges to learning something new and growing is your capability to step out of your comfort zone.

Most of us are held back by the patterns we have developed and the comfort zone we live in. It’s natural for us to do this since we look for ways to make our lives more comfortable.

Most of modern society’s advances focus on improving the “quality” of our lives, which means faster, more convenient, less work and above all else – “better” than what has come before.

Unfortunately as is often the case, quicker and easier doesn’t mean better, and most things in life that give us real meaning and substance are not instant achievements.

We derive more satisfaction from what requires more of us. Usually it is our patterns of behavior that make us look for the easy way out. We are comfortable doing things the same way and uncomfortable doing things we have never done before. This unfortunately can blindside us from what is really worth doing.

Knowing and Then Doing What You Don’t Know

One of the most interesting concepts when it comes to learning something new is the idea of discovering what you don’t know that you don’t know.

It’s the “ah-ha” moment, when you come to an awareness you didn’t even realize a problem was there holding you back, or you have a behavior pattern consistently resulting in the same outcome, even though you want something different.

Uncovering what results you are reinforcing based on your current actions and what you need to know and then do to change this, is the first step towards creating what you want in life. Unless you are prepared to completely re-wire some of your belief structures and destroy your old patterns, once you find them, you won’t experience what you desire.

In other words, you first need the ingredients to enter your awareness as a possibility before you have even a hope of achieving what you want. Without tools and a map, you’re going to keep walking the same circles you have always walked, because you’ve programmed yourself to do so.

Are You Lying To Yourself?

If you’re new to self assessment, the process of discovering your patterns can be quite difficult. It literally takes an entirely new way of thinking. It’s like stepping out of your body and mind to watch what it does, then slap it into awareness whenever you notice something needs to change.

Why this is hard is because you are trying to change things you currently believe are true, based on your actions. Even if you consider yourself flexible and open minded, if your immediate response thought and your actions don’t reflect this (your snap judgments and actions repeat), then you’re not really changing.

It’s nice to think of yourself in a certain way, that you are capable of change, but if your real-world actions don’t reflect this, you are pandering to your own sense of self, your ego and belief structures about what kind of person you are.

You are basically believing what you think you are, even if you really aren’t there yet. This is natural of course, as we all operate within our own boundaries and thus justify why we do as the right choice for us right now.

If you want to change, you need to be harsh sometimes about what really is the truth regarding the choices you make. It’s seeing a new reality about yourself that you don’t like, which triggers the push to finally act to create change, rather than just be comfortable thinking you can make the change whenever you want to (and never do, or do so only when it is too late).

Examples Of Common Belief Patterns

Since you are reading this blog and have read this article up to this point, you are likely a practitioner of what I call “meta-thinking“.

Meta-Thinking is a phrase I coined (a language identifier), that describes the process of assessing what’s going on behind the scenes. I described this idea as it relates to analyzing the world around you, in particular business, in this article -

Are You a Master of Meta-Thinking?

The meta aspect of your own decision making process is vitally important to become aware of too. Watching how you see the world, especially your immediate judgments, can be a very eye-opening experience (or perhaps mind-opening is a better phrase).

To help you practice your study of self, here are some common situations we face as humans and some as Internet marketers. Starting today, if you don’t already, monitor how you react to these types of situations -

• When you first meet someone, how do you react to how they dress, the color of their skin, what accent they speak with, what country they come from and how attractive you find them (or not attractive)
• In your everyday life, do you tend to shop in the same places, hang out with the same people, eat the same food, wear the same clothes and stick to the same jobs
• In terms of online marketing, how do you first react to a sales page, or to a certain language style (corporate or sales or natural/blogging style), when you read a testimonial, or see pictures of proof elements like checks or cars
• What are your natural responses to making changes to your own blog or business, like how do you feel about asking for money, or using sales copy, or having to make a sale, or use marketing techniques like launches processes

A lot of people won’t buy products that are sold via long form sales page and consequently couldn’t imagine ever using them to sell their own products or services. Some people think that all testimonials are lies, and thus won’t use them (or now the FTC might stop you!).

You may have a blockage around creating your own product because you don’t see anything you can create as valuable enough for others to buy. Or you may believe that you have to basically lie and cheat and use all those horrible launch tricks in order to convince people to buy what you have, and you just don’t want to become another annoying marketer.

Right now you have a way of looking at everything around you. Your perception dictates what you do and don’t do. Unless you are willing to change how you see things, who you surround yourself with, how you do things and ultimately, how you think, you are going to repeat the same patterns and earn the same results.

The examples above don’t include a “correct” way to look at each situations, they are merely common scenarios we face. If you start to watch how you react you’ve taken the first step because you have opened a new window of awareness – you know what is true to you right now – which means it becomes a variable you can play with rather than just default to.

How To Break Patterns

Once you become aware of how you think, perceive and thus do, you have a starting point for breaking patterns and belief structures that are not beneficial to what you want to create in your life.

Next you need to assess what you want to change, discover the patterns that are holding you back or reinforcing what you don’t want, then find the behaviors that lead to what you do want, and start putting them into practice instead.

In order to help you do this, I’ve found the following set of principles extremely beneficial -

• The 80/20 Rule: Ascertain the few things that matter most and eliminate what doesn’t have impact.

  In most cases, getting the change you want actually requires a lot less “work” than what you do now, because you spend so much time repeating patterns that don’t give you your desires. Once you cut the waste and focus on the leverage points, life becomes a lot easier.

  For more on this, see: What Is The 80/20 Rule And Why It Will Change Your Life

• Theory of Constraints: You are only as strong as your weakest point.

  Identifying your immediate next step towards what you want is critical, and your immediate next step is always elimination of the constraint that is holding you back now. Getting what you want is a process; removing each constraint, which reveals another constraint to remove, and so on. Breaking things down into steps until you can assemble the entire picture is a sound practice, and makes things much less overwhelming.

• Operate with a malleable structure for decision making.

  Live within a fluid environment, but set within boundaries based on the goals you determine using the 80/20 rule and Theory of Constraints. In other words, focus on your goals and be open minded in how to meet them so you are not locked into set ways of doing things, yet you have parameters to work within and you know what your next step is.

• Monitor your decision making process and assess your own meta-game for flaws.

  If you can’t determine this yourself, ask for external input from mentors, coaches, peers or resources such as books, courses, blogs, websites and formal study.

• When speed is required, trust the power of “blink” decision making. Go with your gut instinct and focus more on taking action and less on deliberation.
• Don’t let yourself get too paralyzed. Permanent fence sitting is not good, so it’s important you balance your open awareness with a passion for just getting things done.

  Applying deadlines can really help this process, especially when the avenues for “study” are limitless, which in most circumstances, they are. There is always more you can learn and become aware of, but only so much time to experience it, at least within this lifetime.

Master of Your Universe

It’s a sobering idea that we are entirely responsible for everything we have and don’t have. If you truly grasp this idea it can be very empowering, but can easily depress you too, depending how you look at it.

As with everything in life, how you feel is dictated entirely by how you choose to see things. Opening your eyes to your own behaviors and seeing what doesn’t help you create the truth you want to experience, is an incredibly powerful insight. Knowing this idea alone is enough to start you down a path that could lead you to exactly what you think you want.

Yaro Starak
Pattern Interrupter

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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?

How Can We Be So Unresponsive?

Given the size of this issue (we are talking about the entire planet), it can be daunting as an individual to fathom what type of change is necessary to “save us”. The problem is complex and the implications so widespread that we can never hope to get a grasp of what exactly is going to happen, but one thing is clear – we need an adjustment of the entire global consciousness if we are to solve this suite of issues.

I began thinking how exactly this level of change is likely to happen. What’s the most likely scenario for us as a race to react to what’s happening?

Since I’ve been writing about change I’ve realized that behind every big change is a process of incremental changes. It’s the little adjustments along the way that take us to the big outcomes.

Unfortunately, in the case of changes like climate change, we don’t react to the problem until it has had a dramatic impact on us. Because of this, we may need to suffer before we do something significant and react collectively to the idea that the world as we run it today, is not sustainable. By the time we realize that we need to all adjust our behavior and shift our motivation, it will be too late, the inertia will be too great to reverse or even reduce very quickly. It’s going to be rocky before it becomes smooth again.

Most of us make changes to our lives only when there is a stimulus strong enough to cause us to react. If there’s no direct agitation that we personally feel, we tend to go with the flow and do whatever the majority does. The herd mentality strikes again.

In the case of climate change, I don’t have faith that enough individuals will force a shift in behaviors great enough to change us, until something really significant happens.

In other words, it’s going to take the threat of realizing or even experiencing that you won’t be able to just turn on a tap and have water appear. The garbage you produce won’t just magically disappear once a week, buried somewhere hidden away where you never see it. You won’t be able to just catch a plane to visit another country. The weather will be so severe that for periods of collectively many months every year, being outside simple won’t be an option.

Everyone will feel the impact so significantly, that finally we will be motivated to make changes. It’s a shame that it may have to go this far for us to decide to do something about it. This may not happen in my lifetime of course, but that doesn’t mean anyone alive today should be comfortable opting-out of responsibility. This is a human-race problem and I for one care about my people.

The one silver lining in this scenario, as I see it, is a huge raising in global consciousness and a shift in priorities towards much more sustainable and humane practices.

The world operates on polarities. When really bad things happen to you, your perspective on life shifts dramatically. Although your physical world may not be as rosy, you personally experience major growth – you “raise your consciousness” and see the world in a different way.

When this happens to many people at the same time due to a major tragedy, our entire society changes, emerging from the despair with an inner power and peace that wasn’t present before. We experience a mass internal realignment, advancing our culture towards a more functional, equal, sustainable and peaceful society.

From the seeds of suffering is born enlightenment.

Don’t Take What You Have For Granted

Of course I have no idea if these situations will eventuate, but I do know that human nature is very complacent.

As long as you don’t directly suffer, you don’t worry too much about all the big issues and focus more on what little things are bothering you or how you can get your next fix of self gratification. Let the politicians and the activists worry about the implications of climate change. As long as I get my beer, weekends, restaurants, cafes, cars, TV, sex, drugs, music, mobile phones and of course – the Internet, I’m good.

That’s a dangerous attitude and it needs to be changed.

Don’t live in fear of what you might loose, but don’t be ignorant either. Understand the reality of how you live today and what behaviors contribute to climate change and start making smart choices based on what you value in your life.

This is about everyone – and everyone includes you. Unless you want the shock of your life, it’s important that you start caring now, rather than just as the disaster strikes. This is your problem too, and although you shouldn’t let the burden depress you, and accept that you’re not perfect, it is important you start acting less like an individual, and more like a part of a collective species that makes one hell of a large footprint on this earth.

Yaro Starak
Shifting

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These ideas focus on you being the catalyst for change, so let’s take a deeper look at how much power you really have to create the kind of results you want in your life…

A Hard Lesson: You Can’t Control Everything

Potentially one of the most depressing moments in your life, especially as a young person, is coming to grips with your own limitations. I’m all for creating a strong base of self esteem so you feel like you can achieve anything, but it’s necessary to realize that you’re not going to be the best at everything and some things you won’t ever be able to do.

We’re all born with gifts, natural abilities, and strengths, but conversely, there are things we’re not good at and other elements that impact our lives, which are based on the “luck of the draw” that is the lottery of life. Your genetic make-up, where you are born, what era you are born into and all kinds of things can hinder your ability to create the change you want in your life.

Your environment has a huge impact on who you are, how you think and what you do. You can expand your universe by taking in new inputs, but you’re limited to what inputs are available (hence the phrase you don’t know what you don’t know). Although you live in an infinite universe, for most of us we can only function within a finite universe or, well, your head might explode, or at least you won’t be able to function within the framework of the society you call home, or the body you operate within.

Despite having your own unique set of circumstances based on your environment, physical make-up and ever expanding consciousness, there are universal principles that you can apply to help you create what you want in your life, regardless of your limitations. In the end, as is always the case, in comes down to the choices you make.

You’ve been given the power of freewill, which means in all circumstances you can make a choice. This is a wonderful gift, but dangerous in the “wrong” hands, so it pays to put some effort into ensuring you are making smart choices – that’s smart in relation to what you want of course, which is going to be different from person to person.

Let’s take a look at a basic framework of ideas you can use in order to help you make the right choices. Like the previous article in this series, I’ll draw upon other blog posts I’ve published as source content for the ideas. Please read the source articles too as they will enhance your understanding of each concept.

4. Make Smart Choices (Stop making it hard for yourself and don’t just follow the herd)

Source: How To Combine Your Brain And Willpower To Break The Pattern Of Average Results

When faced with a situation where you’re simply not good at something or there is a barrier that is completely out of your control stopping you from achieving something, it’s important that you see reality for what it is.

Of course we can choose to see things in a different way, to put our positive glasses on, or perhaps simply not think about or perceive something at all because it serves us better that way. However, fooling yourself to believe you can fly and consequently jumping off a building causing massive injury is not the kind of positive thinking or awareness change we are after here.

The article on using your brain and willpower to create change introduced a logical idea when faced with a world of inequality: You need to accept the conditions you operate within now and do the best with what you have been given.

This is actually more critical than you might think. It’s not just about accepting that you will never be tall if you are short, it’s important that you make choices that allow you to develop what you are naturally gifted at (in the height example, you do things that short people have an advantage doing).

There are people in this world who prefer to take on challenges that they are handicapped to perform in some way. That’s fine, and I’m not going to argue against this, but for the greater majority of people on this planet, making your life harder than it already is, is not a smart choice.

We’re looking for the path of least resistance, and the lowest hanging fruit.

Make choices that leverage skills, talents or abilities that you were born with or have developed over time to give yourself an advantage. It’s usually much more fun and gratifying to do this, you earn greater rewards because you put more into it and do it for longer, and on a global scale, generally you give more back to the world too.

Don’t fight what you can’t control and gravitate to areas where you can provide effortless value. When I say effortless, I don’t mean it won’t be work, but the process of work is enjoyable even when it’s frustrating, painful or exhausting. You’re developing aspects of yourself that were meant to be developed, rather than struggling to do something you’re not good at.

This makes complete sense right?

Yeah, sure it does, but for many people on this planet they consider it a pipe dream to do what they want, and here’s why…

1. You don’t know what you’re good at or “meant to do” or how on earth it could help you make money, or if it even should
2. You’ve made less than smart choices and find yourself in a situation where you feel trapped doing something you don’t like
3. You live in a society where you don’t even have your basic needs met, so thinking about what you might be good at doing rarely even crosses your mind, making enough food to survive, or finding a place to sleep that is warm, are the only challenges you deal with on a day to day basis

The fact that the third point is even relevant is particularly sad, in terms of a reflection of who we are as a people. It’s safe to say that if you’re reading this you’re dealing with issues one and two and have risen to the point where your basic needs are met. Although at one stage I’d like to more thoroughly review some things we can do to help eliminate that third condition, that’s a topic for another article on another day.

So, assuming your basic needs are met, in most cases to create the positive change in your life, the big mistake you are making right now is bad choices, choices incongruent with what you want. Every day you wake up and repeat activities that reinforce what you don’t want, which are born from thinking in a way that doesn’t take you to where you want to go, or to who you want to be.

This is an easy mistake to make because most of society is doing exactly the same thing. In order to break out of this pattern you essentially have to be “weird”, which in context is not doing what the majority think is accepted behavior. The problem is that you are a herd animal and it’s uncomfortable enough just to even bring up the subject of making changes that most people will criticize you for, let alone to actually do it. This is why it’s critical you start to connect the dots and realize that –

• A) You’re going to have to be different to most “normal” people if you are to go after what you want
• B) The perceived normality is, however, just an illusion, brought about because everyone thinks in a certain way and thus acts in a certain way, which doesn’t make them happy, often causes other people as well as themselves to suffer and worse still, usually damages the planet too

If you can break the illusion simply by choosing not to partake in the accepted behaviors and thought processes, then you’re on the way to making a difference.

This is not a situation of black and white choices of course, so you’re going to have to make some decisions based on what you believe is right given what you want to change. I reiterate, you need to do the best with what you have been given, which is not usually doing what everyone else does or doesn’t do.

You’re going to face ridicule (all entrepreneurs and revolutionaries know what this is like), but the fact is, if you just keep doing what everyone does, you’re going to get the same results. Break the pattern, stand out from the crowd, start making smart choices and people will look at you funny at first, but once they see how big an impact it has on your life, they’re going to start looking at you as if you are some kind of genius. You may even become a leader – now that’s a scary thought isn’t it!

What’s particularly powerful about this shift in awareness and behaviors, is that at first sure, you’re doing it for your own self good, but it can go much further. It’s when one individual starts making smart choices – let’s call them “enlightened choices” – that the run-off effect is an impact on people around you, who may as a result of observing you, start to make similarly “unusual” choices. Like a good pyramid scheme, if enough people do this, then the world can change for the better, as these two fellows certainly understand –

Daisaku Ikeda (Japanese peace activist) said – “A great revolution in just one single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a society and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of humankind.”

Gandhi said – “Be the change you wish to see in the world”

Although you may be looking to create positive change to aspects in your life, making smart choices can have a ripple effect that can change the behaviors of the entire human race. The great thing about this is all you need to worry about is making what you perceive as the right choices given what you want to change. It’s not always easy, but becoming aware of your power to make the choice and not simply go with the status quo, is a huge first step.

If you’ve managed to raise your self awareness to the point where you understand you are master of your own interpretation, you’re focusing on changing the internal dialogue with yourself for the better, you’re seeing the world in a much more positive light, you’re committed to working on something long enough to get a result and you realize that it’s not always going to feel 100% perfect along the way, all that’s left is to figure out what the right choices are, and then make them.

Let’s take the next step and look at how we can determine what the right choices are…

5. Follow Success Patterns (Don’t reinvent the wheel)

Source: How To Find The Courage To Change By Raising Your Awareness

Much of this source article focuses on raising your awareness to the point where you realize what you want, a recurring theme in this series on positive change too. There’s a very relevant point to extract from towards the end of the article, which can fill in one of the final missing ingredients to create the change you want in your life.

It never fails to amaze me how many people don’t figure out this very simple idea. I’ve had people come up to me and ask for my advice on how to do something and in so many situations, even if I know absolutely nothing about who they are, what they are good at, or even the area they are focused on, this advice still applies.

This concept applies universally to all forms of change, there is always some form of help available. If you want to make money doing something, find someone who’s figured out how to do that. If you’re about to face a new challenge, like becoming a father or mother for the first time, there are other people who have been through this experience before you. If you want to start a revolution and eliminate a great injustice, or stop a global catastrophe, or just figure out how to change your fashion style so you will be more attractive to the opposite sex, aspects of how to do all these things is learnable because it has been done before.

Even if you are doing something completely new in a completely innovative industry, or you’re attempting to break new ground, there will be success principles that other people have used that will apply to what you are doing. You’re learning some now just by reading this article. All you have to do is get out there and find the right people or the right information to start filling in the blanks to figure out what your immediate next step is, what the smart choices are.

You might need a coach or mentor, or perhaps you can study a guru or just read a good book. Maybe a structured course, or even a full degree is the answer. Maybe just a conversation over a cup of tea will give you want you need, or perhaps taking a hands-on training program is what you require.

In most circumstances, to learn what you need to know is a holistic process. To determine what steps you need to take and to undertake the necessary personal growth you require to get where you want to go, it is necessary to collect input from all kinds of sources, some that you proactively seek out, others that just show up at the right time (more on this later in the series).

In my own experience to create the change I desire in my life I usually go with a combination of experimentation (mandatory for most change to occur), with passive observation of people who have what I want, combined with active study of materials from experts and when possible, some personal time spent with people, some who just came about at the right time and taught me something they may not have even realized they were teaching, and others who I sought out to solve a particular problem.

As Mulder constantly reminded us in the X-Files, the truth is out there, you just need to go looking for whatever truths will help you to create the change you want.

What If You Don’t Know What You Want?

As one final piece of advice before I end this part of the series, if you’re not even sure what you want, consider things you might like to have, or what about you or your immediate environment that you want to change, and then start looking for alternative choices you could make today to take you towards that reality.

You have to understand that making smart choices is not an absolute endeavor. You will never know the “right” decision beyond what is best for what you want to be in a given moment. This means that what is right for you will change constantly, it’s part of the growth process that is the evolution of your consciousness. In order to help you get closer to figuring out your truth, you will need to sample and experiment.

Follow success patterns based what you think and feel might work for you, or focus on making changes that eliminate what you don’t like about your life right now. Sometimes a process of elimination will lead you to what you want, but that doesn’t mean all the principles you have learned up to this point are not relevant. They apply equally the same.

You will always have the power of choice and it’s up to you to figure out what you want, no one else can decide this for you. That’s why raising your awareness as a basic concept is so important, it will give you the insight to know that change needs to be made in the first place, triggering the cascade of decisions that will lead you to greater clarification of what you really want.

Coming Up Next: Where Does Change Really Originate From?

The puzzle is looking a lot more complete. You now have some strong foundation concepts that can help you to realize the change you want, namely -

1. Confidence comes from training
2. Become self aware so you can use your perception as a positive force in your life
3. Work consistently regardless of external conditions and their effect on your feelings
4. Make smart choices based on your own strengths and what you want, not what everyone else does
5. Follow the success patterns that are all around you, ready to be learned whenever you need guidance

Most of these ideas reflect on you as the center of your own universe, which is certainly true, but we’ve left out a key point – everything is connected.

I touched on this idea when I talked about how you changing yourself can result in changing others around you, but it goes much further than this.

Everything you do influences other people, just as what other people do influences you. There is a mass interconnected web that you must learn how to operate within if you want it to help, rather than hinder you from experiencing the positive changes you desire.

Once you are aware of what I will cover in the next article you may even begin to question where change comes from or what you even are. We are heading into uncharted waters, so stay tuned, there’s more to come yet!

Yaro Starak
Change Agent

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If you haven’t manifested your own desires and want to change your life, take on board what I have to say here, and in the articles that complete this series. I promise it will help you in many ways…

Here Is What I Know So Far

I’ve proactively changed many aspects of my life for the better, especially in the past five years. The key word here is “proactively”, which could be interchanged with the word consciously, or intentionally. The point being that I decided I wanted something and then went to work to create the change necessary to have what I wanted. It wasn’t just hoping, dreaming, or thinking about the change, it was all of those things AND focused action designed to take me there.

The end outcome of achieving what I set out to is usually different to what I expected, and of course as per the universal rules I talked about in the first article in this series, the process, the journey of creating the change turned out to be more valuable than actually arriving at the outcome.

Although we are motivated by changing certain physical circumstances we exist in, often it’s the internal shift, the growth we go through on a personal level, that turns out to be the most valuable outcome. The physical benefits are like having the cake, while the real change is learning how to cook, something you can take with you long after you finish eating the cake.

Although many of the stories I’m about to tell you relate to a personal milestone, event or challenge from my life, the cornerstone of the story is the lesson learned as a result. Luckily for us, I’ve been chronicling many of these lessons by revealing the stories here on this blog, so together we can go on a trip through the last ten years of my life and extract some of the most important and powerful revelations as they apply to creating positive change.

I’ve included a link to the original articles that recount in more detail the situations and the key learnings. I strongly recommend you read these articles too, as they will greatly reinforce the messages of this article series.

This is some of the most powerful content in this blog in terms of helping you change your mindset, increase your own self awareness and achieve what you want. I say this in confidence because they are the benefits I gained by living these experiences.

Here we go…

1. Personal Congruency (Confidence through training)

Source: Personal Congruency… At 21? How To Be Confident At Any Age

Way back during the first year of this blog I talked about my trip to Seattle to play in the 1998 Magic world championships (a card game that has a competitive tournament series, sort of like poker, but geekier). During this trip I was able to meet some of the stars of the game, and play against the best of the best. The result of this once-in-a-lifetime experience was a change to how I perceive people who are considered famous and a deeper understanding of how they got there.

People who are exceptionally good at something get there because they repeated processes over and over again in preparation for an experience, or in an attempt to qualify for the experience. They then had the experience, which helped them become more confident heading into the next similar experience. This is why in professional sports or competition of any kind it’s usually a huge advantage to have “been there before” as you’re not intimidated by what you don’t know.

This opens up the idea that expertise and success comes to people who choose to go after it. Yes talent, gifts and luck play a part, but the greater your “courage of conviction”, the more likely you will be successful. If you build the tools to create the courage through hard work, then you are more likely to succeed, even if you have never had the success you are striving for before.

It’s worth reading this article because I wrote it when I was 26. I’m 30 now and a lot happened during those years. I wrote that article having had minor financial success in my life at the time, but feeling confident about where I was heading because the positive signs were becoming very consistent and I truly began to believe I could have what I wanted, at least financially, because of what I was doing. I was starting to become proof of the concept I was writing about. I was starting a process of change, just as I was starting to build this blog.

2. You Control Your Perception (Interpretation is half the battle)

Source: The Key To Happiness

I read a book called Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman. It’s a really interesting book, and one of the most enlightening ideas I took away from it was this -

Optimistic people do not see reality. Instead they contort their interpretation of what they are experiencing to see it as positive, regardless of what is really happening.

Pessimistic people have a much firmer grasp of reality and as such often see the negativity in what is happening to them and other people around them.

Optimists are essentially fooling themselves so they feel better. They manufacture hope and as a result live longer, happier lives. Pessimists see a form of truth, which you might say is more accurate than the optimists, but they consequently suffer more.

So do you want to be the happy fool or the sad realist?

When I was in my early twenties clearly my mind had decided that it preferred to see the negative in what was going on around it. It became so good at this, that the body it had control of started to malfunction.

My mind created so much fear that I started to get panic attacks. Even when there wasn’t a large predatory animal trying to hunt me down, which is a more typical reason for my body to react the way it did, as if it was preparing to fight or run away from the danger, I was feeling these sensations. It was horrible.

I created danger and fear when it wasn’t there and it was because I had learned how to think about things the wrong way. I distorted my interpretation of reality to the point where I suffered physical pain. I call that a form of insanity, but I did find a way out…

As a result of this experience I became a very, very good listener, and this has nothing to do with listening to other people. I started listening to, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say I started to observe my own thoughts, and wow, were they broken.

Back when I wrote the key to happiness I was at a stage where I observed my thought process for the sake of becoming a better thinker. You can call this cognitive behavior therapy if you like, but it’s not that complicated, all you really have to do is “watch” how you talk to yourself. Once you do this you start to realize, at least this is the case for many people, that you really don’t like yourself very much. You spend your entire day being insecure about pretty much everything.

My god was this a turning point for me! I couldn’t believe how mean I was. I thought I was a good person before this, in fact I thought I was so nice that I deserved better in my life, but I was wrong. I was an absolute bastard to the person that mattered most – myself. I spent nearly every waking moment judging myself, and the world around me, and 90% of the time I was negative.

From the seeds of your worst moments, come your greatest strengths. Becoming aware of my own internal dialogue was a massive gift and has positively influenced my life since then. The awareness born from actively listening to how I talked to myself, and then making a very conscious choice to change how I interpret the world around me and thus how I talk about experience to myself, gave me the toolset I need to, well, be happy.

I can’t really put it any better than I did at the end of the article, so I’ll repeat it here…

Happiness is ultimately not in anyone else’s hands or controlled by any external element at all. It’s purely a choice you can make. As often as I can I choose to be happy. It’s not always as easy as that but by undertaking to change the way you think and create an ongoing positive dialogue with yourself you are both working towards the same goals – that’s you and your little voice – both aiming for happiness.

Once you gain the power by becoming self aware of your own voice inside your head and how you perceive the world around you, half the battle is won. You are in control and that will always be the case no matter what happens to you or your environment.

Creating positive change in your life begins with how you interpret life itself. If you want things to change for the better, the first step is to make the choice to see the world in a way that is beneficial, on the inside. The outside world is always open to interpretation, and you will never know the real truth, so why not create perceptions that help you?

The key take away from this article is self awareness is the first step towards creating the change you want, in fact, it is all you ever need if you really drill down to it. You are the master of your own universe.

3. Work Ethic (Do it even when you don’t feel like it)

Source: How To Remain Productive When You Feel Like Giving Up

This is still one of the most popular articles on this blog with almost 250 comments as I type this, I wrote the article because it is clear people need encouragement. Heck, I need encouragement too, so I wrote this just as much for myself as I did for you.

Your mind is your strongest asset and your weakest link, and can be a very clever saboteur. It has a huge influence on your emotional state, and your emotions are the fuel that feed your creativity, or stifle it.

If there was a lesson that every blogger, entrepreneur and athlete knows well, it’s the importance of consistence and persistence. I wrote about this in some depth in my very first free report – How To Start An Internet Business – and it’s safe to take this on board as fact.

To be successful you’re going to have to work hard, over a long period of time and there will be stages, many of them, where you just don’t feel like it. If you want to change, learning how to work through periods of lack of motivation, depression, feelings of loss, confusion, or any state brought upon by negative thought patterns, requires that you learn two things -

1. Your thoughts are choices of perception that you are in control of entirely (the previous section discussed this)
2. You can choose to just do it (credit to Nike) regardless of how you feel

As you probably know from experience, sometimes even when you are aware of your inner voice, and even despite telling yourself all kinds of positive and good things, you still feel like crap. The reason for this is you don’t believe in what you are saying to yourself, which is often very hard when you’re still on the journey to change, because your physical reality hasn’t become what you want it to…yet.

A true master of self awareness chooses their emotional state because they are in complete control of their internal configuration and have need for nothing in the external world (like totally zen). For most of us, the outside world has, and will have for our entire lives, a huge influence over us because we want something from it. As long as you have a sense of attachment to anything, and this is especially true for attachments to people, you’re going to suffer (go Buddhism!).

This happens to me too, and although I can say it’s not as pervasive as it once was, I still feel lousy sometimes when I’m not getting what I think I want, when I want it. This is especially the case when you are working to change something that requires you have an experience you have never had before, or where you have attempted to have the experience, yet failed, perhaps multiple times, reinforcing the belief that you will never attain your goal.

Chances are if you are reading this blog, one of the things you are attempting to do now is make money online, and you’re not there yet, so you’re forced to do things to make money that you don’t like (e.g. a job), and you feel bad about it. This is a classic situation where you need to push through and keep going, even in the face of emotional adversity, and as I outlined in the article, often simply making the decision to act even when you don’t feel like it, will pull you out of the negative mood.

The important point here is that you need to realize your process to come to a change is going to involve feeling all kinds of emotions, many of which will not help you change in the direction you want to. The greater the change you desire, the longer the journey, and the more you are going to experience along the way. It’s your job to pilot the ship forward no matter what the conditions, with the belief that your destination is always moving closer, even when you feel like you are going backwards, and you are never certain of when you will arrive.

Coming Up: Taking It To The Next Level

I’ve introduced you to three principle concepts required to realize positive change in your life -

1. Confidence through training helps you create a foundation for growth
2. Self awareness – You choose your perception of reality
3. Working regardless of inner or outer conditions is the path to what you want

You can no doubt see how all three of these concepts are very interrelated and impact each other. As you continue through this series you’re going to see that all these concepts are governed by universal laws, and in the end there is only one variable that really matters when it comes to making change. That variable is you.

Coming up next we’re going to look even deeper at how you are the greatest agent for change there is today. Although your focus right now might be to change aspects of your own life, by the end of this article series you’re going to see how important it is that you go through this process, because if you can truly grasp this, you will see that you’re also the key to changing absolutely everything that you perceive as wrong on this planet.

But let’s not get too deep just yet. First we need to understand what’s governing the process of change, how your own behavior dictates results, what drives your behaviors and how simple it really is to change behavior if you just tie it all into the right mindset.

You can read part three of this series now here –

Why Creating The Change You Want Is All About You

Yaro Starak
Blogging To Awareness

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This is going to be a very important series if you’re ready to arm yourself with some powerful tools in the battle for happiness, success and contentment in your life, so get ready. Here we go…

This Is Who I Am

As a blogger you are at times more open with your thoughts and feelings online than you might be in person, even with your closest friends and family. Despite knowing that thousands of people read this blog every day, I find it easier and I’m much more succinct, when I share my thoughts and ideas here, at least when it comes to certain subjects.

One of the wonderful, if surprising at first, experiences as a result of being open with people through a blog is that eventually you gain some kind of notoriety for being good at something. When I started Entrepreneurs-Journey I wanted to share my business experiences simply for the sake of sharing and to see whether other people found what I had to say of value. Some people did find what I had to say valuable, so I kept saying things, and more and more people found me and started listening.

Eventually my perception online became that of an “authority” in my niche, at least to a small sub-segment of the population. I became a “someone” rather than an audience, in one little corner of the universe, in this case as a blogger who talks about entrepreneurship, marketing, and personal development.

This is a great event for all kinds of reasons, but the most important reason, and be sure to underline this, is that with authority, more people actually read what I write. With the attention that authority gives me, I enjoy the privilege and honor of being able to influence people. This is power and it’s something you have to be very careful with as power is trust, and you don’t want to abuse people’s trust.

What’s a little strange for me is that I’ve not really done anything to enjoy my position other than tell you what I think and do. I haven’t been officially trained to do this in any way, I didn’t go to school to learn to blog (I started one instead), nor was I instructed along the way about the right way to do things. In reality I’m pretty much exactly the same as you are right now, except I’ve spent the last five years sharing aspects of my life through this blog over and over again, week after week.

The Challenge That Is Changing Yourself

One of the most interesting subjects, one that I’d like to tackle with you now, is the concept of whether it is really possible to change, especially in a proactive, self-determined manner. This isn’t about fate or destiny, this is going after and getting what you want.

When I say change, I mean real change. I mean the kind of change that takes you from where you are now, to where you really want to be, although using a phrase that relates transition to a destination or a time isn’t quite complete. What I’m really talking about when I say “be” is the state you are in. It’s the change of state, the way you think and consequently act and thus experience, that I refer to when I mean change.

This is the kind of change where you feel like you’re not the same person you were before, and everything around you has changed as a result of this. You might be living in a different place, associating with different people, you might have a different lover, or several, you might be financially wealthier, or maybe you’ve lost or gained weight, or you no longer do something you wanted to stop, like drinking, or smoking.

All these things are symptomatic of change, to say they are the change isn’t quite accurate. It was something about you on the inside that changed, that caused a physical change to manifest in reality. It was YOU who changed.

When you experience this kind of change you know it, because when you realize the change you stop yourself and go “wow, I’m actually feeling what my previous self wanted to feel oh-so-much back then“. I’m living what I previously wanted to live. I am what my past self wanted to be in the future, if we include the element of time. I am now where I wanted to be back when I was somewhere else, if we include the element of place.

It’s this idea of change, and it’s change for the better that we want, or at least what we perceive as desirably better today (it may not actually turn out to be so, but we assume it is for now since we don’t know yet), that intrigues me. The idea that you are in charge of your own “personal development” is powerful. Imagine being in charge of claiming what you want in your life?

Yeah, it sounds good doesn’t it, but let’s state a truth – change is hard.

Significant change takes effort, and often so much effort that by the time we get what we wanted or arrive where we wanted to be, our value system has changed too, so you may not even want what you were working so hard to acquire. That I believe is a clever built-in motivation tool nature has given us so that we’re always striving for more. If we got everything we wanted instantly and easily then the value wouldn’t be there and we’d stop striving to make ourselves better.

Consequently, the lessons we eventually take away from any dramatic change in our lives are these, which many people come to understand as universal principles if they live long enough…

• We should live in the moment,
• enjoy the journey,
• understand that what we want isn’t what we really want and,
• that we will always want more until we decide we don’t.

Tricky isn’t it.

Is Change Even Possible?

I remember as a child listening to my mother on the rare occasion she hosted a party at her house. My mother is not the most social person and while she loves sharing ideas with other people, she’s closer to hermit than socialite. That doesn’t stop her from talking her mouth off when she’s had a glass of wine and the people around her are saying things she feels a need to respond to (nowadays she doesn’t need any alcohol to get her started!).

One of her favorite subjects as I recall, is whether change is even possible in the first place. She steadfastly believes people can change on a fundamental level, and we are talking about the tiniest of individual personality details, all the way up to global consciousness. Some people didn’t agree with her, they argued that no one could truly change, which is why as humans we will always have the problems we have, in some shape or form.

I remember listening to her passionately explaining her viewpoint on this subject, although from my recollection as my mother’s son, I felt more uncomfortable that here was my usually soft-spoken mother becoming more animated than usual, resulting in me wanting to be somewhere else (parents are, like, so embarrassing!). I generally preferred to find a way to be in another place when adults where drinking and talking loudly, but no doubt my mother’s viewpoint on change has impacted my own perception of whether change is possible, so credit where credit is due.

I Haven’t Quite Mastered This One…

As I stated at the start of this article, sometimes as a blogger you have to get personal. It’s one of the most powerful tools we have to engage our audience. However, in the case of this subject, I have to admit I don’t feel quite as comfortable as I’d like to when talking about my own perception of how to change.

Normally, as the authority, it’s smart for me to assume a tone in my blog posts that I know what I’m talking about, and to a certain degree with many subjects that relate to marketing, I do, at least comparing my own skill level and knowledge with my audience’s. I know just enough more than my readers so that I can provide value.

Marketing in so many ways is a science. Talking about how to make money, or relating a story of how you did something to get a result is simple enough. The concepts we are dealing with there are straight forward, like pieces of a puzzle you just have to arrange in the right order.

Concepts like change are much more fluid and complex. Most personal development subjects are that way because we’re dealing with some of the fundamentals of life. As a result, I’m best teaching by revealing the aspects of my own journey, even though I may not have figured it all out. Writing an article like this isn’t just for you, it also helps me, as I come to a greater realization of my own place by sharing with you. As they say, the best way to learn is to teach.

Here, discussing how you can go about changing your life for the better, I feel the need to make note of where I’m personally at with the topic because, well, I’m not quite there yet. At least I’m not where I want to be, so there is still more change to make.

I expect this is likely the state I will remain in for most of my life because as far as I can tell, no human ever masters change or remains content with how things are permanently, unless they are enlightened or dead. I don’t exist in a perpetual state of enlightenment (nor am I convinced that’s what life is all about if you consider the practical world, not just the spiritual world, although they can overlap if you become self aware enough), so I can only imagine what it is like.

For the sake of making this applicable to you, I’m going to assume you still have a strong desire to make changes in your life too and you’re not quite enlightened yet either. At least we’re coming from the same place .

This is part of the reason why this subject is so compelling. Being comfortable that life IS change is one thing, and I’m all for going with the flow, but taking a proactive interest in determining what changes in your life is a different story. You want to be the driver in your life, even if you can never be sure where the road is taking you or what you will pass through on the way.

Coming Up Next: What I Can Teach You Now

Coming up in the next part in the series I’m going to review what I know so far in terms of how I’ve been able to realize growth and change in my own life. There are some very strong repeating themes in this, and I’m seeing a pattern that I’m still trying to come to terms with myself.

If you want to know what that pattern is, read on to part two of this series –

What I Can Teach You About Getting What You Want

Yaro Starak
Changing

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Click here to download the audio-only MP3 [ 61 MB ]

Katie Freiling is an up and coming internet marketer who currently focuses on social media and blogging, however she came to my attention after watching a video she did about Eckhart Tolle.

She’s only been on the internet marketing scene for a couple of years, but is already earning six figures and just recently did a blog related launch and made $30,000 in a couple of hours.

I’m a big fan of personal development and how important YOU are to your business, which is why I asked Katie to feature in my first video interview.

In this interview Katie explains how important changing her mindset has been to finally finding success online after some rough patches in the past, and also some of the common mindset challenges that her students have faced and how to overcome them.

If you’re currently experiencing any kind of fear regarding your Internet business, this video is worth a watch.

You can find out more about Katie at http://katiefreiling.com/

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"How To Start An Internet Business
& Make Your First $1,000 Online"
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I still remember being quite surprised when I read Yaro’s August 8, 2008 post because it didn’t deal with business or the basics of blogging or even increasing traffic to your blog … it dealt with food and nutrition. At first, I thought it might have been an error but after reading Yaro’s post I realized that he is as careful as I am about what goes into his body.

Here’s the post in question if you missed it -

If You Don’t Take Care Of Your Body You Are Harming Your Business Too

It’s true that I have an unfair advantage as a formal personal chef (nope, I didn’t train at a prestigious school, I’m a self-taught personal chef who happened to have helped many other people make better food choices with the recipes I’ve prepared for them) and I have an immense passion for good food (I’m always careful to choose foods that will benefit my body and I’ve read an insane number of books on nutrition and sports nutrition).

I still remember something Yaro said during the introduction of the sales video to launch his Membership Site Mastermind program. He said that people constantly tell him that he has this ability/gift to explain complicated things in a simple way. It might have taken me a long time in my life, but I think my gift is that I’m able to get people really excited about good food and I’m able to change people’s way of seeing healthy food options.

Now, I’m not saying that I don’t have my list of cheat foods (because I do), but as a rule of thumb I make sure that I always eat high quality foods and keep the cheat foods to about 10% of the foods I eat.

I’ve found that this discipline has served me well as an entrepreneur. You see I own a media company and I also blog daily for two sites (one on nutrition and one on beauty) and as you might know, when your run your own business there is no such thing as a 9-5 at the beginning and you often put in much longer hours than you would in the corporate world.

I learned very quickly that food is my fuel and it could help me be more or less productive … it was all up to the food choices I made.

Many entrepreneurs make some pretty damaging decisions when it comes to their diet and many don’t understand the implications of their actions, so I thought it might be good to highlight some of the biggest mistakes many entrepreneurs make when it comes to their diet. I’ll also show you how what you eat and how you eat can really affect your productivity.

7 eating habits that sabotage your productivity as an entrepreneur

1) Skipping breakfast:

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day because when you break down the word, then you understand that you are “breaking” an eight hour “fast”. When you sleep, you don’t eat, and therefore if you skip breakfast and wait until you start feeling hunger pains in mid-morning you are depriving your body of the nutrients and energy to keep you going.

Let’s say you have dinner at 7 p.m. and go to bed at 11 p.m. and you wake up at 7 a.m., then you start your day as usual without eating and let’s say that around 9:30 am you start really feeling weak and decide to hunt down some food. That means that you’ve not refueled your body for 14 ½ hours! That also means that you are running on empty and there is no doubt that you are dragging yourself until you find something to eat. When your body is not properly fueled, your brain will not be able to work at maximum capacity and you may experience fatigue, dizziness and even aggressiveness (some people get quite irritated and have short fuses when they are hungry or when their blood sugar is low).

>>> Here’s another reason for you to eat breakfast: most people who skip breakfast and wait until they feel hunger pains will reach out for whatever is convenient rather than eating a more balanced breakfast. You need to have a breakfast that includes protein to help sustain your body and prevent you from loading up on bad carbs like bagels and doughnuts. New research from the Virginia Commonwealth University found that people who ate high-protein breakfasts were better able to maintain a healthier weight.

In terms of selecting good source of protein, remember that three eggs are not the only way of integrating protein in breakfast:

* Nuts: If you have an allergy, then you’ll want to skip this idea, but if you don’t explore the many nut varieties that are available including walnuts, almonds, cashews, Brazilian nuts, Macadamia nuts, hazelnuts, pecan. Peanuts are a great source of protein, but they are technically legumes and not nuts!

* Cereals that are high in protein: These types of cereals have become quite popular lately and you’ll find them at your local natural health food store or at the “health” section of your favorite grocery store. Cereals that are high in protein are a much better bet than those sugary cereals because you’ll feel fuller longer and you won’t be tempted to grab some empty calorie snack by mid-morning.

* Nut butters: Once again, if you have allergies … skip this all together. There are many different types of nut butters like peanut butter, almond butter and cashew butter. Make sure you read the label and opt for nut butters that only contain the nut itself and no added sugar, salt or hydrogenated fats. You’ll find many big brands launching new 100% roasted peanut butters that contain only one ingredient!

* A good quality protein supplement: If you are vegetarian, this works well for you. I’m not a vegetarian myself, but I like preparing my smoothies with protein supplement products instead of adding a handful of grounded nuts or a tablespoon of peanut butter. You’ll even find protein supplement products created for vegans.

* Eggs: Eggs are still a great choices, but the three-egg omelette is overkill. You should opt for either a two-egg omelette or even a hardboiled egg.

* Brown rice: Before you think I’ve lost my marbles, I have to say that since switching to preparing rice pudding with brown rice instead of white rice … there is no going back. Now a morning rice pudding is quite different from a dessert, because I don’t add eggs or heavy creams in my recipe. I simply cook my rice in water and add raw organic sugar. Once it’s cooked, I’ll put a spoonful in a bowl and will top it off with maple syrup, milk or rice milk, nuts and dried fruits!

2) Consuming too much sugar:

WebMD came out with a startling statistic: Americans bought 10 BILLION cases of soft drink sodas in 2008!!! It would be much easier to call a spade a spade because if you’re drinking a lot of soft drinks, then you are consuming an insane amount of sugar.

The sad thing with the North American diet (and this includes a lot of Canadians) is that sugar is hidden in so many foods most people don’t even realize they are eating it. You’ll find uselessly added sugar in chips, peanut butter, orange juice, most other fruit juices, mustard, relish, pasta sauces, most BBQ sauces and the list goes on. I had a friend who consumed ¼ cup of ketchup each day because she couldn’t bring herself to eating vegetables or eggs without blanketing them with ketchup (the second ingredient in ketchup is sugar and some brands add corn syrup). I was horrified when I found that out. She decided to cut back on her ketchup consumption and just that decision helped her shed 10 lbs.

A lot of entrepreneurs will rely on coffee with sugar, all of those energy drinks to help boost their energy throughout the day and drinking a lot of sugary soft drinks. Don’t get me started on those expensive sugary coffees that should really be called “desserts” and the number of times I see people drinking sports drinks (which are full of sugar) when they are sitting at a desk working makes me want to scream.

As an entrepreneur, you want to watch your sugar intake because you want to avoid the peaks and valleys that come with consuming a lot of sugar and you also want to watch the empty calories you consume. Sugar will NEVER (EVER) help you be more productive. You may get a temporary jolt, but the only thing you are really getting is extra calories that will translate into fat.

3) Consuming too many frozen foods:

If you work from your home-office and aren’t adept at cooking, you might think that your only alternative is to eat frozen foods. Alas, frozen foods are quite expensive and they are loaded with ingredients you don’t want to consume on a daily basis. I’m not saying that a frozen dinner here or there will kill you, but eating them for lunch and dinner every single day is truly sabotaging your productivity and your health. If cooking is not your thing try to opt for these healthier choices:

* Sandwiches: Be creative here and add some of your favorite ingredients in your sandwich. You don’t need to know how to cook to make a sandwich.

* Wraps: Just like a sandwich, a wrap is the extension of your creativity and require no cooking time!

* A protein smoothie: You’re better off pulling out your blender and preparing a smoothie that contains protein and fruits instead of putting a frozen dinner in the microwave.

* Roast chicken: You don’t have to even pull out a roasting pan because most grocery stores sell roasted chicken and you can use the chicken in so many ways. A roast chicken is ideal for sandwiches, with pasta, with rice, with potatoes or with vegetables. Once you have it cut up in your fridge, you can easily pull it out.

* Tuna: You don’t want to eat canned tuna daily because there are concerns about mercury-overload if you do, but eating tuna a few times a month is not a problem. Tuna is very versatile because you can use it for sandwiches, pasta, rice or I like to add them to tomato sauce and served it inside a puff pastry. If you are going to eat tuna, I’d recommend that you stay away from the ones that are conserved in oil and would opt for those that come in water. You can save up to a whopping 150 calories just by making that switch!

* Pasta: You don’t need to be Jamie Oliver (famous British chef) to prepare pasta. You really only need to know how to boil! Once you have your boiled pasta, you can add so many different ingredients to it or you can create a nice pasta salad. There is some cooking involved, but nothing too complicated.

* Eggs: You’ll either have to boil them or cook them in a pan, but eggs require little culinary know how and they are a great source of protein.

4) Consuming too much junk/fast food:

I know a cartoonist/illustrator who worked from his home office who went out each day at lunch and each evening at dinner time to buy food. Every single time I saw him on the bus, he’d be carrying a bag from a fast food restaurant in the neighborhood.

Not knowing (or liking) how to cook is no excuse for relying on junk foods and fast foods. There are many prepared options that are quite healthy and that don’t involve food that is deep fried and drowning in sugary gravy. It might be an easy fix if you are a busy entrepreneur to grab a quick takeaway meal from a fast food joint, but think of the long term effects on your body. I think that as entrepreneurs, we have to start thinking of our bodies as the engine of an insanely expensive European car and start thinking of the “quality” of fuel we but inside that engine. Would you put cheap quality gas in your Aston Martin? I wouldn’t and I wouldn’t put poor quality foods in my body!

5) Multi-tasking while eating:

Being a multi-tasker comes with being an entrepreneur. It’s been reported that most of us entrepreneurs suffer from some form of mild ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder Syndrome) and that’s why most of us jump from one activity to another or work on many projects at the same time.

Very few entrepreneurs are happy sitting down doing the same old job day-in and day-out. This might be a great quality to have when running a business, but it has to stop when it’s time for your eating habits. Entrepreneurs who eat while working at their desk or drive while eating a sandwich or are running about town with a hot dog in their hands are missing the boat. Eating on the run causes so much havoc to your digestive system and because you aren’t being mindful while you eat, it’s so much easier for you to overeat when you are eating on the run. It makes so much sense to sit down even for 15 minutes to eat your meal and it won’t add all that much pressure on your day. It you make sitting down to eat a priority, you’ll find the time to do it every day.

6) Skipping meals:

I’m guilty as sin when it comes to forgetting to eat. Sometimes I’m so focused on a project that I keep saying to myself “I’ll eat in 15 minutes”. That usually turns into an hour or two later and by then my stomach is growling and I feel very weak. It would have been so much better for my brain and my body to stop and eat when I started feeling hungry, but as an entrepreneur, I’m trying to cram as much as I can into my day. I’ve actually solved this problem by scheduling my meals into my outlook and I no longer forget to eat.

7) Eating too much:

If you only have to travel from your bedroom to your fridge to your desk, you’re not dispensing all that much energy. When you work from your home office, you have the luxury of being really close to the kitchen. This is a good thing because you are able to save a bundle on buying food at restaurants and other eateries, but it also means that you potentially have access to a lot more food than you’d eat if you were working away from your home.

Since it’s easy to get into the habit of eating at your desk while you work, overeating becomes a real concern for many entrepreneurs who work from their home office. You’ll want to avoid eating at your desk and you’ll want to make sure that you eat sitting at your dinner table. When it comes to portion size, remember that you’re not as active as someone who has to travel, so you’ll want to watch your portions closely.

Since you have the luxury of being so close to your fridge, you’ll want to make better food choices and avoid empty calories as much as you can. Finally, I think that any entrepreneur who works from home should make working out mandatory. It’s not only imperative for your health and keeping your weight in check but taking 60 to 90 minutes per day for a fitness activity you love doing will get your mind off of work and when you get back to your desk, you’ll be that much more productive!

Need More Food Help?

If you’re in a food rut or if you’ve not been making the best food choices, you might want to download my free book: 21 Easy Tips to Making Smarter Food Choices.

In fact, I’m offering Yaro’s readers three of my books. Just head to this page Get Smart about Food and sign up to receive a few books that will help get you back on track to Eating Smart!

http://www.eatsmartagesmart.com/get-smart-about-food/

You can read my daily banter on Eat Smart Age Smart, or you can follow me on Twitter!

www.EatSmartAgeSmart.com

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Krizia

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